LAND, a Rehabilitation Centre for drug addicts and alcoholics, is situated about 50 kms away from the city of Mumbai. It is spread over 60,000 square feet. It is equipped with a state of the art gymnasium, a badminton court and a club house. There is also a gazebo for meditation.
All the rooms are equipped with air conditioning and water heaters.
Our success rate of 85 percent is not due to the luxury offered but due to the program routine, counselling sessions and its principles.
We cannot change the world. We can only change the way we perceive the world. One of the important principles we use at our rehabilitation centre is about unlearning old negative patterns and learning and replacing them by new positive behaviours. Let us look at few more principles that addicts use for their recovery.
Reappraisal is a good tool.
Most drug addicts have both, real and perceived negative experiences or circumstances. They are troubled by these negative thoughts. Not wanting to think of a negative experience only makes them think about it even more. They are taught to do a Reappraisal exercise about the negative experience at our rehabilitation centre.
For instance an alcoholic at our rehab centre, just couldn’t let go of the thought that a part of his home was burnt in a fire. He used to keep drinking alcohol to forget his loss. Outlining the negative circumstance only made his drinking worse.
So, when he joined our drug rehabilitation centre, he was taught to do a reappraisal of the negative situation.
For a reappraisal one has go to a point of value and see the incident from that perspective. The alcoholic valued his 14 yrs old daughter. When he completed the reappraisal, he said , “Wow! Thank God my daughter was not at home, but instead was at her school when the fire broke out!”
Counsellors at the centre then encouraged him to visualise the scenario over and over again. Now when he think of the fire at his home, he feels grateful that his daughter was at school. The same event that made him miserable, now makes him feel gratitude.
One trip Funda.
Our treatment centre believes in total abstinence. This is often referred to as the one trip funda. It means that even if a drug addict or alcoholic stops taking drugs or alcohol for 40 years, he only has to have just one more dose of drugs or even a little bit of alcohol and he will soon go back to his drug or alcohol of choice.
This is because for drug addicts and alcoholics, the brain produces a neurotransmitter called THIQ (Tetrahydroxyisoquinoline). This neurotransmitter intensifies the urge to use.
The addict may use a smaller quantity for a very short period of time, but will soon go back to the original dose. In fact most drug addicts and alcoholics, increase their dosage to make up for lost time.
Either you are working towards your sobriety or towards your relapse.
One of the important principles of our program is that if one is not working towards sobriety, one is working towards relapse. The process of recovery is a dynamic process.
There is no such thing as recovered drug addicts or recovered alcoholics. They are constantly in a state of recovery.
An input towards their sobriety should be on a daily basis. Sobriety is like a plant that needs constant nurturing. Prayers, gratitude and sharing of day to day negative emotions, if they do arise is a must.
Thousands of drug addicts and alcoholics are now leading sober lives because of the various principles that learnt at Dairrc rehabilitation centre. Anyone can give up drugs and stay in recovery all their lives by using these principles.