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Do You Need Help with Substance Abuse?

      If you have tried to quit using drugs or alcohol on your own but have not met with success, you may need professional help. People can start to abuse drugs for various reasons; they may have grown up seeing their parents do it as a way to pass the time or to deal with unwanted relationships; or they may have started out using "socially" and wound up letting the substance dominate their lives. Sometimes people who have experienced a traumatic event in their past can seek to numb their pain with substance use. If the problem has not progressed very far and you have not lost very much as a result of using or drinking, it may seem as though you don’t have a problem. 

    However, drug and alcohol abuse has a way of sneaking up on people. Other people may know it's a problem before you do. Sometimes the way society views addiction is very negative, and we are raised to believe that no matter what’s wrong, we should be able to fix it ourselves. But that only holds us back from getting the help we need. You may want to take the quiz under "Quizzes and Questionnaires" to help sort out how much alcohol or drugs are affecting your life. This web page is not meant to diagnose or treat you; please leave that up to the professionals. However, you can get an idea of what criteria we consider when we evaluate clients for substance use disorders:

Substance Abuse Symptoms Substance Dependency Symptoms
You keep using the substance despite failing to fulfill your requirements at work, school, in relationships, or at home (for example, you miss work or school a lot; you neglect your kids or spouse)
Tolerance (either you need to use more and more of the substance to get the same effect, or you have less of an effect when you use the same amount of the substance over time)
You use the substance in situations where it’s dangerous to do so (i.e., drunk or buzzed driving, operating a machine while impaired)
Withdrawal (physical effects of not having the substance in your system; this is different for each drug); you may take the same drug or a similar drug to relieve or avoid experiencing the withdrawal symptoms
You keep getting arrested behind the drug (e.g., DUI, drunk and disorderly, possession)
You often take more of the drug or take it over a longer period than you meant to
You keep using despite negative consequences
You keep trying to stop using but find yourself using it again
If you have one or more of these things going on over a period of a year or more, you should think about getting help before it progresses to dependence.
You spend a lot of time getting, taking, or recovering from the aftereffects of the drug
Other things to consider are whether you have ever had a black out, meaning a period of time when you were intoxicated to the point of not remembering what you were doing, and other people have to tell you what you did during that time. If you have ever been hospitalized for alcohol or drug poisoning, please also consider getting help. Often these disorders are progressive and serious. Please make yourself important enough to take care of this properly.
You neglect your family, friends, work, education, or things that used to be important to you as a result of using
You keep using despite negative consequences
If three or more of these things happen over at least a year’s time, you definitely need to get professional help!

   

Please call 661-233-6771 today to receive professional help from a psychologist who knows substance abuse and chemical dependency. Together we can determine  what kind of support you may need and how to start working on a better, less destructive life for you.