Can drug addiction really be "cured"?
Perhaps rehabilitation centers help to
cut the habit, but the lasting effects
of the drug use remains with the user.

His mother was a respected teacher and they were a family known in our neighborhood. He had two other brothers and he was the youngest of the three.His mother had a nine-to-five job and would come home a little after five, so they grew up mostly by themselves through the years.

When his brothers were in their teen years, groups of friends would come over, as is usual among young people, and they would have a "jamming session" - drinking beer and some singing with a karaoke unit. The gangs/groups seemed harmless and did not cause trouble (until later) and they would jam at the wee hours of the morning to the annoyance of the neighbors.

Later, we learned that his mother was having problems with him. He was getting violent and would not eat for days, sleeping only most of the time.
One day she came to ask for my help as her son had covered all their windows with aluminum foil and painted the walls of their house black! Another time, he went up their roof and started to burn some newspapers on the rooftop as though he was cooking something.

Because of neighbors' complaints filed at the local community center, the mother had to bring him to a mental hospital. He was not mentally ill, never was, and had no history of any illness of that kind. What they discovered was that he had drug overdose. Drug overdose? The mother wondered where in the world did he get the drugs!

Poor mother, she did not know that one of her sons was already a drug pusher and he had stocked some of the drugs in the house, and the younger son "experimented" with the forbidden stuff.
Being new to the chemicals, his brain
literally "got cooked" and all his mental capacities were totally wiped out. He could not even recognize his mother and his family.

He stayed for a year at the institution, and lately, he was released and came home. For a mother who has a son like him, my heart breaks every time I see him. He walks the streets with glazed eyes, looking but not really seeing, his mind was never restored even with treatments.
His speech is zero, and he exists like a zombie, alive but not living. He stays home and is fed, taken cared of like a child or a stroke victim.

I have observed some of my friends who had been into drugs in their youth, those who did it "for fun" to "be in with the crowd" or just for "party kicks", exhibit weird behavior like slurred speech, nasal clogging,
involuntary muscle twitching, extreme hair loss, trembling hands, and sunken dark eyes. They try to get back to the work place, get jobs, and stay for a while. They can never really do work that requires normal brain functioning as most often their capacity for memory retention and comprehension has been damaged. It is futile to even mention decision-making capacities and reasoning or logic. There is none of that restored.

The brain is a human mechanism much like a machine. When it is properly nourished and taken cared of, it will function for a long time. But when
drugs are taken into the body, the brain is one part of the anatomy that is most affected. Damage to its cells and tissues are direct and often irreversible. There will be moments of normalcy but there are more lapses into mental deterioration.

Emotions must never be stressed because
most former addicts get back to the state of uncontrolled rage or deep depression. One friend of mine, whose husband came home from rehab, was elated to relay the news that "her husband had been cured." After a year, we learned that her husband committed suicide and hanged himself. He had
been suffering from extreme depression.

Recently, a crime was committed by a former addict, a seventeen-year-old boy
who came from a church camp for drug rehab, they thought he was "cured" and
his family left him to baby-sit his three-year-old niece. When the family came home in the afternoon, the young child was dead, her throat slashed by her trusted uncle.

Addicts may survive with rehabilitation and life-time medication, but the damage cannot be "cured". If only they can be given brain transplants.



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Note: The drug dealer brother had been killed in a drug bust operation by the police tw0 years ago.