Go on, spoil yourself. It’s been a long week, right? Lots of drug treatment sessions, lots of growth—lots of steps toward a new life, one that seems to be getting closer by the day. You’ve worked hard, and you’re getting better, and now, you deserve a day off.

Maybe you’ll start with a stroll to the dining room, for a breakfast so good it makes you want to eat it twice. Or maybe you’ll laze around in bed for awhile, and take in a movie on your personal plasma-screen TV. You can’t stay inside forever, though—it’d be a shame to waste all that daylight—and so why not wander out to the pool, or the beach, and fall asleep with the sun on your face. There’s also shopping of course, or hiking or surfing or kick boxing or massages or…

You get the idea: Options. Lots of options. You’ve got ‘em—and we make sure you’re able to take advantage of them.

Sunset Malibu is founded on the principle of excellence: excellence of care, of course, but also excellence of living—excellence for everyone and in everything, because anything less just isn’t good enough. We aim—we exist—to provide our residents with the best of all possible amenities; from the bed to the beach, nothing we do is anything sort of exceptional. The idea, of course, is to make the healing process as smooth as possible—and to ensure that our residents have plenty of options, no matter how varied their interests or how refined their tastes.

Remember, recovery is a trying process. The road to becoming sober is a long one, a difficult one—no one gets better without experiencing a little pain along the way. The key, as you might expect, lies in managing that pain; our goal as a recovery institute is to give our residents every opportunity to feel good…even (or perhaps especially) on the bad days. And that’s where options come in, because sometimes there’s nothing like a morning by the pool or an afternoon in a boutique to clear your head, and remind you that everything’s going to be all right. Sometimes, you might say, happiness lies in having a choice.

So like we said: Go ahead. Take the day off. Spoil yourself. You’ve earned it, after all, and it’s not like that breakfast is going to eat itself.

There is always a reason.

Addiction, you might say, doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It doesn’t come from nowhere, doesn’t emerge from nothing. There is always a Why behind substance abuse, a psychological or physiological basis for dependence. Addicts don’t need just for the sake of needing, in other words; they need because they’ve got to, because there’s something about them that creates a sense of overwhelming want.

There is always—always—a reason.

It follows, of course, that a primary aim of any successful recovery program has got to be finding that reason, and unmasking the disease it engenders. Addiction treatment, more than anything, is an exercise in diagnosis and exploration; healing can only come with an honest and thorough understanding of the self, and such understanding can only come with rigorous and thoughtful assessment. You can’t fix the problem if you can’t find the cause. And you can’t find the cause unless you know where to look.

But where then, exactly? If there’s always a reason for addiction, what is it? And more importantly: What can be done about it? How does the team of psychologists and counselors at Cliffside Malibu use a dual diagnosis—of addiction and its cause—to treat addiction itself?

First, a note of caution: There is not, in any meaningful sense, a single common “reason” behind every addiction. No two addicts are alike, and no two addiction cases can be explained—accounted for—in exactly the same terms. Yes, there is always a reason for addiction—but there is not one reason for addiction, and to imply otherwise would be a mistake. That said, though, there is one reason that, statistically, stands above all the others, and by virtue of its prominence plays an important role in any preliminary diagnosis of addiction and its roots:

Depression.

According to most estimates, at least 18 million American adults—almost ten percent of the total population—suffer from some form of clinical depression. The disease is both biological and psychological in nature; depression is known to result from emotional trauma on the one hand and chemical imbalances in the brain on the other. In practical terms, depressives are consumed by an overwhelming confluence of pain, angst, and negative thinking—a vicious spiral which, unfortunately, drives many victims of the disease to use and abuse illicit drugs. Depression hurts, is the bottom line, and drug use makes the hurt more manageable. Depressives become addicts, you might say, because getting high feels a whole lot better than being low.

Remember, remember: There is always a reason.

But still—so what? Why does it matter than there’s often a link between addiction and depression? How can a dual diagnosis help the team of psychologists and counselors at Cliffside Malibu treat substance dependence?

The simple answer, again, is that you can’t fix a problem without understanding its cause. Because the pain of depression drives depressives to use drugs, any recovery program that fails to treat it—fails to treat the pain—is doomed to fail. To kill a weed, you destroy the roots. To kill addiction, you do the exact same thing.

To that end, the psychologists and counselors at Cliffside Malibu use dual diagnosis protocol to develop specially-tailored treatment programs for each individual patient. We believe, above all else, in highly personalized care, and our clinicians are among the best in the world. Indeed, we’ve assembled a group of the most elite minds in the field, all of whom are dedicated to—and uniquely capable of—battling addiction on every front. If there’s a reason—and there always is—our doctors will find it. And when they do, they’ll do everything they can to fight it.

In the case of depression, that fight is a particularly hopeful one. Depression treatment has undergone a dramatic evolution in recent years, with new methodologies showing success rates of up to 90 percent. Traditional pharmacological and psychotherapeutic techniques have been supplemented with an emphasis on whole-person healing, which aims to address depression in all its manifestations. In broad terms, whole-person therapy aims to promote positive interpersonal relationships, foster encouraging spiritual beliefs, and develop fulfilling behavior patterns. On a more practical level, whole-person techniques work—and our team of psychologists and counselors know how to use them.

All told, then, the prognosis for depressives—and especially for addicted depressives—isn’t as bleak as it might seem. Yes, addiction, like depression, is a powerful foe. But it isn’t, importantly, an unconquerable foe—or it doesn’t have to be, anyway, not if individuals are willing to seek the help they need to overcome it. Success, of course, is far from a sure thing…but the same can be said of failure, which at the very least would seem to be an eminently hopeful sentiment. Ultimately, patients’ prospects for recovery—for healing—lie with the patients themselves; they hold their futures in their own hands, and their decisions hold the key to triumph or defeat. In the end, it’s like we said at the beginning:

There’s always—always—a reason.

(Source: http://www.upliftprogram.com/depression_stats.html)

Addiction

The Wikipedia Free Encyclopedia defines addiction as “a mental or physical disorder proposed to be precipitated by a combination of genetic, biological/pharmacological and social factors.” Being that addiction is usually characterized by the repeated use of substances, many people think of addiction in terms of physical dependency. However, as times change, so has the medical community.

Nowadays, many medical professionals have begun to make a blatant distinction betwixt physical dependence (usually associated with symptoms of withdrawal) and psychological dependence. Not all doctors agree on what addiction is because its definition has traditionally been limited to the ingestion of psychoactive substances that temporarily change the brain’s chemistry. Now, many professionals admit that attention should be paid to psychological dependencies on things like gambling, food, pornography, and sex. The argument still exists, however, because dependencies on these things usually don’t end with symptoms of withdrawal.

There are many explanations for the origins of addiction. There is the moral explanation for addiction which insists that it stems from human weakness and/or character defects. This explanation is usually attached to dependency on illegal substances. The disease explanation of addiction contends that addiction is a disease deeply rooted in the impairment of neurochemical or behavioral processes. The genetic explanation for addiction states that dependency can come from one’s genetic background. It is often said that addiction can “run in the family” and this is explored in the genetic explanation for addiction.

Whatever the cause, there is always help for an addiction. Society is constantly evolving and along with it, so are the methods of dealing with addiction.