We introduced you to a family who owns an elephant in the living room. It seems the dad, Matt, has the same name as the elephant—and that’s because Matt is a drug addict. It’s time to find out what kind of help you can get at drug treatment centers in Fort Worth, TX, or through other resources.
One of the most important things for you to realize is that you are not alone. Drug addiction has been running rampant throughout the country. Whether your loved one is using alcohol, a stimulating drug like cocaine, or a narcotic such as pain pills or heroin, much of the information for families is identical.
The first thing you can do is steer your loved one toward treatment. Calling one of the drug treatment centers in Fort Worth, TX, is not an easy thing to do, but remember that the people who pick up the phones are used to answering the call for help. They will be willing to help you find what you need—but when it comes to getting your loved one into recovery, there’s one problem: The addict has to make that particular phone call himself.
Even so, you can still call a place, like a local methadone or buprenorphine treatment center if the person you care about is abusing pain pills or heroin. You can ask about the hours when a person can access treatment and how they go about it. If there is paperwork to be completed, maybe they can mail it or email it to you. Your job then becomes making it known to your loved one that you want them to get help. Leave the literature around for them. When the person is calm and not high, talk to them about why it matters to you for them to get into recovery. Get them to start thinking about recovery.
Education for Families About Addiction
The next thing for those families who have a loved one at one of the drug treatment centers in Fort Worth, TX, is to become educated about drug abuse and recovery. There are plenty of booklets available from the government. There is a huge government agency called the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), which offers free material of all types concerning substance abuse.
What Is Substance Abuse? A Booklet for Families is free. You can have it mailed to your home or download it at your computer. You will learn that people of all types seek out help at drug treatment centers in Fort Worth, TX. They might be rich, they might be poor. They can be Hispanic or not, black or white. Some of them hold down good, respectable jobs, and others are unemployed. Drug addiction knows no barriers. You will learn about cravings and loss of control, how you can get your loved one started, plus much more.
If your loved one is abusing pain pills or heroin, you can read Medication-Assisted Treatment for Opioid Addiction: Facts for Families and Friends. Some people do not approve of methadone or Suboxone treatment because they say the addict is substituting one drug for another. This booklet will help you understand why “Just Say No” doesn’t work for everybody. For those people, one of the methadone drug treatment centers in Fort Worth, TX, is the only place that can make a difference.
What Drug Treatment Centers in Fort Worth, TX, Cannot Say
The drug treatment centers in Fort Worth, TX, or anywhere in the U.S., cannot talk to you about your specific family member. There are federal laws protecting confidentiality of the people who seek help. When you make your first inquiry, the person at the drug treatment centers in Fort Worth, TX, can answer your questions freely about the person who is using. But once that person comes into the treatment center, the staff cannot even tell you if they know that person’s name.
It can be very frustrating when you cannot even find out what’s going on with your loved one’s treatment. Even so, once they’re getting help, it’s only a matter of time until they bring home some information to you about how families can help with recovery. Some drug treatment centers in Fort Worth, TX, offer family groups. Others do not have family groups but provide lists of Alanon and Nar-Anon meetings. Attending those, when the time comes, will be an important job for you.
SAMHSA can also provide lists of drug treatment centers in Fort Worth, TX. You just enter your zip code to find treatment centers near you.
Alanon, Alateen, and Nar-Anon
Methadone Anonymous would be the perfect resource for people who use pain pills or heroin—but the website is out of date and there aren’t any chapters operating near the drug treatment centers in Fort Worth, TX. Alanon or Alateen offers help to the families of anybody who has an addicted family member.
You can read the questions on Alanon’s website, concerning people whose families need to be in one of the drug treatment centers in Fort Worth, TX—just ignore the words like “drinking” and “alcohol” and substitute the words that describe doing drugs and narcotics. For example, instead of “Do you worry about how much someone drinks?” you would ask yourself, “Do you worry about how much someone does drugs?”
Many of the questions will be eye-openers for you. It will be a good feeling to discover that you are not alone, that many others have been “hurt or embarrassed by a drug user’s behavior” or “feel like a failure thinking of the lengths they have gone to in order to control the drug user.”
Alateen offers help for the teens and preteens in your family. When you look for meetings for Alanon, you will often find Alateen meetings scheduled in another room, at the same place and time. That way you can attend a meeting in one room while your child gets help in another room nearby. Adult moderators watch the children in the group. Both you and your children will benefit from hearing the stories of other people whose relatives are using drugs. You can go whether you loved one has chosen to enter one of the drug treatment centers in Fort Worth, TX, or even if that person is still refusing to get treatment.
Nar-Anon also provides information and help for families of addicts, but there are simply fewer meetings than those offered by Alanon. You will also find that some people in Nar-Anon—an offshoot of Narcotics Anonmyous—frown on methadone or Suboxone treatment, which offers great success for many pain pill and heroin addicts. People in other groups, however, welcome families of all addicts. You can learn more about methadone treatment from the methadone maintenance Treatment factsheet published by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC).
Your Goal
Your job, whether or not your loved one finds help at a Fort Worth methadone program or drug treatment center, is to become educated about addiction. It’s also important to meet others who have walked this path ahead of you. You can access the websites and materials listed above, or you can make a phone call and direct your questions to a drug treatment center near you.
