How Drugs Can Change Your Personality
Picture a young person who, for the first time, walks into a party where people are using drugs. He sees people high on marijuana, giggling and running around the garden like children. He sees people drinking and exuberantly talking with friends. He sees a couple of people crushing pills and snorting them, an activity that looks very grown up and exciting. He has to make a decision about whether or not to engage in the same activities as his friends. What he never once takes into account is how disastrously these drugs could change his personality.
One of the most common things that families say after a loved one becomes addicted is, “He became someone I don't know any more.” The personality change is complete. Before drugs make these changes, maybe he was a funny young person who could imitate any comedian. Perhaps she was a loving child who brought home every stray animal she found. He might have built his own rockets in the backyard with his dad. Maybe she was an excellent dancer or musician and hoped to be a professional one day. Drugs put an end to the joy and the dreams.
The personality changes have been described in these terms:
A mother struggling with her son’s addiction said, “I've seen this drug turn wonderful, talented people into ugly, untrustworthy, monsters.” And after 14 years of marriage, one woman’s husband became an alcoholic and addicted to pills. She said, “I am married to a man I don't even recognize anymore.”
Each drug tends to drive in certain personality changes. Cocaine, for example, tends to make a person reckless and rebellious, with a craving for excitement and a low tolerance for frustration. A woman who was smoking marijuana heavily became paranoid and hostile. Synthetic drugs like bath salts and Spice can make a person unrecognizable when he suffers intense delusions and hallucinations.
A young person considering joining his friends for a joint or a few beers never looks further down the road to consider that he could one day lose every aspect of his personality to drug use and addiction.
Violence and Arguments
As a person begins abusing drugs, it is common to start becoming secretive and evasive. When he becomes addicted, it is not unusual for a person to become highly manipulative and even abusive. Those who care for him may begin to encourage him to stop using drugs and clean himself up. A few individuals may be able to respond to this encouragement but what is more likely is that the severely addicted will lash out at these people trying to help. They’ll accuse them of being suspicious, they’ll threaten to leave or harm themselves. They tear apart anyone trying to get them help. The arguments can become brutal. But all the family was doing was trying to help.
Violence is a possible outcome of drinking or drug abuse, as is domestic or sexual abuse of spouses and children. Along with the loss of the person’s own personality, most addicted people lose morality and values. It’s like the drugs themselves do the thinking. The result is very often monstrous.
Restoring the Personality
The good news is that a person’s personality can, in most cases, be brought back by a good drug rehab program. To rehabilitate means to “bring someone back to a normal, healthy condition after an illness, injury or drug problem.” Rehabilitating a person is not done with more drugs like methadone, Suboxone, Antabuse or tranquilizers. It’s done by repairing the damage done by addiction, by brightening a person’s outlook on life and helping him find relief from his heavy guilt.
The Narconon program is not a 30-day program because we have found that true rehabilitation takes longer than just a month. It takes more time than that for a person to heal the harm, find relief from guilt, and learn fresh, new sober living skills. For most people, it takes eight to ten weeks to land back on their feet with new abilities to maintain a sober, productive life. This is when you can see their personality come shining through once again.
At graduation ceremonies held each week at Narconon centers, parents come to cheer their loved one who’s completing this holistic rehabilitation program. When a mother or father says, “I have my son (or daughter) back,” we know we have done our job right.
Call us today to find out how we can help you or a loved one escape from the prison of drug abuse. 1-877-936-7435.
