Posted by Tony Bylsma on September 16, 2011 under How to Help a Drug Addict | 
I had a sobering experience in a classroom this week. A young high school student came up to me and said her father was addicted to crystal meth and sometimes crack cocaine. What she told me was not easy to listen to but I knew it was true by her mannerisms and by her tears.
At 17, she’s the oldest of four children; the youngest is five. Her mother works two jobs and she herself works after school in order to help pay the rent and feed the family. No health care, no car, barely covering the basics in order to survive. Her mother insists she stay in school and graduate, I agreed wholeheartedly.
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Posted by Tony Bylsma on May 11, 2011 under How to Help a Drug Addict |
Don’t think that quitting drugs is going to solve all the addict’s problems.
What the addict did while on drugs wasn’t exactly creating a good future. Once the drugs are removed, the work of rebuilding a life has to begin.
When an addict tries to quit but then relapses to drugs, it occurs because he or she didn’t change anything. We’re not talking about just a change of location or of friends. The addict must change abilities.
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Posted by Tony Bylsma on April 14, 2011 under How to Help a Drug Addict |
I have long heard it said that only an ex-addict can 
effectively help another addict through recovery. I know that is not so because I have know many talented counselors who had never abused drugs. But sometimes the extra dimension of having personally experienced addiction can provide insight that cannot be taught.
The problems of overcoming addiction are something only one who has overcome them can completely understand. Others can study addiction, work with addicts and even live with addicts and begin to see what the effects of addiction to drugs or alcohol are. But there is a vast difference between truly and fully knowing something and merely knowing about something. The addiction scholars can study for years and never completely understand the life of the addict.
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Posted by Tony Bylsma on April 9, 2011 under How to Help a Drug Addict |
As with many other Amphetamines, methamphetamine can be snorted, smoked, injected, and eaten. 
How it is introduced into the body has a lot to do with how hard and fast the effects take place and, to a degree, how damaging the drug is with each use. It can even effect how quickly the abuser becomes addicted.
First Date
Smoking the drug or injecting it intravenously, the user experiences an intense “rush” that lasts only a few minutes and is described as extremely pleasurable. The initial effects of meth can last from a few minutes to a half hour, until the body becomes more tolerant to the drug’s influence and the rush becomes less intense. But the effects of the drug are not over at that point.
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Posted by Tony Bylsma on March 24, 2011 under How to Help a Drug Addict |
What is the difference between an addicted individual and one who has stopped their drug taking? If we examine this, we can learn something useful about drug addiction.
Let’s stand them together. Someone who has ceased consuming dangerous and addictive drugs stands right next to a fully strung-out, stoned, blurry eyed drug addict. We should try to pick out the differences, the user from the ex-user.
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I had a sobering experience in a classroom this week. A young high school student came up to me and said her father was addicted to crystal meth and sometimes crack cocaine. What she told me was not easy to listen to but I knew it was true by her mannerisms and by her tears.
