I guess that makes sense.  So you agree with the clinic.  I was focusing on the drugs and the effects of them, you focus on the illness which includes all drugs.  Actually my son's mind was not healthy to start off.    He needs mind drugs anyway to battle mental illness and disorders.     He is getting the right medicines from his psych doctor.    We all believe he was just self medicating himself to live.   Anyway, I suppose it will be a long road to recovery.   I suppose it is going to take awhile to get him on the right meds, so he can get off the bad ones.   Thanks for you comments, it was enlightening.   Do you believe getting off methadone is harder than oxy.   Seems like many, many people say it is.      

let me give u a little tip about methadone i was up to 200mg then tapered to 90 and 1 i never heard of **** like their talking i was allowed to go as quickly as i wanted but anyway i stopped cold turkey and its been 9 miserable days i believe there is something quite differant about meth then evevn iv heroin use i was better by now.it was easier to kick straight opiods in a hospital detox then this methadone POISON.

There's virtually no use getting someone off one mood altering substance if they continue to use another.  The problem is not really WHAT the addict is doing, but that they suffer from the disease of addiction.  As they say in NA: "We are people with the disease of addiction who must abstain from all drugs in order to recover."

The crux of the problem is found in that part of the brain that hosts addiction - the lymbic system.  The research, most recovery professionals, and the experience of many addicts with sustained Recovery, all say that the lymbic system is either in addiction-mode or it's not.  Once it gets in addiction-mode it can be very difficult to turn it off and even harder to keep it off.  As that statement implies, once it's been in addiction-mode it's very easy to go back to addiction-mode even if you get it turned off.

It doesn't require one's drug of choice to turn dormant addiction into active addiction.  In fact, it doesn't even take what most people think of as recreational drugs - anything that is mood altering can do it.  For example, even OTC cold med that gets you wired, such as sudafed, is supposed to be off limits for an addict (or alcoholic) in Recovery.  (I've been meaning to get that off-limits list for a while, so I just called a rehab I went to and they're faxing it to me now and I'll post it on here.)

Anyway, it's not so much that Person-A has a problem with alcohol, Person-B with opiates, Person-C with cocaine, etc., it's that A, B, and C all have brains that suffer from the disease of addiction - the limbic system in their brain tells them that they must have a mood altering substance (the same way it tells them they must eat or breath).  To make matters worse, it seems that when the lymbic system is in addiction mode it's "off switch" gets impaired or just plain broken.  Hence the old saying "one is too many and a thousand is never enough."

So, even though weed (or whatever) may not be the specific mood altering substance that got your son in trouble or even the one that's his drug of choice, it's still a mood altering substance that will keep him in a state of active addiction.

Recovery from addiction is a really tough thing, even if it's approached with a clean and sober mind.  If it's attempted with a mind that's still being subjected to mood altering substances is so much harder that's it's ridiculous.  From the clinic's point of view I'd bet it's a statistical impossibility.

If his thought is that life without at least a little SOMETHING will unbearable or just no fun, that should tell you (and maybe him) something about the current state of his brain chemistry.  People here are no doubt getting sick of me saying this, but check out the books: End Your Addiction Now, by Charles Gant; The Mood Cure, by Julia Ross; Staying Clean & Sober, by Miller & Miller; Staying Sober, by Gorski & Miller; and Seven Weeks to Sobriety, by Joan Mathews-Larson.

Hope this makes sense.