Narconon Brasil

This is a success story from Tim W., a teenager doing the Narconon drug rehab program in Brasil. He’s an American kid whose parents sent him to Narconon Brasil pretty much because they had no other alternatives.

Hey, I’m Tim and I am a student here at Narconon Brasil. I am from Phoenix, Arizona and I am 17 years old. I have been studying here for 5 months now and I am getting ready to graduate soon. The gains I have made and the wins I have had here are amazing. I know it’s easy to guess what a win is, but here we consider it doing something that one intended to do. To be totally honest I did not come to Narconon Brasil willingly and upon arriving I did not have the intention to get off and stay off drugs. I was going to do my program and leave and go back to the same old lifestyle. That was my intention and I held that with me for a good chunk of time here during the early stages of my program. I have attempted treatment 5 times before and this is the sixth. I went through two outpatient programs while staying at home and I have been through three 12-step based inpatient programs in Montana and Texas.

Needless to stay I was not able to stay clean. Personally, Alcoholics Anonymous’ 12 steps are just not for me. From December of 2004 to April of 2006 I had about 17 months of sobriety under my belt.
My drug of choice is really “whatever you got” and it almost changed with every relapse I had. Those 17 months of sobriety were more what I call so”dry”ety, meaning I didn’t have any drugs or alcohol in me but I craved it just about every day. Finally the day came in April of this year that I drank again and the drugs and everything else was back on again. I just can’t really imagine a life of calling my self an alcohol or a drug addict everyday and going to A.A. meetings for the rest of my life. Don’ t get me wrong, I have seen A.A. save tons of lives and get all kinds of people sober, it just is not the way for me. Upon arriving here I was skeptical because I was a believer that there is only one to get and stay off drugs and that is the 12 steps, and that’s it, end of discussion. I really had no idea of where I was going other than just another treatment center. I actually thought this place was a little nutty because they put out a 70% success rate, which is unheard of.

I thought the practices were gonna be “hoaxy” and it was going to be some weird techniques which really weren’t going to do anything for me. But being 17 and under my parents rule I was sent here.

Today I can say it has been the best thing my parents have done for me and let me tell you why.
I have always been a stickler for answers, explanations, and proof. I always ask “why?” and generally don’t trust something if I don’t get a good answer. I was able to ask “why?” here and get a practical answers to all my questions that made sense. The sauna program has been the foundation of the program for me. The roots of it.

Because something that I learned here for the first time is that drug residues stay in a users body way longer than anyone has imagined. It is believed that one can use every drug in the book and any amount of those drugs and then be straight for 30 days and be totally clean. That belief is com-pletely based on urine drug tests and it is totally false. I continued to use drugs after periods of sobriety because my body physically craved them.

My mind did not want to use drugs but it would give in to a physical craving my body created out of my control. That is a result of all those drugs I have ever taken leaving residuals in my fatty tissues. I learned that no matter thin one may be, not matter how active one may be, or no matter how many years one has of clean time, drug residuals stay in the body. And that’s fact. Even with that I was skeptical but as I did the sauna detox program and I was sitting there in the hot sauna sweating for 4 1/2 hours a day, for 29 days, I came to believe it. I believed it because the people next would go into “trips” from LSD residues in their blood and I would feel all tired and groggy like I had smoked a joint three hours earlier. These things proved to me that drugs really do stay in the body.

Completing that sauna program was HUGE for me and today I don’t feel that powerful physical craving for drugs that I used to. Soon after sauna when I started getting into the books, I started thinking that L. Ron Hubbard, was a little cuckoo and that Scientology was just a bunch of made up stuff that people follow like a cult. But as I went through the books, I started having some major changes take place.
I am now at the point of finishing my program in the next week or so and I am a different person. Before in all my sobriety and in a ll other treatment centers I would leave either scared to death of a relapse or just waiting to get high again, but now it is different. Something I did not think could happen. I am here, looking forward to going home and living life. Not scared of relapse and not wanting to get high. Life used to be a huge mission to me, something difficult. In a sense I con- queered life here and now its just something to have fun with and live responsibly. There is a ton of invaluable information to be learned here.

If you struggle with the idea of looking to a God or Higher Power to solve all you problems, or if you have a hard time with the 12 steps and going to the meetings the rest of your life, or if you are like me and a stickler for logical, practical answers based on fact, then Narconon is a great program for you. Given it took a lot of work. No place is just going to fix me by me not doing anything. It has been a ton of work and a lot of I did not want to do. Som e of it I still don’t want to do, but the point is, is that I am doing it and I am getting results. I just want the same for you.

Narconon Brasil is not a bad place to do it either. The basic Narconon program is going to be the same everywhere you go, but there is a handful of reasons why I came here. First of all because they were willing to work with me be under 18 which I am very grateful for, because at this point there are no adolescent Narconon programs. Second because it is a great deal cheaper than if I were to do it in the U.S. and there was no reason why not. I came down here and there was only two staff that spoke fluent English, so I was bummed about that, but I soon realized it really didn’t make a difference. The program is completely delivered in English and I found a brotherhood among the other English speaking students. The facility is huge and its set up in the green hills of Brasil.

We see all kinds of tropical birds and ants the size of grasshoppers all the time. While I have been here the weather has been great. It has really been a nice place to come escape and rehabilitate myself from drugs. My time has come to leave and I can’t wait to go home and mend all the havoc and chaos I created at home while using. Because now with what I’ve learned and how I have changed I can do that!

Come join us, we need some more Americans down here!

Yours truly,
T.W.