The Natural High

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    The Natural HighJorge Quinones

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    Foreword

    In a world plagued by addictions of all types, various persons looking for internal

    peace have found it. Whether that addiction might be, there is an answer equal to theeffect but opposite of that addiction.

    The natural high is not written by a physician or health expert. It is a recollection

    and recompilation in the quest for freedom of many individuals who have achieved it.Once bitten by addiction Science has no remedy up to date to cure it. Can addiction be

    controlled? Can addicted persons live up to the margin of their addiction?

    More people are dying because of their addictions instead of the other wayaround. An addict does not necessarily have to die to the horror of that disease. And this

    is the case of the ones who have achieved The natural high

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    Chapter 1

    The most horrific plagueI remember entering a courthouse. In a wall there was bulletin. It was about a

    handsome male model turned heroin addicted. The bulletin showed pictures of him

    throughout his life. The first pictures were of him from his successful model career. Ashis life continued his was bitten by the addiction.

    His life became tough. He lost his career. His health deteriorated so much he was

    not much of a figure he used to be. The last picture was taken when he was found dead onan overdose with a syringe piercing his vein.

    I remember the messenger guy that did the food runs for all the workers in a very

    famous prostitution area. He was addicted to crack cocaine. He was homeless and no one

    wanted anything to do with him. He cashed in the favors going for food on foot for one ortwo dollars a trip to finance his habit.

    The crack addict would sleep in the grey skull castle which was the name of a

    very famous large abandoned building in the area. Thats the place where also he was

    found dead. Blood excreted by ruptured organs. It was a sad case.I remember an old lady who after retiring from a long teacher career went to a

    casino for the first time in her life. She was bitten. All her retirement checks were spentin the casino plus all the money she would manage to get through a side line of work as a

    private teacher at home in the afternoon helping children that had difficulties in certain

    areas.One night in the casino she fell to the ground. Medical attention was needed. Her

    blood sugar levels had gone down too much for being in the casino for long periods of

    times. The addiction was stronger than the experience and kept going to the casino. This

    time she made sure she would eat the available food given free at the casino and all of thetime her parking ticket would be cleared since she had lost even her parking money in the

    casino.

    She was in denial. Her deceased husband had a property he wanted for his twosons to inherit. The house was sold and the money lost in the casino. This was the last

    money the retired teacher spent in her life in the casino.

    Science had not understood addiction to a hundred percent. Otherwise they wouldhave a cure and you would not see people begging for money in the streetlights or

    stealing from their loved ones and even from them since having money for your clothing

    and spending it on something else is stealing from yourself.

    It doesnt begin in the 20th century. Addictions come from ancient times andhistory notes many cases were rare addictions or aberrations as it was now in ancient

    times had brought calamities to the persons it had gotten to. The human tendency towards

    addiction is nothing new. Indeed, it is likely that addictions have been around for as longas we have.

    The first literary mention of the term addiction is found in Shakespeare's Henry

    V. Prior to the common usage of the word, the behavior of addicts was referred to invariety of ways. Addictions have been recognized variously as habits, weaknesses, illness

    even possession by evil spirits.

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    Alcohol, while being one of the most common drugs today, is also one of the

    oldest. People have been fermenting and brewing alcoholic drinks since at least 8,000BC.

    Lets not be fooled by legal products sold everywhere. Alcohol is a drug.A bunch of drugs prescribed by doctors reduce the symptoms and other problems

    but they are not a cure for addiction no matter the addiction the person has been bitten

    with. Sex addiction is another problem science is trying to work with. A roman ruler

    was known for its sexual addictions or depravations that lead him to his death. All

    addictions have been treated separately for its individual traits and still the result seems tobe that more persons are lost to addictions than the ones rescued from them.

    Why is this happening this way instead of the other way around? This question is

    more intriguing than it is hard to answer. This question hits the minds of all the family

    suffering from the suffering of their loved ones when they find they have no means tohelp them. The other question is, are they alone?

    Understanding addiction is like understanding all the laws of the universe and all

    the things science does not have an answer for and therefore there is no magic pill for this

    disease. When the syphilis venereal disease spread world wide, science was able to find acure for it. It was the penicillin which also cured gonorrhea and other infections.

    Such an injection for addiction does not exist. It would be so wonderful to visityour doctor and have a conversation like this.

    Patient: I have to admit my problem is gambling.

    Doctor: Why do you assume you have that problem?Patient: I cant control myself. I have to go to the gambling rooms and cant stop

    once I start.

    Doctor: There is this new medicine we are using for that specific problem now

    and the results are wonderful and guaranteed. It is an intramuscular injection calledteraxyflan. You will feel no longer the need to go gambling after the medication takes

    effect.

    Patient: I'm so thank full doctor.This would be a scenario all addicts and their families would like to have. If you

    think about it this would be great. No more violence related to drug trafficking and barely

    any economics underworld except by those illegal moneys obtained in a way not relatedto any addiction. This means society would be a lot more peaceful than what it is today.

    The Second World War would not have occurred if a man in power did not have

    an addiction for world control and an addiction of hatred by human race. The addiction of

    power has also brought calamities to this world as much or even in greater numbers thanthe ones mentioned before.

    So the man in power sees a very bloody and terrible war and instead of wanting

    better crops by fertilizing the soil with the blood of war, he goes to the doctor to gettreatment.

    Dictator: Doctor, I have a very bad complication in my life.

    Doctor: Your pulse and blood pressure are excellent today, what other thing couldbe going bad for your majesty today?

    Dictator: I have this addiction to power. I have built war machinery with the

    sweat and blood of our fellow people of this nation and have plans for annihilation of a

    certain group and other groups by race and other bodily deficiencies.

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    Doctor: Science has come now with a drug for the treatment of such symptoms.

    Doxyplerk will take all those symptoms away in the next two hours after injected. It is an

    intravenous drug.The dictator takes the shot and miracle, no second world war ever happens. No

    holocaust. Actually this is how it is not being worked. Science can not provide to this

    date a specific drug to a specific addiction that will cure it as penicillin cures syphilis.All the resources appointed to work on this problem have been divided into

    specific organizations meaning that there is not an official group or organization given

    the task by any government to deal with this problem. The problem is so big that is has tobe dealt with by area since no single organization would have the size and real state to

    accommodate the number of people dealing with addictions today.

    Giving the examples; the veterans administration hospital has an area to treat

    addicted veterans with therapist and doctors. Local hospitals have an area to treat theaddicted and each city may have a specific location where programs are being developed

    to treat this horrific disease that has killed more than any other disease or pandemic and

    has gotten killed more innocent people not aware of the situation than any other cause

    only matched by natural disasters. Certain locations to feed the homeless because of thisdisease have also been established and yet addiction has become the longest pandemic in

    existence in the whole world.Polio, or more properly poliomyelitis, was one of the most feared and studied

    diseases of the first half of the 20th Century. It appeared unpredictably, striking its

    victims, mostly children, with a frightening randomness that resulted in near panic duringthe epidemics of the 1940s and 50s. Then, in 1955, a breakthrough occurred when, after

    massive field trials involving nearly two-million children, the Salk vaccine was shown to

    be effective in preventing the disease. Today, polio is all-but-forgotten as it has

    completely disappeared from developed countries, and worldwide eradication waspredicted to end by 2005. Science was able to deal with this horrific problem and solve it

    thoroughly and yet we have been dealing with addictions for periods much longer than

    the mid-20th century and still science have not achieved a drug or vaccine to prevent andeven less eradicate this problem from developed countries and much less to predict a date

    of worldwide eradication.

    We can begin to understand that this is a bigger problem than we really though itwas. The government deals with many social, economical, military and education

    problems in daily basis reaching favorable solutions. More roads and road expansions as

    well as large bridges and large tunnels are built as the population develops and increases

    but addictions keep growing faster than roads, schools and wars. This is the reason somany foundations along with all the government programs had to be established in order

    to give a helping hand dealing with this problem.

    People who advocate legalizing drugs state that Illegal drugs are often sold inunknown strength and purities, and in a preparation that maximizes the dealer's profits

    rather than protect the health of the user. This will make some drugs much more harmful

    then they might otherwise be if they were sold in regulated environment. This is not anatural high as we would like to achieve like the lucky persons that have been able to

    achieve the natural high having been bitten by any addiction or not.

    Let us see what the statistics in the United States tells us about several causes of

    death including the drug related deaths.

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    Year 2006

    Tobacco 435,000

    Poor Diet and Physical Inactivity 365,000Alcohol 85,000

    Microbial Agents 75,000

    Toxic Agents 55,000Motor Vehicle Crashes 26,347

    Adverse Reactions to Prescription Drugs 32,000

    Suicide 30,622Incidents Involving Firearms 29,000

    Homicide 20,308

    Sexual Behaviors 20,000

    All Illicit Drug Use, Direct and Indirect 17,000Non-Steroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drugs Such As Aspirin 7,600

    What do we have here? Legal substances kill more people than the rest. They

    even beat the car accidents the same legal substances cause in our roads. If we think the

    way legalizing drug advocates think, we would rapidly become advocates of the samecause stating that illicit drugs cause less deaths than legal ones. It doesnt come to their

    minds that legalizing the rest of the drugs would increase the death rate.I will put the death rate aside since the only thing guaranteed in this world when

    you are born is death. Wealth, good living and other things are not guaranteed. Some

    people get them some dont and when persons die they dont take any of it to the grave.Death is guaranteed to anyone born. So we will put these issue aside since our main issue

    here is the natural high so we can live with it until the day we die.

    We will put the sexual addiction aside for the rest of this written material since

    sex is a natural activity of the body and will concentrate in drug addictions.

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    Chapter 2

    When the sun reaches the zenith

    The sun shined bright in a hot summer Monday. Many addicted persons got totheir daily task of finding money to finance the next drug. Many tricks had to be done in

    order to cure the sickness of the moment. A lot of manipulation of human beings was

    conducted in order to receive money from them. All those who awaked sick this day bythe time the sun had reached the zenith have found a way to satisfy the moments need

    The night was close by when the next need arrived to every addicted person that

    covered that specific addiction by the time the sun had reached the zenith thus becominga vicious cycle. This is what comes in costly. A single drug is not too expensive. The

    habit is what becomes expensive. Take for example a car tire. It can cost over a hundred

    dollars but you dont have to change them several times a day. A single drug dose may

    cost form three to ten dollars which is not expensive by anyones standards. Having thoseamounts repeated several times a day becomes a very expensive to support habit.

    Now that we have got clear that drug is not the expensive part of the addiction and

    that it is the habit that becomes costly, we are becoming ready to start on the quest for the

    natural high.The sun reaching the zenith has another side of the story also; the bright side of

    the story. Let us begin the story again:The sun shined bright in a hot summer day. Many persons who appreciate and can

    live with a natural high, did not have to wake up sick due to the disease and did not have

    to rise to cash in some money. This people had money saved for this hot summer Mondayand simply woke up to follow their plans for the day. By the time the sun reached the

    zenith all those people were enjoying a nice day in the outdoors being the beach a lake or

    a river. Maybe a hike was the choice for someone to enjoy the natural high. This had a

    cost but this is what life is about, working and making a living without having to struggledaily and ending up with nothing.

    The natural high is the bright side of the story. As I write these words, the night is

    approaching in a hot summer day. A day I truly enjoyed writing and having my naturalhigh. It is a wonderful feeling of fulfillment and life in its full.

    The natural high is something everyone has a right to enjoy but sadly many

    decline to develop after puberty. Eventually after high school comes college and wildparties involving a lot of alcohol and crazy contests begin to distort the natural high. This

    is the time were most people start changing the natural high for the garbage high.

    Education is not doing much to avoid this. At this age some young men and

    women start leaving the churches they grew up and become involved in the garbage high.Some even start a lot earlier due to home disorders and dysfunction. This is a critic time

    in the life of every person male of female. At the beginning the garbage high is fun and

    nice until it goes through several stages and becomes a cross to carry without help fromanybody. Now we cant live without the drugs but neither can we live with them. There is

    no control.

    Changing our natural system of happiness for the garbage one takes some timeand a process. It changes with each individual how long or where along the trek you

    became dependent and impotent to an addiction and now they are sick for life.

    Sick for life might seem as doomful but the sickness can be control and the

    garbage high can be changed for the natural high. The thing is that many people do not

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    choose to change that high. It is a small percentage that would like to change it. The

    percentage that got sick and tired of being sick and tired. The ones who were brave

    enough to say this is enough.That is when they admitted they were impotent to their addiction. What does this

    exactly means?

    It simply means that we are not capable of controlling the situation we havegotten ourselves into. It means the addiction can not be controlled. It means the person

    would wake up sick looking for the cure of his addiction. It has become a routine a

    vicious cycle or a way of living that took most of the hours of the day to work out.The addicted could not hold jobs simply because pay day was to far away for

    them to way and they needed to go to the street to catch in on whatever service they can

    in order to finance the addiction. This gives them suffering as well as their family and

    loved ones becoming most of the time the forgiven black sheep of the family.As sad as this may seem and sound, there is ways a mind corrupted after years of

    garbage high to transform it into the natural high our bodies were born with. Then there is

    the supposedly point of no return. The natural high is something now matter how

    advanced you are into an addiction is still achievable if the proper steps are done toregain it.

    We are not trying to find a natural high; we are trying to regain it. This is animportant factor I want to stress. We are born with it to utilize it during our lives. In a

    specific part of our lives we became entangled in activities that convinced us that garbage

    highs are better than natural highs. In some extend of our lives we could not live withoutthat garbage high. When it came to drugs, that was the life then we could not live without

    them and much less live with them.

    Much of the addicted persons were walking like a man wounded at war worthy of

    a purple heart. As a matter of fact a Purple Heart should be awarded to all those damagedin the war they have against drugs and their daily struggles to finance thy habit. It is

    during that struggling that the world turns black to all the addicted. To turn that way

    around and switch back to the natural high would be another struggle, but a struggle thatwill not last the rest of your life or take you to your grave.

    How long does it take? So far I have found no one who has been able to switch

    their garbage high back to the natural high to tell me the exact time it took him not to feelthe desire to consume drugs. They all guaranteed me that it could be achieved. It will take

    more time for others or it can take less time for the rest. The important thing is that it can

    be restored to an optimum level so we can enjoy it for the rest of our life in the hard

    situations, the good situations, and the normal situations of daily life.In some part of our life we had ruptured with our natural high. There have been

    wars. People have suffered accidents were pain drugs were administered for prolonged

    periods of time. Not all people who have interrupted their natural high or have decided tolive on garbage high have done so voluntarily even if this is a small part of all the

    addicted who the choice was theirs to pick up that first drug ever offered to them.

    We are living in a world where the drug is the word of the day. It is simply themost accepted choice in society and the peer pressure the society is delivering is a mighty

    blow. The statistics of the people that dies because of the problem of addiction is not

    even a small percentage of the people that are switching their natural high for the garbage

    high or that are in the process of it.

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    Most addicted people reach a point when they ask themselves or their God, why

    me? Why do I have to live with this condition I can not change? It is a point in the life of

    every addicted that they are convinced they can not bring their natural high back. Someof them do not know at that point that this could be done. Most just dont want to return

    to their natural high. We will leave those alone with their life. Our main concern here is

    the ones who want to regain their natural high.Children runaround and laugh when they hide and the adults cant find them. Did

    they drink alcohol or take any drug for the laughter? No that was just simply the natural

    high not yet disturbed. Addicted persons no longer see things that make them laugh untilthey had their addiction covered for the time being.

    College students can not see or take note on time when their natural high begins

    to be interrupted and corrupted. The lines of studies require much concentration on their

    subjects that when the time to party comes they hit it with all their might. They did notlearn in high school how to keep their natural high and in college most of the addicted in

    the streets today had their natural high corrupted and changed for the garbage high. It is a

    sad fact but one we have to face. Our sons and daughters will one day go to college and

    I'm not blaming college since a great number starts much earlier than that.Some times the parents are blamed for not seeing the symptoms on time. Most of

    the times symptoms do not show clearly until advanced stages of the sickness and in theearliest stages mistaken for some other condition. Gradually this is when the natural high

    begins being switched to the garbage high.

    When this sickness attack, it does not discriminate by social status, sex or sexorientation, nationality, religion or political believes. It goes to every corner of the

    cultures and elusively enters to harm the social relation of all by altering the natural high

    and switching it to the garbage high. Once this is achieved, the social life becomes

    decrepit for everyone around the problem direct or indirect involved in it. Social peaceand tolerance towards the other is crippled by the addictions.

    The addiction brings and houses other diseases which become a chain of

    transmission and even sudden death at the exposure of an overdose. This disease bringstears to the eyes of the strongest when it hits him or someone in their family. It leaves

    children without a childhood simply forming a more decrepit social system as the years

    pass by. The only way to repair society of these effects is learning how to recover thenatural high.

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