I had another interesting and challenging conversation last night. I am really very lucky to do what I do. Never the same thing, and boy it is never, ever boring. I was discussing the possibility of drug rehab with someone last night. They thought rehab might be a fairly good option for them. Drugs had been in theri life for a long time, and their life seemed to be stuck in somewhat of a rut lately. They hadn’t worked in quite some time.

The question arose, that would it not be a better idea to invest the money for drug rehab into starting a business for them, so they could actually support themselves. If they had a business and were accomplishing some things in life, they would not need drugs in their life and could move past addiction. There is good logic in this path and would it not make sense to build something rather than just go to drug rehab?

The real answer would lie in the actual reasons on a day to day basis, on why someone is using drugs. If the drug usage was truly do to boredom, then activity would seem to be the cure. The problem is, just like most things in life, not that simple. Even if that were the only reason, it still might be a better idea to go to rehab first.

One is that with long term drug use, the body and the brain has changed. The will be some depression and side effects while a person is stopping use. Being depressed and hyper-sensitive to the world is not the best time and frame of mind to start a business. The other is that it is rare, that drug use is do to a single cause. Most time it is because of multiple areas. Stress, boredom, anxiety, anger, social pressure and a few others are really common. Starting a business is always stressful and filled with some moments of doubt and uncertainty. Stress could lead to increased drug use, not a great idea while building a business.
Building a business is a tough demanding time. It is also a blast. Building a business while on drugs, while totally possible, seems to be really pushing the odds. Four out of five new businesses fail in the first five years.

I guess the final words I would like to end with are, if it were possible to quit without going to rehab, after decades of drug use, why have they not quit? I think building a business is a wonderful idea. I still think drug rehab and a business are in the realm of possibility. The only real shot at success is to do one, before the other.

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 21st, 2008 at 7:13 am and is filed under Alcohol Blog, Drug Addiction. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.