Giovanna’s Alcohol Rehab Story

Giovanna is a lively, attractive 44-year old woman with a strong accent betraying her Colombian origins. With her siblings, she moved to New York City in search of the American dream when she was in her 20s. But her alcoholism threatened to steal that dream away.

She started going to parties on the weekends at first. Every weekend, she was drinking a lot. Gradually, she added Thursdays to the weekend, drinking vodka, tequila and gin, straight up. It made her forget her loneliness after her divorce. But she began to accumulate a DUI every few years and spent a few years on probation after each DUI.

Then She Lost Her License to 3 DUIs

She managed to keep her job as an accountant through most of her alcoholism but then she lost that job when the company moved to China. She started working as a childcare provider but then when she lost her license after the third DUI, she lost that job because it involved driving the kids around.

She was estranged from her family who wanted nothing to do with an alcoholic. She tried a few times to get sober through short-term programs but found that all they did was give her some clean time away from the alcohol.

She was gradually but steadily losing her self-respect, consuming four or five bottles of liquor each weekend. She started having blackouts, not remembering trips to the liquor store to get more alcohol.

She Found Narconon

Finally, her DUIs caught up with her and she was looking at three years in jail. At this point, she decided it was finally time to get clean and get her life back on track. She found a program that enabled her to achieve stable recovery for the first time in her life.

She Completed the Narconon New Life Detox Program

Early in the Narconon drug and alcohol rehabilitation program, she did the New Life Detoxification, the portion of the Narconon program that enables each person to flush out old drug and alcohol toxins that get stored in fatty tissues. Once she had flushed out the residues left over from her drinking, she said, “I felt like new.” Her energy and thinking were better too.

She went on to begin learning the new, drug-free life skills she was going to need for lasting sobriety. One of the unexpected rewards this part of the program provided was relief from painful incidents of the past—things she had done or that had been done to her that she was not able to let go of. This gave her a fresh start in life, free from attention on the past.

A later life skills class taught her how to improve situations that had been damaged by substance abuse. She learned how to make a fresh start with her seventeen-year-old daughter. She was able to repair her relationship with her daughter and show her the new, sober side of herself.

“I’m happy I came here, I could not have gotten achieved stable sobriety without this program,”

“I’m happy I came here, I could not have gotten achieved stable sobriety without this program,” she said. “The other rehabs didn’t work for me. This one gave me what I needed.”

Giovanna Graduated Narconon and Went on to Help Others Recover from Alcohol and Drug Addiction

When she graduated from the Narconon program, Giovanna was able to plan an alcohol-free future for herself with her new, sober life skills. Among her other goals was helping others recover from drug and alcohol addiction the same, effective way that she had.

(To preserve privacy, the photo does not show an actual Narconon student or graduate.)