Orange County ranks among the most beautiful places to live in America. Featuring affluent and beautiful cities like Anaheim and Huntington Beach, the city abuts the southern expanse of Los Angeles, providing a more serene and traditional backyard that many of the latter city’s middle-class commuters call home.
Orange County also features some of the best weather of any place in the country, with average January highs near 70 degrees and summer temperatures that are hot but not stifling as is so often the case in places with warm winters.
But despite its charming environment, just below the surface, Orange County suffers from many of the same pathologies as the rest of the Greater Los Angeles area. Among its biggest problems, Orange County suffers from rampant drug abuse among its poor and homeless residents as well as generally high availability of many different kinds of drugs.
Local estimates have placed the prevalence of drug addiction at 8 percent of the county’s population. But this hides the fact that those of lower socioeconomic classes tend to be vastly more afflicted by substance use disorders. In one of the most unequal cities in one of the most unequal states, Orange County is a place where the rich play and the poor often self-medicate just to get through their days.
Homelessness and Addiction Rates in Orange County
Drug use has long been a major problem throughout Orange County with a constant rise in homelessness. With the increasing access to potent drugs, including both illegal and prescription opioids, and the economic hardship brought about by stratospheric living costs, Orange County residents have been falling into addiction’s vicious grip in record numbers.
By some estimates[1], drug- and alcohol-related hospital visits have become the single most expensive public cost that the county faces, totaling an estimated $269 million per year and putting a dire strain on the county’s healthcare resources.
But the far bigger cost is measured in lives, both those that are outright lost to addiction and those that are destroyed in its wake.
While Orange County has, to a large extent, avoided the most serious consequences of the national prescription opioid epidemic, the raw statistics can hide the painful individual reality that hard street drugs, like heroin, crack cocaine, and crystal meth, are probably easier to obtain in Orange County than perhaps anywhere else in the country. This is due, in part, to the county’s location as a strategic drug corridor for Mexican cartels as well as a thriving gang and dope-dealing culture in neighboring Los Angeles County.
What this means is that Orange County, despite its lower incidence of addiction relative to its sister city Los Angeles, is a particularly challenging place for those who are looking to make a full recovery from drug or alcohol addiction. California’s lax attitude towards drug enforcement combined with its large criminal underclass means that those who are attempting to conquer their own personal vices will be tempted at every turn to regress back to their old ways.
Our Orange County Treatment Center Can Help
Our Orange County treatment center is comprised of expert staff with a proven track record of helping Orange County residents to shed their destructive habits and begin a new and purposeful life.
Taking an evidence-based approach to drug treatment, Ocean Hills Recovery is able to help our clients through every challenging step of their journey towards sober living. Beginning with the initial detoxification period to the months, years, and decades after leaving treatment and returning to a society offering ever-present temptations.
The Personal Touch of Holistic Treatment Combined with the Rigor of Medicine
Our highly trained, professional staff includes practicing doctors and mental health professionals. We have the means to safely and effectively help our clients through the addiction-recovery process, including handling care-intensive detoxifications that may require pharmacological and medical intervention. Our staff is fully qualified to help our clients through everything from a relatively symptomless period of amphetamine withdrawal all the way to the complex withdrawal syndrome of heavy, prolonged alcohol or benzodiazepine use. Ocean Hills Recovery is a fully licensed and accredited detox center for every major substance of abuse.
We also have trained mental health professionals on-site who are able to make accurate dual diagnoses, helping to tailor each client’s treatment program specific to their individual needs. Research has shown that as many as half of all those who develop serious substance use disorders suffer from a combined mental health condition. In nearly every case, adequately addressing the underlying mental health issue leads to a far higher rate of relapse-free recovery.
But as a community-based program, we also believe that drug treatment is about far more than physical detoxing and optimal medical management. Our treatment center strives to connect those at similar points in their journeys to sobriety. In many cases, clients that meet in our programs form relationships that last a lifetime. Through fostering camaraderie and encouraging the externalization of feelings of guilt, anxiety, and other potential emotional triggers, Ocean Hills Recovery will help our clients to relearn to walk through social life without the crutch of their preferred substance of abuse.
Contact us today if you or a loved one is struggling with substance abuse.
Source:
[1] http://www.ochealthinfo.com/about/admin/pubs/od
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