There is one more step after the Purification Program to achieve a full recovery from drugs.

Complete freedom from the damaging effects of drugs requires that a person also deal with the mental image pictures from having taken drugs. The Purification Program gets rid of the drug residues that keep these mental image pictures in restimulation. But the pictures still exist. They can be restimulated by perceptions in the person’s surroundings and have a bad effect on the person. This can occur out of his control and below his awareness. It can do him harm in a way that is not obvious, with the cause hidden from him.

The processing that deals with these pictures is called the Drug Rundown. It is delivered by highly trained practitioners in Scientology Churches and Missions.

A rundown is a series of steps to handle part of a person’s life or difficulties and which has a known end result. The result of the Drug Rundown is freedom from the harmful effects of drugs, alcohol and medicine and freedom from the need to take them.

A person’s perceptions and recordings of the physical universe when on drugs are inaccurate as they are a combination of past events, imagination and the actual events which occurred at the time. A person can have pictures from past experiences mixed up with his present time perceptions. Thus his memory and his ability to think are both less than they could and should be.

The Drug Rundown handles past drug use in several ways. First, exact procedures are used to deal with the experiences the person had while taking drugs. This frees attention that became stuck on those experiences.

The more a person’s attention is freed from past incidents, the more able he is to handle his life. He feels brighter, has increased perception, is better able to control his life and the things in his surroundings, and he becomes more able to get along well and rationally with others.

A person who has taken drugs also has many unpleasant physical, emotional and mental sensations connected with them. During the Drug Rundown he discovers and examines the source of these. The harmful energy in the mind that is connected with them is released.

Finally, the person, through the processing, is able to find out the actual reason he started to take drugs in the first place. A person turned to drugs for a reason—some physical suffering or hopelessness. The drug problem is thus basically a spiritual one. The being was somehow suffering and drugs became a way to lessen this suffering.

The person looked upon drugs, alcohol or medicine as a cure for unwanted feelings or conditions—which could include an almost endless list of things from physical pains to anxiety to lack of confidence. One has to find out what was actually wrong before drugs became his solution or “cure.”

If the reason for taking drugs in the first place is not found, the need to take drugs or medicine or alcohol remains. Processing on the Drug Rundown not only deals with the effects of drugs, but enables the person to find and get rid of the causes which first led him to take them. By doing this it completely removes any desire he might still have to use or depend on drugs in the future.

The Drug Rundown deals with and handles the unwanted feelings the person had both during and before the use of drugs, alcohol or medicine. By completing this processing, the person is at last free from any effects of drugs.

A full recovery from the mental and spiritual damage of past drug use requires all these steps.