October 2007 Archives

Marijuana is no big deal…if you only smoke it in real moderation and if you wait until you are 21 to do so.

Unfortunately, a lot of teens are smoking it in great quantities…a lot of teens are addicted to the drug. Also, since by definition teens are not 21 years of age, they are doing great harms to their still developing minds.

If parents can keep kids from using the drug until after the age of 18 the risks that they will ever have a real problem with it decline dramatically. Additionally, since the risks of mental illness related to marijuana usage rise greatly with earlier ages of experimentation, the younger teens start smoking, the greater the damage done.

Prevention is the key, and preempting a problem before it emerges is always the best course of action, but even after experimentation ensues, the earlier you intervene and you earlier you stop that drug use, the better the eventual outcome, and if needed, the easier the treatment.

What are the Teen Specific Risks of Marijuana Usage?

Addiction

Teens seem especially vulnerable to the addictive properties of marijuana, and with the strength of today's marijuana, too many teens get caught up in what begins as casual experimentation and ends us in dependency and pain.

Academic Performance

Teens who smoke marijuana don’t do as well in school. Marijuana smoking teens are less likely to finish high school, less likely to get good grades and less likely to go to college. Smoking marijuana can seriously derail academic performance, and during a time in life when school success has such a great influence on later life success.

The teen years are a time of exploration, a time to have a lot of fun, but also a time when your job is to go to school, get good grades and move on into successful adulthood. Marijuana lowers the chances.

Marijuana decreases cognitive performance for about 24 hours after it is smoked; decreases the ability to consolidate memories and concentrate, and on tests of mathematical and verbal reasoning, marijuana smokers perform significantly worse. If you smoke daily, you are never as smart as you would otherwise be and even if you are still a motivated student (something that seems less likely with greater marijuana usage) you are not as able to perform well, not as able to learn what you need to know.

The damage done is not permanent and your mind can recover, but at the same time you can't get those years back, and if you do poorly in high school there can be long lasting and serious life consequences.

The Risks of Mental Illness

The earlier you start using marijuana, the greater your risks of suffering from psychosis later in life. Teens who smoke before the age of 18 have 2-3 times the chances of experiencing a schizophrenic like condition in their 20's. Marijuana use also seems linked with later in life depression and anxiety disorders, although the link has been less casually proven.

Marijuana usage is also linked with increased rates of teen depression, especially depression in teen girls. Teen girls who do develop marijuana prompted depression are very likely to self medicate their condition with ever more drug and alcohol abuse, further compounding the problem.

Psychosocial Development

Marijuana decreases your ability to learn, and what you do learn tends to be state dependant learning. Essentially, you can learn while high on marijuana, but you need to be high once again to retrieve that information and to make full use of stored marijuana consolidated memory.

Marijuana also blunts emotional experiences. While high on marijuana you do not accurately experience social and emotional challenges that are essential for full emotional and social development. If you are high on marijuana enough of the time, you never learn how to deal with the challenges and social situations of life, and you never mature into a real developmentally appropriate adult. The earlier you start smoking the greater the delay, and the more you smoke the less social learning that is accomplished. If a teen starts smoking at 13 and becomes a daily user throughout their teens, even where they to ultimately stop in their 20's, they would present in many ways with the emotional and psychosocial maturity of a 13 year old.

Many tens of thousands seek professional treatment help for their marijuana addictions each year in America. There is no shame in getting help when you can’t do it on your own, and it’s a far more courageous and sensible thing to do than ignoring the reality of your addiction, and continuing to lower your quality of life and health through ever more heavy marijuana usage.

But when you do make the decision to get help…where do you go, and what do you need?

Here is a basic overview of some of the available treatment options.

12 Steps Group Meetings, Such as NA or MA (Marijuana Anonymous)

These free peer support meetings can be a great venue to explore your compulsion to use and to gain insight and strength towards recovery. Learning what you need to know from other people also dealing with an addiction to marijuana or other drugs of abuse.

Like AA, marijuana and narcotics anonymous use the 12 steps to sobriety as a philosophical framework to recovery, and as with AA, you must subscribe to certain core beliefs for the steps to work. You can’t fake it, and you either believe in and the process and approach it with commitment or dedication, or you don’t, and if you don’t it's not likely going to work for you.

Individual Therapy

One on one sessions with an experienced addictions therapist or psychologist can also help a lot as you grapple with getting and staying off marijuana. These can be expensive, but getting some individual attention and help with your particular issues does have real value, and the insights gained from a few sessions can offer you a very solid foundation for your attempt at getting clean.

Working with a therapist you should expect to explore any personal issues that lead you to seek such intoxication, and also explore why it is that you turn to marijuana as a coping mechanism. You may also want to explore any unresolved personal issues that linger and contribute to your drug seeking behaviors.

A trained therapist can also help you to devise a tailored relapse prevention plan, help you to identify those things in your life that led you to crave marijuana and help you to understand just what you can do to beat these temptations.

Group Support Therapy

A generally more affordable alternative to individual therapy is the participation in a peer support group. Ideally, you will join a group of people with similar world views and facing similar life challenges, and explore together what works and what doesn’t on the road to long term recovery and sobriety.

Group therapy generally occurs with 6-10 others, and there is most commonly a trained group leader who guides the sessions and offers insights where appropriate. Group sessions offer a number of benefits to addicts in recovery. Firstly, no one in this world is quicker to spot dishonesty or denial faster than another addict in recovery. You may get away with a lot of your manipulations (even the one's you're not aware of) in a lot of places, but in group they're going to call you on it, and you can’t deny their expertise either!

You can also learn effective and concrete strategies for staying clean. Exploring together what seems to help gives you some real world workable options to try when you feel you can’t go on anymore. Additionally, recovering together with a group of people you can get to know pretty intimately can offer a lot of encouragement and inspiration. Nothing keeps you going more than watching someone that you know struggles as you do, break free from addiction and really reap the benefits of sobriety.

Drug Rehab

A lot of people just can’t do it on their own, and either can't do it on an outpatient basis, or are just so tired of their problem that they want to start with the most intensive and effective therapeutic option to recovery.

Getting into a drug rehab program offers a lot, and although it is disruptive and it is expensive, sometimes you just need to get out of the environment of abuse, get into a safe and sober environment and start to learn what you'll need to know to stay sober over the long term.

In drug rehab you will get a comprehensive blend of individual and group therapy, MA style 12 steps meetings and drug and relapse prevention education. You also get the time away from abuse to gain self awareness over those things in your life that lead you to need to use. Without outside distractions you have the opportunity to focus all of your attentions on getting better, without all of the everyday concerns that normally distract your attention.

Drug rehab is a big commitment, but it also offers the best chance at recovery and a long future without marijuana.

Get Some Help

There is no shame whatsoever in getting help when you can’t do it on your own. Marijuana is a very addictive drug, and the cravings and temptations to use can overwhelm even the best of intentions. Through therapies and support, you can learn what you need to know to get off and stay off marijuana for good.

About 10% of people who experiment with marijuana will develop a problem with dependence, which when you consider how many millions of people smoke marijuana in America alone becomes a very large number of people.

Wouldn’t it be great if there was a pill at somehow just stopped your cravings for marijuana…

Well, that would be great, but that one doesn’t yet seem in the works, but as a next best thing scientists are chasing down some promising leads on a new drug that may at least eliminate the high from marijuana, leaving addicts little reason to smoke the drug, and helping them in theory get past their addiction.

Scientists have been looking at a substance in a plant from the buttercup family as a possible active ingredient in a new medication for the treatment of marijuana addiction.

To test the substance, researchers gave rats an unlimited supply of synthetic THC through a feed tube. Over time, the rats came to very much appreciate the drug, and would self medicate frequently with the THC over the course of each day. After the rats were given the methyllycaconitine, which is the active ingredient from the plant, the rats immediately cut down on their self administration for the THC, by as much as 70% on the first day. Importantly, researchers note that the drug didn’t seem to have any adverse effects on the rates other than to dampen their enthusiasm to get high.

When the researchers looked at what was happening in the brains of the rats given the medication, they found that the methyllycaconitine seemed to reduce the dopaminergic reaction normally associated with the use of THC down to essentially zero. It took all of the pleasure out of the THC high, and the rats had far less inclination to use the THC after the dopaminergic response was eliminated.

Importantly, the levels of dopamine functioning for other activities did not seem affected, which is very important if it's to be considered as a possible medication for human subjects. A reduction in dopamine from baseline levels is associated with depression.

A very controversial and contention issue to be sure; if America were to decriminalize marijuana usage, would people smoke more, would we see greater rates of addiction, and other harms, or would we just benefit from a great reduction in law enforcement costs, criminal profiteering and other punitive sanctions? These were the questions that researchers from the RAND Drug Policy Research Center wanted to answer, and to do so they looked primarily at the Dutch experiment with the decriminalization and the defacto legalization of marijuana, and have extrapolated these effects to speculate on the American situation. The study authors have characterized the Amsterdam marijuana policy experiment into primarily two phases. The first phase was simply a decriminalization of the sale and possessions of marijuana, and the second phase essentially legalized the sale, and allowed for coffee shops to sell the drug openly and without sanction within the city of Amsterdam. Looking at marijuana usage rates, they state that a decriminalization of the plant, and allowing people to grow their own and smoke as they wish without providing legal venues for the sale of marijuana seems to have no effect whatsoever on increasing the rates of drug use. Legalization and sale in coffee shops has resulted in a dramatic increase in marijuana usage, and the study authors speculate that if such a policy were adopted in America, with its history of commercialization, promotion and free speech, this increasant effect could well be amplified. But what about the gateway theory? One of the real obstacles to marijuana decriminalization is the fear that marijuana tends to increase the chances of experimentation with other harder drugs, and thus if we increases the rates of marijuana use, we may increase our societal problems with harder and more destructive drugs. Again, looking at the Dutch model of decriminalization and even legalization, it doesn’t appear that this is so, and in fact, although legalization has increased the rates of marijuana use, it seems to have dampened somewhat the association between marijuana use and use of harder drugs. Virtually all users of harder drugs have smoked marijuana, but most marijuana users do not go on to use harder drugs, so is there a gateway risk? Well in the Dutch experiment, what seems to have happened is that by legalizing the sale of marijuana, officials have greatly reduced the impact of the street level dealers. The overwhelming majority of Amsterdam marijuana users buy their drug from coffee shops in a legal manner, and these coffee shops almost universally do not sell harder drugs. The average marijuana smoker just doesn’t seem to have the same access to different and harder drugs. American marijuana smokers in contrast do buy their drugs from street dealers, and these dealers are in many cases also offering harder drugs of abuse. So legalization of sale, although it has increased marijuana usage, seems to have decreased problematic usage of harder drugs. So what should America do? It seems pretty clear that decriminalization offers almost all benefits with essentially only very minimal risks. And when these minimal risks are compared in severity to the harms enacted through the punitive enforcement of marijuana drug laws, the benefits of decriminalization become more persuasive. So, let's decriminalize it. The Dutch experiment shows that making it completely legal does cause some problematic increases in usage, and America may not want to follow down this policy road; but allowing people to grow a small amount for personal consumption seems to offer the best overall solution to everyone involved. So, researchers seem to back decriminalization, public option concurs…government, what's the hold up? Marijuana is not good for you. It does cause addiction, it does lessen cognitive abilities, and it would be great if people would just stop using it and all other drugs of abuse; but since that's not likely to happen, and we obviously have no real control over its illegal distribution and sale, we should take steps to reduce the harms of a punitive anti marijuana policy.

How much will it cost, where can I go, who can I trust and what can I do if I don’t have any money… but really need some help? Although making the decision to get professional help takes you a giant step forward to getting better, even after you have committed to change the difficulties involved in selecting an appropriate and affordable service provider can easily overwhelm; and the sad fact is that far too many people who do want to get help just get discouraged by the high costs, the waiting lists and the sales pitches from private clinics who may or may not have your best interests in mind. Here is a step by step guide that you may use to help you to better understand your options, and get you started in narrowing down the available and affordable providers in your area. In broad terms, your drug and alcohol rehab options may be subdivided into 4 distinct categories. 1) Private or non profit but expensive drug and alcohol rehabs. 2) State run rehabs or state funded slots in a program. 3) Low cost drug or alcohol rehabs that do not require state funding or Medicaid 4) Totally free drug and alcohol rehabs and sober living environments, many Christian in nature, but a good number of secular options as well. There is some truth in the saying "you get what you pay for" and in general, the higher the cost of the rehab the more comfortable the facilities, the shorter the waiting period and the greater intensity in group and individual therapy as offered. There are however some real lemons in all price ranges, and you do want to ensure that any rehab under consideration enjoys a good reputation for services provided. How to Find a Rehab In general, you should approach this list as 1-4 in order of desirability and action. If you have good private insurance, use it and get the best; it's well worth it. If you can access state funded treatment and the waiting list is acceptable, you may get high quality free care including medical detox. If you can’t access state funded care or the wait is just too long, find a private rehab in your area that offers very low cost care, and get into treatment quickly. If you can't access state care, have no insurance, have no money to pay for any form of treatment…you can still get care and get it soon, look into totally free rehabs and long term care facilities as a last option. Whatever you do, get help and get it quickly. Any form of residential treatment is far preferable to months or years of continuing abuse. 1) If You Have Private Health Insurance…Use It! This is what you've been paying towards all those yeas, and you are entitled to coverage for your medically necessary treatment. The degree of coverage as offered varies greatly between companies and even between coverage plans, but as a first step, you need to call you insurance provider and find out just how much you are entitled to. If your policy information is dated, you should not rely solely on your at home resource materials. There have been some legislative changes for the better over the past years and you may be covered for more than you think you are. You may be covered for all or nearly all of the cost of a private residential facility; and if this is the case you could be getting care tomorrow at a top quality facility. Even if your insurance company will pay for a substantial portion of the costs, you don’t want to waste your energy, time and hope at a substandard facility. Please feel free to contact us at www.ChooseHelp.com for recommendations or help in selecting a quality private rehab in your area. You may find that your insurance provider will only cover a portion of your care and that to enroll in a quality private rehab you will need to contribute a substantial amount of money. No one enjoys paying for care, but if you can afford it, if you can get reasonable credit to finance your stay, or if you can borrow the money from family; you may want to consider your contribution as a worthy investment in your future health and happiness. It can be pretty expensive, but then again, so are drugs and alcohol; and if you factor in the savings from abuse, the savings of better health, and the likelihood that you will excel in your career once sober, getting better always makes good financial sense…whatever the initial cost. 2) Your State Addictions Agency is there to Help If you have no private health insurance and lack the means for expensive private rehab facility self payments, your first step towards care should be contacting your local county mental health and addictions services board. Please see state by state phone numbers for contact information in your area. Even if you do not currently qualify for Medicaid, if you lack insurance coverage, and meet certain low income criteria, you may be eligible for free or very low cost local care. Some publicly funded facilities provide an excellent standard of care, but in general, due to funding limitations you cannot expect the same degree of privacy and comfort, of individual therapies and of quick entry as with private care. Many people will qualify for state funded rehab slots but because of high demand, the waiting period for services can be long. Still, it's very much worth a couple of phone calls and a trip to your county health office to find out if you are eligible for state funded care. 3) Low-cost community or private care If you have no private insurance and do not qualify for state funding, or do qualify, but don’t want to wait for weeks or months for care, your next step would be to contact local low-cost residential rehabilitation programs in your area. Many base their fee assessment on a sliding scale of income, and will work with you to ensure that you can get the care you need at a price you can afford, and many self mandate that no one be turned away for financial reasons. The majority of facilities in this sector fall into either Christian rehab care or long term sober living residences and both may be a good fit for you. Christian programs may offer very low cost care to those in need, and sober living homes may not require any money up front, and only demand that after a specified period you gain employment and contribute a low monthly rent to the maintenance of the house. You may also find a local residential rehab in your area offering services at a full price of less than $1000 per week, with fee discounts available based on need. Please see the list of state facilities in your area for details. If you cannot find a suitable facility in your area, the local Church, Mosque or Temple can be a great resources for low cost options, and your Pastor, Imam, Priest or Rabbi will very likely know of local faith based low cost rehabs. 4) Totally free care For those in real need, and for those without the ability to pay anything towards the cost of their care, their still exist hundreds of completely free residential rehab programs. The Salvation Army runs almost 200 long term rehab programs nation wide without asking a penny, and the Union and Baptist Missions run a similar number. Most will ask a long term commitment to care and most will have structured and strict rules of conduct, but they act only out of a desire to serve and out of real experience towards your recovery. Some programs may have waiting lists, but in general these waiting periods are far shorter than for comparable free care within state funded rehabs, and you may not need wait at all for entry into a program. Most free care providers will demand that you show a sincere personal motivation to change as a criterion for admission. Private facilities do not request this, which is fortunate as statistics show that a person's motivation for entry has very little influence over the eventual success rates. Contact me if you need help locating a low cost drug rehab in your area. You Can Get the help you Need Even if you have no insurance, have no money and don’t qualify for Medicaid, you still have hundreds of options available to you, and some of these offer a very high standard of care. If you want to get help…you can. Don’t wait another day before starting the journey to health, sobriety and happiness. It's not going to be easy, there are no guarantees, and the process can be painful; but the payoff at the end makes it all worthwhile. With sobriety you will perform better at work, greatly improve your health and your ultimate lifespan, contribute fairly to your family and no longer act in ways that make you ashamed, but over which you seem to have little control. You can get better, there is always hope. Alcohol and Drug Rehab Directory
A directory of reputable and ethical alcohol and drug rehab centers.

Sober Living Environments

An often overlooked form of residential care is the sober living residence. Most often used as a transitional phase after detox or after rehab, some people find benefit and sobriety through a direct entry into such a facility. Sober living environments are almost universally very low cost, and a majority do not ask for any money upon admission, although within a reasonable length of time you are expected to find employment and contribute a small monthly rental payment.

These facilities work therapeutically through peer support, very structured rules of living and of conduct, enforced sobriety and a temptation free area of residence and through compulsory and intensive participation in AA or another form of 12 steps programming.

These homes generally only ask that you abide by the rules, attend meetings and don’t use drugs or drink; and you can basically stay as long as you'd like. There are many thousands of sober living homes throughout the nation, and unlike low cost rehabs, these often do not maintain a waiting list.

Rehab is a business, and it's big business, and as unfortunate as it may be, those without money wait a lot longer for care; and too often never do get into treatment, deterred either by unreasonable waiting times or by a simple lack of access.

Private rehab treatments can be very expensive, and it's not at all unusual for a facility to charge upwards of $20 000 for a month of care, and if you relied on a web search alone you might believe that these rehabs were your only option.

Thankfully, although charity and non profit rehabs may not have the resources to compete with the marketing efforts of expensive private rehabs, they do have the resolve to maintain low cost and even free services to all in need, and all over the country.

There is no reason for anyone to think they can’t afford rehab. Private rehabs may be out of reach, but there is someone, somewhere, waiting with a bed ready for you, and with a concerned heart ready to guide you out of your pain.

Contact me to find out what your rehab options are, how much they cost, how to access state funded rehabs, and how to find a free or low cost rehab that can get you in the door soon.

Rich or poor, there's someone ready to help you.

Most people don’t spend a lot of time thinking about drug or alcohol rehabs…until they need one. Once you make a decision to enter into treatment, the sooner you can get help the better. Unfortunately, since you need to make a decision about rehab quickly, you can easily get overwhelmed by the difficulties of finding an appropriate facility, and even in finding accurate and transparent information. Try typing affordable drug rehab into Google, you'll get a lot of hits, but you can be sure the first 500 won't be affordable! The sad reality is that too many people with temporary motivations to get better just get so frustrated and deterred by the stress and challenge of finding affordable care that they just give up. Even if you have quality and comprehensive private health coverage, you don't want to waste your time and your hope on a poor quality treatment experience; it's your life and your health and happiness that are at stake, and you don’t want to make a mistake. If you don’t have comprehensive insurance coverage the situation grows even more difficult. Where can you go for rehab you can afford; who will help you when you can’t afford an expensive up front fee? Recognizing the problems inherent in getting into appropriate and affordable treatment, I have compiled a resource book designed to assist you in understanding your options, your rights and even your needs; and to help you in locating an affordable residential rehab program that's going to work for you. Some of the questions that I have struggled with include: Do I need rehab? What kind of rehab do I need? How much does rehab cost? What type of rehab can I afford? Where can I go to find low cost help? How can I get a family member into rehab? What can family do to help during and after rehab? Do I need to detox first? What about rehab for my­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­ special need? What are some phone numbers for low cost rehabs in my area? Where else can I get information on addiction, rehabs and recovery? I hope you will find the answers to all of these questions and more contained within, and I believe that everyone can find treatment in a timely manner and at a price they can afford, they simply need to know where to look. Please contact me if you need any help in finding affordable care. You can get better; it will be hard…and it will be worth it!

I hear a lot of true sad stories about people who have had enough of addiction or alcoholism, finally want to get better, but just don’t have the money they need to get into even the lower cost rehabs right away. They may be eligible for some subsidized care, but with waiting lists as long as two months, this is pretty far from ideal anyways; and a story I get a lot, is "My family has had enough of me, and they won’t help me anymore". Which I can understand, and when we are using and abusing, we tend to do things that force our families away. We burn our bridges, lie, cheat and steal one too many times, and they just get fed up. And they don't want to enable the abuse either, and it's true, when they let us live rent free in the home, getting high in the basement, that doesn't help us get better. When they give us money for drugs or alcohol when we get desperate…that doesn't much help either. They are taught that the only way that they can truly help us to change our ways is to stop enabling, and to start giving a little tough love. And it's true too, and tough love can help. But tough love gets a little too tough when we finally reach the point when we can no longer deny the extent of the problem, when we accept that things are out of control and when we realize that to have any chance at a better life; we are going to need some help. When we reach that point and we come pleading for a bit of money for our treatment, turning us away is awfully hard, has nothing to do with enabling or otherwise and just keeps too many of us out of treatments that could really get us up out of the mess we've made of things. We may not deserve it, but we'll make it up to you once we're better. You don’t have to give the money to us either, we can understand how that might make you feel a little uncomfortable…pay the treatment center directly. But do help us, if you still love us at all, do help us.

There is no problem. Anyone who wants to get into drug rehab, regardless of how much or how little money they have, can get in… Or at least that's the message I keep getting from state social services personnel. Which is kind of funny, since a lot of the people I talk to that are struggling with addictions are telling me a very different story. I've been working hard as of late on a book on low cost drug rehabs, and as a part of this book I wanted to be able to explain how someone would go about claiming any entitled state subsidized benefits The process has been enlightening to say the least, and I can now understand just how frustrated people can get by a system that seems designed to have them fail. Who you gonna call? Firstly, who even knows where you're supposed to go or who you’re supposed to call to find out about state funded programs. The information is there, but it took me a lot of determined searching to find it, and I spend most of my day reading about addiction on the internet! Did you say 8 weeks? Secondly, even if you are eligible for state funded programs, you can be looking at a waiting period of up to two months. TWO MONTHS! When you need help with an addiction, you can’t be waiting 8 weeks to get into rehab…you need it now! And it's not surprising that so many people just get so discouraged by the whole process that they give up, turn back to drugs and don’t even think about getting better again for a long while. I don’t blame any individual working within these governmental agencies, and I'm sure that they are doing their best and working with what they have; but I've got to say that the attitude that I got from a lot of these people was that the system is fine, the system is working, and we have everything in place that people need. Finally, something that makes sense… I was repeatedly sent to a SAMHSA rehab finder tool; which is quite a good tool in theory. What it is is you go to the SAMHSA web site, and when you finally navigate through the many many options, you find this tool. You type in your zip code, check off what you’re looking for from a list of options and this tool will come back to you with a list of rehab facilities within a few miles of your house. Sounds like a great thing, and it is…in theory. I tried it out for New York City, and I did get a number of hits. I was looking for rehabs that stated that they offered sliding fee scale payments, and I got great many that said that they did. Great! I started calling them…the first ten that on the federal government's treatment locator website claimed to offer sliding fee scale payment assistance, when you actually call them on the phone…have no idea what you are talking about! They take Medicare, which is great if you have Medicare, but if you had Medicare you would probably be getting service through your local state social services clinic already, and wouldn’t need to use the treatment locator. So if you are looking for low cost rehabs on your own…I feel your pain. State and federal initiatives seem set to work great in theory, and are failing miserably in reality. Government: 1) Make your websites better! They suck. 2) If you are going to offer web services, give us at least a hope of finding them on the internet. 3) Fix your treatment locator tool. It’s a good idea, but it’s not working, and you just keep sending people to use it. 4) 2 months is not an acceptable waiting time 5) You may say that everyone can get help, I say different. And the crazy thing is that there are thousands and thousands of rehabs in America that do offer low cost or free care, but unless you have incredible web savvy, or are willing to spend a week looking (I just did) you are not going to find them. If you do want some help locating a low cost rehab by the way, drop me a line and I'll hook you up.

You may have done some terrible things while under the influence of alcoholism or addiction, and you may be ashamed of what you have become; but at the core, you are not a bad person you are a sick person, and the things you may have done do not reflect who you are and what you believe. A lot of us who struggle with addiction do things we are ashamed of, and we feel shame and guilt, and sometimes don’t really believe that we deserve to be treated well. We do, and you should never consider getting help for your disease at a facility that doesn’t treat you with respect, that doesn’t treat your concerns as valid and that doesn't care for your recovery more than it cares for your admissions check. Addiction is a disease, and medically recognized as such by all major medical organizations, and although we may start down the road to dependency with willful consumption, once addicted we truly do lose control over our actions and even our thoughts. Although we are legally responsible for what we do, once addicted our moral compass cannot often withstand the pulls to drug or alcohol use regardless of what may stand in our way. No one who experiments with a bit of cocaine at a party ever imagines themselves stealing from loved ones, no one who enjoyed beers under the bleachers in high school ever imagined the pain of an alcoholic DUI and no one who enjoyed prescribed pain pills a little too much would have believed the lies they would tell to get the drugs they needed. Our actions while addicted are not who we are, and we deserve the same quality of treatment as anyone sick with a disease deserves. Respect does not disallow tough and confrontational treatments if that's what's required, but only if done for a reason, and not simply because they can be done, or because we don’t deserve better. Respect starts even before we enter into treatment, and when calling around and trying to choose a facility for your care, you deserve to be treated well, given the information you need to make an educated decision, and never as a burden or a bother. If you are treated as such before you even enter into residence, you cannot expect better once under their care, and in fact you should expect worse. You have value, and your potential exists just below the surface of addiction and despair, and however low you may have sunk, you are only a month away from your former self. Make sure you receive care at a facility that's going to treat you well; it's the least you deserve.

Now a lot of people have a bit of a problem with evangelical Christianity. They don’t much care for people who try to convince them out of word views and beliefs they're perfectly happy with already, and they feel that there is something a bit distasteful in the whole missionary to the world, spreading the light kind of thing.

And I can understand where they're coming from as well, but when you look at who is and who is not stepping up to help people with addictions in this country, you have to give a lot of credit to Christian good works.

I've just spent a week compiling an enormous list of free or almost free rehabs (1300 or more by now, contact me if you need some advice!) and the there are more Christian residential programs offering free of charge care to those in need than all others combined. Some may be effective and some may struggle, but at the core, they strive to do good, strive with limited resources, and strive to include access to all in need…without a thought of monetary reward.

Now there is no doubt that they act out of dual motivations, and intermingled with a desire to do good works is surely a desire to spread the word of Christianity; but they make no apologies for their actions and they never hide their intentions. They are doing what they think is right and what needs doing, and they are saving an awful lot of lives in the process.

Compare them to another "religious" organization, Narconon, which although a front for Scientology, makes no mention of this in any of their aggressive promotional literature, and once they get you into their quasi scientific program of questionable merits, do make efforts to convert you to their world view. To me, this is extremely distasteful.

So if you do resent the motivations and actions of evangelical Christianity and their works to spread the word, that is your right; but remember that they do great good for those in need and with no where else to go; and if you feel strongly enough about it, get involved and give these people some secular alternatives for help.

They do want you to "switch teams" as it were, and in the process of saving lives from the pains of addiction and despair, they probably recruit a few grateful members along the way. But if your philosophy is to deny them the right to do their Christian good works, without somehow providing an equal quality and quantity of secular services to those in need, then you espouse hypocrisy. Addicts and alcoholics enter into free of charge recovery programs willingly and with thanks, and they are never forced to participate. If you're trying to save them from the pains of conversion, you're sending back to the pains of addiction…and ask them which fate they'd rather.

All of us should feel some personal obligation to do more good than harm throughout the course of our lives, and there are a great many ways to even out that balance sheet; but those who speak badly about Christian recovery organizations, who would deny them funding and who would like to see them gone do not contribute good, and without providing an acceptable alternative, do harm.

Whether you are Christian or not, see that these people do good works, and if you don’t like it, don’t wish them removed, but give freely to the United Way or to your local secular shelter or rehab, and let them expand their services to more who need it.

OK, I know that as soon as I start to talk about marijuana I begin to come across as some kind of governmental propaganda "reefer madness" anti pot fascist, but there are some things that need saying. Medical marijuana First of all, the whole medical marijuana thing drives me crazy. Fine, give marijuana to people with glaucoma if it helps them, cancer patients need a little pot, by all means they should have it; but there is a substantial difference between something being beneficial to certain people who are suffering from disease and good for one and all and their brother. There's this sort of smugness that I get a lot from marijuana proponents fighting for medical legalization, as if they were fighting some sort of battle for the greater good. I don’t believe it anyways, I just think they want to get stoned on legal weed…which is fine, but let's drop this whole doing it for the AIDS patient's thing. It's natural OK what's next, oh yeah, the whole it's from the earth it's natural it's good for you line of reasoning. What's up with that? Sure, smoking a natural herb may not be quite as harmful as sniffing gasoline, but just because things come from the earth doesn’t mean we should put them in our bodies. Opium is from a plant, but smoking a lot of opium never did anyone much good. Cyanide, that's another one of natures goodies that never seems to make it into the whole, from the earth let's smoke it line of reasoning. How about cobra venom…can’t get more natural than that. Alcohol is worse OK, number three on my list of grievances regards the whole comparison thing with alcohol. Yes, I get it, alcohol is worse, and it's legal too; the horror. Get over it already, alcohol isn't good for you, it surely causes far more pain that marijuana ever will, and it's far harder on the body as well; but once again, simply because alcohol is worse, doesn’t make marijuana good. There is no law saying that you need to put any form of intoxicating substance in your body, it's not as if we are dealing a necessary decision between two evils here. And about the whole alcohol being legal thing; governments would stop it if they could, but they can’t so they don't. End of story. Hemp Yes yes, hemp is a wonderful thing, and I can’t wait until all of my shirts look as scratchy as yours. What's the deal with marijuana smokers and hemp? They're so infatuated with that weed they're even going to wear it on their backs? OK I know hemp has a lot of promise for a great many things and I agree that it is pretty silly to restrict the growth of industrial hemp fibers, without any THC at all in them; but those clothes you're wearing…I just can’t take you seriously in them The legalization issue So now you know where I stand on marijuana legalization…well you’re wrong; I think the money spent on enforcement of marijuana is absurd. I used to smoke marijuana, have since given it up, have friends that use heavily…whatever. It should be a personal decision, based on an awareness of the facts and issues surrounding the use of the drug, and wasting dollars far better destined to health care or education on rooting out plants and busting weed dealers makes no sense at all. I don’t care as much about the issue since I no longer smoke and have nothing to fear from John Q Law, but even still, I’d like to see a legalization if only to prove that govt. policy makers have enough courage to do what most educated people believe needs doing, but remains such a political minefield. And it may not help their case much, but I for one would respect the pot heads of the world far more if they'd just come out from behind their smokescreen (pun intended) of medical marijuana and scratchy shirts and all that, and just said "I like to get high, I'm not hurting anyone, get out of my darned business"

Billions have been spent educating our kids in schools about the dangers of drugs and alcohol, and despite the best of intentions; these programs have failed. Independent evaluations of DARE and other school anti drug message courses show absolutely no difference in drug taking behaviors between teens exposed to school education, and those not. In response, a lot of schools (with justification) have decided that their scant resource dollars would be better spent elsewhere, and the intensity of drug education in our nation's schools has fallen somewhat. A better way? University researchers at USC decided to change the matrix slightly, and see if they couldn’t design a better drug education program. They enlisted the help of approximately 500 alternative school high school students, a traditionally high risk group for substance use and abuse, to participate in the pilot project. These students were randomly assigned to two protocol groups. The first group received drug education within a traditional teacher led classroom program, and the second group participated in a self directed peer based program. The peer based students elected a classroom representative to lead the program, and the students ran a self directed drug education module, where they spent time divided into small groups, discussing issues pertaining to the dangers of substance abuse. The results were mixed On average, after evaluating drug taking behaviors for a full year after the completion of the program, students who had participated in the peer led group reported 15% less drug taking behaviors than those who had been randomly assigned to the teacher led group. Which sounds like great news, until researchers reveal that those students who participated in peer led programs amongst other students in favor of drugs…actually increased their drug usage as opposed to the teacher led group. A bit worrisome to say the least! It's encouraging to see continuing research in a needed area, but for now, schools cannot be relied on for effective drug education, and as always, the job must fall to parents. Thankfully, although research has proven school programs a dismal failure, it has also revealed just how effective an open dialogue from parents on the subject of drug and alcohol abuse can be. Kids whose parents talk to them about drugs don’t use drugs as much…period. Kids whose parents let the schools do it…well, that's a bit of a gamble, and if the above study tells us anything, the kind of drug education peers are getting from peers may not be the sort of thing parents envision when they imagine "school drug education".

In my readings and research for this blog, for my own recovery, and for my original entry into treatment, I have done A LOT of browsing on the internet about treatment and recovery. I have gone through literally thousands of web sites on addiction, and through hundreds of privately run web sites for drug or alcohol treatment centers; and although some are good and some are not, they share a universal and eternal reluctance to give you certain bits of information; information that you need when trying to make an appropriate decision on your treatment needs. "Please, please, please, just tell me the price, for heavens sake, I need to get help, I don’t have time to waste calling every recovery hotline and dealing with the sales pitch at every center I have no hope of affording. I'm having a tough enough time here; am I asking too much?" There are great treatment centers and there are those that only want you through the doors so as to start spending your admissions check…and not on therapies you need either. When someone makes a decision to get help, they need to get it fast; too many people with transient good motivations get discouraged before they even start from the extreme difficulties inherent in simply selecting an affordable and appropriate treatment center for their needs. They're often not in a great shape to be making such an important decision, and they shouldn’t be forced to jump through quite so many hoops on their journey to help. If you really care… So here is my plea to all of you treatment center owners out there. Show us you’re one of the good guys, show us you care about our recovery as you claim on your website; don’t make us call your number for the most basic of information. If you really care about us, give us what we need to make a decision on treatment. If we can afford you, and you offer comprehensive and professional treatment, We WILL call your number, we want to get help, that's why we're looking. Please tell us: How much is it…for real? What kinds of therapies you offer How many individual therapy sessions per week? How many to a room? What other types of programs do you offer in addition to therapy? What's your success rate…don’t lie to us now! How long can we come back for aftercare? Can our family participate? What insurance companies you work with? Do you offer credit?What's your philosophy of care? Give us the information we need. We've got to make a decision fast, there are hundreds of treatment centers available, and we don’t want to get so discouraged that we delay needed treatment. We understand that you run a business and you expect a profit; that's fine, but since you're in the business of helping people, start with a little compassion even before we sign up.

We all know the risks of drinking and driving, and yet even with massive advertising, stringent enforcement and severe penalties; driving while intoxicated remains a substantial and too often tragic problem in our society. But even those of us who do endeavor to stay under the legal blood alcohol limit may be placing ourselves and others in danger if we drink even a small amount of alcohol and drive, while very sleepy. Testing the pros Australian university researchers wanted to investigate the influence of sleepiness and low doses of alcohol on driver performance, and to do this they enlisted the help of a number of professional drivers. Over successive days, these drivers where given performance tests on a driving simulator, either sober and wakeful (awake for 12-15 hours), having consumed alcohol and wakeful (blood alcohol levels of 0.03 and 0.05) and then the tests were performed again (0.0, 0.03,) when the drivers were sleepy, after having been awake for 18-21 hours. So does being sleepy matter? The researchers found that sleepy drivers who had consumed only a small amount of alcohol (blood alcohol levels of 0.03) did worse on reactions and performance testing than did the wakeful drivers who had consumed a greater amount of alcohol (0.05 blood alcohol) and researchers extrapolate that with more alcohol consumption, the impact of sleepiness would grow more significant. What this means? Most of us don’t drink and drive for two major reasons. Firstly, we have a social conscious and are aware of the destruction wrought by intoxicated drivers, and we have no wish to cause or suffer the pains of a drunken driving accident. Secondly, we also fear penalties if caught driving drunk; and a combination of these two factors is enough to keep the majority of people off the roads after drinking too excess. Our false assumptions We also assume that blood alcohol levels are determined with road safety in mind, and that if we remain under the legal alcohol limit, we therefore retain the ability to drive safely. Unfortunately, this study tells us that our assumptions may be false. If you drink while very sleepy, and stay just under the legal limit--theoretically safe to drive--your reaction times more likely equal someone who is well above the legal limit, and both of you represent a danger to self and others. Take it easy, be safe, and avoid the heartbreak of a DUI tragedy.

Watching a loved one flirt with disaster over risky drug taking or drinking behaviors can put a lot of strain on a relationship. You want to help, but your words have little impact, and you're not even sure if the problem is as bad as you make it out to be. What to do? There are a couple of actions that can have a powerful impact over the behaviors of a family member. Firstly you need to decide just how bad the problem is, and if you determine that your husband, sister, mother…whoever, has become dependant, then you need to get professional help. Once addicted, the family can offer support but the addict really needs professional intervention and treatment for the best chance at a betterment of the problem. A family intervention can be a very powerful tool in convincing a reluctant addict of the need for treatment. But hopefully you decide to take some action before abuse behaviors have reached the point of addiction, and if abuse has yet to proceed to addiction, you may still exert a powerful influence over abuse behaviors, and you may yet save the problem user from addiction and a necessary period of treatment. Do as I do, not as I say The single greatest way to help someone in your life who is using drugs or alcohol at a potentially unsafe level is to set a good example. Words mean little to the substance abuser, but actions speak with power. Clinical research reveals that if a spouse quits drinking, the other spouse is five times more likely to quit as well. If you can drink or use drugs recreationally and maintain control, but a loved one whom you use with cannot, you can very likely spur that person into a change of behaviors simply through setting a good example. No wine with dinner Don’t buy beer when you do the grocery shopping, don’t order wine with dinner at a restaurant…just stop all personal use behaviors and your loved one will very likely reduce theirs as well; and if they don’t or can’t, this tells you a lot about the level of their problem, and tells you that professional help may well be needed. It's not much to ask, and if you can cause such change simply through a temporary abstention from drugs or alcohol, you'd be hard pressed to justify continuing use; and if you find yourself having trouble with the thought of quitting, you may need to evaluate your own habits as well. There is natural progression from use to abuse and abuse to addiction; and once dependent, the difficulty of treatment and achieving sobriety increases tenfold. If you can possibly influence use behaviors before they get to the point of addiction, you do real good and you save someone from a very scary battle for life with use and addiction. Grab a coke, and watch your partner do the same.

Making the decision to get help takes you closer than anything else you'll ever do to getting sober and getting better; but even once you've decided that you need residential drug or alcohol rehab treatment, you still have an enormous availability of choice as to where to get it, and thus a difficult decision. For people wanting a quick transition into rehab and into a better life, the many options available brings unwanted stress into an already difficult time. The deciding factors may include location, price, philosophies, and probably also treatments offered; and when evaluating the last of those, it's easy to wonder how important seemingly frivolous programs such as yoga or meditation really are to your likelihood of recovery. After all, wouldn’t your time be better spent in therapy? People make enormous amounts of money providing drug and alcohol rehabilitation therapy to those in need, and although the vast majority of operators do run reputable facilities offering you a legitimate opportunity at sobriety, there are unfortunately some owners far more interested in banking your admissions check than spending that money on therapies and programs of value. Knowing that, shouldn’t you be concerned that a period of karate class is used as a cheaper substitute for individual therapy? The value of peripheral programs in drug rehab Addiction affects us on many levels, and no one as yet has a complete understanding of the totality of the disease. Traditional and conventional therapies do offer assistance to a great many, and treatments such as group support therapy, individual therapy, medication for relapse avoidance and individual therapy have proven themselves worthy and essential parts of any treatment regimen. But more people fail than don’t. Quality rehabs, offering intensive therapies and quality conventional care can only boast a success rate of about 40% (anyone advertising more than this should be regarded with skepticism) so there is still obviously room for great improvement. Additionally, no one form of therapy works well for everyone. We all bring our unique experiences and histories, as well as our emotional baggage with us into treatment, and what motivates one, does very little for another. The two conclusions we must draw are that to offer the best chance of success the programming should be comprehensive and varied; and since traditional and conventional therapies do not yet offer a great likelihood of success, we need to supplement these therapies with additional forms of programming that have shown promise. The interplay of the body, mind and soul The complexity of the human condition causes enormous challenges for the treatment of addiction; and since addiction affects our bodies, our minds and our spirits in unique and influential ways, effective therapies need to be holistic in nature, and treat all parts of our being as one. Hard to quantify, and even to define, the influence of the soul has not traditionally affected the selection of therapies outside of religious facilities; yet our spiritual selves undoubtedly impact on our actions and our emotions…and it is in the treatment of the soul that alternative therapies such as yoga or meditation have shown tremendous promise. Although exceedingly difficult to measure or understand, the soul does impact on success rates, and we can measure the effectiveness of certain therapies. Meditation and yoga have both been studied for use in addictions therapy, and both have been shown helpful; and as effective as group therapy in some studies. Don’t go to yoga school for drug treatment Ideally, you want it all. You want medications that help to control cravings, you want therapies that increase self awareness over those things that lead us to abuse, and you also want a spiritual element of programming, with classes that offer us greater peace and happiness, and by extension, less likelihood of relapse. Nothing works for everyone, and although you may find karate class a waste of time…you may not, and you may find that the intensive focus between mind and body offers something intangible yet of great value; something that may make the difference between taking that drink, and another day of struggle with the disease. Choose a quality rehab You do want a rehab that allows for family involvement and offers intensive one-on-one therapy, and you do want to stay in a facility that offers comfortable and private accommodations; but you may also want to consider a facility that attempts to provide a holistic experience. Spiritual programs should never substitute for effective conventional therapies, but when used as a compliment to traditional and well respected treatments, they offer you something of value. Recovery from addiction is hard, and you need all the help you can get. The more comprehensive the experience the better chance you have at finding something that really resonates, really motivates, and is going to keep you sober when nothing else will. Don’t choose a rehab that offers karate instead of therapy; choose one that offers it after therapy.

A great many lingering myths about addiction pervade our perceptions of the disease, and these myths are universally unhelpful to those struggling with disease, and in some case propagate the negative stigma too often attached to those that do successfully beat their disease.

Addicts do not have to hit rock bottom before initiating a treatment, and waiting until that terrible time comes almost invariably makes the ultimate task of recovery that much harder. Alcoholics and addicts also do not need to initiate treatment of their own accord, and those mandated to treatment through the courts, through the workplace or out of familial pressure do just as well as those who seek help on their own.

But perhaps most damaging is the myth of addiction as an illness related to willpower.

It's easy to understand the roots of the perception, and for those people not addicted to any form of drugs or alcohol, the use of these substances is a matter of conscious control, and although these substances may sometimes tempt, we can control our impulses out of an exercise of willpower.

But once use and abuse progresses to addiction, there are physical changes in the brain and these changes remove willpower or any form of conscious awareness from the cravings and impulses that lead to use. Addiction occurs within the mesolimbic dopaminergic systems of the brain, and the cravings that emerge from this area of the brain are not at all under conscious control.

Addiction has a mind of its own

Addiction truly has a mind of its own, and the actions and impulses on a preconscious level prompt much of the seemingly decisive behaviors of the addict or alcoholic, and because these impulses exist preconsciously, it can be very difficult for recovering alcoholics or addicts to exert any form of control over their drug seeking behaviors.

It is for this reason why abuse is so much easier to treat than addiction and why addiction entrenches so firmly even in the face of persistent therapeutic attempts to better it.

For the best chance of bettering addiction, recovering addicts need pharmacological intervention…drugs that operate on this preconscious level and reduce the impulses and cravings to use. They also need to learn behavioral strategies that influence the frequency of the occurrence of these pre conscious impulses, and learn to recognize more consciously when these impulses emerge, and learn strategies to control and manage these impulses.

Will, not willpower

Labeling an addict or alcoholic as weak or lacking in willpower is misleading and inaccurate, and does not accurately reflect the challenges inherent in a battle with recovery. There is an element of determination and will that comes into play throughout recovery, but this is not be confused with willpower over use.

Will to recover means having the determination and commitment to participate fully in the therapies, education and difficult life changes that have proven effective at managing these pre conscious impulses, and maintaining a vigilant awareness over the mental processes learned to influence these cravings to abuse.

It takes a lot of will to recover but it doesn’t take willpower; willpower is irrelevant. We should be celebrating those people who have the courage and strength to change their lives for the better, instead of chastising them for their weakness and lack of willpower.

The 12th step of the 12 steps of AA, "Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics and to practice these principles in all our affairs" is narrowly defined as helping other alcoholics to see the light, and helping them using the knowledge you have gained to better their own lives, and their own addictions. But even if you do not subscribe to the AA methodology of recovery, the essential meaning behind the principle assists anyone in a battle with sobriety. Essentially, once you have achieved a goal of sobriety, you have a duty to help others achieve their goals of a better life. All of us who have spent time as alcoholics or drug addicts have acted in ways that created harm to the people and the communities around us, and all of us have some responsibility to take steps to erase some of the harms we have done by giving back. You need not necessarily give only through helping other addicts to overcome addictions, although that is a very worthy task, but in any way that benefits the community as a whole. You also need to act altruistically, without thought of personal gain, and only motivated through assistance to others. Of course although you need to act out of a concern and motivation for others, as you give, you also get, and those people who take the time after sobriety to ensure that they give generously back to the community are far more likely to remain sober. Volunteer your time 3 ways it helps keep you sober Meaningful acts 1) Volunteering to help those in need always gives meaning to our lives, and by extension to our sobriety. Knowing that others rely on our wisdom and assistance can give incentive against temptations, and strengthen us in our personal battles with an addiction. Time away from temptation 2) When you're helping, you're not drinking. One of the greatest threats to initial sobriety is free time. Most of us entering into sobriety after a long history of addiction have forgotten how to have fun, and how to fill the hours without getting drunk or getting high. And although most people come to love the clarity and bodily health of sobriety, there are always moments of boredom that threaten our will and our commitment, and enough boredom is a significant predictor of relapse. Keep busy by getting involved in a charity or organization meaningful to you, and feel better as you fill your time with worthwhile activities…activities that keep you too busy to think too much about getting back to use and abuse. Sober friendships 3) Benefit from a sober friendship support network. In addition to not knowing how to fill free time without using, a lot of us come out of rehab knowing we can no longer spend time with abusing friends, but not really having any other replacement friends for companionship. Loneliness does influence relapse, and a great way to get out and meet sober living people is through the act of volunteering your time. The people volunteering in the community are a source of sober and supportive friendships, and these people are ready and wanting to meet and work with you for the common good. Never let loneliness trigger despair, your next sober friend is as close as the local good cause. Do good, stay sober…what more can you ask for?