TroubleBlog

No Hangovers for 1 in 4

Sun, 11 May 2008 15:05:29 -0800

Puffy, sweaty, nauseous, headachey, anxious, tired, irritable, incredibly dumb...

Hangovers. Man oh man.

It's an odd way to live - to suffer through self inflicted illness each day for poured pleasure each night.

Near-death experience survivors talk of a renewed appreciation for the simple pleasures in life, and although the act of putting down a bottle is hardly so dramatic, I think I sort of understand what they're going on about. Waking up on a Sunday morning without it being Sunday afternoon is a beautiful thing, and when I remember to think about it - I'm grateful.

Anyway, you'd think that hangovers would be a deterrent to excessive drinking (and for most people they are) but for those of us predestined to be alcoholics, hangovers don't deter didly. I drank every night - knowing full well what I had coming, and I, it seems, was not alone.

No Hangovers for 1 in 4

Some people don't get hangovers. About 23% of people report feeling almost no ill effects even after nights of hard and heavy binge drinking. Thousands of people have been surveyed, from college students to rural folk, and scientists have even mixed drinks in labs just to observe the after effects of intoxication.

The results are pretty clear and pretty consistent - about a quarter of us just don't pay a price.

You would think that people who could drink without experiencing a hangover would be more likely to overindulge. They get all of the fun with none of the pain, but it turns out that it's the opposite, and people who report consistent and heavy hangovers are more likely to be problem drinkers.

Huh?

Researchers speculate that those people who experience tough hangovers may be more prone to "the hair of the dog" solution and a few drinks the day after as a hangover remedy, and as an accelerated path into alcoholism. Researchers also admit that just as they aren't sure why certain people suffer through hangovers and others don't, they aren't entirely sure just what influence hangovers exert on the likelihood of developing an alcohol abuse problem.

More study is needed, they say. I think I'll pass.

Virtual Drug Rehabs. They're Coming, But They Won't Work

Tue, 22 Apr 2008 02:24:45 -0800

Alcoholic avatars and penny pinching insurance companies - a match made in heaven.

None of us would complain about less time spent wasted in doctor's waiting rooms, or better and more affordable healthcare! Emerging internet based interactive platforms promise to increase our access to health information and healthcare participation, while allowing a finite number of doctors to treat as many patients - more comprehensively and effectively.

We are not the same group of patients we were 15 years ago. Who goes to the doctor now before taking a self diagnostic tour of internet medical sites? We often scare ourselves with misdiagnoses of terrible diseases, but we endeavor to get informed and by doing so we participate better in the healthcare process - and at its best, healthcare is not passive, but interactive.

The potential for positive change is great - but will the pendulum swing too far? As interactive net based communication between patient and provider improves, will financial pressures compel the e-sourcing of things that just don't make sense? Will we soon see virtual drug rehabs?

The Good - Where E-Care Makes Sense

www.reliefinsite.com is great. Not too fancy, no bells and whistles, just a simple and effective way for pain patients to communicate their symptoms in real time, and longitudinally, to their doctors. Pain patients can create what is essentially an online pain diary - and as they experience pain on a day-to-day basis, they can record information about their symptoms in their diary.

It's collaborative too. Doctor's can log on, and given permission, access a patient's diary, see what's really happening, and even write notes to the patient in their diary - on a day-to-day basis. Great stuff - It just makes sense. No need to try and explain a history of pain in a 15 minute office appointment, that's a pretty tough thing to do. Doctors get to see what's really happening, can make better diagnosis's and can react to changing symptoms in real time. It provides a way for more accurate information sharing, it saves money and everyone's time, and it allows doctors to treat their patients more effectively.

That's the kind of stuff we need. Platforms that improve healthcare efficiency while at best also improving the standard of care, or at the very least - not reducing it.

Except for the very rich, in any country you can name, healthcare systems are overburdened. Resources are finite and never enough to provide optimal care to all that demand it. It's a fact of life, and for now, it's just a case of managing the shortfall.

Internet healthcare systems could free up such enormous resources of time and money - ensuring that those that need a hospital bed and a doctor's care get it - and those that don't, stay home. How many parents, after some deliberation, make a midnight trip to the emergency room in search of treatment for something that they are 99% sure is not serious? For parents, a 1% chance of tragedy is more than enough to justify a few hours of inconvenience and 99 wasted trips out of a hundred.

On an individual basis, this makes perfect sense - but systematically, it strains resources - and strained resources mean lessened care for everyone.

E-based diagnostic platforms, staffed by doctors and nurses, serving as a front line operation would make sense, and in some jurisdictions, already exist. Get on the video phone, explain the situation, and a lot of the time, they are going to be able to tell you with certainty that there is no need to go to the hospital.

How about on the back end? How many hospital beds stay filled each year by doctors pretty sure that the patient could go home, but wanting one more day of observation - just to be certain. What if those patients that doctors were almost sure were going to be OK - were released one day earlier, but remained linked via web based diagnostics tools? The doctor could still monitor the symptoms in real time - could get someone back to the hospital if needed, but tens of thousands of beds a year would be free to people waiting for them. Better health care for all. Some people would die, but many more people would live - saving more lives for the same expenditure.

The Bad - When Only Face-to-Face Will Do

In the short to mid range future, you need not be terribly imaginative to envision the sort of benefits that interactive net based healthcare services could result in - the two suggested above are only the tip of that iceberg. But there are certain services that do not lend themselves well to distance interaction. Poisoning, trauma, pancreatitis - you can name thousands of conditions that, if you had one, you'd probably want in-person and face-to-face medical care for.

What about addiction counseling? I'd argue that although less obvious and dramatic, it also requires in-person treatment for any real odds of success. I'm not talking about detox, which obviously demands medical supervision; I'm talking about the nuts and bolts of long term treatment - group therapy, cognitive therapy, psychotherapy, etc. A case could be made that such forms of counseling could be provided more cheaply, and with little loss in efficacy, using internet communication technologies. Actually, a case will be made, and e-rehabs are likely on their way.

Addiction though, is tricky. It's a gestalt kind of disease, in which the sum of the parts never seem to equal the whole, and a disease that demands treatment of a psychological intensity that matches the cognitive manipulations of the disease.

You could arrange for an internet based group therapy session. It would be cheap and easy, but it wouldn't work very well. Group therapy works when participants are fiercely and honestly involved. You don't get that when tuning out is as easy as checking your email as you sit in therapy; and manipulations don't get spotted as they do when you squirm, lying, in person to a group.

You could conveniently get individual therapy at home, over the internet; but the trust building needed for effective counseling takes time in the best of cases, and a situation where the patient is miles removed from the therapist - is not the best of cases for relationship formation. And forget about what our non verbal communication would otherwise reveal.

Could you learn how to make sober friends again, online? Would you really do that yoga - if no one could see what you were up to? Would you tune out, when you didn't like what you were hearing - sometimes people need a little push to make a breakthrough, but it's a lot easier to close your browser window than it is to walk out of a therapy session.

Logistically, online addiction treatment is a cakewalk - online addiction treatment that works may be another story.

The Ugly - Financial Pressure

Interactive net communication will create savings opportunities. Ideally, healthcare e-sourcing never harms patient care. The selective application creates a higher standard of individual care in certain areas, and areas unsuited to the application of the e-sourcing benefit from increased funding from the savings - An opportunity for better healthcare, for all.

But if the potential savings in any area become significant enough, there will undoubtedly exist pressure to accept an erosion of healthcare quality in the face of savings - or to put it more bluntly - profit.

Already, consumers with excellent private health coverage who want to get residential drug treatment find that they are obliged to try outpatient first, for a long while, before their insurance company will fund a residential stay. Once insurance companies have an even cheaper option, it's hard to foresee how they won't compel us to use it first.

Addiction treatment isn't like a lot of other disorders. If you had cancer, and the insurance company forced you to try a less expensive procedure first, prior to allowing the more intensive treatment - if that first one didn't work, you'd be ready that next day to sign up for the better one. Alcoholics and drug addicts are more easily discouraged (or their disease is better at manipulating their behavior) and if the first treatment doesn't work, odds are it will take a while (if ever) before they approach a second round. A very cynical person might suspect that insurance companies are counting on this...

It will be interesting, and great changes in healthcare over the next decade are a certainty. Most will be positive. The potential for great advances in systematic levels of care exists through the selective application of resource saving distance treatments. There will, I suspect, be an ugly side to it though, and I'd wager virtual drug rehabs will be at the head of that, unfortunate, pack.

I hope I'm wrong though.

In The War on Drugs - Are We Trying to Kill Drug Users?

Fri, 11 Apr 2008 02:14:35 -0800

Prison is not a particularly safe place to live. For newly freed inmates however, the streets are even more dangerous.

Australian researchers examined the mortality rate of newly released prisoners, looking at the risk of death during the first two weeks after release. They call it carnage. Newly released men are 29 times more likely that the general population to die during that first 2 weeks - women are 69 times more likely to die - 69 times more likely.

What's killing them?

Drug overdoses mostly. It seems as though prison isn't doing much to break long dormant opiate habits, and the newly released addicted are soon back to their old ways - minus any real tolerance for the drugs.

They are shooting heroin, and what used to be a manageable dose is now a fatal dose, and that's the end of that story.

We think that a death sentence for non violent drug crimes is unreasonable - but what we give, when we sentence heroin addicts to prison - is pretty close to capital punishment anyway.

Read more about it in the February 2008 edition of the journal, "Addiction".

Meth Addiction - Saving Kids by Saving Moms

Thu, 10 Apr 2008 02:03:57 -0800

In Utah, 58% percent of women who sought out drug treatment had children living with them at home.

Women of childbearing age are the biggest users of meth, and they don't fit in well with our stereotypical perception of the typical meth addict. Moms are on meth, and unless we reduce the scale of this meth epidemic, the repercussions in a generation to come, when these meth-mom raised kids grow up, will be tragic.

Getting mothers into treatment saves everyone money. The cost to jail a meth using woman in Utah is $25 700 and if that woman has kids that need to be placed into foster care, the cost increases by $33 000, per year, per child.

In contrast, the cost to treat a meth using mom is $3500 per year, and in most cases, kids can safely remain in the home with their moms. Treatment beats incarceration hands down. It benefits society, it helps women beat terrible addictions, and it saves kids from an institutional upbringing.

Getting a meth using women into treatment is always the right thing to do.

Wondering if a woman you know is struggling with meth?

Be concerned if you witness symptoms of meth abuse, such as:

Hyperactivity

Erratic sleep patterns

Irritability

Isolation from friends and family

Mood changes (includes hostility, abusive behavior, depression)

Loss of appetite and weight loss

Lack of interest in normal activities

Poor judgment

Or take the warning signs quiz on meth addiction, at End Meth Now

Can Heavy Drinking Turn You Gay?

Tue, 08 Apr 2008 02:21:55 -0800

A lot of people do things they wouldn't ordinarily do while drunk - and more than a few marriages have ended over the indiscretions of a drunken spouse. There is something magically horrible in alcohol, which makes us feel increased sexual desire, while losing the ordinary good sense to just go home at the end of the night.

But if you're wondering why alcohol makes you so weak - take some solace from the humble fruit fly - alcohol intoxication can actually turn him gay.

It's true, researchers have known that acute alcohol intoxication decreases sexual inhibition in fruit flies, but it turns out that when given repeated doses of alcohol, over a matter of days (designed to replicate the experience of alcohol abuse or alcoholism) male fruit flies, who are normally quite macho, will seek out other males for copulation.

The researchers say that fruit flies are a fairly accurate model for the neurobiological effects of alcohol on mammals, like humans, and research using them can help to explain human alcohol affected sexual behavior.

Commit a Crime - Win Free Drug Treatment!

Mon, 07 Apr 2008 00:45:59 -0800

Yay Drug Courts!

It's hard to find anyone these days with much of anything bad to say about drug courts. These alternative sentencing vehicles are saving tax payers a huge amount of money, they are freeing up space in overcrowded jails, they are helping people in need beat terrible addictions, reuniting families and the recidivism rates for drug court graduates are far lower than for offenders processed through the traditional court system.

Yay!

Seriously, they work, and they save everyone money, and it's great news that drug courts are now in operation in all 50 states, with a total of 2000 in operation or in the works. But They have created a rather strange set of circumstances.

If you are poor, addicted to drugs and alcohol and really want some help to get better - but are not a criminal - you are out of luck.
If you are poor, addicted to drugs or alcohol, don't care if you get help or not, and commit crimes - then you get free drug treatment.

It's an absurdity, and I have spoken with a few people over the last months who find themselves in this frustrating predicament. It seems to them, that the only way they are going to be able to get drug treatment, is by being arrested for a crime.

Not ideal

Drug courts aren't going away, nor should they. They work better than the traditional court system, they are more humane and they treat the root cause of such a lot of the criminal behavior in this country today. But why should we wait to provide funding for people only after they commit crimes? Why not give them a leg up before it gets to that stage?

Let's keep the drug courts, but expand the programming so that anyone in need can have access to the same sorts of treatment programs. Maybe that will cut down on the eventual need for courts and drug courts alike, while saving a great deal of tax-payer money on everything from law-enforcement to welfare to health care.

Besides, it's the right thing to do - and it's only fair.

Jailed Monkeys Use More Cocaine

Sun, 06 Apr 2008 20:21:34 -0800

Monkeys in nicer cages use less cocaine than monkeys in standard cages. That's one of the more interesting research findings coming out of Wake Forest University Medical School this month.

Monkeys are used as a good predicative animal model for the administration of drugs in humans. Essentially, if monkeys like something, then we probably will too. Researchers wondered what effect the monkey's environment would have on their desire to self administer cocaine.

They put some cocaine using monkeys in larger cages for three days and then gave them access to cocaine and food self administration - and the monkeys that were given access to larger (nicer) cages, administered less cocaine than the monkeys that didn't get the upgrade. The researchers stress that the environmental improvement was relatively minimal, and suspect that if the monkeys were given access to a larger cage, and also given interesting activities to do while in the cage, the decrease in cocaine self administration would be larger.

The human extrapolation suggests that environment plays a greater than previously thought of influence over drug use, and that people in more pleasant environments are likely better able to reduce their cocaine usage.

On the flip side, and not entirely surprisingly - monkeys that were subjected to three days of more stressful living, instead of more spacious accommodations, used more cocaine than before.

Hmm...I wonder why putting people in small jail cells doesn't seem to help them quit drugs very well?

Which Drug is Most Addictive? A List Ranking the Addictive Properties of Commonly Abused Drugs

Sat, 05 Apr 2008 00:03:49 -0800

Surfed across this today, and thought I would pass it along. It is a list ranking the addictive properties of various drugs. Drugs are ranked based on "how easy is it to get addicted?" and on "how tough is it to quit?"

These two questions were given to a community of addiction experts, who ranked each drug on a variety of measures. The scores below reflect the ranking scores offered by these addiction experts. The numbers are only relative opinions, and are based only on the experience and expertise of experts in the field. In other words - these are just opinion scores, but interesting none the less.

The Addiction Scores of Illicit or Abused Drugs

100 - Nicotine

99 - Ice, Glass (Methamphetamine smoked)

98 - Crack

93 - Crystal Meth (Methamphetamine injected)

85 - Valium (Diazepam)

83 - Quaalude (Methaqualone)

82 - Seconal (Secobarbital)

81 - Alcohol

80 - Heroin

78 - Crank (Amphetamine taken nasally)

72 - Cocaine

68 - Caffeine

57 - PCP (Phencyclidine)

21 - Marijuana

20 - Ecstasy (MDMA)

18 - Psilocybin Mushrooms

18 - LSD

18 - Mescaline

Research was conducted by John Hastings, and the full text article can be found at "In Health" journal.

Virtual vs. Real-Life Identities – Is it Crazy to Choose a Virtual Life?

Thu, 03 Apr 2008 02:47:07 -0800

Millions of people become someone else everyday on the internet. People lie about their age, gender and occupation as a matter of course on forums and e-communities, and shift identities even more intensely when playing virtual world video games like World of Warcraft. If you can be anything, you might as well be who you wish you were, rather than what limits you on this mortal realm. So if someone decides they like their online persona better, and decides to spend as much time in that persona as possible, living virtually – are they crazy? Should we label them video game addicts, and intervene? There is something incredibly seductive about this identity transformation, especially for people who feel somewhat dissatisfied with the life they live in the "real world". In MMPRPG's (Massively multi player Role Playing Games) you emerge into a truly egalitarian world. You can be as good looking as everyone else, brave and incredibly successful, no matter how lowly your real world realities. In a virtual world, shy teens become leaders of armies, and the body conscious and insecure, objects of desire. These games are addictive by design, and a lot of people get sucked into a virtual world existence, at the expense of their real life happiness. And surely a large part of the attraction is this ability to live an alternate, and in many ways, happier existence.

People get Addicted – But They Don’t Want to Quit

Millions of people around the world are whiling their lives away, largely within cyber identities, in virtual worlds. Many of these people recognize to some degree the costs incurred to their real world lives, yet an awful lot of these people seem to be making a conscious choice to keep playing. They choose virtual contentment and pleasure, knowing full well the price they pay for it. Now, some would argue that these people are just addicts in denial. That this is addicted thinking that keeps these gamers glued to their screens, and keeps them from taking the steps needed to restore some sanity to their worldly lives. And they may be right – the games certainly are addictive, and denial is always part and parcel of addiction. Or maybe they just choose a better life? Gamers don’t often want to quit – other people around them convince them to. Gaming addiction (if that's what it should be called?) certainly does create some real-world harms that can be hard for those around them to watch. After all, it's hard to keep a job, physical health and a healthy social life when all awakened hours are spent alone in a darkened room. But is it a form of mental illness to select an existence that brings you greater tangible pleasures? Gamers don’t complain of loneliness, they spend all day interacting with friends – those friends just happen to look like elves or dwarves, and they reside online. Are online friends less real than physical world friends? Gamers say they prefer the virtual world, that there they can be who they really want to be in life, and that it's a life with little pain, great adventure, and fulfilling rewards – a far cry from the tedium of real world living. Is that crazy? People are finding love and getting married within games, they are setting up full time occupations in virtual shop fronts (and earning real world money to do so), and they are living the life they choose, free from restraint. Is that crazy?

Are they Crazy?

I don't know – I think they probably are…Crazy in terms of exhibiting all of the signs and symptoms that would lead to a clinical diagnosis of a compulsive disorder, anyway. And there is no doubt that some people pay an incredibly high price for their gaming - Their real world lives in shambles at the expense of an alternate reality. And as good as online friends may be – they can’t make you soup when you’re sick, and online love affairs won’t bring the joys of children. So yes, I think they are probably crazy - but they're not stupid. They choose something different, something that brings them more happiness than real world living seems able to, and somewhere that lets them be what they want to be. They may be crazy, but you can understand where they're coming from. It's a tragic and fascinating phenomenon, just starting to really unfold – the tip of the coming iceberg, that's for sure. As things get more sophisticated, and virtual lives continue to enrich – who's to say what will become of all of us. Will there come a time when all of us choose the boundless possibilities of a virtual life over the limitations of physicality? Do you try to rescue someone who swears they're happy as they are? For now, I think you gotta'. It's too sad to watch someone give up on real world living, for what is still a pretty limited, albeit seductive, fantasy world life. It's a mental health disorder, and it can be treated, and most people will probably be happier and more fulfilled by striving towards what they want in real life, rather than taking the easy way out, virtually. But you can understand it, and one day, and maybe one day soon, those virtual worlds will start to legitimately compete with a real world existence, and that's when it's going to get truly and terribly interesting. Will we all be living virtually in 30 years?

Is Internet Addiction Real? Does it Matter? Get the Help You Need

Wed, 02 Apr 2008 02:47:54 -0800

There is some debate about whether technological addictions are real. Not a debate about whether or not people seem to have problematic compulsions to use the internet or text message, everyone seems to be able to agree that these problems exist, but it's less clear to clinicians that these compulsions are different enough to warrant their own classification as separate disorders. People with cybersex addiction, some would argue, are simply sex addicts using the internet and people who can't stop sending emails and check their blackberry in the middle of the night, don’t have an internet addiction, they are simply people with impulse control disorders and symptoms are manifested via technology. On the flip side - other professionals argue that you can't ignore the growing numbers of people complaining of technology compulsions, and that it's clear that we are dealing with something new here – something that needs to be classified uniquely. The debate continues, although it's looking more and more likely that internet addiction and other technological disorders will earn a place in the upcoming edition of psychiatry's bible, the DSM-V5. And it's a very important debate too. The recognition of these disorders as unique will mean that they gain legal status and recognition. It will mean that as insurance parity movements gain strength, people suffering an internet addiction will have a greater chance of claiming insurance benefits to treat their recognized "disease" and that employers will afford the technologically sick the same rights and protections as they would grant anyone sick with any other disorder. So it's important, and the scientists are taking a good hard look at the whole thing and in a few years anyway, we'll all probably understand technological compulsions a lot better. But for now, the ambiguity of it all is not helpful to those stuck in the middle - in never never land. It's not helpful to be suffering an uncontrollable compulsion to do something, to have that compulsion harm your health and happiness, and to have people say that what you're suffering – isn’t real. And it's not helpful to delay getting treatment for something that's giving you problems because you don't want to seem crazy or because your friends and family think it's ridiculous. Is it an addiction - is it something else? It doesn't matter! For now, the debate raging offers little benefit to those people whose online habits are causing them problems. It doesn’t matter at all whether someone else calls it internet addiction, or gaming addiction, or a big fat figment of your imagination – if you need help, then you need to get it.

3 Questions – and 3 Answers That Will Tell You All You Need to Know.

Does your internet/gaming/texting habit cause you problems in life?

Answered yes? Then you have a problem. Seems obvious, but it's a fundamental part of the equation.

Do you continue to use the internet/game/text devices even though you know it causes you problems?
Have you tried to stop internet/gaming/texting, and failed?

If you answered yes three times, then you have a problem, a problem that affects your quality of life, and yet you continue, and when you try to quit – you can't. If you answered yes three times, then you need help, and it doesn’t matter at all what anyone else labels your disorder. There are therapies that work and techniques that you can learn to help you manage your compulsions to use the internet in a controlled and limited way. But unless you take some serious steps to change, then you have to accept that things aren’t going to change. This addiction (or whatever else you wanna' call it) seems to be like most other addictions, in that it's progressive and getting better takes a little effort. Don’t wait for someone else to recognize your problem to get help. If you know you have a problem, then you should know that you need, and deserve help.

A Considered Life – Addiction Treatment and the Secret to Lasting Happiness

Tue, 25 Mar 2008 03:08:37 -0800

In a funny way, drug addicts and alcoholics are some of the luckiest people around. Addiction brings only pain – but that pain, through the recovery process, sometimes births true self knowledge and the courage to truly live. The considered life is a happy life. Living a considered life means appreciating life, and working towards a life you appreciate – and although conceptually simple, it's a rare thing. It takes understanding and courage, and it takes effort. Most of us live reactionary lives - Frenzied, busy lives; stuck on our paths, too busy or scared to think about change. The addicted life epitomizes reactionary living. It's an extreme knee-jerk case, and so it brings us deep unhappiness. Some of us, when it gets bad enough, take a courageous step and get some help. We don’t know what we need, but we know that we've got isn’t it. We walk into that meeting or that hospital, yearning for change, and ready to listen. And if we do listen, we are taught the most important truths of all.

Addiction Treatment - Self-Knowledge, Courage and Spirituality

Addiction treatment, at its best teaches us real personal honesty, it demands true courage, and it prompts emotional and spiritual growth. Teaching us who we are and what we want – and how to get there. Teaching us that change takes courage and determination, but that the rewards can be great, and teaching that however we define it, that we all exist within the spiritual realm, in part, and through spiritual self-knowledge comes peace. We walk into treatment to learn how to live right, and we walk out having learned how to live happy. And that's why we are so lucky to be drunks or junkies or what-have-you, because we are given a golden opportunity. Someone is going to show us the secret to happiness and unlike most people at most points in their lives - we are ready to listen!

Addiction Treatment and the Secret to Happiness

We would all like to leave this earth having few regrets, having no thoughts of time wasted and happiness squandered. Yet few of us are willing to look seriously at what makes us happy, and even fewer have the courage to strive towards happiness in life. And that’s because it's hard! Some of us periodically consider our happiness, deeply; but it takes real effort to make the kind of changes that are needed to live an honest and considered life – and since life as we know it already demands so much from us, few of us can spare the time. Addicts in recovery are given the time, in fact they are often pushed into the process. Not many are given a month or two to work on emotional growth, free from other responsibility or worry – addicts in recovery are given a gift.

Personal Honesty

Reactionary living has us blame other people and other things for how we feel and how we act. How we feel actually comes from inside, and so when we feel bad and we react against the world, we never change the source of our true discontentment. Considered living has us recognize that we control how we act, and to a large extent, how we feel. When we feel bad, we recognize the discontent as internal, and take steps that will change how we feel, and will lead to greater happiness. But to live this honest and considered life, we need to have an honest understanding of our strengths, and more importantly, of our weaknesses. Addiction treatment demands that we look at ourselves through new, and less distorted lenses. Something is clearly wrong, and we need to figure out how we are contributing to the problem – and whether it is through the 12 steps, and a personal inventory, group therapy or individual therapy; a large part of any addiction treatment is focused on gaining self awareness. It's often painful, and sometimes when we get to know ourselves a little bit better we don’t much like whom we meet, but it's necessary, and once we gain a better understanding of our natures, we are granted the opportunity to improve ourselves.

Courage

We are brave to varying degrees, but courage takes practice and determination, and it's something you can get better at.

It takes a great deal of courage to admit that you have a problem - that you are powerless to control yourself, and to reach out for help. It's a very tough thing for most of us to do.
It takes courage to make amends. To approach people you have wronged and to try to make things right, knowing that some of them are justifiably angry with you, and not knowing what to expect.
It takes courage to look at yourself warts and all, and to reveal your true nature to others.

Recovery is a succession of steps, all requiring courage – and the funny thing is, after a while it makes us courageous! The considered life takes courage too. There is no sense in knowing yourself and understanding what makes you happy, if you don’t have the courage to make changes. Quitting a job that makes you miserable takes courage, finding real love takes courage; living as you are and not how others say you should be - takes courage. Living the life you want on your terms is the only kind of life that makes any sense, but so many never do. Through recovery we find the courage to change.

Spirituality

We exist in the mind and in the body. Yet there's more, we exist also on a spiritual plane – but figuring out this third part of our being takes a little effort. Spirituality can mean religion or it can mean god, but it doesn’t have to – and many self professed religious people aren’t all that spiritual. Spirituality can be understood as an experience and understanding of our place in this greater universe. At a very basic level, the interaction of body and mind together creates something larger than the sum of its parts. And learning to appreciate and understand the body-mind effect can lead to a greater understanding of our existence on a more metaphysical plane. Recovery activities like meditation or yoga attune us to this interplay. In many recovery programs, we go searching for God - or at least, God as we understand Him, as well. And finding something larger than yourself, with the power to help you, can bring a lot of peace. We are spiritual beings. Humanity and the human experience has always been an oscillating quest for pleasure, power or spirituality. However you define it – spirituality is real, and coming to understand how you fit in the universe inures you from a lot of the inconsequential unhappiness's of the unconsidered life.

Recovery Is for Life – and or Happiness

We create so much pain while using or drinking, that it hardly seems fair that we are also granted this opportunity for such lasting peace and happiness. But we are and we should be grateful and seize this opportunity – make up for time wasted and live a life that will leave no regrets.

About to Relapse? Forget About One Day at a Time – Think Like a Buddhist; One Second at a Time

Wed, 19 Mar 2008 02:08:36 -0800

About to relapse? Feel like you can’t hold out any longer? Try some simple Buddhist techniques to clear your head, soothe your soul, and gain a little of that serenity that we in recovery so dearly need. Now, let me begin with a caveat. I am not a Buddhist and certainly not an expert on the religion or on meditation in general. I do practice certain Buddhist techniques, and I find them very helpful, especially in moments of temptation. I urge you to try these techniques - but to find full knowledge of them on your own, through readings or the teachings of someone more qualified than I. So, disclaimer aside – here goes. We spend a lot of our lives living outside the moment, and as any Buddhist will tell you, this aint' the path to happiness. We walk through life partially unaware, we are here, but our minds are elsewhere. A great way to achieve some serenity in life is to train yourself to enjoy and appreciate your life, moment by moment. To literally stop and smell the roses, and just keep on smellin' them! Using the roses analogy as a starting point – lets imagine you are walking through a park on a lovely Indian summer Saturday. It's beautiful, and pleasant, and you're feeling alright. But you're also stressing about a work presentation to come on Monday, wondering if the parking meter has expired, thinking about what you need to pick up at the store for dinner…etc. etc. You are in the park, but at the same time, your mind is elsewhere, and as a result you don’t enjoy the experience nearly as much as you would have if you had just been in the moment, and forgotten all your troubles and worries for a while. And unfortunately, all that mental effort you expended to keep that internal dialogue running through your mind probably didn’t amount to much good at all. That work presentation is still coming, the parking meter was OK, or it wasn't - and you will likely do just fine at the grocery store without a whole lot of preplanning. In fact, you'd probably do better on that presentation for giving your mind a rest and gaining a little clarity. Without effort, we suffer a constant barrage of mindless internal dialogue. Our brain just seems to like to blather on to itself. Not much comes out of it, usually, but it's all most of us know, and so we don’t think about it. Worse, for those of us struggling with sobriety, that voice inside our head seems determined to sabotage our efforts. The voice of addicted thinking, it tells us we can’t hold on any longer, argues that we could maybe have just one drink and runs a dialogue blaming someone or something else for how we're feeling right now. If you could just shut that voice up – you'd find you thought about taking a drink or a hit, or whatever, a whole lot less often. Part of achieving serenity through Buddhism is accomplished by eliminating that voice inside your head, and enjoying the still and silence of your mind for a while, appreciating the moment you’re in for what it offers.

How to Silence the Voice

OK – so now, if you're game – try a little experiment right now. Turn away from your computer screen for a sec, and just sit there, not thinking about anything, and see how long you can keep your inner voice silent for. OK, so it's not easy! But it's not as hard as you think either, it just takes a little practice, and there are some techniques you can use to help you stay focused.

Step One

In this first step, you don’t even need to silence your inner voice; you just need to keep yourself focused on the present moment. You can get into a meditation position or whatever, but you don’t even need to do that, just sit somewhere comfortable, and start to think about this moment. And not this moment as in around this moment, I mean this moment, second by second. Forget about anything that happened before this second, and don't think about anything that's coming after this second – just be. For this moment, don’t be a mom or a dad, don’t be a worker or a boss, don’t be a drunk or a junky – try to be nothing, to leave everything in your life behind. Take a break from all that, free from any responsibility or worry – this time is yours alone, and you deserve a little vacation. Use your senses, in this first stage, you don’t need to quiet your inner voice, you can still think to yourself about anything around you, but only as it comes.

Listen - to the noises in your environment.
Feel - think about the feeling of the ground on your feet, the sun on your face.
See - really look at what's around you.
Smell - what does your environment smell like?

Just concentrate on your sensations as they arise, and try to stay focused on them for as long as you can. At first, you'll find your mind wandering away frequently. Don’t worry, it's normal, just bring it back to the present whenever that happens. The more you do this, the easier it gets, and the longer the intervals will be between wanderings. It's a liberating experience to leave your worries behind for a while. Rarely is there anything very troubling in our immediate environment, and so this experience tends to be calming, and pleasant. It may sound boring, but really, it’s not at all – it's a relaxing break.

Step 2

Once you get comfortable staying in the present for a while, perform the same exercise, but this time quiet the inner voice. Feel the sun, but don't commentate on it to yourself, just experience it. Hear the birds, enjoy the sounds, but don’t "think" about them Just be in the moment, free from worries, and in the silence of your mind. Again, at first it's a bit tough to quiet the voice, but every time you start hear it, just turn it off, and refocus. With practice you'll find it easier to stay silent. Once you can do this, you'll understand what I'm talking about here! It's an amazing thing to be able to sit quietly, in peace, with no worries, and enjoy the experience without talking about it to yourself. It is serenity embodied, and you will find it carries over into the rest of your day – leaving you less prone to stress and worry, and less prone to relapse provoking thoughts. And then whenever you do feel temptation arise – forget about day by day, tune out that voice for a while, live second by second for a bit – and when you return – you'll feel a whole lot better, and that urge to drink; it will likely be gone. These simple exercises will help you to stay sober, but more than that they teach you happiness. Live in the moment, enjoy what comes – and learn that a lot of what you worry about – what makes you miserable – is not as important as you think.

How’s Your Drinking? How to Know if You Have a Drinking Problem

Sun, 16 Mar 2008 20:51:08 -0800

Do you have a drinking problem? Are you an alcoholic? How can you know, and what do these terms mean anyway? If you go to the doctor, and she says you have cancer – shows you the MRI pictures, and you see a tumor – you believe it, and start thinking almost immediately about how to get better. It's black and white, cut and dry – and for the most, the decision to get treatment is an easy one. Not to belittle the challenge of cancer, but – if only it were that easy for someone with a drinking or drug problem! People diagnosed with cancer can understand their diagnosis, most will accept it as accurate, and most will accept of the need for treatment. People don’t tend to understand the true meaning of terms such as alcoholic, substance abuser or chemically dependant – although they tend to have a misguided idea in their heads about what these things mean. And they won’t tend to believe a doctor, or anyone else, if they are told that they suffer the disease of addiction. The term alcoholic is not a medically accepted diagnosis, yet has wide cultural connotations and understanding. It's a tough and problematic word. People don’t tend to understand it, yet think they do, and since two hallmarks of the disease are delusion and denial – it's all too easy to self-define alcoholism in such a way so that you don’t meet the criteria – no matter how bad your problem becomes. For example You believe that alcoholics are homeless bums – and since you still work, ergo you are not an alcoholic, no matter what drinking is doing to other areas of your life. The addicted mind, as a defense mechanism preserving the drinking, defines alcoholism as whatever you are not. And that tricky addicted mind can shift those definitions as it needs to, always ensuring that your self-definition of "alcoholic" is anything but what you yourself are. So Let's Forget About the Word "Alcoholism" Just for a second, let's forget about the term alcoholism. It is a useful term, and understanding the disease of alcoholism can help you to get better, once on a road to recovery – but if you're still drinking, don’t think you're an alcoholic, but have a small nagging voice inside your head saying there's a problem…lets look at things in a different way. Do You Have a Drinking Problem? People without drinking problems almost never experience problems because of their drinking. If drinking causes you some problems, in any area of your life, yet you still drink – then you have a drinking problem. There - it's as simple as that. If drinking causes you problems, you have a drinking problem. If you have a drinking problem, you should change your behaviors. While drinking, we tend to associate with others that also drink. While drinking heavily, we associate with others that drink heavily – and we use our associates as a way to gauge our own problem. Not a great diagnostic technique, obviously, but it's human nature to peer model, and it's also a great defense mechanism for the addicted mind. It is not normal to get drunk a lot. About half of Americans basically don’t drink at all. Forget about comparing yourself to your friends. It's tempting, but it doesn't offer you any real insight into yourself. Keep it simple. If drinking is causing you any problems, you have a drinking problem. Not sure? Write it down. On a piece of paper, make two columns describing your drinking - one for benefits, and one for costs. Start with the benefits, and in the benefit column, write down anything and everything positive that you can think of about drinking. You might say: It relaxes me I enjoy the taste of…. I enjoy socializing with friends at the bar Whatever, be thorough, and make a full list of everything good that you can think of about drinking. Now – do the same for costs, but this time, do it in a more structured way, and be honest – there is little point in the exercise of you are not being honest with yourself. Firstly, write down how many drinks you have a week. No lying, is it, 20 - 50 - 150? Health Now think about health, and think of any influence your drinking has on your health. Has your drinking affected your weight, your fitness, your heart, your blood pressure, your liver, your energy or your mind? Do you think that if you keep drinking at the level you are drinking now, you will start to experience any health problems? Social/Relationships Has drinking ever caused you personal problems? Has it ever affected your relationship with your spouse, friends, children or family? Has your drinking ever caused you to miss an important social event? Would you like to see your children drink as much as you do? Would your spouse/mom/brother be happier if you drank less? School/Career Has your drinking ever caused you to perform poorly at work or school? Do you go to work with a hangover on a regular basis (more than once a month)? Do you perform as well at work when you are hung-over? Have you ever been noticed for being hung-over or drunk at work? Do you sometimes call in sick to work due to a hang-over? Would you be a better employee if you didn't drink? Have you ever lost a job or been reprimanded due to alcohol? Legal Have you ever had any contact with law enforcement as a result of your drinking? Now Take a Look OK, that's it. Now you should have two columns. What do your columns look like? If you're feeling really brave – have someone that knows you well complete the same "costs" exercise for you. See what problems they think your drinking is causing you. If you are a social drinker, with nothing to worry about – your "costs" column will be empty. If that column aint' empty – you have something to worry about. Drinking should bring only pleasure – if it brings any kind of problem on a regular basis – and you don’t stop drinking, then you have a drinking problem, and you either need to quit on your own, or get some help so that you can. When self-diagnosing the problem, forget about the term alcoholic – and just decide if you have a drinking problem or not – and if you do – think about how much you are willing to sacrifice to keep on drinking.

Parents, Stop Feeling So Guilty - Maybe We Just Like Being Drunk or High

Fri, 14 Mar 2008 05:59:51 -0800

Addiction and alcoholism are some pretty misunderstood phenomena. Doctors don’t really know what's going on, addicts themselves are hard pressed to explain just why they act as they do, and loved ones can't fathom how we could let ourselves get and stay this way. And because the whole mess is just so bewildering, a lot of myths and half-truths supplant reality – myths that make a lot of sense, but that just aren’t true. For example It's a myth that people need to hit bottom before they can benefit from treatment. A whole lot of people do finally get help after experiencing the worst, but they could have probably avoided all that pain by getting help sooner. Treatment works better when it comes earlier. But most people believe the whole rock bottom thingy – and it's not helpful. Now, I have to be careful here, because a lot of what's backing my arguments to come are personal experiences, but I don't think my path to addiction was so unique, in fact I think it's a pretty common route. So here goes. I think that a popularly held conception has it that alcoholics and drug addicts use or drink as a way to escape from life's problems or from past trauma or abuse. When someone we love becomes an alcoholic or drug addict, we tend to spend a lot of time searching for the reason why. We wonder what in their life was so traumatic as to cause this; and it can make us crazy, and in a lot cases, for parents especially, it can cause unnecessary and undeserved guilt. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. I know that a lot of people do drink or drug to escape past trauma or to self medicate mental health issues – I just think there are also a whole lot of drunks that drink just because they like to drink. I was one of them. Raised by involved, loving and kind parents, given every middle class advantage, reasonably smart, best friends, little league; no unusual and tease-worthy physical defects – I had a fine childhood. And still I spent a decade drinking hard. I discovered booze in my mid teens, and I loved it, couldn’t believe how much I loved it – loved just about everything about it; and I spent the next many years of my life enjoying it to great excess. I drank because I liked getting drunk too much. It fit just right inside my mind. Eventually, of course, the drinking got less fun, certainly less exciting, and the negatives of drinking started to weigh heavily on my life and happiness. I knew I had to quit for a long time before I did anything about it. By then of course I was an alcoholic, and by then, quitting wasn't so easy. Now, I don't tell you all this because my story is just so darned interesting – it's not; but I've spent a lot of my life talking with drunks, some still drinking, some not – and as far as I can tell, my story is a pretty common one. In the end, it doesn’t matter how you got yourself addicted, once you are you have a struggle ahead of you, and I don't think that falling into addiction this way is any "worse" than falling into addiction and abuse for any other reason. Nobody plans to become a desperate drunk, but we are all hardwired to seek out pleasure – and for those of us that seem to get more pleasure out of a drink than others, it's understandable why we might get ourselves into trouble. So if you're tormenting yourself, trying to understand a loved one's drinking, and just can’t think of any traumatic reason compelling such abuse – maybe there isn’t one – maybe they too just love getting drunk or high. And so maybe you're being too hard on yourself. If you did something terrible, then you'd know it, probably – and if you can’t think of anything you could have done to cause them to drink or drug in this way – then there probably isn’t anything.

Wet Brain. Why Do We Add Vitamins to Bread, But Not Beer?

Thu, 13 Mar 2008 06:28:07 -0800

Nobody walks away from years of heavy drinking unscathed, it always takes its toll; but for some heavy drinkers, a multi decade party ends in tragedy, with Wernickes-Korsakoffs Syndrome…wet brain. Wet Brain Wet brain is a tragic and often fatal syndrome of brain damage caused by years of vitamin B1 deficiency. Most people get all the vitamin B1 they need through a normal diet. Alcoholics, who may eat poorly or have damaged and ill functioning gastro intestinal systems, often do not. And the syndrome is pretty sad, with symptoms of confusion, language deficits, an ill ability to concentrate and social withdrawal just a few of many – and it can and does kill tens of thousands of Americans each year. A simple vitamin deficiency! So anyway, I was talking with my mom about wet brain, and she asked me why they didn’t just fortify beer with vitamin B1. And I had no idea. Why didn’t they? There must be some reason though right? It just seems too obvious a solution to such tragedy. So anyway, a quick peek online confirmed a couple of things. Firstly, that my mom is a pretty smart cookie, and secondly that the AMA has been recommending just such a fortification, and studies have shown that it would work. An Australian study, where researchers actually did fortify beer showed that alcoholics drinking this B1 beer showed cognitive improvements, couldn’t taste the difference, and that the vitamins could be added to beer for about 20 cents per 6000 bottles! Currently, brewers cannot legally add vitamins to beer, and some have argued that by offering vitamin enriched alcohol, some people might assume that drinking was less dangerous than it is. But hey, legislation is changeable, especially when it makes sense - when it saves lives, and I don’t think adding vitamin fortification to the small print on a case of beer is gonna' be convincing anyone to drink more than they do now. But there has got to be something else, right? I mean it can’t be this easy can it… So for now, if you drink too much, make sure you take a B12 supplement, it could save your life - and maybe one day, one day soon, that just won’t be necessary, and you'll get all you need in a few "well balanced" beers a day.