Category: From Addiction Recovery Bulletin

Addiction Recovery Bulletin

SHOP ’TIL YOU CAN’T STOP – 

March 25, 2021 – The pleasure of acquiring superfluous shoes and kitchenware is, predictably, fleeting. “Shortly after they make a purchase, they often feel really bad,” Norberg says. This shame and disappointment is another hallmark of an unhealthy habit, and it feeds the habit. “It’s this reinforcing cycle,” she adds. “You feel good, then you feel bad, so then you want to feel good again.” 

A spree of compulsive buying often begins, as it ends, with negative emotions: loneliness, depression, anxiety. A person may turn to shopping because they are unable to deal with some stress in their life, or to boost their own sense of self. But it can also begin with a more neutral state of mind, like boredom. 

The underlying principle is that humans seek to enhance their mood, and in a year of isolation and uncertainty, many are more in need of coping mechanisms than ever before. We often refer (quite flippantly) to this emotional spending as “retail therapy.” The name is misleading, as it implies the act will improve mental health — the opposite is far more likely.  There’s been little research into the causes of compulsive buying, though researchers guess that it hijacks our body’s reward system in the same way as other behavioral addictions, like gambling. The activity of shopping and purchasing delivers a rush of dopamine, and the brief euphoria associated with it, then leaves us feeling as low as ever.

Internet vendors wield an arsenal of clever sales tactics against our meager brains, making it all the more difficult to resist the desire to buy. “Marketers know, perhaps better than the clinical psychologists, what drives purchaser behavior,” Norberg says. “They’re totally in tune with how people consume.” Algorithms present you with unsolicited advertisements based on your search history. Amazon automatically suggests items to pair together. E-tailers offer flash sales and “buy now, pay later” schemes.

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Addiction Recovery Bulletin

A NEW GOAL – 

March 25, 2021 – ‘I would have to fight very hard sitting in the house. I was struggling with it because I didn’t know what I could do, then Dungannon came in for me. I never thought I would be back playing again after being out for so long. ‘I’m lucky. We watch football every night on TV and these professionals don’t realise how lucky they are to still be playing. I feel sorry for the thousands of kids, men and women who can’t play sport. I know how serious that is for mental health.

‘You have to show a brave face for the kids when you’re doing Zoom chats because each week they’re getting more and more down. There’s no point me saying everything is brilliant — it’s not.’

Last year, Carroll joined FC Mindwell, a club set up for men with mental health issues, to raise awareness and help others.

The club also signed his former Northern Ireland team-mate Keith Gillespie, quite a coup for a team playing in Division Three of the Mid-Ulster League.

‘I appreciated what FC Mindwell were doing,’ says Carroll. ‘I didn’t realise how serious it was until I first moved back home in 2016. It opened my eyes and I just want to give something back because I went through a really bad time with depression and alcohol. I want people to understand it’s OK to talk.

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Addiction Recovery Bulletin

WATCH – CHOICES CHOICES – 

March 24, 2021 – The House of Pain member said that he was able to get temporarily clean in 2000 and stay off drugs for the next three years. 

But he was hooked again and by 2005 and was reduced to sleeping on a couch in a warehouse after burning though millions of dollars spent on drugs. He was even dodging a warrant for his arrest before he decided to get clean again, he said.

“By the time I got sober the second time in 2005, I was sick and tired of being sick and tired and I was either gonna kill somebody or kill myself. And you know that’s a terrible feeling,” he said. 

“A guy called me that I knew from a 12-step program in the past and he reached out and said, ‘You know, I’m just checking. You know you deserve to have a good day. Let me know if you ever want to try meetings again.’”

He says he feels that he only sought help after he was “out of all options,” and has been off drugs ever since.

“I just didn’t think it was going to work for me anymore because I had thrown the gift away originally. And so it really took what it took because I went back and forth and it wasn’t clicking. So finally it stuck in 2005 I got willing and on April 15th of this year, I’ll have 16 years consecutively sober. So it’s been a blast.”

more@PageSix

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Addiction Recovery Bulletin

WOMEN SHOULD BE WARY – 

March 25, 2021 – Women tend to have worse outcomes from increased drinking — worse outcomes in health issues, psychological consequences, and progression to an alcohol use disorder.  Increased drinking is especially evident in women 30 years of age and older in the U.S. Research also indicates that women over 60 are binge-drinking more often. A nationwide study showed that between 2006 and 2014, emergency room visits due to excessive alcohol rose by 61.6%, with a staggering 272% increase in related costs. Another study showed that between 1993 and 2010, alcohol-related hospital diagnoses increased by 90% for women 45–64 years of age (versus 30% for men of the same age). In a look at alcohol-related liver issues, one study shows that between 2000 and 2015, rates of alcohol-related liver issues for women increased by 85%.

What do we know about how alcohol impacts women specifically?

One study on women and alcohol shows that women react more to alcohol because of lower amounts of water and muscle mass in their body and higher amounts of estrogen. Dr. Joseph Volpicelli, an addiction medicine specialist, confirms this. He also points to the fact that women have higher estrogen levels as an important part of the puzzle in alcohol addiction.  Volpicelli explains that because women have large fluctuations in estrogen, it makes the effects of alcohol more pronounced. Estrogen enhances a sense of well-being, and since alcohol also increases blood estrogen concentration, the effects of alcohol may be more pleasurable for women, says Volpicelli. One study shows a definite increase in alcohol craving for women when estrogen levels are dropping. In his practice, he notices that women have more alcohol cravings postpartum once estrogen levels drop.

Volpicelli also notes that the withdrawal process is more pronounced for women due to changing estrogen levels. A drop in estrogen levels has a highly irritating effect on the nervous system in women, which explains many premenstrual symptoms. This can compound the effects of alcohol withdrawal, especially if estrogen levels are naturally dropping at the same time.  In my case, I experienced worsening health issues due to alcohol use in my late thirties and early forties when my estrogen levels were fluctuating more wildly. My hangovers produced harsher neurological symptoms, I had worsening chronic pain, and my menstrual symptoms became unmanageable. At the time, I had no idea that the combination of changing estrogen levels and heavy alcohol use was causing me harm.

more@Elemental

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Addiction Recovery Bulletin

CAUGHT SPEEDING – 

March 26, 2021 – Irish jockey Adrian McCarthy was suspended for six months after testing 1,000 times above the cocaine limit.  McCarthy, who said an addiction to drugs left him in a rut, was suspended on Thursday after the disciplinary panel of the British Horseracing Authority was told at a hearing that he tested positive for benzoylecgonine, a metabolite of cocaine, in a urine sample at Chelmsford on Oct. 15 last year.  He gave a reading of 150,300 nanograms per millilitre, with the threshold for riding set at 150 ng/ml.  The 42-year-old said he was “in a really bad place” at that time and had tried to take his own life. “I just got into a bit of a rut,” McCarthy told the hearing. “Drinking all the time, using drugs, cocaine, and trying to make things better. Obviously it doesn’t make things better. “I’m in a lot better place now than I was before, I just want to get my head down and do what’s right.  “We all make mistakes. I made a mistake, I regret it. I just have to look forward and work hard.”  McCarthy is banned from racing until April 21, with his six-month suspension backdated to Oct. 22.  

more@ESPN

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Addiction Recovery Bulletin

WAGER THIS! – 

March 26, 2021 – People like Lewis, a 25-year-old from Hampshire who requested anonymity because few people know about a compulsion he is still struggling to control. He won about $77,000 at age 16 with an online betting account and chased the high of that original hit for years. Since 2016, he said, he has toggled between total abstinence and flat-out mania.

To him, bet365 is the most insidious of the many online gambling sites, because it outpaces the rest at catering to the always-on impulse of people who want to wager, day and night, on games happening anywhere in the world.

“A gambler is desperate to distract himself, and during lockdown there was nothing to distract me,” he said. “Can’t meet your mates at a pub, can’t go out for a meal. You’re at home every waking second. You end up in a vicious cycle.” The online gambling industry has long operated under exceptionally lenient rules in Britain, many of them codified in 2005, with a set of regulations that was largely designed for retail betting shops. It has been described as an analog law for a digital age, and it’s overseen by the Department of Culture, Media and Sport, also known as “the Ministry of Fun.”

By all accounts, no company has profited more under this light-handed regime than bet365. Which is why it is spectacularly profitable.

more@NYTimes

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Addiction Recovery Bulletin

BOOK REVIEW – 

March 12, 2021 – Obviously, it is preposterous to consider potato chips less fattening than walnuts — because potato chips are among the most addictive foods on the planet, along with French fries, pizza, cheeseburgers and Oreos. Too many of us can’t help eating too much of this stuff. And that’s the chief motivation for “Hooked,” which is in many ways a sequel to the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist’s 2013 tour de force, “Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us.” That book exposed how multinational food companies churn out processed foods that are both cheap and alluring. “Hooked” asks how food manufacturers manipulate these foods to addict us, helping along a national crisis in which 40 percent of Americans are obese.

No one questions that the nutritional quality of foods has health consequences, but “Hooked” redirects our attention to the arguably more important question of quantity. To do so, Moss first focuses necessarily on the brain, the true fountainhead of addiction, which he defines (using the words of a Philip Morris C.E.O.) as “a repetitive behavior that some people find difficult to quit.”

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Addiction Recovery Bulletin

FILM REVIEW – 

March 25, 2021 – As opening credits roll, we hear the sound of a drink being mixed and the first thing we see are cherubic teens participating in a beer bottle rally race. It generates a lot of camaraderie and vomit. A quartet of old friends who teach at the school view these ecstatic youths as a repudiation of their staid lives and decide to jump straight into their mid-life crises. The pack leader is melancholy history professor Martin (Mads Mikkelsen), whose wife Anika (Maria Bonnevie) and two sons are unimpressed with his permanent air of hungover ennui. He meets up with his mates Nikolaj (Magnus Millang), Tommy (Thomas Bo Larsen), and Peter (Lars Ranthe) and they discuss a theory from philosopher Finn Skårderud, who feels that a constant blood alcohol level of .05 makes a person “poised, musical and open” at the exact moment between drunk and sober. Why not bring the sun-kissed boozing of your summer vacation to your day job?

Martin and co. goad each other on, saying stuff like, “Russia was built by men who drink and drive.” Hemingway is invoked repeatedly. They pledge to keep their blood-alcohol level at .05 and promise no drinking after 8 p.m. (ha!) but soon they’re secreting Smirnoff in their coffee cups, stashing bottles in utility closets, and buying breathalyzers to keep themselves on point. As a man of science, Nikolaj scientifically documents the gambit.

more@SonomaNews

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Addiction Recovery Bulletin

LISTEN! – THE TRACKS OF OUR TEARS – 

March 24, 2021 – We wanted to look at two songs from the 1970s that dove deeply into the morass of drug addiction. The first is “Home is Where the Hatred Is,” a Gil Scott-Heron composition. It appeared on Scott-Heron’s first studio album, Pieces of a Man, and second recording (the live Small Talk at 125th and Lenox marked his debut). It was also the first of his collaborations with pianist Brian Jackson. The group included Scott Heron, guitar, piano, vocals; Hubert Laws, flute, saxophone; Brian Jackson, piano; Burt Jones, electric guitar; Ron Carter, bass; and Bernard ‘Pretty’ drums. … The other is “King Heroin” by James Brown. Manny Rosen wrote the poem from the point of view of the drug. Brown added an intro and a concluding paragraph, and he, his arranger David Matthews, and his manager Charles Bobbit wrote the music for the track.

more@MusicFestNews

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Addiction Recovery Bulletin

CENTRAL PARK TO LEVITATE IN 2022 – 

March 25, 2021 – The legislation sets a goal of having 50 percent of marijuana business licenses for distribution and retail issued to social equity applicants, including people with past marijuana convictions or who have relatives with such records as well as those living in economically distressed areas or places where cannabis criminalization has been enforced in a discriminatory manner. Equity applicants would also include minority- and women-owned businesses, disabled veterans and financially distressed farmers.

*Cannabis products would be subject to a state tax of nine percent, plus an additional four percent local tax.

*Marijuana distributors would also face a THC tax on flowers, concentrate and edibles—applied on a sliding scale based on type of product, up to three cents per milligram.

*Tax revenue from marijuana sales would cover the costs of administering the program. After that, 40 percent of the remaining dollars would go to a community reinvestment fund, 40 percent would support the state’s public schools and 20 percent would fund drug treatment facilities and public education programs.

more@FilterMag

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