Category: From Addiction Recovery Bulletin

Addiction Recovery Bulletin

A time of reason… –  

Nov. 27, 2020 – Pickard then writes about neuroscientist Marc Lewis’ learning model, which considers both the disease and choice model problematic. While the choice model demonizes the addict, the disease model disempowers them and minimizes their agency. Lewis maintains that the brain changes seen in addicts are a result of neuroplasticity, rather than the underlying cause of addiction and that the empowerment and agency of the patient are essential to recovery.

Pickard mostly agrees with Lewis but insists that the choice model cannot be easily rejected. First, there is a growing evidence base suggesting that drug use is not simply compulsive, and addicts have a degree of control and choice. Studies show that most people age out of addiction without treatment because they get preoccupied with life changes. Others quit cold turkey despite years of dependence. Both people and animal studies have shown that people with dependence will often choose rewards other than drugs (like money, small gifts) when provided alternatives; rats addicted to cocaine even chose snuggling over cocaine.

Second, if, as Lewis maintains, we are to use empowerment, agency, and self-awareness to help people, then this means that a person has some level of agency, some control over their behavior, and some power over their addiction.

Pickard writes that we can accept drug use to be a choice, but unlike the moral model, we must not consider it to be a shameful or a selfish one. Thus, we as a society also have a choice in seeing the addict not as someone who is lazy or bad, but as someone who is suffering and in pain.

Pickard’s responsibility without blame framework is about exploring and challenging our own attitudes about addiction. The model emerges from her work as a clinician in a Therapeutic Community. These communities are less hierarchical than hospitals. They require a deep and even a personal connection between experts and patients, and within the patient group. She writes:

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Addiction Recovery Bulletin

MEDIA: DOPESICK by Beth Macy hits the small screen – 

November 27, 2020 – Academy Award-nominated actor Michael Keaton will executive produce and star alongside Peter Sarsgaard, Rosario Dawson and Kaitlyn Dever.

“We are honored to host the impressive team behind this compelling and consequential project, and to play a role in putting a universal spotlight on the opioid epidemic that continues to devastate American families and communities from all walks of life,” Northam said in a news release.

Production will be required to adhere to comprehensive industry health and safety protocols developed over the past six months during the coronavirus pandemic. Those safety measures are in addition to the current Virginia pandemic workplace safety guidelines and those required by Touchstone Television.

“Dopesick” will be eligible to receive a Virginia film tax credit or grant. The exact amount will be based on the number of Virginia workers hired, Virginia goods and services purchased, and deliverables, including Virginia tourism promotions.

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Addiction Recovery Bulletin

Hindsight IS Indeed 2020 – 

by Dr. Don Grant, MA, MFA, DAC, SUDCC IV, PhD

November 27, 2020 – In the early 2000’s, I began to notice sobriety support “chat rooms” online, and online recovery opportunities increasing.  My observations of this phenomenon caused me to direct my doctoral work towards a non-prejudicial investigation of their use and efficacy value, ultimately resulting in choice of my dissertation topic and subsequently published research study exploring any potential differences between face-to-face (F2F) and online sobriety support.

It still stands as the only legitimate investigation comparing these two types of recovery communities and is entitled “Using social media for sobriety recovery: Beliefs, behaviors, and surprises from users of face-to-face and social media sobriety support.” 

My study investigated key questions related to F2F versus technologically mediated sobriety support. My original 2009 study hypothesis, and four subsequent research questions, have now become even more relevant in 2020.

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Addiction Recovery Bulletin

Here comes the knight –  

Nov. 27, 2020 – Tevis, originally from San Francisco, learned to play chess as a young boy but fell ill at the age of eight. He was put in a nursing home and abandoned by his parents, who moved across the country to Kentucky, reports The Ringer.

In The Queen’s Gambit, we watch as eight-year-old Beth is put in an orphanage and becomes addicted to the tranquilisers she and the other girls are forced to take.

Similarly, Tevis was drugged with sedatives when he was left in the nursing home as a child. He was given barbiturates three times a day, starting him on a path to dependency.

“I loved it,” he told the San Francisco Examiner years later. “That may be one reason I became a drunk.” Tevis was later taken back in by his strict mother and alcoholic father and struggled to fit in at school in Lexington; just like Beth, an outsider among her peers.

As an adult, he got married and had two children. He became prolific short story writer, as well as a drinker and a gambler.

“He gambled my milk money away, and the way he got it back was by selling short stories to various magazines,” his son William later said.

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Addiction Recovery Bulletin

And to stay alive – 

Nov. 23, 2020 – Everyone knows that tobacco causes cancer, and severe dental problems can happen due to the use of methamphetamine. It is common to hear about deaths occurring due to drug overuse, especially for those who take opioids for pain relief.  Some drugs like inhalants can destroy or damage nerve cells in the peripheral nervous system or the brain.

The threat of infections is also high for those addicted to drugs as sharing of injection equipment increases the chances of contracting HIV or hepatitis C, both of which are deadly diseases. Injecting drugs increases the chances of heart infection that affects the valves and can cause cellulitis, a skin infection. Often, mental illness aggravates due to the use of drugs. … Starting an addiction treatment at any of the luxury rehab centers will help reduce the cravings for the drug that put a check the drug intake and then coupled with psycho-therapy paves the way for giving up drugs altogether. It signals a new beginning as a continued treatment for the long term will help complete recovery from addiction, and people can start leading a regular life once again.

Going to a rehab center is the best way to start treatment for drug addiction, and here are some more reasons for choosing the treatment.

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Addiction Recovery Bulletin

High or Low Bottom Line – 

November 28, 2020 – “They intoxicate themselves with work so they won’t see how they really are.” —Aldous Huxley.  The end result of these differing work styles may look the same from the outside—an unbalanced life dominated by long hours at the office—but each face expresses a different set of emotional vulnerabilities. The broad umbrella of work addiction is only a starting point. If you’re a relentless or dyed-in-the-wool work addict, you’re distinguished by high work initiation and high work completion. 

You work compulsively and constantly day and night, holidays and weekends, regardless of the deadline. You’re a hard-driving perfectionist, your work is thorough, and your standards practically unreachable.  When you approach a project with a six-month deadline as if it were tomorrow, you get an adrenaline charge. Getting the project finished early leaves extra time to focus on other job tasks. Your focus is constant initiation of tasks and completing them at all costs. If you’re a bulimic workaholic, you have out-of-control work habits that alternate between binges and purges and are distinguished by low work initiation and high work completion. If you’re an attention-deficit work addict (ADW), you’re distinguished by high work initiation but low work completion. You’re adrenaline seeking, easily bored and distracted, constantly after stimulation. Your appetite for excitement, crisis, and intense stimulation is a strategy you unwittingly use to focus on a task. You like risky jobs, recreation and living on the edge because it gives you an adrenaline charge that helps you focus at work or play. Creating tight deadlines, keeping many balls in the air and taking risks at work make it difficult for you to slow down and relax.  If you’re a savoring work addict, you’re the opposite of the ADW—slow, deliberate and methodical. You’re distinguished by low work initiation and low work completion.

You’re a consummate perfectionist, terrified deep down that the finished project is never good enough. You have difficulty telling when something is incomplete or finished. You savor your work as an alcoholic would savor a shot of bourbon. You inadvertently prolong and create additional work when you’re almost finished with a task. You’re notorious for creating to-do lists that take longer to generate than completing the task. 

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Addiction Recovery Bulletin

Discomfort Zone – 

November 24, 2020 – Rather than getting mad at herself for going backward on her sobriety journey, Cyrus used the opportunity to figure out what caused the setback. “One of the things I’ve used is, ‘Don’t get furious, get curious,’” she said. “Don’t be mad at yourself, but ask yourself, ‘What happened?’ To me, it was a f*#k-up because I’m not a moderation person.” The singer went on to explain that while she doesn’t have a drinking problem, sobriety is important to her because she doesn’t like her mindset under the influence of alcohol and prefers to be fully present. “I don’t have a problem with drinking,” she said. “I have a problem with the decisions I make once I go past that level of [intoxication]. I’ve just been wanting to wake up 100 percent, 100 percent of the time.” “My mom was adopted, and I inherited some of the feelings she had, the abandonment feelings and wanting to prove that you’re wanted and valuable,” she explained. The singer also added that her dad, Billy Ray Cyrus, basically raised himself after his parents divorced when he was three years old. “I did a lot of family history, which has a lot of addiction and mental health challenges,” she said. “… By understanding the past, we understand the present and the future much more clearly.”

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Addiction Recovery Bulletin

Thank you for not sharing – 

Nov. 14, 2020 – “I gave in to my craving and watched porn,” he said. Silence. What exactly is one supposed to say? “Thanks for being so honest and transparent with me”?

All I wanted to do was scream and yell like a child, “Nooo! It’s not fair!”

“I need to be transparent with you.” Just a few words and my entire world felt like it was caving in. Crushing me.

Again.

My hopes, my dreams, my trust … shattered. Anger. Sadness. Loneliness filling its place. I was 24 years old, married for 4 years, with two children in tow and I was pregnant with a third when I found out about my husband’s porn addiction. My world turned upside down and it became very dark at that time in my life. In my extreme pain I miscarried the baby I was carrying.

What was the point? I assumed that we did not stand a chance to pull through the storm.

I sat in front of rabbis and therapists and begged, pleaded, for an easy way out. It would be easier to throw in the towel on our marriage. After all, I didn’t sign up for this!

It’s been almost two decades now. Two decades of this life of mine, being married to a porn addict. An addict in recovery.

Day in and day out I have chosen to stay. And that has been the best decision I’ve ever made in my entire life. I’ve been through all the stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Yes, of course my situation comes with the pain and discomfort of holding onto fears, trauma, and uncertainty … I constantly need to keep my anger and ego in check. It takes work. And loads of faith.

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Addiction Recovery Bulletin

Graduating to Oblivion U. –  

Oct. 20, 2020 – “There was an increase in opioid prescribing in the 1990s and 2000s that contributed to the opioid epidemic,” he said. “Health professionals and the larger public health community owe it to these individuals to understand the downstream effects of overprescribing and develop effective interventions.”

The researchers were surprised by the large uptick in heroin use among the more recent cohorts, and the findings partially explain why opioid overdoses have skyrocketed, Veliz said.

“These prevalence estimates of heroin use are very high, considering the general population annual estimates are less than 1%,” McCabe said. “And anyone in the study with a history of heroin use at baseline was excluded, which makes the findings more conclusive.”

Based on national estimates, the number of people in the United States using heroin has increased from 373,000 in 2007 to 808,000 in 2018. The largest increase in heroin use over this time period has occurred among adults aged 26 and older.

Although the vast majority of prescription opioid exposure does not lead to heroin use, heroin incidence and prevalence rates were significantly greater among those who reported prescription opioid misuse, the researchers say.

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Addiction Recovery Bulletin

WATCH –

Sobriety, creativity, serenity and laughter in the Coronaverse. A conversation with Paul Williams, Ester Nicholson, Ricky Byrd, John Taylor, Johnny Solomon, with fabulous host Stevie Mack.

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