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Wednesday, February 1, 2012
RIDE FOR RECOVERY!
THOUGHT FOR THE DAY
Today you are a winner. It doesn't matter where you have been or what you have done. There is always a reason for us to self medicate and a lot of times that reason is because we have spent a life time of listening to peoples verbal abuses and somehow they have managed to convince us that we are NO GOOD and UNWORTHY of the wonderful gifts this life has to offer. Well I am here to tell you it doesn't matter what they have to say, it matters what God has to say! Our creator has said that you are special and that you deserve the very best that life has to offer. We can take a punch and the bruise will go away in a week or two but when were hit with words of hurt they can remain a lifetime. Today we are going to take the sting out of those words and believe what our creator says that we are special, important and loved! Today your a WINNER!! REMEMBER JESUS LOVES YOU!
Canadian Doctor Uses Amazonian Herbal Medicine Called Ayahuasca to Break Addictions
Dr Gabor Mat̩ is a family physician in Vancouver Canada and over the past few years he has provided an Amazonian addiction remedy to between 150 and 200 addicts in East Vancouver Рand many, he says, have had significant breakthroughs.
Called ayahuasca, this hallucinogenic is taken as a spiritual aid in several religious traditions of the Amazon basin and has been used in ritual for thousands of years. The drug is legal for spiritual use in the US and a Health Canada study on the substance found that it produced no adverse effects and provided spiritual benefits.
Dr. Mate says he first became interested in ayahuasca after learning of addiction treatment clinics in Peru using the herbal medicine which had ‘cure’ rates many times better than that typically seen in North American and Europe.
Working in some ways similarly to the African origin opiate treatment medication Ibogaine, Dr. Mate talked to journalists about how ayahuasca helps people to break free from addiction, saying, ayahuasca is not a drug in the Western sense, something you take to get rid of something. Properly used, it opens up parts of yourself that you usually have no access to. The parts of the brain that hold emotional memories come together with those parts that modulate insight and awareness, so you see past experiences in a new way. The natural human response to pain is to escape it. That’s the essence of addiction. Ayahuasca allows users to hold pain and not run from it.”
36 year old Megan Hames of Vancouver is one of the almost 200 people who have received ayahuasca treatment from Dr. Mate. Describing her experience, she says, “Ayahuasca saved my life. It enabled me to look at all those dark things I buried long ago … to unleash them and the pain, so that I could move forward.”
*Nov 13th Story Update
In the wake of media reports on Dr Mate’s successes with ayahuasca, Health Canada officials sent him a letter which asked that he immediately cease his use of the drug, which remains a controlled substance within Canada, and threatened prosecution should he fail to comply with the demand.
Based on this, the doctor says he will no longer, for the moment, use ayahuasca in his clinical practice, saying, “I have no intention of breaking the law. But I hope to get permission to use it in therapeutic context. I’m surprised no one thought to talk to me before sending the letter, but I suppose someone in Ottawa is just doing their job.”
Health Canada has previously allowed the use of ayahuasca for spiritual practices, but the director of Ottawa’s Office for Controlled Substances, Johanne Beaulieu, said, “For a controlled substance to be used in Canada, there’s a process that needed to be undergone. We’d welcome scientists like Dr. Maté talking to us before they start their work. Our intent is not to stop research or treatment. It’s to ensure the safety of Canadians.”
Read more: Canadian Doctor Uses Amazonian Herbal Medicine Called Ayahuasca to Break Addictions
New Screening Test Predicts Odds of Addiction Treatment Success
A team of American and Irish researchers have developed an assessment test which seems to reveal which people are most likely to benefit from addiction treatment.
The computer module test, named the Implicit Relational Assessment Procedure (IRAP), requires participants to give very fast and accurate answers to a series of questions regarding attitudes to drug use. Both the answers given and the reaction and answer time for each question are recorded and analyzed in the scoring of the test.
Explaining the test procedure, the researchers say that in traditional questionnaires where participants have a moderate amount of time to formulate answers responses are more likely to be consciously or unconsciously deceptive. When participants must answer very rapidly they are less able to mask the truth and their answers may also reveal unconscious or deeper truths.
The Study
In an experiment, the researchers compared the effectiveness of the IRAP against standard admission treatment questionnaires. The IRAP test seeks to measure a person’s true feelings about drug use – such as beliefs about positive and negative consequences of drug use.
Twenty five New Yorkers seeking 6 months of outpatient cocaine treatment were asked to complete the IRAP and a standard admission treatment questionnaire prior to treatment onset.
The Results
Standard questionnaires did not reveal which participants would stay in treatment and have success as measured by negative urine tests for cocaine.
On the IRAP test, however, study participants who scored highly on positive feelings for cocaine use were most likely to exit treatment early and most likely to test positive for cocaine use in urine tests.
Commentary
The researchers say that the test may be useful in identifying which people need the most support in the treatment process, such as those at greatest risk of treatment exit and relapse
Study author Professor Dermot Barnes-Holmes commented on the significance of the findings, saying, "Participants' beliefs about their substance abuse and the negative or positive consequences that follow, appear to have an impact on the success of their treatment - and these beliefs aren't currently being identified through standard drug abuse treatment.”
The full study results can be read in the current edition of The American Journal of Drug and Alcohol Abuse.
Read more: New Screening Test Predicts Odds of Addiction Treatment Success
Tuesday, January 31, 2012
THOUGHT FOR THE DAY
My wife and I just spoke with a dear friend of ours. He mentioned the words...."Its my own dumb fault". Lets not start the day with that thinking. Though we have made mistakes that doesn't make us dumb. It makes us human. Poor choices do not determine who we are. They shape us and make us stronger as long as we try not to repeat them. Take these mistakes and look at them from that perspective. That this is a learning and growing experience and I know I am not going to do that again! and move on. My favorite book states that through trials and sufferings we learn to have faith, and through faith comes hope and after hope perseverance. Let these trials finish their good work so that we become mature and complete.
"Blood on the Walls" Biker Bar Transformed Into House of Recovery
Once the roughest joint in town, the Eastwood Tavern has been renamed the Eastwood House of Recovery - Now healing instead of hurting.
Once a Biker bar known for violence and with literal blood on the walls, the Eastwood Tavern in Comstock County Michigan has been rechristened the Eastwood House of Recovery, and now tends to the very people who used to drink heavily within its walls.
Mike Green, a retired truck driver and ex addict opened the reincarnated Eastwood facility last year. Now serving hope instead of whiskey, the community center is open 12 hours a day to those in the community looking for sober support and recovery fellowship. Home to six 12 steps meetings a day, pot luck dinners and weekly euchre tournaments, the facility has met a real need, and the response has surprised even the optimistic Mike Green. About 100 people walk through the doors on an average day.
Steve Somers, 24, says he comes to the Eastwood House of Recovery just to chat sometimes, and describes it as "a place to come where I know alcohol won't be an issue - there are some days when I'm here 12 hours a day."
The building is owned by the non-profit Geek Group, and Mike Green pays the organization half of what he collects through "pass the hat" donations as rent each month.
Green, who spent 19 years abusing heroin and alcohol now suffers from stage 2 Hep C, and doctors say he won't make 60, but he explains "if it weren't for people in the recovery community helping me out when I needed it most, I wouldn't be alive today. This is my way of giving back to people in recovery who need somewhere to go."
Jim Wickline, 82, an appreciate patron of the new facility sums up the transformation as "A place of destruction has been turned into a house of construction."
Read more: "Blood on the Walls" Biker Bar Transformed Into House of Recovery
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