Friday, October 5, 2012

Celebrate Recovery Springfield Pa.


About
CR is a Christ Centered Recovery Program for anyone seeking freedom from lifes hurts, habits and hangups.
MissionTo provide a safe and confidential place, to focus on God's healing power through fellowship with others by working the 12 Biblical steps and the 8 beatitude principles.
DescriptionLIVES ARE CHANGING RIGHT HERE IN DELAWARE COUNTY!

We meet every Wednesday at 7:00 at Life Christian Fellowship, Springfield, PA.



607 W Springfield Rd
Springfield, Pennsylvania 19064



Phone (610) 328-2843
Email celebraterecovery@Lcfconnect.com
Website http://www.Lcfconnect.com/CR

SOBER ESCORTS INC.





Sober Escorts, Inc. offers a variety of services. These services are tailored to our client’s individual needs and goals. Listed below are the services which make up the bulk of Sober Escorts, Inc.’s business. If you happen to have a need or situation that is not covered in the following information, please feel free to contact us. We’re here to help. We care – We’ve been there!

We are a fee for service company, normally a flat per day fee, plus expenses. Our rates are very reasonable and affordable. Please contact us directly for specific pricing.

Click on any service category below to read more about that particular service:

To Treatment Transit

From Treatment to Extended Care TransitFrom Treatment to Home Transit

Sober Companion Services


There are 3 types of transit services; To Treatment, From Treatment to Extended Care, and From Treatment to Home. We know through experience, some of it our own, that airports and airplanes are difficult for some clients going to or coming from treatment. We know of individuals who “got lost” on their way to treatment and others who, upon discharge, were not able to make it home, or to their intended destination clean and sober. That first 24 to 72 hours outside of the structured treatment setting can be pretty rough.





Sober Escorts, Inc. works with families, interventionists, admission specialists, physicians, lawyers, personal managers, agents, anyone and everyone concerned with getting the client to treatment safely and expeditiously. We are familiar with the uncertainty, fear, and sense of aloneness inherent in the trip to treatment. A Sober Escort can be extremely helpful during this period. Many of our escorts have been through this themselves. They will lend their strength, encouragement, and support to the client in an effort to insure a successful trip to treatment.




Sober Escorts, Inc. works with anyone and everyone concerned with getting the client safely and expeditiously from primary treatment to an extended care facility, halfway house, or sober house. The majority of these prefer that the client come to them directly from the primary treatment facility. SEI will gladly accompany the client to any one of these destinations. Often times there are pressing matters at home that must be dealt with before moving on to the next destination. This can be a dangerous and stressful time. In this type of situation our escort will perform all the services covered in “From Treatment To Home”.




SEI assists with the transition from treatment back to everyday living. Our escort will meet the client at discharge, accompany them on their trip home, and within the first 24 hours after discharge, attend with them their first AA or NA meeting. We’ll continue with at least one meeting per day for the duration of our contract. We’ll go early and stay late, encourage them to meet people and get phone numbers. We’ll help them if necessary. Our escort will work with the client to make their home a clean and sober environment and we’ll do our utmost to see that the client follows through with their recommended discharge plan.








There are numerous situations where a newly recovering individual would find the support of a Sober Companion beneficial, business trips, social events, and weddings are but a few. A Sober Companion will lend strength and support in situations or circumstances that are deemed as perilous or stressful to the client.

Another Sober Companion service SEI offers relates directly to the film and entertainment industry. There are instances where a Sober Companion is required as a condition for cast insurance during the shooting of a film.


Via Telephone

Voice: 352.236.0127

Toll Free: 877.218.3800Via Facsimile

Fax: 352.438.1145Via Postal Mail

Sober Escorts, Inc.
1187 SE 65th Circle
Ocala, FL 34472

Via e-mail:Click here to send us an e-mail
m.

Little Hill Alina Lodge New Jersey


About
She never said it would be easy. She said it would be worth it.
Description“Gerry has inspired thousands of people to regain their lives and live sober. This is the greatest gift anyone can give. She has been a front-runner in the field of alcohol and drug treatment for many many years” Betty Ford commenting on Geraldine Owen Delaney
General Information
Alina Lodge, founded in 1957, is legendary for its no-nonsense structured approach to treatment. Scope: In furtherance of our mission and as an industry leader, we remain committed to the highest standards of student safety, quality care, individualized treatment, and positive results delivered in a cost effective manner. We offer a no-nonsense program with diverse counseling modalities. The integ
rated services, excellent staff and emphasis on the whole person—and the whole family—contribute to our successful track record with chronic relapsing individuals. Of course, one need not wait for chronic relapse to come to Alina Lodge. Addictive behavior, if untreated, has serious, often life-threatening consequences whether or not someone has had prior treatment. Therefore, Alina Lodge also offers a 90 day MINIMUM treatment program designed specifically for those who have had no prior residential treatment. The Lodge intends to remain a unique, innovative and effective clinical model for treating all of its clients as they begin their recovery from their addictive diseases. Specialties: Long term, low cost treatment for those suffering with the disease of addiction.





Basic Info
Joined Facebook 08/13/2009
Location Blairstown, New Jersey 07825


Contact Info
Phone (800) 575-6343
Website http://www.alinalodge.org

More Than 195,000 People Sign Online Petition Demanding Meth Testing of Homes




By Join Together Staff | October 4, 2012 | Leave a comment | Filed in Drugs

More than 195,000 people have signed an online petition demanding the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation, known as Freddie Mac, test the homes it sells for methamphetamine contamination.

The petition, on the website Change.org, was started by Jonathan Hankins, who purchased a home in Oregon from Freddie Mac that turned out to be a former meth lab, according to The Baltimore Sun.

“Within weeks of moving in, my wife, my two year old son, and I all started experiencing terrible dry-mouth and mouth sores,” Hankins wrote on the petition site. “Then we started to have trouble breathing, and I developed sinus headaches and nosebleeds. My home was contaminated with methamphetamine. But even worse, it was filled with traces of the toxic stew used to cook the drug.” Hankins says he and his family now have to pay their mortgage as well as rent on a second house where they have moved.

There were more than 10,000 clandestine meth lab incidents last year, according to the Drug Enforcement Administration. The article notes that thousands of homes nationwide may be contaminated by methamphetamine and the residue produced when the drug is made.

Time to speak up

The Medicine Abuse Project
 Time to speak up,
While last week's events for The Medicine Abuse Project were huge successes, guess what we're hearing in the national dialogue about medicine abuse?

Silence -- it's just not getting the attention it deserves. But that just gets us even more fired up.

By adding your voice, you can help us end this silence. Do you have a personal story about medicine abuse, about something that happened to either you or a loved one? Do you have questions or thoughts about the epidemic that you want to express?


No matter what you have to say, say it now and The Partnership at Drugfree.org will make sure others hear it.

We're building a movement, and by speaking up and speaking together, we can make an impact.

Raise your voice now:

http://my.drugfree.org/raise-your-voice 


Thank you,

Marcia Taylor
Senior Vice President of Government Affairs
The Partnership at Drugfree.org
 
 
 
 
352 PARK AVENUE SOUTH, NINTH FLOOR | NEW YORK, NY 10010
UNSUBSCRIBE 

Thursday, October 4, 2012

IS YOUR KID AN ADDICT


Is Your Kid an Addict?
Addiction to drugs and booze are leading teenagers to the ER at a skyrocketing rate. How can you help them before they get there—and how much blame lies with the parents?

By Jennifer Matesa

08/15/12  SOURCE: THE FIX


I know a 23-year-old NYU graduate—I'll call her Sophia—who had an arrangement with her dad when she was in high school: he would buy her booze if she would buy him pot. Since many folks don’t think either pot or alcohol are “hard” drugs, some adults—including Sophia's dad—don’t have a problem with such boundary-crossing bartering. For my friend, however, it created a number of conflicts: for one thing, it meant Sophia was dealing in illegal drugs, and exposing herself to prosecution for felony crimes. For another, it meant she got a clear message from her father that teenage drinking isn’t harmful.

So began Sophia’s drinking career as a young teenager. In high school she drank hard and hung out with likeminded kids. Her grades dropped, and her parents switched her school and put her in therapy—perhaps her father couldn’t imagine what might be leading his daughter to “act out.”

In college she continued to drink, picked up weed, popped Xanax and got wasted regularly. Finally she realized that if she were going to have any chance at a normal life, she’d have to get sober. So she did, at age 21, in the Manhattan 12-step community. To this day, her dad doesn’t get how much weight his lax attitude about drugs and alcohol carried.

This scenario is more common than you might think. “Sometimes we’ll see a situation where one parent smokes pot,” says Nicole Kurash, LSW, director of inpatient adolescent programs at Gateway Rehabilitation in Pittsburgh. “It hasn’t been a problem—they can hold a job, they’re successful, so they don’t think their kid smoking pot is a problem either. A lot of times what we see is, ‘If I let my kid drink at the house, it’s OK. At least it’s in my home.’”


“The substance becomes a remedy for normal emotional struggles,” one expert says. “How do you ask a girl to to dance? Is anybody going to like me? I feel my body going in a thousand different directions—all these things are managed by the substance. What you’ve learned is, ‘I don’t have to feel that.’"

Sophia’s situation might sound beyond the ordinary—her dad buying her booze if she buys him pot. But it’s how ordinary it came to seem to Sophia that’s so significant an illustrator of the teenage epidemic of drinking. “I was like, ‘Who am I trying to hide this from if it’s my dad who’s buying it for me?’” Sophia recalls. “My therapist told me I was totally crying out for rules.”

The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) classify underage drinking as a public health crisis. Alcohol is the most commonly abused drug among America’s youth, more than nicotine and illegal drugs, and people aged 12 to 20 drink 11% of all the booze consumed in the US. Most of this alcohol—more than 90%, in fact—is consumed in binges. In 2008, underage drinkers made 190,000 emergency department visits for alcohol-related reasons.

“We see kids coming in on alcohol and marijuana, and also prescription opioids—first it’s Percocets and Vicodins, then Oxys, then heroin,” says Patricia Schram, MD, an instructor in pediatrics at Harvard Medical School and faculty at the Children’s Hospital Boston Center for Adolescent Substance Abuse Research.

“People are dying from this,” says Kurash. “It’s not this horrible homeless person living under a bridge using IV heroin—that’s not the total reality of who loses their lives. It is also the wealthy suburban kids who are mixing their prescription drugs. It’s the beautiful 19-year-old girl who goes off to college to be a teacher and gets pressured into drinking too much and overdoses and dies.”

Gateway’s adolescent program serves kids between 13 and 21, and most of the kids they see come from “privileged suburban neighborhoods,” not the inner city, says Kurash. “They have access and money, and sometimes they’re held less accountable. We always have kids who use alcohol and marijuana, and we’re seeing plenty of kids who are using prescription pills—opiates and benzos like Ativan and Xanax.”

“I’m seeing kids who get addicted on their first time” trying prescription drugs like oxycodone, Schram says. “Their prefrontal lobes are not fully developed, they don’t have brakes on their impulses. That’s why they engage in high-risk behaviors—not only drugs, but other high-risk behaviors.”

What happens in the brains of kids at risk for alcoholism and addiction? “We see that even prior to use themselves, they have some abnormalities in the cognitive control circuitry in the brain,” says Bonnie J. Nagel, PhD, who runs the developmental brain imaging lab at Oregon Health Sciences University in Portland. Nagel’s five-year, $1.6 million ongoing study underwritten by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism is looking at the effects of substances on adolescent brains. She enrolls kids ages 12 to 15 before they’ve started to drink or use and follows them throughout time.

“We know that family history of alcoholism increases one’s likelihood of going on to develop alcoholism,” Nagel says, “but we don’t understand the neurobiology of that. When we bring in kids and throw them in the scanner and say they have a predisposition to alcoholism, we don’t know how much is genetic and how much is environment.” But her initial findings suggest, she says, that “there are abnormalities in the circuitry of the brain during decision-making that would suggest atypical kind of control.” Which means that when kids are placed in a heated situation, unlike adults—whose wiring has had a chance to develop by years of experience making good decisions—kids’ fragile circuitry might break down.



Most experts agree that genes don’t make a person an addict or alcoholic. Instead, as Canadian addictions expert Gabor Maté notes in his book about addiction, In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts, addiction is one result of “an infinitely complex and moment-by-moment interaction between genetic and environmental effects.” The way parents model—or don’t model—healthy ways of negotiating feelings has a profound influence on kids ability to deal with their own emotions.



“In addicts—and you see this in adolescents—there’s an inability to self-soothe or manage emotions,” says Michael Clemmens, PhD, a gestalt therapist and author specializing in addiction who lectures internationally and who for many years worked with teens with addiction. How do parents read the signs of addiction?—kids who are headed for trouble are quick to anger and show discomfort with feelings, Clemmens says.

“The substance becomes a remedy for normal emotional struggles,” he says. “How do you ask a girl to to dance? Is anybody going to like me? I feel my body going in a thousand different directions.—All these things are managed by the substance. Emotional, moral and cognitive development is slowed because you don’t get to move through those problems on your own. What you’ve learned is, ‘I don’t have to feel that.’"

The desire not to feel, not to face reality, comes out in kids’ behavior: their grades may drop; they may change friends; they may isolate themselves in their rooms; their tempers may snap for no reason; they may swipe cash or possessions. Worst of all, they may begin to be secretive or deceptive. “I can’t get the kid to engage in treatment if they see I’m pointing out they’re lying to me,” says Harvard’s Schram.

It’s important for parents to keep in touch with their kids’ social networks. “If your kid is hanging with other kids who are using,” says Gateway’s Kurash, “you can bet your kid is also using.”

As in my the case of my friend, the NYU grad, parents see the acting-out—the changes in friends, dropping grades, skipped classes, failure to communicate—and often miss the underlying addiction. So how should parents go about learning how to identify addiction in their kids, and how to talk to them about it?

Parents may be tempted to go through kids’ rooms and backpacks, but most experts agree that, without hard evidence, that’s likely to exacerbate the problem. “If you go in there without any evidence, it communicates mistrust big-time,” says Clemmens. “If there’s an incident, or a pattern of using, that’s one of the options. If it’s just because they’re an adolescent, it creates an atmosphere of mistrust.” If parents have evidence, he said, it’s a good idea to have a third party conduct the search so the parent can continue to be the good cop.

“Searching rooms, notebooks, journals—I come down kind of hard on parents who do that,” says Heidi Van Doeren, a Pittsburgh-based private-practice therapist who has worked with teens with addiction since 1994. When parents search their kids’ stuff, Van Doeren says, “they’re trying to manage their own anxiety—which is an impossible phenomenon—by controlling an external circumstance.

“Look,” she says, “we’re trying to raise confident individuals. So if you find drugs, what are you doing to do with it? If you read the journal, what do you do with that information? It’s not like that information leads to a more empowered stance. Do you really think it’s going to get the kid to stop smoking pot?”

Instead, parents should learn how to talk with kids about addiction and drug-use, and most of all learn how to demonstrate the behaviors they want kids to adopt. Instead of just talking a good talk, parents need to walk the walk.

“I believe you hook the kid—I believe you ask them, ‘What does this behavior cause for you? What is it in your life that you are interested in that this could jeopardize? Whether it’s getting into college, getting that girl, having your parents finally respect you—you inquire into what they’re most interested in.”

“I think the first thing to do is to ask them, ‘Where are you going? How are you doing?’ Keep communication open, and model talking about feelings,” says Clemmens. “And that’s tough with adolescents because they don’t want to talk about that shit with us.”

Clemmens noted that kids are often smarter and more perceptive than parents give them credit for. “If we talk about drug-use in condemning, prohibitionary ways, or in joking ways—those are things adolescents can pick up on,” he says. “Parents need to be communicating, ‘My concern is not about the drug, it’s about you. You have to be aware of the impact of these drugs on you.’”

Experts said parents need to be firm about setting limits on drinking early in kids’ lives. Kurash says Gateway emphasizes that parents are legally responsible for their kids’ decision to drink, and for any consequences. “Number one, it’s against the law,” she says. “Number two, a child can overdose from alcohol, especially young kids who don’t know their tolerance level, and then you have that on your hands.”

Clemmens grew up in rural eastern Pennsylvania, in Amish country, and went to Catholic men’s college where, he says, all the students and even the priests smoked pot. Clemmens himself began getting drunk at 14, then progressed to cannabis, meth and cocaine; he has been sober since 1975. He urges parents to set limits by helping their kids understand the physiological consequences of excess drinking in teen years: it disrupts brain development. “It’s different from having a glass of wine with dinner as an adult,” he says. “To get drunk behind the barn with a bunch of your friends as an adolescent—that’s just plain too early.”

Clemmens and others also agreed that it’s impossible to talk about preventing teen addiction without talking about the health of the entire family. The CDC’s long-running Adverse Childhood Experiencesstudy shows that risks of addiction and alcoholism increase with the number of traumas kids endure during childhood. These include physical, emotional and sexual abuse; physical and emotional neglect; living with substance abuser, a convicted offender, and/or a family member with mental illness; and seeing domestic violence.

“When you have family environments that do not teach affect regulation—learning how to soothe yourself—and you have the biochemistry that’s already a potential time-bomb, there’s the tendency to move in the direction of addiction,” Clemmens says.

In order for parents to teach kids how to regulate their feelings, the parents themselves may have to start with their own emotions. Van Doeren urges parents to confront their own feelings of insecurity and inability to control their kids. “I ask the parents, ‘So what’s it like for you that your 15-year-old son is moving away from you? What kind of support do you need from your system?’ I would encourage Al-Anon.

“I encourage parents to talk about their own experience with their kids: ‘I’m worried; I love you so much and maybe this worry is all mine, but I want to talk with you about this,’” she says. “If you can do this without unbridled emotional out-of-control-ness, which is never helpful—if you can keep from saying, ‘You need to quit the football team, you need to do this or that or the other thing’—then it can work out well.’”

Fix Contributor Jennifer Matesa also writes about addiction and recovery at her blog,guineveregetssober.com.