Friday, December 14, 2012

Recovery Connections: CLEARING A CRIMINAL RECORD IN PA

Recovery Connections: CLEARING A CRIMINAL RECORD IN PA: Pardon A pardon relieves an individual of the consequences, generally in the nature of legal disabilities, resulting from conviction f...

Surgery Destroys Parts of Brain’s “Pleasure Centers” in Attempt to Cure Addiction

By Join Together Staff | December 13, 2012 | 1 Comment | Filed in Addiction & Research

A controversial surgical procedure being studied in China attempts to cure addiction by destroying parts of the brain’s “pleasure centers,” Time.com reports. The research is being conducted on alcoholics and people addicted to heroin.

The procedure risks permanently damaging a person’s ability to have longings and feel joy, the article notes.

The Chinese Ministry of Health banned the procedure in 2004. Some doctors were allowed to continue to perform the operation for research purposes. In a recent study published in the journal Stereotactic and Functional Neurosurgery, researchers called the surgery “a feasible method for alleviating psychological dependence on opiate drugs.” They note more than half of the 60 patients in the study had lasting side effects. These included memory problems and loss of motivation. After five years, 47 percent of participants were still drug free.

That compares with a 30-40 percent rate of significant recovery with conventional addiction treatment, the news outlet states. Experts feel the small increase in success rates with the surgery is not worth the large risk.

Patients are awake during the procedure, to minimize the risk of destroying parts of the brain involved in movement, consciousness or sensation. A surgeon uses heat to destroy cells in small sections of the part of the brain containing large amounts of brain chemicals called dopamine and endogenous opioids, which are involved in desire and pleasure.

Experts say they are opposed to using the procedure to treat addiction. “To lesion this region that is thought to be involved in all types of motivation and pleasure risks crippling a human being,” Dr. Charles O’Brien, head of the Center for Studies of Addiction at the University of Pennsylvania, told Time.com.

Thursday, December 13, 2012

"Knowing that every hit could kill me didn't stop me. I guess I didn't really care."

A young woman named Kimmie wrote those words. At 19, she's already been to hell and back.

Kimmie started smoking pot when she was 15. A friend got her to try meth, and soon, she was addicted. Then she got some news: "I found out I was four months pregnant, but by then I couldn't stop using." Luckily, she got a new probation officer who helped her get into treatment. She's in recovery, she's never been happier -- and she wanted us to tell you her story to prove that anyone can turn his or her life around.

The Partnership is building a massive online community called The Hope Share to help those struggling with addiction see the possibility of recovery. Can you donate $10 now to help us give hope to people across the country?

The last part of Kimmie's story was so moving that I had to share it with you. Here's what she said:

Getting sober was the best thing for me and my son. If I didn't choose a better life, I could have had a miscarriage, my son could have come out unhealthy, or CPS could have taken him from me. My life is so much better now, and my son is one happy, healthy, handsome little guy.

I had the privilege of reading Kimmie's story because she shared it as part The Hope Share. It's a nationwide story-sharing project -- an online space for anyone touched by substance abuse to tell his or her story and let others know they're not alone. One person's story can change someone else's life.

As a non-profit organization, we can't operate if we don't have donor support. And if we can't operate, we can't run programs like The Hope Share.

Help us save lives and broadcast messages of hope. Make a $10 donation today:

http://my.drugfree.org/hope-share

Living Free Every Day®

Today's Scripture

"Do not let sin control the way you live; do not give in to sinful desires. Do not let any part of your body become an instrument of evil to serve sin. Instead, give yourselves completely to God, for you were dead, but now you have new life. So use your whole body as an instrument to do what is right for the glory of God." Romans 6:12-13 NLT
Thoughts for Today
"You shall have no other gods before me" (Exodus 20:3). When sin controls our life, it becomes our god. And this happens all too often to everyone--including Christians. Sadly, the statistics on divorce, pornography, adultery, and similar behaviors are not that different in the lives of Christians. And then there are the everyday so-called "little" offenses: gossip, anger, lying. You get the idea.

Today's scripture warns us not to let sin control the way we live. When we give in to sinful desires, our body becomes an instrument of evil to serve sin.
Consider this …
Jesus paid a great price to give us new life. Now we must give ourselves completely to God. Then instead of our body being an instrument of sin, it becomes an instrument to do what is right for the glory of God.

How does your life look? Is it controlled by pornography or alcohol or drugs? An adulterous relationship? Anger? Perhaps it's gossip. Success at all cost. Gambling. Pride. Are you ready to let God regain control of your life? Are you ready to be free of the sin? Sin hurts you. It hurts those you care about. And most of all, it displeases God and separates you from him.

God wants to help you, but you have to make a choice. Will you ask for his help today?
Prayer
Father, forgive me for this sin in my life. I know I've let it take control. I am ready to give it up, but I need your help. In Jesus' name . . .
These thoughts were drawn from …
The Ten Commandments: Applying the Foundations of Living to My Personal Life by Jimmy Ray Lee, D.Min. Knowing that there are absolutes that define moral conduct and ethical decisions is essential for believers surrounded by relativistic values. This guide helps us understand God's boundaries. It shows how the Ten Commandments apply today. It also discusses the biblical laws on which the legal codes of every civilized society are based. This guide is written in a way that helps people see the Ten Commandments in light of today's problems. Note: This curriculum was written especially for small groups, and we encourage people to use it that way. However, it can also be used effectively as a personal study for individuals or couples.

PO Box 22127 ~ Chattanooga, Tennessee 37421 ~ 423-899-4770
© Living Free 2007. Living Free is a registered trademark. Living Free Every Day devotionals may be reproduced for personal use. When reproduced to share with others, please acknowledge the source as Living Free, Chattanooga, TN. Must have written permission to use in any format to be sold. Permission may be requested by sending e-mail to info@LivingFree.org.

Where Bill W. Came From

Born behind the bar in his family's big red inn—117 years ago this week—Wilson's Vermont youth wasn't exactly bucolic. His encounters with early adversity show how the child was father to the man.

The Vermont inn where Bill W. was born photo via

By Susan Cheever The Fix

11/27/12

Alcoholics Anonymous cofounder Bill Wilson was born on Thanksgiving behind a bar. His father’s family owned an inn, the sprawling red-gabled Wilson House on the south side of the village green in East Dorset, Vermont, a small town where quarrying and polishing local marble was the only industry. (His father, Gilly Wilson, was a quarryman.) Raised in these humble circumstances, Bill Wilson grew up to pioneer a movement that has forever enriched our view of addiction. It’s instructive to study Bill Wilson’s early years, because in ways that seem more than coincidental they prepared him for the role he would play in history.

Born in 1895, William Griffith Wilson was a dyed-in-the-wool Vermont boy. AA is deeply rooted in the rocky soil and granite traditions of New England, from its grass-roots, town-meeting democracy as Bill expressed it in the twelve traditions to its farm-boy practicality to its understanding of the limits of temperance. When Bill Wilson finally met Dr. Bob Smith, AA’s other cofounder, in a gatehouse in Akron, Ohio, when Bill was almost 40, one of their bonds was that they were both Vermont boys—Smith was from St. Johnsbury—and their broad vowels and dropped consonants sounded like home to each other.

Bill Wilson’s start in life was not promising. His mother, 25-year-old Emily Griffith, had a difficult labor, and the baby was finally delivered by primitive forceps, half-asphyxiated, “cold and discolored and nearly dead,” his mother later wrote in a letter to her son. “There is evidence of alcoholism” in the Wilson family, the authors of AA’s official history, Pass It On. Even now the Wilson House, still run as a hotel, has the extravagant architecture and colors that somehow reflect the generous, experimental attitude of a drinker on a good day.

Bill Wilson’s parents abandoned him and his sister, Dorothy, to the care of their stern Griffith grandparents.

By contrast, the Griffith House across the village green is trim and gray, and his mother’s family was all hard-driving teachers, lawyers and judges. “The first indication that the marriage was in some trouble may have appeared during Emily’s pregnancy,” wrote Robert Thomsen in his biography of Bill Wilson, Bill W. Emily suggested that her husband go out alone, and he began to do that more and more. By the time Bill was 10, his parents’ marriage had come apart. They both had other plans—Gilly got a quarryman’s job in the West, and Emily went to Boston to become an osteopathic physician. Bill Wilson’s parents abandoned him and his sister, Dorothy, to the care of their stern Griffith grandparents. Bill moved into the narrow Griffith House, a house so small that going downstairs, the awkward, lanky boy had to stoop to keep from bumping his head. At night if he wanted to stretch out in bed to read, he had to put his feet out the window to accommodate his height.

Bill W. grew up at a time when the temperance movement was sweeping New England. Groups like the Washingtonians and the Women’s Christian Temperance Union were advocating an end to drinking—a reaction to the previous century, when America had been the drunkest country in the world. As a boy, Wilson learned, in school and through observation, that drinkers cannot be legislated into people who do not drink. Vermont was a dry state, but “going to Cambridge” was the euphemism for crossing the border into New York on a liquor run. In temperance clubs, people who had taken the pledge held meetings to help each other stay away from a drink.

Arriving in adulthood, Bill Wilson was already a complicated, educated man.

Bill’s gruff, prosperous grandfather tuned out to be an ideal father-surrogate for the abandoned boy. In mourning for his own son when his grandson moved in, he was won over by Bill’s determination and charm. He gave the boy books, and encouraged his musical talent—Bill was an accomplished fiddler and violinist—and mechanical experiments. He enrolled the boy in a private school, Burr and Burton, in nearby Manchester, where Bill became a big man on campus, a promising student, the captain of the football team and the boyfriend of the local minister’s pretty daughter, Bertha Bamford. Arriving in adulthood, Bill Wilson was already a complicated, educated man who knew the forks and was also at home in the marble quarries of East Dorset.

What happened over the next two decades—Bertha’s death and Bill Wilson’s first serious depression; his engagement to Lois Rogers, an older girl who summered in Manchester; his Wall Street success and severe alcoholism—was certainly not what he would have wished for. Yet his Vermont roots and education, the resilience developed in the wake of his parents’ abandonment, his exposure to both the hardscrabble quarry families and the wealthy summer people of Manchester, all seem necessary stones in the foundation that helped him find a way to stop drinking, a way that has become a worldwide movement with millions of members.

East Dorset hasn’t changed much since 1895. Winter is coming on, the woodpiles are high, and fires are lit in the Wilson House. Nights are freezing, and there will soon be snow on the hillsides of Mount Aeolus above town. Christmas decorations are going up in front of the Town Office on Mad Tom Road. The sprawling, red-clapboard Wilson House and the trim, gray Griffith House still face each other across the green.

Susan Cheever, a regular columnist for The Fix, is the author of many books, including the memoirs Home Before Dark and Note Found in a Bottle, and the biography My Name Is Bill: Bill Wilson—His Life and the Creation of Alcoholics Anonymous. She is a frequent visitor to the Wilson House and East Dorset.

Recovery Connections Network