APRIL 13 V 15 TWELVE STEPPING WITH POWER IN THE PROVERB

A person with good sense is respected;
    a treacherous person is headed for destruction.

STEP 4 -   Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.

Who are you ! Are  you someone heading to hell in a hand basket or are you someone with good sense .Step four will help you figure this one out . My life was a mystery for thirty two years all that time growing up and living in active addiction had me convinced I was someone else . After hitting bottom and finding the steps ,  I began to discover I was not who I was pretending to be. Step four solved the mystery and brought freedom I never thought possible in life . 

  Proverb 21 v 2 - Every way of a man is right in his own eyes, but the Lord weighs the heart. 

BY : Joseph Dickerson 

Ten Ways the War On Drugs Violates the U.S. Constitution

How our government's ongoing policy on drugs threatens all of us in unexpected ways.



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By Clarence Walker

04/10/14
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An Inside Look at the Drug War Vs. Civilization
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Even while marijuana legalization has been approved in some states, the War on Drugs remains the biggest and greatest violation and imminent threat to our civil liberties and the preservation of the Bill of Rights under the Constitution. The War on Drugs is an enemy to the rights and privacy of U.S. citizens everywhere. And this war not only targets guilty drug users or traffickers; it is also waged against innocent Americans who may think they are safe from draconian drug war policies.

This belief is a myth, and here's why: even if you don’t use marijuana, cocaine, pop pills or inject heroin—the drug war can still target you as a suspect. It doesn't matter if you're at work, picking up mail, applying for a job or even purchasing cold medicine at drug stores like CVS or Walgreens, the drug war has boldly established a 24-7 disturbing presence in the lives of American citizens.

The drug war is also responsible for the past and present illegal surveillance of people's cars and property and even plays a vital role in collecting information through illegal spying. The government's drug policies have unequivocally undermined basic civil rights and gutted the constitutional amendments. And it's not coincidental that much of the eroding civil rights in the "war on terror" came directly from the war on drugs.

Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall once summed up the drug war by reminding his fellow justices that "there is no drug exception to the Constitution."

The drug war is a war on everyone. So who is the real enemy? Drugs are not the enemy because drugs are chemicals. We have a war on drugs no more than we have a war on fruit trees. Just read the Constitution and there's nothing in it that says our government can pass laws to prohibit citizens from injecting narcotics or smoking marijuana; our brains and bodies don't belong to the government.

In a recent email, Phil Smith, editor of Drug War Chronicle, slammed the drug war this way: "One area of constitutional violations is in the realm of mandatory, suspicionless drug testing. The federal courts have held repeatedly that a drug test is a search under the Fourth Amendment and have generally barred government from requiring such tests, although they carved out a handful of exceptions for public safety-sensitive positions such as law enforcement, and for students engaged in extracurricular activities."

Smith points out the differences in how the Constitution functions against the government and private entities. "The Fourth Amendment protects us from the government, not privatization. That's why private employers can demand a drug test for no reason, but the government cannot demand welfare recipients take a drug test for no reason."

According to drugpolicy.org and Forbes, here are the stats proving the failure and institutionalized racism of the drug war:

• More than $51 billion has been spent annually in the U.S. on the drug war.

• 1.55 million people were arrested in 2012 on non-violent drug charges.

• 749,825 people were arrested that same year for marijuana drug violations. Of those, 658,231 were charged with possession only.

• Over 200,000 students lost federal financial aid eligibility due to a drug conviction.

• Studies show that the amount of tax revenues drug legalization would rake in annually is estimated at $46.7 billion dollars if current illegal drugs were taxed at rates comparable to alcohol and tobacco.

• African Americans represent an alarming 62 percent of all drug offenders sent to U.S. state prisons, yet they only represent 12 percent of the American population.

• Black men are sent to prison on drug charges at a rate that is 13 times that of white men.

• Out of 25.4 million Americans arrested on drug charges since 1980; approximately one-third of them were black

Here are prime examples of how the drug war policies violate the Constitution:

(1) Facts Behind How DEA Designated Marijuana as a Schedule 1 Drug: Long ago the federal government defined marijuana as a schedule 1 drug with no scientific accepted medical use. Apparently the feds intentionally ignored how marijuana is beneficial for people to treat serious ailments like arthritis, diabetes, glaucoma, Crohn's disease, and Parkinson’s disease and marijuana is also used to relieve joint pain as well as relieve nausea that cancer patients feel after undergoing chemotherapy. Further, marijuana has been used to treat depression and other mood disorders.

Plus we must not forget how the DEA and conservative lawmakers have tried to block legislation for states to pass medical marijuana laws. Thousands of chronically ill patients have suffered unnecessarily due to this opposition. In states where medical marijuana is legal the DEA along with city and county law enforcement officers continue to raid marijuana businesses, and arrest patients and legal pot growers.

Warning: Anyone living in a state without medical marijuana laws can be arrested for buying it to treat a medical condition. Under federal law marijuana is illegal even if a particular state legalizes it for medical or recreational purposes.

(2) Millions of Americans are Drug-Tested Each Year: Remember the job you applied for where the hiring requirements included submitting to a drug test? Well approximately 84 percent of U.S employers drug-test current employees including anyone considered for hiring.

So here's the kicker: what if a potential employee confides to a prospective employer that he takes prescribed legal opiates like oxycodone for pain, or a legal amphetamine like Adderall for ADHD, or even medical marijuana? The potential employee has just set himself up for rejection; even though he takes legally prescribed medication, this testing mandate actually gives employers unlimited power to discriminate against millions of workers based on private health decisions.

Erasing Your Traumas
 

Could it be possible to erase memories of "people, places and things" that trigger us, including into addictive behaviors?



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By Jeanene Swanson

04/09/14
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Can Blocking Memories Help Addicts Recover?
Drunk Brains Forget Facts But Not Feelings
10 Memorial Days to Forget
New National Crisis: People Who Forget To Do Drugs

There are, undoubtedly, many memories that addicts would love to forget. For most recovering addicts and alcoholics, encountering the so-called “people, places, and things” that remind them of using bring on the strongest cravings. Research has shown that repeated exposure to these cues—and then not getting to use—may temporarily ease cravings, but the association returns over time.

And, cravings equal relapse for the majority of addicts within the first year of sobriety. “Dealing with cravings is a major obstacle to recovery,” says Michael Saladin of the Medical University of South Carolina, “so it’s a natural target” for treating addiction. Saladin is one of a few clinical investigators who is looking at ways to interfere with cravings on the molecular level, such that these emotional memories can be erased.


As with most things in life—and addiction—there will be no easy fix.

Over the past several decades, science has slowly but surely upturned the entrenched idea of memory being relatively static—or, consolidated from “short-term” to “long-term” storage in the brain once and then left to deteriorate over the course of a lifetime. There is considerable evidence that memory can be interfered with during the initial consolidation period—both drugs that block protein synthesis in the brain and electroconvulsive shock can disrupt the formation of memories. It wasn’t until the late 1990s that researchers began really looking into the process of reconsolidation—what happens to memories when they are re-activated, or, recalled after they have been put into long-term storage.

In fact, recent research has found that memories are actually labile, in other words, open to being updated or changed during a short period of time after being recalled. A now-landmark study from 2000 out of Joseph LeDoux’s lab at NYU, and co-authored by Karim Nader, now at McGill University, found that they could erase fear memories in rats by injecting a chemical into their brains that stopped protein synthesis during a timeframe of about 6 hours after recall—they called this the “reconsolidation window,” and just like with new memories, reconsolidated memories require new proteins to be made. This reconsolidation window has most recently appeared on the radar of addiction treatment specialists as a way to interfere with—and possibly “erase”—craving memories.

There have been many studies looking at memory reconsolidation since 2000, but most have been done on rats. In all these studies it is important to understand the concept of fear extinction training. Harkening back to Pavlov’s classical conditioning studies, a neutral stimulus (say, a bell ringing) can be paired with a fearful stimulus (say, a shock to the rat’s foot) such that the rat learns to associate the neutral stimulus with the shock. After a while, the neutral stimulus alone will elicit a fear response. In fear extinction training, the subject is repeatedly exposed to the neutral stimulus—and continues to experience the fear without the actual shock—until the fear goes away. However, the extinction training can “wear off,” so to speak—this explains in part why addicts go back to using when they re-enter their old environments away from rehab, or simply, after a long enough period of time passes. Finding a way to interrupt memory reconsolidation in recovering addicts would go a long way toward preventing cravings and relapse.

Pharmacological intervention

Since drugs that block protein synthesis aren’t safe to use in humans, scientists have turned to drugs like propranolol (trade name Inderal), an FDA-approved beta-blocker that is already widely used to treat hypertension and stage fright. It works by lowering levels of the neurotransmitter norepinephrine, which, as it turns out, can also interfere with memory reconsolidation—norepinephrine is required for protein synthesis.

In the late 1990s, researchers at UC Irvine showed that propranolol could affect the emotional salience of a memory—while it can’t erase a memory, it can make it less emotionally relevant. The application of this work can be found in recent studies involving patients with PTSD—it might help victims of trauma dissociate their emotional memory from cues that remind them of what they went through, whether war-torn violence or domestic partner abuse. After decades of groundwork research, Harvard’s Roger Pitman found in a 2002 pilot study that exposing patients to propranolol immediately after a traumatic event might prevent them from developing PTSD.

Are These Fifteen Behaviors Addictions or Compulsions?

The word "addiction" gets thrown around a lot these days—anything from sex to eating dirt—but what's the difference between an actual addiction and a compulsive behavior?


By Chris Bisogni

04/08/14
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To the layman, there is a fine line between indentifying the symptoms of an addiction, as opposed to what is known as compulsive behavior. There are many cases of such confusion; we often read or hear about those who are “addicted” to the likes of cleanliness, tanning, hoarding, cosmetic surgery and tattoos, to name a few. Debate continues as to whether these are addictions or compulsive behaviors.

By definition, a compulsion is a behavior which occurs in response to an obsessive thought that will only be relieved by engaging in the behavior. Therefore when the obsessive thought returns, as thoughts do, there is a perceived need to act on it, and the compulsion occurs. This stops the obsessive thought temporarily. An addiction is due to a brain chemical (dopamine), and is acted upon to elicit a desired heightened state of elation.

According to the American Society of Addiction Medicine (AMSAM), the “Short Definition of an Addiction” is a primary, chronic disease of brain reward, motivation, memory and related circuitry. Dysfunction in these circuits leads to characteristic biological, psychological, social and spiritual manifestations. This is reflected in an individual pathologically pursuing reward and/or relief by substance use and other behaviors.

The fact that AMSAM, as recently as August 2011, issued a statement announcing its new definition of addiction is evidence to suggest diagnosing actual addictions is not set in stone.

“At its core, addiction isn’t just a social problem or a moral problem or a criminal problem. It’s a brain problem whose behaviors manifest in all these other areas,” said Dr. Michael Miller, past president of ASAM. “Many behaviors driven by addiction are real problems and sometimes criminal acts. But the disease is about brains, not drugs. It’s about underlying neurology, not outward actions.”

Armed with this information, we have handpicked 15 addictions/compulsive behaviors (yes some of them are extreme) and put them to the test to see just where they sit when put to the both the layman’s and expert’s opinion.

Eating dirt



As kids, many of us probably did this at least once, or knew someone who did, and there is a significant number of those who carry this onto into adulthood. Pica, as it is known, can be treated but if we address the AMSAM definition, there surely can be no reward for eating dirt. Verdict: Compulsive behavior

The Crescent and the Needle: The Remarkable Rise of NA in Iran

Narcotics Anonymous has thrived in Iran since 1990, second in membership and groups only to the United States. The Fix takes a look inside the phenomenon.



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By John Lavitt

04/07/14
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Afghan Kids Caught Up in Heroin Trade With Iran
Iran Deals Death to Drinkers
Despite Strict Prohibitions, Iranians Still Able to Get Drunk
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Confessions of a Modern-Day Opium Fiend

As of 2012 there were 61,800 Narcotics Anonymous meetings worldwide. 27,650 in the USA and 15,955 in the rest of the world, except for Iran. There are 18,195 weekly NA meetings in Iran where Narcotics Anonymous was voted the top NGO by the government. How did such a paradoxical reality come to pass?

Shattering Expectations


Rebecca had experience being in tough situations at 3 AM in the morning. In the thick of her heroin addiction, she had been in jeopardy countless times. As the Assistant Executive Director of the Narcotics Anonymous World Services Office, she had traveled all over the world. She had led workshops for emerging NA fellowships in many Third World countries. Still, nothing had prepared her for standing in line at customs at the Tehran Imam Khomeini International Airport in 2006.

Standing next to NA Board Member Tom M. from Hawaii, Rebecca leaned on her old friend for reassurance. As a six-foot-tall blond woman with a poorly-tied impromptu veil, she knew she stood out; an American in the wrong place at the wrong time. Although Tom reassured her that everything would be all right, Rebecca kept thinking of the tabloid reports about Iran in the American media. She came of age during the Iranian hostage crisis. Night after night, the images of bound and blindfolded hostages on Ted Koppel’s Nightline had been downright terrifying.

After passing through customs, Rebecca and Tom were greeted by Siamak, the office manager of NA World Services Iran, and several other enthusiastic Iranian NA members. She was surprised they had stayed up so late. Rebecca felt her fears evaporating as she was met with smiles and respectful embraces. They got their luggage and headed into the city. “Tehran is huge,” Tom wrote in his Iran Diaries, “The city at 3:00 AM was still bustling.”

After a quick bite to eat, they wondered if they could take a rest. Siamak let them know that wouldn’t be possible until later because there was so much to do and see. There were people to meet and things to accomplish. Most importantly, the fellowship had set up a Narcotics Anonymous meeting where they would share their stories through translators.

With so many NA members wanting to attend, the fellowship had rented out a local sports arena. When Rebecca and Tom heard this, they looked at each other, a bit confounded. Rebecca thought, “I mean, a sports arena? How many people will be there?”

When they arrived at the Arena in mid-afternoon on a workday, the car had to navigate through a maze of parked vehicles to reach the back entrance. Ushered down the kind of hallway where one usually only sees professional athletes, rock stars and security guards, Tom could hear the roar getting louder and louder. In the Iran Diaries, he described the experience of entering the arena:

“…the members all started clapping and then chanting as they clapped. You know why they are clapping and you know exactly who you represent. I thought holy shit, this is off the charts. Rebecca says to me, ‘What did we ever do to deserve this experience?’ I said we shot a lot of dope, that's all, and beyond that we have just showed up like any other member.”



Over 24,000 Iranians in recovery greeted the NA World Services representatives in celebration. But it wasn’t Tom and Rebecca they were cheering; it was NA itself. Coming from the United States, they represented the birthplace of Narcotics Anonymous, a program that had saved so many lives and become such a force for good in Iran.

All of Rebecca’s fears of going to a fundamentalist country as an American citizen evaporated as the tradition of Persian hospitality, the passionate belief of the Iranian NA members and a truly universal celebration of recovery became the zeitgeist of the moment. Tears came to her eyes as she looked up to see banners hanging in the arena with the traditional recovery proverb written in English specifically for them, “Just For Today.”

Tom described the power of the moment when he wrote, “There were several rows of women in the back of the room. Becky shared as a woman with 27 years clean. You can imagine the impact that had. When we spoke and said how long we were clean they all chanted out something in Farsi that I later found out meant, ‘and may nothing ever take it from you.’”

May nothing ever take it from you because recovery from the depth of addiction is a blessing and a miracle all over the world. It doesn’t matter the name of the country or the tenor of the politics. But the looming question is how did this happen? How did Narcotics Anonymous become so successful in Iran?

The Quality Of Narcotics Anonymous In Iran

Founded in the United States in 1953, Narcotics Anonymous officially describes itself as a "nonprofit fellowship or society of men and women for whom drugs had become a major problem.” Since the rocky beginnings of this 12 Step program in California when police harassment was common, the fellowship has spread and today can be found in over 130 countries across the world. After the United States, the country with both the most weekly meetings and the largest population in the fellowship is the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Rebecca described her impression in an interview with The Fix, “What we talk about as principles in 12 Step fellowships, the Iranians in NA live and embrace in a way that impacted my own recovery for the better. The lengths they will go to help an addict in need was inspiring; a lesson in true recovery.”

The NA World Service office in Chatsworth has become accustomed to excluding Iran from worldwide reports; the Iranian phenomenon skews the figures. Statistics From the 2008 NAWS Report include the following:

1. Iran accounted for 126,000 copies of 447,000 Basic Text sales worldwide (the Basic Text is to NA what the Big Book is to AA)

2. The Iran office distributed one million key tags, including 200,000 multi-year key tags: 9% more than the United States

3. Iran distributed 1.7 million NA information pamphlets; this number was greater than the rest of the world combined

Since the Islamic revolution in 1980 that overthrew the corrupt regime of the Shah, Iran often has found itself at odds with the Western world in general and the United States in particular. But the story of Narcotics Anonymous in Iran has nothing to do with politics or international conflicts or religious fundamentalism. The surprising success of NA in Iran is based on a remarkable commitment to recovery by the fellowship and an ardent focus on continuing to reach out to the newcomer.



NA World Services was not aware of the true success of Narcotics Anonymous in Iran until 2003 when Iranian members started reaching out for guidance. Chatsworth knew that NA in Iran existed, but, according to Rebecca, their impression was that it was a struggling movement. The movement did have a bumpy start in October 1990 when Mohsen T. returned to Iran from the United States and tried to start a NA meeting in an Iranian rehab center.

At the time, Mohsen had only one year clean. He had joined NA while living in Los Angeles and was so taken with the program that he hoped to bring it back to his home country. Unfortunately, the Iranian rehab tried to co-opt that first NA meeting and attach their name to it. Not wanting to violate the traditions, Mohsen had to abandon the project.

Later, according to an anonymous source for The Fix from the NA WS office in Iran, Mohsen started meeting in private homes with three other Iranians who had experience in 12 Step programs in the United States and Canada. These men bumped into each other by happenstance, an example what people in recovery call a God Shot.

Since they were all newcomers, according to a NA member from Iran, “It was another 4 years before NA really took hold in Iran. Once members accumulated some time and worked the steps, they began translating NA literature into Farsi and the fellowship took off.”

When the NA World Service office was contacted in 2003, the initial reaction was nothing less than utter surprise. The movement had grown so big and so fast that the office staff in Chatsworth thought surely something had gone wrong. Had the government become directly involved? Had NA in Iran become co-opted by a religious movement?

In order to find out what was really happening, Rebecca described the next steps taken: “In 2004, someone from the region we trusted went to check it out and discovered that NA in Iran was not only like NA as we knew NA, but it was even better. Better in the enthusiasm, better in carrying the message to the addict who still suffers, better in terms of a commitment to their own recovery and helping others find the same path. In May of 2005, a branch office of NA World Services was opened in Iran.”

When asked why Narcotics Anonymous proved to be so successful, a member of the NA WS Iran office told The Fix:

a) The early and continuing efforts to translate NA literature into Farsi and distribute it to NA members

b) A powerful service structure with dedicated trusted servants

c) The traditions of Persian culture that worked so well in conjunction with the 12 Steps and 12 Traditions of NA.

APRIL 11 v 12 TWELVE STEPPING WITH POWER IN THE PROVERB

It is foolish to belittle one’s neighbor;

    a sensible person keeps quiet.

STEP 8 -  Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.

I think we are all guilty of violating this one ! When I see the word neighbor and I automatically assume it is the folks that live in the house next store. What I think the Proverb is trying tell us is it could be the person your next to in the store or someone your passing on the street. Your neighbors are everywhere it does not matter where you are. Now lets be honest when I see someone dressed like an idiot , I cant help myself , I gotta say something even if it is under my breath .I cant count the number of times I put my foot in my mouth and got caught saying something about someone. We all have to remember words can wreck a life ! I can still hear the words thrown at me as a kid rolling around in my head . Talking bad about yourself and others is gonna cause a lot of drama in your life , haven't you had enough of that . To eliminate stress keep your mouth shut ! To remove guilt and regret sincerely commit step eight . Once you have made that list keep it clear by keeping your opinions too yourself . Making amends can be costly but very liberating !

1 Peter 3:10 - For he that will love life, and see good days, let him refrain his tongue from evil, and his lips that they speak no guile:

By : Joseph Dickerson