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Wednesday, May 28, 2014
insurance provider. However, The Council will help you understand the problem and navigate the system to access the care and support you need. Whether you need information, recovery support or an intervention, call The Council. 
Tuesday, May 27, 2014
MAY 27 v 21 TWELVE STEPPING WITH POWER IN THE PROVERB
The refining pot is for silver and the furnace for gold,
And a man is valued by what others say of him.
STEP 8 - Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
The verse from the Proverb is a tight rope ! What i mean is we have to be careful in listening to what others have to say about us. Criticism can be a good thing as long as it used to help and not hurt or tear someone down. Growing up in a home with negative criticism about yourself and everything around you will shape you into a Doomsday preacher. For along time my life was directed by whatever everyone else had to say .My everyday was lived with everything will go wrong everyone is out to get me and life will not get any better than this. When working step eight you must include yourself first . For along time my thinking was I am ok and everybody else was screwed up ! Honesty with yourself will start the healing process and eventually folks around you will eventually have only good things too say about you . Do not let your negative thoughts or someone else s thoughts about you determine your destiny . Your life can and will get better ,you gotta have faith and be willing to work your butt off to make change.
Proverbs 12 v 18
There is one whose rash words are like sword thrusts, but the tongue of the wise brings healing.
By Joseph Dickerson
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The feelings you have as the parent of an addict can be panic, exhaustion, and a deep sense of loneliness. And the questions seem endless: How did my child get here? What do I do now? Who can I trust to give me help? If you are living with the pain of an addicted child? 
When we are facing challenges in life that are overwhelming, we know we need to make a change, but how do we do it. How do we take the patterns, failures, and disappointments of life and boldly step-out and make a significant life change. The real challenge is not just recognizing that change is needed but how to implement this change daily in every little battle that we face that makes up our real challenge. Successfully overcoming life-challenges is possible, and this DVD shows the small steps that when acted upon over and over again lead to amazing transformation in your daily life.
Killing Veterans With Painkillers
Our veterans' overdose death rate was 33% higher than average as VA doctors blithely prescribed opioid and other dangerous drugs. Some good changes are happening - but then there is stiff resistance from pill pushers.
Shutterstock
05/19/14
SOURCE THE FIX
“Keeping our men and women doped up to keep them quiet and happy is not treatment. It is cruelty and torture and in too many cases it’s manslaughter.”
Heather McDonald didn’t mince words last October when she testified before a House subcommittee investigating the stratospheric number of prescription drugs being given to American war veterans. McDonald’s husband, Army Spc. Scott McDonald, died in 2012 after accidentally overdosing on some of the eight pain medications and antidepressants he took daily for chronic pain and PTSD. Spc. McDonald was by no means alone. Pentagon data show that the number of pain pill prescriptions written by military doctors to service members quadrupled from 866,773 in 2001 to 3.8 million in 2009. Most of those meds were addictive opioid narcotics like oxycodone, hydrocodone, or methadone.
Vets had been dying from accidental overdoses at a rate 33 percent higher than that of civilians.
The consequences have been nightmarish. The number of veterans abusing or addicted to prescription drugs tripled between 2005 and 2008. And vets have been dying from accidental overdoses at a rate 33% higher than that of civilians. In 2010, the Army Suicide Prevention Task Force reported that alcohol or drugs were a factor in 29% of active duty Army suicides between 2005 and 2009. A third of those substance-related suicides involved prescription medications.
The Veterans Administration has been working to reverse those tragic trends with revised prescription guidelines introduced in 2009 and a new educational effort - the Opiate Safety Initiative - which launched in February of this year. But moving doctors and patients away from prescription drug therapies has proven to be an uphill battle.
In 2008, 83% of soldiers being treated for chronic pain at the Warrior Clinic of the Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington were given prescription medication, primarily opioids. But by 2011, the number of Warrior Clinic patients who were prescribed narcotics had dropped to 10.2%. Since then, doctors at the Warrior Clinic have turned increasingly toward behavioral and non-medical approaches to pain management.
"It's a holistic, interdisplinary, and multi-modal approach. Pain management is not simply giving opioids," says Dr. Christopher Spevak, a leading pain specialist at Walter Reed. Speaking to the US Army news site, Spevak explained, "We are very active in using acupuncture. That's a very big component of my practice (along with) chiropractic modalities. Through behavioral health we have specialized people that help with bio-feedback and even hypnosis."
Multiple studies show that non-drug-based pain management programs are effective in reducing pain and staving off dependency. In 2008, researchers at the Mayo Clinic found that chronic pain patients who were weaned off of opioids as part of an interdisciplinary regimen experienced “significant and sustained improvement in pain severity and functioning.” In other words, they had less pain after they stopped taking painkillers. Last year the American Academy of Pain Medicine reported that nearly 80% of patients with chronic non-cancer pain remained opioid-free 12 months after completing an interdisciplinary rehab program that included opioid weaning.
These and other studies reinforce the message that the Veterans Administration is promoting through its Opiate Safety Initiative, a nationwide effort to educate veterans and their healthcare providers about the limitations and dangers of pain medication. Dr. Melissa L.D. Christopher, who directs the Initiative for California, Nevada and Hawaii, told a PBS reporter, “When opiates are used, they are not as effective as physical therapy, cognitive behavioral therapy and exercise for specific pain conditions.”
But getting people to buy into that anti-drug message is often a tough sell. Part of the reason is economics; many insurance companies hesitate to cover non-drug treatments because they are more expensive than pills. But the deeper challenge is cultural. Relying on prescriptions to deal with discomfort has become an accepted, everyday practice among medical professionals and the public. Drug companies have fueled this trend with relentless TV advertising and promotional campaigns inside hospitals and medical schools. The result is what Barry Meier of the New York Times called “a synchronized drumbeat sounded by pharmaceutical companies, pain experts and others who argued that the drugs could defeat pain with little risk of addiction.”
Of course, the risk of addiction turned out to be much greater than the drum-beating prescription advocates estimated. This is especially true for military personnel, whose rate of prescription drug abuse (11%) is twice that of the civilian population (5%).
Reducing that rate is one of the Veterans Administration’s goals. But many military doctors continue to prescribe pain meds heavily—and the pressure to write prescriptions can be intense. When she appeared before the House veterans’ affairs subcommittee last October, Dr. Pamela Gray testifiedthat she was terminated from the VA medical center in Hampton, Virginia after refusing to prescribe painkillers unnecessarily. Dr. Phyllis Hollenbeck told CBS News that her superiors at the Jackson, Mississippi VA demanded that she order prescriptions for patients that she had never met.
Critics charge that such practices reflect a fragmented culture within the Veterans Administration. Tom Tarantino, chief policy officer for Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, told the Center for Investigative Reporting that the VA is divided up into “fiefdoms where hospital directors are just running their own show out there.”
Still, the VA is making progress in implementing its recommendations on reduced prescription use. Some hospitals report that they’re handing out fewer pain pills than they did in the past. Opioid prescriptions at the VA medical center in San Diego have taken a small but measurable drop from 18.2% to 17.2%. As she continues to promote the VA’s Opiate Safety Initiative, Dr. Melissa Christopher is optimistic that more physicians will replace drugs with integrated therapies in their effort to help veterans cope with chronic pain. “We want our veterans to live life in high definition and not be fogged by opiates. We want them to maintain control over their pain and transition to a better quality of life.”
Cameron Turner is a writer based in Los Angeles. He last wrote about sobriety and hip hop.
THE FIX CHALLENGE: Join These Former Addicts in Seeking A Natural State
It's deep clean time - alcohol, caffeine, sex, processed foods, the works - now that Ayahuasca helped get us get past addiction. It's time to seek a total natural state.
Shutterstock
05/21/14
SOURCE THE FIX
EDITOR'S NOTE: What follows is a challenge to readers, whether in recovery or not or just going about your life with your normal bad habits and ups and downs. We invite you to join these two writers in striving for - and reporting back on - what they call a 33-day "total cleanse." Both have been in recovery, one from bulimia, the other from drugs and alcohol, for many years and tell their dramatic stories here.They will be detailing in the comment section their 33-day detox adventure, which starts Monday, May 26th (Memorial Day). We challenge you to start your own detox along the way and share the ongoing experience in the same space. Whoever we judge as best contributor gets a $200 writer fee. You don't have to be a hard substance abuser to join in - anyone can participate and report back on the results on your life, mindset, emotions and general sense of well-being.
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Okay, here’s the deal: We’re taking on a total cleanse, clear, detox vortex immersion - 33 days, complete abstinence from all consciousness-altering substances and habits - alcohol, drugs, caffeine, tobacco, sugar, sex (alone or with someone), gambling, animal foods, processed foods, preservatives, chemicals, the works.
We’ve both earned our street cred with addiction and recovery - Doug with drugs and alcohol, Alesha with food. We believe it’s time for a new paradigm in recovery, an expanded model that combines conscious step-work with transforming technologies from science, medicine, psychotherapy, nutrition, meditation, community, ancient knowledge.
We hold a vision of a widespread shift in the consciousness of recovery from stigmatized disease theory to celebrated spiritual opportunity. We believe the challenges we face and the issues we address in recovery are portals to growth, learning and Self-awakening. We theorize that there is an undeniable connection between the sacramental use of certain entheogenic plant medicines and an experience of Self-revelation of sufficient magnitude to drive recovery.
At the moment, both of us seem to have our demons under reasonable restraint - at least to where behaviors once associated with our primary destructive addictions are simply not present. Nobody’s flipping cars at 3 AM. Nobody’s locked up in the ladies’ room. We’re happy, loving, creative, successful people. Despite these measures of balance we may have achieved with our former behaviors, neither one of us really knows what it feels like to be – well – natural.
What is our true, clear, conscious Organic State, unsurpressed, unaided? How will we change physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually? How will it influence our vision for a new age in recovery? How will it affect our own healing consciousness? Will we be more creative, productive, proactive, prosperous? Will we finally get rock star bodies and the energetic vibration of ascended masters? Or will we just feel like shit and want to kill for a spliff and a grande Americano?
We both currently use tobacco, marijuana and caffeine, as well as Ayahuasca and certain other sacramental entheogens. Doug is nobody’s vegan by a long shot, though he's very big on stir-fried veggies and quinoa. He's also a bit of a sugar junkie. Alesha’s much more conscious about the whole food thing. But hey, she’s a professional.
It is our shared view that human beings are powerful beyond measure, not the weak, sick, diseased wretches the addiction industry says we are. We’re profoundly capable of change, and the process is accelerated through focused practice, retraining and remapping the brain. Current neuropsychology puts the time frame for changing an entrenched habit or behavior at about 33 days – exactly the time frame of our great Natural State experiment. Let the good times roll!
Through this intensive personal process, we hope to bring forward a new understanding, to implement our learning into a new model for transformational recovery, drawing from a wide variety of approaches and disciplines. We’ll be bringing in masters from related fields to share their wisdom and guide us on our journey. We challenge you to join us – for the whole trip or any part of it. We ask for your solidarity, strength and support. We seek here to open a dialogue, to invite you to share your own tales from the trail, your own experiences and perspectives about recovery, health and healing.
Here are our stories:
ALESHA: The bulimia really started when I was about 13, though I’d been obsessed with food for as long as I can remember. I was just getting into high school. My body was going through radical changes. I was the heaviest I’ve ever been in my entire life. Everywhere I looked I would see these beautiful, sparkling, perfectly put together girls with unimaginably wonderful lives. I would feel so small, alone insignificant, thinking about all the ways I fell short of perfection. There was always someone smarter, funnier, prettier or more talented.
The roots of my alienation had found fertile soil in the rigidly constrained Christianity of my childhood. For as long as I could remember, I’d been talking to God. Problem was the messages of unconditional love and compassion I was getting straight from the Source flew directly in the face of the harsh dogma of sin, retribution and damnation I was being force-fed at church.
I badgered my parents and pastor with questions about their beliefs, about God and Jesus. If we’re all God’s children, then why is Jesus His “only begotten Son?” Why is God a “He” anyway? Where does God live? In Heaven? Everywhere? Is Heaven everywhere? If Heaven is everywhere, aren’t we already there? And if we are, why is there so much suffering? If God is Love, why is there so much hate? If we’re all guilty of Original Sin, aren’t we already doomed to the pit of fire? What’s the point of living righteously if we’re damned before we even start? Their answers rang false and hollow. I was branded a troublemaker, unwelcome in our church by the time I was 10 years old.
Alone and adrift on a sea of lies and pretense, I turned for comfort and control to my old friend, food. I’d shut myself away and gorge on candy, sweets, pastries, yummy delicious things till the world went away. And then I would hate myself.
By the time I was 13, my world had closed down to a small, dark corner, my dreams of love and happiness had devolved into a nightmare of self-loathing and misery. This girl I knew handed me a wild card. I could have anything I wanted, be anything I wanted, eat anything I wanted. All I had to do was make a deal with the devil. I was never a big fan of Satan, or even heavy metal, but I found myself in my heart of darkness thinking about it, wondering about it, wrestling with it. In the end, I never did sign the contract in blood by the light of the full moon. But just the fact that I would consider such a course was evidence of my treachery, proof of my absolute moral and spiritual bankruptcy, my unworthiness in the eyes of God. I was already the walking dead
Six Ways Your Family Is At Risk From Addiction
How it affects your loved ones.
shutterstock
By Pamela Wray
05/22/14
SOURCE THE FIX
ADDICTION IS A PROCESS
Addiction must be viewed as a process that is progressive, and an illness - not a disease - which undergoes continuous development from a starting point to an ending point. According to Craig Nakken in his book, The Addictive Personality: Understanding the Addictive Process and Compulsive Behavior, “we must first understand what all addictions and addictive processes have in common: the out-of-control and aimless searching for wholeness, happiness, and peace through a relationship with an object or event. No matter what the addiction is, every addict engages in a relationship with an object or event in order to produce a desired mood change or state of intoxication. The crucial crux of the situation is that the addict will not recover unless he or she wants to recover regardless of any intervention!"
After spending many years on drugs, even young, otherwise healthy bodies fight back. The vibrations of an addict are of a very specific sort - they ricochet out of control, mostly out of reach. The energy called up by the drug quickly disperses, leaving a void, a nothingness. Nature abhors a vacuum, so negative forces rush in, take up residence. The only immediate relief is more narcotics. This is the vicious cycle of addiction for an addict.
DIFFERENT EFFECTS FOR DIFFERENT FAMILY STRUCTURES
In days past, when society spoke of “family,” it was typically referring to Mom, Dad and the kids, plus grandparents and an aunt or uncle. Family structures in America have become more complex - growing from the traditional nuclear family to single‐parent families, stepfamilies, foster families, and multigenerational families. Therefore, when a family member abuses substances, the effect on the family may differ according to family structure.
SMALL CHILDREN
A growing body of literature suggests that substance abuse has distinct effects on different family structures. For example, the parent of small children may attempt to compensate for deficiencies that his or her substance‐abusing spouse has developed as a result of drug abuse. Frequently, children act as surrogate spouses for the parent who abuses substances, according to S. Brown and Lewis V. in The Alcoholic Family in Recovery: A Developmental Model. In a single‐parent household, children are likely to behave in a manner that is not age‐appropriate to compensate for the parental deficiency.
Empirical studies have shown that a parent’s alcohol problem can have cognitive, behavioral, psychosocial, and emotional consequences for children. Among the lifelong problems documented are impaired learning capacity; a propensity to develop a substance use disorder; adjustment problems including increased rates of divorce, violence, and the need for control in relationships; andother mental disorders such as depression, anxiety, and low self‐esteem.
PARTNERS
The consequences of an adult who abuses substances and lives alone or with a partner are likely to be economic and psychological. Money may be spent for drug use; the partner who is not using substances often assumes the provider role. Psychological consequences may include denial or protection of the person with the substance abuse problem, chronic anger, stress, anxiety, hopelessness, inappropriate sexual behavior, neglected health, shame, stigma, and isolation.
PARENTS OF GROWN CHILDREN
Alternately, the aging parents of adults with substance use disorders may maintain inappropriately dependent relationships with their grown offspring, missing the necessary “launching phase” in their relationship, so vital to the maturational processes of all family members involved.
When an adult, age 65 or older, abuses a substance, it is most likely to be alcohol and/or prescription medication. The 2012 National Household Survey on Drug Abuse found that 12.5 percent of older adults reported binge drinking and 6.4 percent reported heavy drinking within the past month of the survey. Veteran’s hospital data indicate that, in many cases, older adults may be receiving excessive amounts of one class of addictive tranquilizer (benzodiazepines), even though they should receive lower doses.
Further, older adults take these drugs longer than other age groups. Older adults consume three times the number of prescription medicine as the general population, and this trend is expected to grow, as children of the Baby Boom (born 1946–1958) become senior citizens, according to “The epidemiology of alcohol use, problems, and dependence in elders: A review” by K.K. Bucholz, Y. Sheline., and J.E. Helzer.
STEPFAMILIES
Interestingly, many people who abuse substances belong to stepfamilies. Even under ordinary circumstances, stepfamilies present special challenges. Children often live in two households in which different boundaries and ambiguous roles can be confusing. Effective co-parenting requires good communication and careful attention to possible areas of conflict, not only between biological parents, but also with their new partners.
Experts believe that the difficulty of coordinating boundaries, roles, expectations, and the need for cooperation places children raised in blended households at far greater risk of social, emotional, and behavioral problems. Children from stepfamilies may develop substance abuse problems to cope with their confusion about family rules and boundaries.
Substance abuse can intensify problems and become an impediment to a stepfamily’s integration and stability. When substance abuse is part of the family, unique issues can arise. Such issues might include parental authority disputes, sexual or physical abuse, and self‐esteem problems for children.
Substance abuse by stepparents may further undermine their authority, lead to difficulty in forming bonds, and impair a family’s ability to address problems and sensitive issues. Clinicians treating substance abuse should know that the family dynamics of blended families differ somewhat from those of nuclear families and require some additional considerations.
EXTENDED FAMILY AND INTERGENERATIONAL EFFECTS
The effects of substance abuse frequently extend beyond the nuclear family. Extended family members may experience feelings of abandonment, anxiety, fear, anger, concern, embarrassment, or guilt; they may wish to ignore or cut ties with the person abusing substances. Some family members even may feel the need for legal protection from the person abusing substances.
Moreover, substance abuse can lead to inappropriate family subsystems and role taking and the effects on families may continue for generations. Intergenerational effects of substance abuse can have a negative impact on role modeling, trust, and concepts of normative behavior, which can damage the relationships between generations. For example, a child with a parent who abuses substances may grow up to be an overprotective and controlling parent who does not allow his or her children sufficient autonomy.
FRIENDS AND COMMUNITY
Neighbors, friends, and coworkers also experience the effects of substance abuse because drug abusers are often unreliable. Friends may be asked to help financially or in other ways. Coworkers may be forced to compensate for decreased productivity or carry a disproportionate share of the workload. Consequently, they may resent the person abusing substances, according to H.C. Fishman in Intensive Structural Therapy: Treating Families in Their Social Context.
In cultures with a community approach to family care, neighbors may step in to provide whatever care is needed. Sometimes it is a neighbor who brings a child abuse or neglect situation to the attention of child welfare officials. Most of the time, however, these situations go unreported and neglected.
Substance abusers are likely to find themselves increasingly isolated from their families. Often they prefer associating with others who abuse substances or participate in some other form of antisocial activity. These peers support and reinforce each other’s behavior.
Different treatment issues emerge based on the age and role of the person who uses substances in the family and on whether small children or adolescents are present. In some cases, a family might present a healthy face to the community while substance abuse issues lie just below the surface.
TREATMENT
In any form of family therapy for substance abuse treatment, consideration should be given to the range of social problems connected to substance abuse. Problems such as criminal activity, joblessness, domestic violence, and child abuse or neglect may also be present in families experiencing substance abuse. To address these issues, treatment providers need to collaborate with professionals in other fields. This is known as concurrent treatment.
Whenever family therapy and substance abuse treatment take place concurrently, communication between clinicians is vital. In addition to family therapy and substance abuse treatment, multifamily group therapy, individual therapy, and psychological consultation might be necessary.
With these different approaches, coordination, communication, collaboration, and exchange of the necessary releases of confidential information are required. With concurrent treatment, it is important that goal diffusion does not occur. Empowering the family is a benefit of family therapy that should not be sacrificed.
Pamela Wray is a writer and author based in Birmingham, Alabama. She has a blog.
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