In recovery? Eat your spinach!

by ChooseHelp -

Vitamin deficiencies have been conclusively linked to certain cancers, pancreas and liver disease and even brain damage. If you are a recovering alcoholic, you need to pay close attention to your nutrition, and should consider adding vitamin and mineral supplements to compensate for any period of abuse.

Many of us who ultimately enter rehab do so in less than ideal health, and as a result, one important part of the rehab experience is getting good nutrition and exercise. Alcoholics especially can be prone to certain nutritional deficiencies as a consequence of their abuse, and can benefit greatly from good nutrition and the use of vitamin and mineral supplements.

Problem drinking is not only socially problematic; it also devastates whole body health and wellness. Alcohol interferes with our body's processing, absorption, and even consumption of vitamins and nutrients, and too often alcoholics show vitamin deficiencies, and may ultimately suffer serious health consequences from these deficiencies.

Read more: In recovery? Eat your spinach! 

Don't Let A Slip Become A Relapse

by ChooseHelp -

If you slip, it does not mean that you are a failure, and it does not mean that you need to start using again. Get immediate help from your support network, and start living one day at a time once again. The road to full recovery never ends, and a few bumps in the road are to be expected. Have the courage and the strength to get help when you need it, and never think that because you've slipped, you have to go back to abuse.

Most addicts that have successfully beaten their dependency have slipped or even relapsed once or more. Recovery is a journey, and there is no overnight cure. You should take steps to minimize the likelihood of a slip or relapse, and you do need to take responsibility for your actions and even your thoughts, but if a slip occurs, you also need to deal with it, and not use it as an excuse to throw away all of your hard work and fall back into your old ways.

The best way to maintain long term sobriety is to minimize the temptation to abuse, maintain appropriate family, peer and professional aftercare support, and live one day at a time with the goal of a day of sobriety above all else. The urge to use lessens with time, but you never know when that urge can come back with a vengeance, and often it’s after we think that the real danger has passed, that we are most vulnerable to a slip.

The two periods that are most dangerous are the period immediately after rehab, and the period a few months later, when our confidence increases to the point that we may let our guard down.

Read more: Don't Let A Slip Become A Relapse 

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY!

I posted the Christian 12 Steps to recovery today,to remind those who have found sobriety ,that these steps are to be worked everyday.We must be careful not to think we are okay and we have got it under control.Life has a funny way of pushing our buttons and if we are not persistent in working on ourselves and these steps,we can wind up , back on the hell train heading to stonedville. Twelve Stepping through life is the only way to go.  REMEMBER JESUS LOVES YOU!

The Christian 12 steps

1. We admitted we were powerless over our addictions and dysfunctional- behaviors, that our lives had become unmanageable.
2. Came to believe that God, a Power greater than ourselves, could restore us to sanity and stability.
3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as revealed in the Bible.
4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
5. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as revealed in the Bible, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.
12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to others, and to practice these principles in all our affairs

Read more: What are the Christian 12 steps to sobriety? 

Researchers Seek to Predict Stress-Induced Substance Abuse Relapse

By Celia Vimont | January 10, 2012 | 3 Comments | Filed in Addiction, Recovery& Treatment

With more than two thirds of people relapsing after starting treatment for substance use disorders, researchers are looking for ways to predict a person’s susceptibility to return to drug or alcohol use. Researchers at the Yale Stress Center in New Haven, CT, are developing biological markers of recovery to predict who will relapse, and when.

Having validated markers to measure a person’s risk of relapse could help doctors better predict who is at highest risk and tailor treatments for them, says Rajita Sinha, PhD, Director of the Yale Stress Center. For instance, a doctor might recommend an extended stay in residential treatment, or more intense behavioral treatment for patients who are likely to relapse.

While much is known about the effects of stress on addiction, much less is understood about how stress affects a person’s risk of relapse and jeopardizes recovery, according to Dr. Sinha. “When the regions of the brain involved in regulating stress are not working well, it increases a person’s vulnerability to relapse,” she says. “We want to find those neural and biological measures that predict whether this will occur.”

She and her colleagues are testing a number of biological measures of stress in people with various substance use disorders, including cocaine addiction and alcoholism. They are studying patients who are discharged from inpatient substance abuse treatment, to see if and when they relapse. The researchers are looking for links between relapse and biological markers including high levels of the chemical cortisol and high blood levels of a protein called brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), as well as brain atrophy in specific regions of the brain.

In a recently published study in the Archives of General Psychiatry, Dr. Sinha found several markers of increased risk of alcohol relapse, including high morning levels of the hormone corticotrophin. Another recent study, published in Biological Psychiatry, found high levels of BDNF in cocaine-dependent patients was predictive of an early relapse.

Dr. Sinha’s lab is also studying treatments to reduce stress-induced substance abuse. One recent pilot study found an older drug for hypertension called prazosin appears to decrease stress-induced alcohol craving. “We are also identifying newer drugs that could help those most susceptible to stress,” she notes. “But first we need to validate biological markers so we know who will benefit from these treatments.”

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Percent in New York State Over Three Years

By Join Together Staff | January 12, 2012 | 1 Comment | Filed in Community Related, Legislation, Prescription Drugs & Prevention

Oxycodone prescriptions jumped 82 percent in New York State from 2007 to 2010, The New York Times reports. The state’s Attorney General, Eric Schneiderman, who issued the findings, said they demonstrate the need for legislation to create an online, real-time database to report and track both the prescribing and the dispensing of certain controlled substances.

Prescription drug abuse has been a particular concern on Long Island, where several recent drug robberies turned deadly.

The Attorney General’s new report notes that the number of prescriptions for all narcotic painkillers increased from 16.6 million in 2007 to nearly 22.5 million in 2010—a 36 percent increase. In addition to the surge of oxycodone prescriptions, there was a 16.7 percent rise in the number of hydrocodone prescriptions over the same period.

Under New York’s current prescription database system, pharmacists must report sales of controlled substances at least every 45 days. The prescriptions themselves are not tracked. Pharmacists cannot confirm whether a prescription is valid unless they call the physician who wrote it.

The new system would create a real-time tracking database, the article notes. Doctors would have to check a patient’s prescription history in the system before writing a prescription, and would have to report a prescription for controlled substances at the time they write it. Pharmacists would have to confirm prescriptions of controlled substances with the system before they fill them, and the filled orders would be reported.

The Pharmacists Society of the State of New York told the newspaper that while it generally supports the proposal, it is concerned that pharmacists would have to check prescriptions for the most dangerous drugs and would face fines for knowingly failing to do so. Craig Burridge, Executive Director, said pharmacists should simply be able to check on customers they do not kno

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY

Our little boy seems to always be sick and we can get so caught up in the right here and now and then worry, panic and anxiety take hold.  Though it will be difficult we need to try and not focus on the immediate circumstances.  We have to get ourselves to a point where we realize that there are people in the world who I am sure have worse situations then our own.  My favorite book "Bible" states that the Lord is faithful and he has plans to bring good into our lives and to prosperous us.  When we are going through the toughest trials of our lives if we can just take a moment and look past the immediate circumstance we will find some of Gods greatest gifts.  We must make a stand and trust Him and let not the fear worry and panic over take any situation that we face.  He has a plan and a purpose.  Trust in Him with all your heart, lean not on your own understanding, acknowledge Him in all your ways and He will direct your path.  REMEMBER JESUS LOVES YOU!

The economics of curbing alcohol consumption.

Late last year, the Centers for Disease Control ran the numbers on how much binge drinking costs the United States. They came up with a pretty big number: Excessive alcohol consumption costs $223.5 billion each year, mostly due to lost workplace productivity and increased health care costs.

New research from a team of Canadian researchers explores one way to bring down that cost: Set minimum alcohol prices. They find, in an article to be published in the journal Addiction, that governments can drive down drinking by setting higher minimum prices for alcohol, an approach that could be more politically feasible than taxing liquor.

Researchers Tim Stockwell, M. Christopher Auld, Jinhui Zhao and Gina Martin combed through historical data on minimum alcohol prices in British Columbia, where the provincial government sets a price floor for various liquors, beer and wine. The number has moved around a lot in the past few decades, creating a natural experiment to look at what happens when alcohol is more or less expensive.

For every 10 percent hike in minimum alcohol price, they found people drank 3.4 percent less alcohol. For certain drinks, the effect was even more pronounced: Increasing the minimum price of wine by 10 percent correlates with an 8.9 percent drop in consumption. Beer, however, appeared relatively resilient to price fluctuations, with a 10 percent bump lowering consumption a paltry 1.5 percent.

The researchers contend that minimum alcohol prices could reduce excessive alcohol consumption, and the negative public health outcomes that come along with it, in a way that’s more politically palatable than a tax. Food taxes have also struggled to encourage healthy eating. A 2007 study from the Forum for Health Economics and Policy modeled the impact of a 10 percent fat tax on fatty dairy products and found unimpressive results, with little in the way of behavior change. For a soda tax to get results, it usually has to be about 1 cent per ounce, a level of taxation that most state-passed fees don’t reach.

Minimum pricing, the authors argue, could get around a lot of the political downfalls of taxing unhealthy foods. “Minimum pricing promises the twin advantage of greater effectiveness for health purposes and greater public acceptability,” they write, noting the “strong evidence that hazardous and problem drinkers seek out the most inexpensive alcohol so as to maximize ethanol intake per dollar spent.”

England and Wales recently passed legislation that prohibits selling below-cost alcohol, to take effect in April. Scotland is weighing a similar bill, but it’s come under fire from the alcohol industry there. The Scottish Whisky Association has been a particularly vocal opponent, arguing “Minimum pricing will fundamentally damage the Scotch Whisky industry at home and abroad with negative consequences for the wider economy.”

http://drugfree.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=fe8b33972f29b8e3f893baefc&id=487851de6d&e=3e629c4eda

Exercise Leads to Positive Results in Recovery

Regular exercise has always been recommended by doctors for multitudes of physical ailments and conditions—but exercise can mean a whole lot more when it comes to substance addiction recovery. In traditional alcohol and drug abuse treatment, both inpatient and outpatient recovery facilities recognize the importance of detoxification, rehabilitation, and aftercare maintenance which includes the application of cognitive-behavioral therapies and pharmacological agents. However, the most modern practices are considering the incorporation of daily or weekly exercise regimens for patients due to the multifaceted benefits it provides recovering addicts.


To Read more please click the link below:
http://www.drugaddictiontreatment.com/drug-addiction-treatments/exercise-leads-to-positive-results-in-recovery/

Drug Maker Recalls Some OTC Drugs to Avoid Mix-Up with Opioids Made at Same Plant

By Join Together Staff | January 10, 2012 | Leave a comment | Filed in Drugs &Prescription Drugs

The drug maker Novartis is recalling 1,645 lots of certain over-the-counter medication, including Excedrin and Gas-X, because the products could potentially contain stray capsules or caplets from other products. Prescription opioids including Opana, Percocet, and an extended-release version of morphine tablets were made at the same plant.

The drug company and the Food and Drug Administration said they were not aware of any adverse events from any pill mix-ups, according to The Wall Street Journal.

The plant where the medicines were made, in Lincoln, Nebraska, was shut down last month, the article notes. Novartis is recalling 1,645 lots of Excedrin and NoDoz with expiration dates of December 20, 2014 or earlier, and Bufferin and Gas-X Prevention products with expiration dates of December 20, 2013 or earlier. The plant also made opioids for Endo Pharmaceutical Holdings. Novartis said in astatement it is recalling its products as a precaution because an internal product review and complaints identified issues including broken gel caps and chipped tablets and “a potential for tablet mix up could not be ruled out.”

The company said Gas-X Prevention is the only Novartis product made on the same line as the Endo products, and it did not receive reports of mix-ups of those medicines.

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Should We Vaccinate Against Unhealthy Behavior?(Say smoking?)

www.Philly.com
http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/public_health/Should-We-Vaccinate-Against-Unhealthy-Behavior-Say-Smoking-.html

... the highest rate of highest rate of youth smoking among comparable ...unsettling and Orwellian about the idea of being vaccinated against a socially... - Blog Post - Inquirer - 131k - 2012-01-06

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY

If you say your going to do something then do it.  I myself personally say that I am going to do this or that whether in my home life or work and then I don't follow through. We don't realize that were only hurting ourselves in the long run. When you really think about it, your word is all you really have and when you tell people over and over again that your going to do something and don't your word is NO good!  I do that so often and when I am called out on it I think its no big deal, but it is, especially to the ones who are counting on me to get it done.

Increasing Price of Alcohol May Reduce Drinking, Study Suggests

By Join Together Staff | January 5, 2012 | Leave a comment | Filed in Alcohol,Government & Prevention

Increasing the minimum price of alcohol may reduce drinking, a new Canadian study suggests. The study found that for every 10 percent increase in the price of alcohol, people drank 3.4 percent less overall. Consumption was reduced by 6.8 percent for spirits and liqueurs, 8.9 percent for wine, 13.9 percent for alcoholic sodas and ciders, and 1.5 percent for beer, Reuters reports.

The study was conducted in British Columbia, where the government sets the minimum price for alcohol. The researchers at the Centre for Addictions Research of British Columbia examined government data from 1989 to 2010.

The article notes the study does not prove that price increases are fully responsible for the change in drinking habits.

The study is published in the journal Addiction.

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THOUGHT FOR THE DAY!

True serenity is found in trusting and loving the LORD with your whole heart.  Have you ever noticed no matter how hard we push to make our life just the way we want it and find once we get it there, its not enough!  That is because most of us are not doing what He wants.  We are not on this earth for our purpose, we are here for His purposes.  It's like trying to put a round peg in a square hole.  We fumble around twist and turn push and struggle and no matter how hard we try to get that round peg to fit, it wont.  Frustration and defeat set in and we have to start over again.  When we live life without putting the LORD first we wind up like that round peg, no matter what we do it just doesnt seem to fit or make sense.  Putting the Lord first will bring serenity and remove that frustration and defeat.  Life wont be perfect but it will start  to make sense and that is when serenity will come in and bring peace.

POTTER COUNTY DRUG AND ALCOHOL PROGRAM

Potter County Human Services

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P.O. Box 241

Roulette, PA 16746

(814) 544-7315 - (800) 800-2560

FAX (814) 544-9062

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY

Unforgivenes ,  is a poison that we drink expecting the other person to die.Anyone can hold a grudge and the easiest thing in the world to do is to hate someone.The real measure of a man should be his capacity for unconditional love.Take JESUS for an instance , he laid his life down for every one including the ones who beat him and spit in his face the day he was executed.Now that is the true definition of love!Today I ask you ,examine yourself and see if you got the guts to love as JESUS did and let go of the pride and anger, tear down the wall that you have built between you and someone in your life.It's time , don't wait until you get that phone call telling you they have passed on. REMEMBER JESUS LOVES YOU!

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY

Impossible, or cannot are just two more ways of saying I won't. We get comfortable and are afraid of change, so we hide behind words such as these! Nothing is impossible, my friends! You can do what ever you set your mind to do, just work hard, don't give up, and after time your can't will become, wow I can and I did! REMEMBER JESUS LOVES YOU!

The Origin of our Serenity PrayerAs published in August/September 1992 BOX-459
(Reprinted with permission)
AA History.com

For many years, long after the Serenity Prayer became attached to the very fabric of the Fellowship's life and thought, its exact origin, its actual author, have played a tantalizing game of hide and seek with researchers, both in and out of A.A. The facts of how it came to be used by A.A. a half century ago are much easier to pinpoint.  Early in 1942, writes Bill W., in A.A. Comes of Age, a New York member, Jack, brought to everyone's attention a caption in a routine New York Herald Tribune obituary that read: "God grant us the serenity to accept the things we cannot change, courage to change the things we can, and wisdom to know the difference."  Everyone in A.A.'s burgeoning office on Manhattan's Vesey Street was struck by the power and wisdom contained in the prayer's thoughts. "Never had we seen so much A.A. in so few words," Bill writes. Someone suggested that the prayer be printed on a small, wallet-sized card, to be included in every piece of outgoing mail. Ruth Hock, the Fellowship's first (and nonalcoholic) secretary, contacted Henry S., a Washington D.C. member, and a professional printer, asking him what it would cost to order a bulk printing.  Henry's enthusiastic response was to print 500 copies of the prayer, with the remark: "Incidentally, I am only a heel when I'm drunk .. . so naturally, there could be no charge for anything of this nature."  "With amazing speed," writes Bill, "the Serenity Prayer came into general use and took its place alongside our two other favorites, the Lord's Prayer and the Prayer of St. Francis.  Thus did the "accidental" noticing of an unattributed prayer, printed alongside a simple obituary of an unknown individual, open the way toward the prayer's daily use by thousands upon thousands of A.A.s worldwide.  But despite years of research by numerous individuals, the exact origin of the prayer is shrouded in overlays of history, even mystery. Moreover, every time a researcher appears to uncover the definitive source, another one crops up to refute the former's claim, at the same time that it raises new, intriguing facts. What is undisputed is the claim of authorship by the theologian Dr. Rheinhold Niebuhr, who recounted to interviewers on several occasions that he had written the prayer as a "tag line" to a sermon he had delivered on Practical Christianity. Yet even Dr. Niebuhr added at least a touch of doubt to his claim, when he told one interviewer, "Of course, it may have been spooking around for years, even centuries, but I don't think so. I honestly do believe that I wrote it myself."

Early in World War II, with Dr. Niebuhr's permission, the prayer was printed on cards and distributed to the troops by the U.S.O. By then it had also been reprinted by the National Council of Churches, as well as Alcoholics Anonymous.  Dr. Niebuhr was quite accurate in suggesting that the prayer may have been "spooking around" for centuries. "No one can tell for sure who first wrote the Serenity Prayer," writes Bill in A.A. Comes of Age. "Some say it came from the early Greeks; others think it was from the pen of an anonymous English poet; still others claim it was written by an American Naval officer... ." Other attributions have gone as far afield as ancient Sanskrit texts, Aristotle, St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas and Spinoza. One A.A. member came across the Roman philosopher Cicero's Six Mistakes of Man, one of which reads: "The tendency to worry about things that cannot be changed or corrected."  No one has actually found the prayer's text among the writings of these alleged, original sources. What are probably truly ancient, as with the above quote from Cicero, are the prayer's themes of acceptance, courage to change what can be changed and the free letting go of what is out of one's ability to change.  The search for pinpointing origins of the prayer has been like the peeling of an onion. For example, in July 1964, the A.A. Grapevine received a clipping of an article that had appeared in the Paris Herald Tribune, by the paper's correspondent in Koblenz, then in West Germany. "In a rather dreary hall of a converted hotel, overlooking the Rhine at Koblenz," the correspondent wrote, is a tablet inscribed with the following words: "God give me the detachment to accept those things I cannot alter; the courage to alter those things I can alter; and the wisdom to distinguish the one thing from the other."  These words were attributed, the correspondent wrote, to an 18th century pietist, Friedrich Oetinger (1702-1782). Moreover, the plaque was affixed to a wall in a hall where modern day troops and company com-manders of the new German army were trained "in the principles of management and . . . behavior of the soldier citizen in a democratic state."  Here, at last, thought A.A. researchers, was concrete evidence-quote, author, date-of the Serenity Prayer's original source. That conviction went unchallenged for fifteen years. Then in 1979 came material, shared with G.S.O.'s Beth K., by Peter T., of Berlin. Peter's research threw the authenticity of 18th century authorship out the window. But it also added more tantalizing facts about the plaque's origin.  "The first form of the prayer," Beth wrote back, originated with Boethius, the Roman philosopher (480-524 A.D.), and author of the book, Consolations of Philosophy. The prayer's thoughts were used from then on by "religious-like people who had to suffer first by the English, later the Prussian puritans . . . then the Pietists from southwest Germany . . . then A.A.s . . . and through them, the West Germans after the Second World War."  Moreover, Beth continued, after the war, a north German University professor, Dr. Theodor Wilhelm, who had started a revival of spiritual life in West Germany, had acquired the "little prayer" from Canadian soldiers. He had written a book in which he had included the prayer, without attribution, but which resulted in the prayer's appearance in many different places, such as army officer's halls, schools and other institutions. The professor's nom de plume? Friedrich Oetinger, the 18th century pietist! Wilhelm had apparently selected the pseudonym Oetinger out of admiration of his south German forebears.  Back in 1957, another G.S.O. staff member, Anita R., browsing in a New York bookstore, came upon a beautifully bordered card, on which was printed: "Almighty God, our Heavenly Father, give us Serenity to accept what cannot be changed, Courage to change what should be changed, and Wisdom to know the one from the other; through Jesus Christ, our Lord."  The card, which came from a bookshop in England, called it the "General's Prayer," dating it back to the fourteenth century! There are still other claims, and no doubt more unearthings will continue for years to come. In any event, Mrs. Reinhold Niebuhr told an interviewer that her husband was definitely the prayer's author, that she had seen the piece of paper on which he had written it, and that her husband-now that there were numerous variations of wording -"used and preferred" the following form: "God, give us grace to accept with serenity the things that cannot be changed, Courage to change the things which should be changed, and the wisdom to distinguish the one from the other."  While all of these searchings are intriguing, challenging, even mysterious, they pale in significance when compared to the fact that, for fifty years, the prayer has become so deeply imbedded into the heart and soul of A.A. thinking, living, as well as its philosophy, that one could almost believe that the prayer originated in the A.A. experience itself.  Bill made this very point years ago, in thanking an A.A. friend for the plaque upon which the prayer was inscribed: "In creating A.A., the Serenity Prayer has been a most valuable building block-indeed a corner-stone."  And speaking of cornerstones, and mysteries and "coincidences"-the building where G.S.O. is now located borders on a stretch of New York City's 120th St., between Riverside Drive and Broadway (where the Union Theological Seminary is situated). It's called Reinhold Niebuhr Place.

Another long version of the Prayer from Ireland

God take and receive my liberty,
my memory, my understanding and will,
All that I am and have He has given me

God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change,
Courage to change the things I can,
And wisdom to know the difference

Living one day at a time
Enjoying one moment at a time
Accepting hardships as the pathway to peace
Taking, as He did, this sinful world as it is,
Not as I would have it

Trusting that He will make all things right
If I surrender to his will
That I may be reasonably happy in this life
and supremely happy in the next. AMEN 

The Full Version of the Serenity Prayer

God grant me the serenity 

to accept the things I cannot change; 

courage to change the things I can;

and wisdom to know the difference.

Living one day at a time; 

Enjoying one moment at a time; 

Accepting hardships as the pathway to peace; 

Taking, as He did, this sinful world

as it is, not as I would have it; 

Trusting that He will make all things right

if I surrender to His Will;

That I may be reasonably happy in this life 

and supremely happy with Him

Forever in the next.

Amen.

Recovery Connections: TALK TO ME!!!!!!!!

Recovery Connections: TALK TO ME!!!!!!!!: I have spent 8 years on my own recovery and a little over a year working in the recovery community as a PA Certified Recovery Specialist. My...