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I lost hope and assumed that this lifestyle was the norm... Then I saw
an internet advertisement for "Recovery Coaches at PRO-ACT" in
Philadelphia... I never dreamed that an advertisement for Recovery
Coaches would lead to all this, but I am glad it did." Read more of 
Earlier that same day, PRO-ACT staff and our Executive Director, Ms.
Beverly Haberle, were interviewed and videotaped about the tremendous
work being done at PRCC. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services,
or 
There were four CRPs in 2000 and an estimated forty today. Lack of data
is often cited by academic institutions as an obstacle. To fill that
evidence gap, CRPs are now the focus of several studies.
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Donations help us to reduce the impact of addiction for more individuals and families. The Council is a 501(c)(3) organization.
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Wednesday, June 11, 2014
Tuesday, June 10, 2014
JUNE 10 v 18 TWELVE STEPPING WITH POWER IN THE PROVERB
Hiding hatred makes you a liar;
slandering others makes you a fool.
STEP 9 - Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others
Hiding hatred is very stressful and overtime it can develop itself into a trigger called jealousy . I was always considered the Black sheep of the family .At a very young age my sister was always at the top and in my parents eyes she could do no wrong. My jealousy developed into anger , hate , and then resentment . I would loose sleep over all the hateful thoughts of how could I get her into trouble and knock her off her pedestal . When we were in our teens , I made up a story and a friend of mine at the time started a rumor and my sisters last few years of high School were a living hell . You can only hide hatred , anger , jealousy , , and resentment so long before it rears its ugly head . If you don't deal with it through step nine it will hurt you and others in the long run . I am not sure if my sister will truly ever let the hurt I caused go .
James 3 : 16
For where jealousy and selfish ambition exist, there will be disorder and every vile practice.
By Joseph Dickerson
Instant Gratification As A Way Out of Addiction?
Yes!
Seeking instant gratification instead of waiting for a more valuable prize can get people into addiction, but this "delay discounting" mentality can be used to break free of addiction as well.
Shutterstock
By Dana Smith
06/09/14
What if I told you you could have $10 today or $20 next week, which would you choose? What about $100 today or $110 in six months? Rationally, we should always opt for the larger amount, no matter what the wait. But our brains process these two rewards differently, under-valuing the later option and preferring an immediate satisfaction far more than a delayed prize.
This inability to defer gratification is a type of impulsivity called “delay discounting,” and it is considered to be a hallmark of addiction. While the tendency to live in the moment is prized in self-help articles, numerous studies have linked this type of “myopia for the future” to an increased risk for drug dependence—users preferring the immediate rush of a high over the delayed benefit of a long and healthy life.
However, new research has emerged showing that while this type of “irrational” decision-making can contribute to someone developing an addiction, it may also help get them out of it.
Discounting and Drug Abuse
Dr. Warren Bickel has been researching drug addiction for the last 20 years, and he thinks that this trait is “part and parcel” with the addictive experience. “Data suggests discounting is predictive of who becomes addicted versus not,” he says. “If you compare addicts versus non-addicts on [this trait], addicts discount substantially more. [Moreover,] it seems proportional with their drug use—the more they use, the more they discount.”
Additionally, discounting has been linked to treatment outcomes, with higher rates of impulsivity associated with a greater risk for relapse after rehab. This predictive ability is true regardless of the drug being used, be it heroin or nicotine—the longer you can wait for any type of reward, the longer you are likely to go without using.
In the lab, delay discounting is assessed by giving people a series of “smaller sooner” versus “larger later” choices, like the ones above. The point at which you switch from preferring the future to the present reward determines your discounting rate and is thought to reflect your capacity for self-control.
This ability to delay gratification is linked to activation in a specific part of your brain—the dorsal (top) lateral (outside) prefrontal cortex, located near your hairline and above your eyebrows. This region is associated with planning and decision-making, and typically the more activation you have in this area, the better you are at self-control. However, the prefrontal cortex is known to be abnormal in dependent drug users, and numerous studies have shown that addicted individuals have less brain volume in this region than non-drug users. This decrease in size seems to be directly related to drug use itself, with severity and length of use linked to a greater decrease in volume and activity. Losing brain cells is never a good idea, but in the prefrontal cortex it can be especially detrimental, impacting the ability for self-control and making someone even more impulsive than they already were. But all is not lost, andstudies have shown that our brains can bounce back once off drugs, the cells regenerating like leaves growing back on the trees after a long winter.
A New Type of Treatment
Which brings us back to Dr. Bickel’s work. Reanalyzing five previous studies, the researchers looked at how different treatment options affected this trait of discounting, and how this may in turn relate to abstinence efforts. Remarkably, this time it was the users who had the highest rates of discounting that improved the most with treatment. That is, those who were initially the most impulsive in their decision-making became less impulsive over time. Notably, this was not the case in the control arms of the experiments, suggesting there was an important effect of the treatment program itself on discounting. Even more remarkable, this improvement in discounting was linked to abstinence success, with the individuals who had the largest decreases in discounting also having the lowest number of positive drug screens.
This result is particularly surprising as it is in direct contrast with previous studies showing that high impulsivity, particularly in regards to future discounting, is typically linked to worse treatment outcomes. One possible explanation is that this discrepancy is due to the type of treatment used across the different studies. For example, in one of the original trials, multiple types of treatments were used, effectively “throwing the kitchen sink” at the patients. As a result, abstinence levels were an impressive 80-90%, roughly double the success rates for the current standard treatment options.
Dr. Bickel thinks that it is this difference in the effectiveness of the treatments that resulted in the conflicting discounting trends. “It looks like the predictive ability of discounting for a therapeutic outcome occurs with moderately effective treatment. But when you have highly effective treatment, which is where we found these changes in discounting, that’s the difference…The efficacy of the treatment determines whether discounting is a predictor or if discounting changes.”
Improving Memory and Self-Control
Perhaps the most exciting finding of the new research is the link between working memory and improvements in discounting. One of the trials that was re-analyzed involved training participants on a working memory task, trying to improve their abilities in this domain. However, the researchers discovered an unexpected link between improvements in working memory and an increase in self-control. While at first this result was surprising, discounting and working memory being separate cognitive processes, the two functions overlap in the brain, both linked to activation in the dorsal lateral prefrontal cortex. Thus, it appears that improving working memory can strengthen activation in this area, which can subsequently enhance other behaviors (like self-control) that tap into it.
Working memory is also thought to be related to abstinence success, for in order to achieve your goals, you have to be able to keep them in mind first. Indeed, more and more, future planning is being thought of as a type of working memory, remembering how you acted in the past and keeping in mind how you’d like to change your behaviors in the future.
Dr. Bickel explains, “Remembering an event in the past and thinking about the future are really tied processes. And working memory, being able to hold ideas and concepts or facts in our heads for a certain period of time, may be necessary for us to think about and value things that occur in the future.”
Together, these findings suggest there may be a way to improve decision-making in drug users, which could then result in an increase in treatment efficacy. As the current options for rehab are often less than perfect, improving any chance for success, particularly in those who are most likely to fail, seems like a worthwhile endeavor.
Regression to the Mean
However, before we get too excited about the possibility, it’s important to keep in mind a small statistical effect that may be having a large impact on the current findings.
One alternative explanation for the results is that those who have lost the most have the most to gain. This is true both mathematically in the idea of “regression to the mean,” where outliers on both ends of a spectrum have a tendency to pull in towards the center, as well as more colloquially in the idea that the lower one starts off, the more potential there is for growth. Also, rather than looking at the trait of discounting itself, these findings can be viewed more abstractly, in that individuals who are able to significantly improve in any arena might be the ones who are most readily helped by treatment.
Additionally, while the current analysis had a dataset of over 200 participants to work with, another 300 individuals dropped out during the initial studies. Considering that drug users who are highest in impulsivity also have the highest likelihood for relapse, this loss could have skewed the data, not taking into account the most extreme cases. Unfortunately, this is a problem that almost all studies on addiction treatment encounter, in that they are largely made up of a self-selecting group of individuals who want to get clean and are willing and able to stick with it. However, it is often those who drop out who might need the most help and who would be able to shed light on what doesn’t work and why in terms of treatment.
At the end of the day, though, any opportunities to advance treatment success rates should be taken, and the current findings do provide a promising new avenue for improving self-control, and subsequently abstinence efforts. Dr. Bickel says, “I think often in addiction we deal with either the symptoms of addiction or the demographics of the participants, but it could be that decision making processes are really key in understanding how addiction operates and perhaps how to treat it.”
Dana Smith has written for The Guardian, The Atlantic and Scientific American: Mind, among other publications.
Photo via
A new drug called ‘Snapchat,’ so named after the popular photo messaging app, has hospitalized four people in Australia over the weekend.
The ecstasy-based drug has been branded with the app’s logo and comes in a variety of colors, including pink, blue, and green. And while the stamp of a friendly ghost sticking out its tongue looks harmless enough, the new drug has sent a number of people in Australia to the hospital in about as much time as it takes for a video or photo to disappear on its namesake.
“Police received a number of reports last night of people behaving in an erratic and irrational manner,”said Clint Slims, superintendent of the Drug and Organized Crime Division. “These people appeared to become aggressive and disoriented after ingesting the drug and were taken to Royal Darwin Hospital.”
The concern in Australia arose following a long weekend celebrating the Queen’s Birthday, with police worried that revelers would be exposed to the contaminated drug over the long weekend. They also issued a public warning that the exact contents of the pills remained largely unknown and that their ingestion is potentially dangerous.
“These drugs are not produced under pharmaceutical conditions and the reality is people have no idea what they are taking or worse, what affect it will have on them,” Slims said.
The outbreak of hospitalizations was just one of many that have cropped up across the world in connection with synthetic drugs. In late May, three died in Indiana after taking NBOMe, while synthetic marijuana was responsible for a number of prison overdoses in the UK last week.
Photo via
Joel Shumrak, 66, of Boca Raton, Fla., wasarrested early last week by federal authorities for running a pill mill operation out of his South Florida pain clinic that supplied drug dealers in other states, including Kentucky.
"The amount of money from the pain clinic is, frankly, staggering," said Assistant U.S. Attorney Brent Tantillo at a hearing in federal court. Prosecutors outlined Shumrak’s operation, which is alleged to have supplied up to 25 percent of all the oxycodone in Eastern Kentucky.
Shumrak is currently being held without bond in the Broward County jail and will soon be transferred to Kentucky for a federal indictment.
His lawyer, Bernard Cassidy, vehemently denied all charges and said that his client was nothing more than a businessman who should be allowed release on bond due to alleged ill health. But with over $15 million kept in offshore accounts, Shumrak was deemed a flight risk and a danger to his community.
"Joel was a licensed business owner and we intend to fight the charges," his attorney said.
Meanwhile, community organizers like Broward county resident and registered nurse, Janet Colbert, one of the founders of Stop the Organized Pill Pushers Now (STOPP Now), was guardedly optimistic about Shumrak’s arrest.
"I hope and pray they've got him this time," said Colbert. "I think the tide is turning and hopefully eventually we won't have this problem anymore."
Daily Quote
"Each person comes into this world with a specific destiny--he has something to fulfill, some message has to be delivered, some work has to be completed. You are not here accidentally--you are here meaningfully. There is a purpose behind you. The whole intends to do something through you." - Osho
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