Fatty foods may cause cocaine-like addiction – CNN.com
A new study in rats suggests that high-fat, high-calorie foods affect the brain in much the same way as cocaine and heroin. When rats consume these foods in great enough quantities, it leads to compulsive eating habits that resemble drug addiction, the study found.
In a word, “No.” That said, let me go on to what I know can happen.
Getting clean and sober is a life-changing experience, in the literal sense: we are successful only if we give up the world that we built for ourselves and tried to hold together with alcohol and other drugs for one that is new and strange. It’s scary. One of the things that makes it possible — in fact, for most people the main thing — is the bonds and feelings of safety that form, centered on our recovery center and/or support group, and the people who were and are there for us. This is our new home. These are our new friends and teachers. This is where we feel safe, protected from the wolves of our addiction that still prowl around “out there.”
Nonetheless, recovery is about resuming (or finally attaining) a place in the world. This means moving away from our safe space, slowly but surely, and expanding our circle of friends, acquaintances and activities to encompass the rest of the community — not dropping our old friends and our program, but making new friends and developing outside interests, getting jobs, reconnecting with families, and growing into the adulthood of our recovery. Change is never easy for human beings, and here we are, faced with the prospect of making huge changes: moving away from the place we feel we “belong” into a world where — we intuitively understand — the vast majority of people don’t even know we are alive!
It’s no wonder, then, that some people become stuck, unable to move onward in their recovery. They have found a new family, a new nest, a new place “where everybody knows your name, and they’re always glad you came.” It takes courage to move out of that glow and into the real world. Addicts and alcoholics are people who have never learned that it is OK not to feel OK. So we get stuck. Some of us don’t want to become unstuck.
It’s not addiction, it’s fear — of change, and of changing. People don’t get addicted to the rooms, but some certainly abuse them.
Naples getting Hazelden substance abuse center
The expectation is 20 patients within the first couple of months of opening, with total volume later reaching 120 to 140 patients, said Michael Demask, executive director of the Naples center.
The Conversation: Recovering Drug Addict Shares His Story – ABC News
Diane Sawyer Talks With a Recovering Addict About How he Got Sober With His Family’s Help
Our Opinion: Deal with addiction | tallahassee.com | Tallahassee Democrat
Florida needs leaders who will address the growing public health crisis that is substance abuse. To date in Florida, both alcohol and drug abuse are treated largely as a criminal justice issue, but that is an unsustainable, unaffordable and fundamentally unhelpful approach that does almost nothing to change behaviors so costly to society.
America’s new touchy-feely war on drugs | Reuters
…four decades and billions of dollars later, this war — based on law enforcement and a crackdown on production, distribution and consumption — has produced unspectacular results, at best.So more and more states have been turning to alternative approaches like drug courts, which target consumption among probationers using a combination of frequent tests, the threat of jail time and plenty of moral encouragement. …
State Alcohol Taxes Creep Up, But Not to Benefit of Treatment and Prevention Programs
Surveys have shown that taxpayers support using alcohol tax revenues to pay for addiction treatment and other related services. However, the laws passed in 2009 largely failed to draw that connection.
Psychological Dependence refers to situations where there is no physical withdrawal, yet there is a compulsion to continue using a substance or carrying out an act. Sex “addiction” is a good example, as is the compulsion to eat sugar.
There is a wide gray area between PD and addiction. For example, some heavy users of marijuana suffer withdrawal when they stop using, which qualifies them as addicted. Others have no overt physical symptoms, but become psychologically disturbed.
As far as treatment is concerned, there is no real difference, apart from the possible need to detox from an addictive substance.
Although not a sure thing, a well-executed intervention is often the best means of getting through to an alcoholic or addict the idea that their behavior is not only ruining his or her life, but also having a terrible impact on others. [It worked on me!]
Success depends on a number of variables:
Intervention can be anything from threatening to move out of the home, to edicts from a judge or a commanding officer, to a clinically planned and executed process involving family, employer, friends and other people important to the alcoholic. The last is the preferred method.
The individual must be in a mental state where he or she is vulnerable to the pleas of the people in his or her life. If their life is going fine, no problems that they can perceive — or if they are the kind of person who actually isn’t much affected by the cares and needs of others — then the attempt may be doomed to failure.
If “success” means getting them into treatment, then the rate is fairly high: probably above 50%. If it means completing a full course of treatment and aftercare, the success rate is substantially less.
If success is measured by continuous sobriety from the point of entering treatment until death, it is probably in the 15 – 20% range at most, even allowing for a relapse or two.
The problem with statistics is that, by Federal Statute, alcohol treatment is seriously confidential. Furthermore, outcomes over time are pretty much a guess, since it is pretty hard to track people whose treatment was confidential to begin with, many of whom have no desire to remain in contact with the treatment facility. Thus, these are educated guesses based on the literature and personal experience with people in treatment and their subsequent progress.
On the twelfth day of Christmas, my Detox gave to me
Twelve junkies shaking
Eleven drunks complaining
Ten tokers talking
Nine teens a-pouting
Eight cokeheads plotting
Seven sellers closing
Six techs a-chasing
Five harried shrinks
Four RNs
Three janitors
Two chefs at work
And a tired, whacked-out C. A. P
All addictions work in the same parts of the brain, by modifying or imitating the production of neurotransmitters that cause pleasant feelings. This is as true of shopping addiction as it is of heroin. Thus, people who have taught themselves that their moods and feelings can be altered by certain actions or chemicals, have a very good chance of cross-addiction to chemicals and actions that have similar effects. Gambling, for example, is the number two substitute addiction for alcoholics and addicts, after relationships.
In a slightly different sense, the actions of some chemicals are so similar that a person addicted to one will almost automatically become addicted to the other. Alcohol and benzodiazepine tranquilizers are one example. Heroin and other opioid drugs are another, as are alcohol and heroin.
Cross addiction and cross dependence are the same thing, really. “Cross dependence” is just a way of saying it that makes it sound less important. Thus the term is much favored by drug companies.
You’re probably asking yourself, “Why would he think I’d care?” Well, you’d better care. Stress of one kind or another is the number-one cause of relapse.
Phys Ed: Why Exercise Makes You Less Anxious – Well Blog – NYTimes.com
For years, both in popular imagination and in scientific circles, it has been a given that exercise enhances mood. But how exercise, a physiological activity, might directly affect mood and anxiety — psychological states — was unclear. Now, thanks in no small part to improved research techniques and a growing understanding of the biochemistry and the genetics of thought itself, scientists are beginning to tease out how exercise remodels the brain, making it more resistant to stress.
You can cut back on alcohol — latimes.com
“We’re on the cusp of some major advances in how we conceptualize alcoholism,” says Dr. Mark Willenbring, director of treatment and recovery research at the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. The institute is the nation’s leading authority on alcoholism and the major provider of funds for alcohol research. “The focus now is on the large group of people who are not yet dependent. But they are at risk for developing dependence.”
This is an interesting idea, but we need to be clear that it refers to people who have not already crossed the line with regard to alcohol addiction. For those folks, once clean, total abstinence is the only safe course.
…studies compiled by various government health agencies show that the five most-chronicled “hard” addictions — alcohol, drugs, tobacco, gambling and eating disorders — are what society truly pays for. Those maladies cost taxpayers and businesses $590 billion annually, primarily in lost productivity and government-assisted medical treatment. That’s about 5% of the national debt. And it doesn’t count the sometimes bankrupting amounts of money those people personally spend on drugs, liquor, cigarettes or at the craps tables. Economically, those purchases are treated as pure transfer payments, no different than any other form of shopping….
Now, if those issues cost that much, why do you suppose the government puts up with it? How much do your figure the politicians are raking in from the people who sell this stuff, one way or another?
The 5 most expensive addictions – MSN Money
Boosting Medical Students’ Training in Drug Abuse – Health Blog – WSJ
Today, the National Institute on Drug Abuse jumped into the fray, announcing new teaching tools designed to help doctors-in-training — medical students and residents — learn about assessing and treating patients with abuse problems, including tobacco, prescription drugs and illicit substances.
How about alcohol, the most-abused drug of all by a wide margin?
