None of us — especially alcoholics, addicts and codependents — like to be told what we “should” be doing. We’ve been working on this problem for (hours, days, weeks…decades) and some clown thinks all the answers can be found in three minutes of listening and a few minutes of uninformed advice? Bullshit!
With a Ph.D., victim of drug abuse didn’t fit stereotype — baltimoresun.com
Just because drugs is what they studied doesn’t mean anything. Addiction is addiction, no matter what we do, what race we are, what occupation we have.
The secret lives of female alcoholics – USATODAY.com
The numbers are troubling: An estimated 17.6 million adults in the USA are either alcoholics or have alcohol problems, according to the National Institutes of Health. By some estimates, one-third of alcoholics are women.Yet if you were to ask a woman’s friends and family if she has a drinking problem, they might very well say no.
An attempt at a ninth step visit leads to an unexpected reunion.
AA Grapevine Digital Archive
…the study leaves one of researchers’ most burning questions unanswered: Whether the blunted emotional sensitivity evident in the alcoholics came first — and then gave way to alcoholism — or whether alcoholism brought about changes in the brain that blunted peoples’ sensitivity to others’ emotions.
Hidden Alcoholism and Family Denial | momlogic.com
The complete denial by Diane’s family and their unwillingness to even consider that she made some horribly poor choices that morning which led to this tragedy further perpetuates the myth of “what an alcoholic looks like,” or the belief that a “mother would never do this.” As a clinical psychologist, I can tell you alcohol and drug addiction knows no race, class, or gender. Any person, even a loving and devoted mother, can struggle with alcohol dependency.
Recovery from addiction depends upon a wide range of conditions: the degree and length of the addiction, the detox protocols used, the emotional and psychosocial factors affecting the addict, the quality of treatment, aftercare and support (including treatment of codependency issues in close family members, either therapeutically or by attendance at self-help meetings), and the desire of the addict to become and remain clean and sober.
We could guess that an individual who is successful at staying clean and free of ALL drugs ( including Methadone and Suboxone, after initial detox), would be able to handle most routine activities, jobs, etc. at between 9 months and two years, if they have good supports.
If the person continues with their program of recovery, support groups, and any necessary treatment for psychological problems not directly related to the addiction, they could in many cases be back in mainstream society in two to three years.
Continued recovery is contingent upon cleaning up the chaos in our lives caused by the addiction and any preexisting conditions, maintaining a healthy, relatively stress-free life, and avoiding circumstances that might tempt us to use.
The King and the King of Pop had a good deal more in common than musical innovation.
Elvis, son of an unsuccessful Mississippi sharecropper, came from hard times and rose above them. He reinvented popular music by successfully combining the three main aspects of American music tradition: mountain or “country” music, popular ballads, and soul. Not only did he do that, he helped facilitate the frame of mind that led to the civil rights reforms of the ’60′s and ’70′s, by bridging a cultural gap that had — except for jazz — remained largely untouched. He did that on his own, actively resisted by the musical Old Guard and much of conventional society as well. If music expresses the humanity of man, then Elvis Presley combined the streams of our musical perception and made us that much closer to being a human race, rather than races.
Michael essentially created a musical genre of his own, combining soul, disco and his own vision into performances that literally changed the face of popular music for a generation. We’ll never know if Jackson would have had the same influence had his chance not come at the same time as the birth of music videos and extravaganzas on the stage, but this is not meant to imply that he was just a showman. He, like Elvis, was a product of a traumatic childhood, and that is reflected in the nuances of his songwriting, his production values, and — most certainly — in the latter half of his professional career. His humanity, its image distorted but not beyond recognition, came through in his work.
Perhaps the forces that shape musical royalty — even celebrity in general — are fated to become the means of their downfall, as well as their muse. Continue reading
Children who grow up with a parent with a drinking problem have been shown to suffer from depression, anxiety, acting out, and academic and social difficulties.
Some of these problems begin as early as age 2 however, the few prevention programs that exist for children of alcoholic parents are typically aimed at students in middle school or older.
Andrea Hussong, Ph.D., a clinical psychologist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, hopes to change that.
