For those of you who don’t know, I also write the blog for Sunrise Detoxification Centers (Sunrise Detox Blog). Some posts I link to here, but not all. I think there’s some pretty good stuff there, so go to the blog and look around the categories if you’re interested.
It’s long been known that alcohol can deepen sleep during the early part of the night but disrupt sleep later in the night, something called the “rebound effect.” But there’s been little research into how alcohol’s effects on sleep may differ in women and men.
This study included 59 women and 34 men in their 20s who consumed either alcohol until they were drunk or a non-alcoholic beverage before they went to bed. Researchers then monitored the participants’ sleep.
The stats helper monkeys at WordPress.com mulled over how this blog did in 2010, and here’s a high level summary of its overall blog health:
The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads This blog is on fire!.
A helper monkey made this abstract painting, inspired by your stats.
The average container ship can carry about 4,500 containers. This blog was viewed about 14,000 times in 2010. If each view were a shipping container, your blog would have filled about 3 fully loaded ships.
In 2010, there were 68 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 431 posts. There were 10 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 692kb. That’s about a picture per month.
The busiest day of the year was January 7th with 139 views. The most popular post that day was Why We Don’t Get Better Immediately: Post-acute Withdrawal Syndrome (PAWS).
The top referring sites in 2010 were digital-dharma.net, gettingpastyourpast.wordpress.com, guineveregetssober.com, sunrisedetox.com, and deanesmay.com.
Some visitors came searching, mostly for post acute withdrawal syndrome, committing an alcoholic, post acute withdrawal symptoms, post acute withdrawal, and can you commit an alcoholic.
These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.
Why We Don’t Get Better Immediately: Post-acute Withdrawal Syndrome (PAWS) May 2008
6 comments
Q&A December 2008
Can you commit an alcoholic or other drug addict? July 2009
Articles May 2008
1 comment
If you get drunk once a week, are you an alcoholic? August 2009
1 comment
All Wet and Shine | Cynthia Huntington
It sounds like the cracks and clicks of the house settling
as the room warms in morning, it sounds like a fan
whispered up. It tastes of wood smoke—sweet and then stale.
It looks like the curve of a mountain
under streaked sky, and everything pale blue
just before sunrise, everything translucent,
even stone….
Be out of circulation Friday through Monday. Have a great weekend!
One of the interesting things about alcohol abuse and alcoholism is the way one progresses into the other over time. The progression runs in the same general sequence regardless of our age or gender. Unless interrupted by some sort of incident that causes us to stop drinking, it is entirely predictable — in everything but the details — from the first signs of abuse to our final drink.
Dr. Marc Schuckit and colleagues at the San Diego VA Medical Center recently completed interviews with over 600 alcoholics who were admitted for inpatient treaatment. They ranged from their early 20′s to their late forties and, although they were all white males, the description of alcoholic progression that they determined to be the “norm” from the interviews has been found to hold across gender and racial boundaries as well. Folks who start earlier tend to have longer runs, while those who begin drinking later tend to progress faster. Those who have been abstinent and resumed drinking go down the fastest of all.
Here, then, is the slide down the rocky, slippery slope.
By this time most of us will have begun to suspect that there might be a problem. We see our lives falling apart, but often fail to make the connection with our drinking. (“Hey, if you had my problems, you’d drink too!”) We see the social damage increase in the form of lost jobs and ruined relationships. We get fired. We get divorced. We get to know the booking officers almost as well as our bartenders.
Then, unless we are lucky enough to get into some form of recovery that involves complete abstinence, we die. I got lucky, but that’s about the way it went for me otherwise.
My name is Bill. I’m an alcoholic, and I approved this message.
Some of you may notice that the “Health Maven” badge is missing from beneath George’s bit of wisdom on the right. I find that most of Wellsphere’s professionals are waaaay up in their heads, and seem to have mostly theoretical notions about alcoholism and addiction. Beyond that, the site is so diluted by other issues that I see no likelihood of its becoming a particularly useful resource for the recovering community at large. The other sites and online resources in which I participate seem to be far more effective in both attracting and informing folks who are serious about recovery.
I’m sure Wellsphere’s founders have their hearts in the right place, but they are trying to re-invent the wheel. WebMD does it better, as do any number of other sites. As to addicts and alcoholics: they’re dying right now. I don’t have time to mess with start-ups that aren’t — in my opinion — sufficiently focused.
For the three of you who might like to keep track of this blog, in case any of you don’t use feed readers, I’ve added an option to subscribe via email. You will see the link at the top of the sidebar, just below the feed link.
Subscribing will get you an email in the morning around 7:00 AM, so that you can have blog goodness with your Wheaties. It contains links to each post from the last 24 hours, along with a short blurb extracted from each first paragraph.
Please consider subscribing.
Binge drinking is a common pattern of excessive alcohol use in the United States. The National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism defines binge drinking as a pattern of drinking that brings a person’s blood alcohol concentration (BAC) to 0.08 grams percent or above. This typically happens when men consume 5 or more drinks, and when women consume 4 or more drinks, in about 2 hours.1
Most people who binge drink are not alcohol dependent.
According to national surveys
Binge drinking is associated with many health problems, including but not limited to
Evidence-based interventions to prevent binge drinking and related harms6,7,8,9,10 include
References:
* Links to non-Federal organizations are provided solely as a service to our users. Links do not constitute an endorsement of any organization by CDC or the Federal Government, and none should be inferred. The CDC is not responsible for the content of the individual organization Web pages found at this link.
One or more documents on this Web page is available in Portable Document Format (PDF). You will need Acrobat Reader to view and print these documents.
Page last reviewed: August 6, 2008
Page last modified: August 6, 2008
Content source: Division of Adult and Community Health, National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion
We’re well into the Dog Days – an interesting time of year for a number of reasons, from traditional harvest festivals to hot nights and their well-documented ill effects on our tempers. I’m therefore honoring the effects on our minds, bodies and spirits, with a short discussion of how the term Dog Days has come down to us over many centuries. From where did such an odd expression arise? Continue reading
I’ll be off on a short vacation tomorrow (Friday) through Monday. Back Tuesday. Keep those cards and letters coming, and have a nice weekend yourselves.
You try beer, booze or pot, maybe cocaine, whatever. It feels good. Youprogress from doing it only at parties or with lovers and/or friends.Now you occasionally have a drink and light up when you are alone. Usebecomes customary: maybe a drink or two before dinner, TGIF, Saturdaynight becomes party night … so do the other nights too … and you nolonger are someone who drinks at meals or social celebrations. Now youare someone who drinks, period.
That oft-asked question: Am I an addict?
See also:
by Bill
Around the 12-step rooms we are frequently told that we should not “take another person’s inventory,” often used in the sense that we ought not criticize another person’s program. The rationale behind such statements seems to be the fear that since (presumably) that person is doing the best they can, it might be bad for their recovery to tell them to their face what we believe they are doing wrong.
While this is no doubt true (addicts and alcoholics of every stripe being less than fond of criticism), it is certainly within the purview of their sponsors — although it should be handled diplomatically and with consideration for the individual’s issues, length of sobriety and other factors. The rest of us would probably serve them best by keeping our less-informed opinions to ourselves, since speaking from ignorance can lead to grievous error. That is why we share OUR experience, strength and hope, with no cross-talk.
We need also to avoid gossip, one of the favorite pastimes of people with poor recovery skills.
However, this does not imply that we should not take inventories at all. Continue reading
They say addicts are all the same. But that doesn’t mean they’re all equal. Rose Garnett, who managed a Notting Hill theatre while she was hooked on hard drugs, explores the difference that wealth and connections make – even on the way to self-destruction…
