The word addiction is hard to define. It is often used in casual situations, “I’m so addicted to chocolate,” or “I’m so hooked on that soap opera.”
As stated in the book I’m currently reading;

“the DSM_IV defines substance dependence as a pattern of continued use of any substance despite the fact that it has become harmful to the person using it. This means that even though a “drug” causes problems in a person’s health, daily function, or other important aspects of life, the addict is unable to stop using it.”

As in, there is no more control.

So, when a person loses sight…

Often, the “truths” and “norms” which pervade our world are developed from subjective points of view. There are subjective, objective and absolute truths. Like the map of our world. Have you ever seen the world flipped South-Up?  Click on the image for a better view.

Not only are many “truths” subjective, the subjectivity is often the perspective of a dominant class.

The notion that North should always be up and East at the right was established by the Greek astronomer Ptolemy. This could be his subjective truth because the better-known places in his world were in the Northern hemisphere. Also, on a…

The Junky’s Wife recently forwarded me a news story about a woman who posted a question to Apple’s support forum about a possible problem with her husband’s iPhone. “Susan042764″ from New Jersey asked if there was any known issue with iPhones attaching and e-mailing photos by themselves. Apparently, when she found naked pictures of her husband attached to an e-mail to another woman, her husband told her there was a porn ghost in his machine that sent them without his knowledge. He claimed to have been as shocked as his wife was to find racy pictures in his outbox and told her…

Another op-ed joins the chorus of pieces hoping that Obama will have the courage to learn from the failures of the war on drugs. The writer makes a great case that avoids the ideological sticking points.

I’m underwhelmed with this breathless commentary.

If I’m reading it correctly, the actual study found decreases in drinking days and drinks per day for all groups during the holidays compared to non-holiday periods. Heavy drinking days was the only measure that was worse on holidays for the placebo group.

The original study was also pretty underwhelming to me. Again, if I’m reading it correctly, it found an advantage of about 10 days over a 6 month period for the drug over placebo. It didn’t report on other measures and was done by researchers who receive funding from the manufacturer. It also framed its support as…

Forces much larger than me are conspiring to challenge my serenity, my courage and my wisdom this week.

The school board announced on Wednesday a plan to close several schools in our district, and one of them is my daughter’s school. The school is the oldest alternative school in the district, founded in the 1970’s and based on a democratic free-school model. We switched C to this school this year after a horrible Kindergarten year at a traditional school (we ended up pulling her out of that school and homeschooling her for the last few months of the year.)

This school serves…

I visited my husband tonight. It was good to see him, and he still seems to be in good spirits, although they are waning somewhat. He’s gotten a nasty chest cold, and he’s sharing a room with someone who goes crazy at night and imagines he’s flying an airplane, so he hasn’t gotten much sleep.

When you visit someone in the looney bin in my town, you sit in a large-ish communal room. There are televisions and puzzles and boardgames and a whole collection of coloring books and crayons. I like it that they want the crazy people to color. My…

Wired in to recovery has a great post on recovery rates for addicted physicians.

We know what works. What’s holding us back? Are we too cheap? Stigma? Ideological bias?

I spent some time going over this website today. Although I read it everyday, there is also a lot going on behind the scenes. I found some neat things to share with you.
Like the members page.
We had a bunch of new folks come around recently; so HI and WELCOME!

I love to look through the quotes that people put on their pages.
One that resonated with me:

“Let us rise up and be thankful, for if we didn’t learn a lot today, at least we learned a little, and if we didn’t learn a little, at least we didn’t get sick, and if…

“I don’t know where my next meal will come from,” the office manager said. She hadn’t eaten in two days. He said, “I’m a lawyer. My wife is a lawyer. We used to donate to this food shelf. Now I must swallow my pride. We need help.”

I understand these comments. I remember that pride. Never in a million years did I believe I’d need to crack the doors of the local food pantry and “beg” for food. Chronic illness changed that, and a few years ago I became a humbled food recipient. For approximately one year, the generous donations of…

Anne Lamott (come on, woman, set up a Google alert on your name and come find me already, for crying out loud) is one of my favorite writers. Recently, I have been reading Grace (Eventually) in stolen moments, usually in the bathroom. The kids are not generally detoured by a closed bathroom door, but they seem to hesitate at the sound of running water, or maybe I they waver when the sound of the shower causes a delay in my response. So, I’ve learned to turn on the shower and “wait for the water to heat up” while I read. (Yes,…

Not surprising, but nice to see someone studying children of alcoholics:

We investigated longitudinal associations between alcohol-dependent fathers’ 12-step treatment involvement and their children’s internalizing and externalizing problems (N = 125, M_age = 9.8 ± 3.1), testing the hypotheses that fathers’ greater treatment involvement would benefit later child behavior and that this effect would be mediated by fathers’ posttreatment behaviors. The initial association was established between fathers’ treatment involvement and children’s externalizing problems only, whereas Structural EquationModeling (SEM) results supported mediating hypotheses. Fathers’ greater treatment involvement predicted children’s lower externalizing problems 12 months later, and fathers’ posttreatment behaviors mediated this association:…

This study was done in England, but it’s easy to imagine these findings being replicated in metro Detroit. I suspect the culture of the treatment milieu has a lot to do with these findings.

[hat tip: dailydose.net]

This finding provides some guidance regarding when control might be therapeutic and when it’s not:

Based on 80 patients randomly allocated to two styles of therapy, this had found that neither better overall but that some types of people did better in one than the other. Specifically, clients high in ‘learnt helplessness’ (feeling unable to control one’s everyday life) did much better in structured therapy where the counsellor took the lead and focused on behaviour rather than emotions. Clients who felt more in control did better in a less structured therapy where the therapist facilitated self exploration and focused on feelings. With…

A harm reduction approach that never occurred to me.

The TSR t-shirt

For just a $20 donation we would be happy to ship you this t-shirt. White cotton, with a beautiful graphic of our logo.

Sizes are small to extra large.

I spoke with my husband today, which alleviated much of my stress from yesterday. He seems to be in a really good place, and I’m trying really, really hard not to get too excited or to withhold positivity that might help encourage him. I’ve felt so many times like he might be taking a turn for the better, and I’ve been disappointed each time, but this seems like it’s for real for real…and I really, really, really want him to get better.

He seems happy to be where he is, and the doctors and his social worker are working pretty hard…

Sitting here stuffed with stuffing…and turkey, ham, mashed potatoes, gravy and pie, I thought I’d wish you all a Happy Thanksgiving. I hope your day was as uneventful and peaceful as mine. I worked at the hospital for 5.5 hours prior to attending a sober get-together with many friends. The food and the company were exquisite. I had some very interesting and fun patients today, too, so it’s been a good day. (Although I could have used a longer nap!)

Today’s events remind me; I am so grateful for my sobriety and for my sober “family.” I know many people with…

If you’ve been wondering…I’ve been missing. Depression and I have been doing battle for the last couple weeks. I’ve NOT been winning. I’ve been so far from winning as to be barely recognizable at times. I’ve been so far from winning as to be barely functional at times. I’ve been so far from winning, I’ve not been capable of rational thought–never mind rational writing! But, I’m back. If you are interested in any of the gory details, I was able to finish a couple of posts here.

One of the toughest symptoms I had over the past few weeks was increasingly-distressing…

Happy Thanksgiving!

Here are a few things I’m grateful for:

Recovery - 18 years ago I was 4 weeks abstinent (not in recovery) and 1 week away from being coerced into a psych unit because my therapist was convinced I was going to kill myself in the coming weeks. He was right. The patients (not the doctors) in the psych unit to me that my main problem was my alcoholism and that I should go to the meetings in the cafeteria. They were right. After I was released (4 weeks later), I was fortunate that my therapist was humble enough to recognize that…

First, apologies for being so slow to respond to the thoughtful comments on the post Work is Your Playground.   This is the link, if you’re interested in that conversation.  

Now for something completely different. 

The Therapeutic Agents of the 12 Steps  

I’m not sure how much real therapy people get when they’re in a 12-Step program prior to a hospital stay, or even after a hospital stay.  And not everyone gets a hospital stay.  

But my guess is that the 12-Step meeting or recovery group becomes the only source of therapy for most people.  And the therapeutic agents of the group experience include:

(a) purging bad experiences by talking about them;

(b)…

1. I’m grateful that my husband is getting himself some help. It’s been a rough road getting him there, but now that he’s settled in, he seems to be getting treated like a human being who needs some professional help, and I’m grateful to all who are caring for him.

2. I’m grateful that I’m in a good place, surrounded by people who love me.

3. I’m grateful for my program, that gives me the serenity to get through the hardest days.

4. I’m grateful for my new kitten! She makes me laugh, and she gives me something to nurture in a way that’s…

I spoke with my husband this morning, and that’s it. I have been on the road for much of the day heading to my relatives’ house for the holiday, and he knew I would be traveling. Still, I have knots in my stomach because I only heard from him once.

I hate playing this game with myself about the phone. First of all,  I could just call him. I’m not sure how difficult it is to get him on the phone at the hospital where he is, but I know I can call him. I could easily say, “Hi. I love…

from: BigHappyBuddha.com

November 26, 2008

Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue.  Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them.  And the point is, to live everything.  Live the questions now.  Perhaps you will find them gradually, without noticing it, and live along some distant day into the answer.       

~Rainer Maria Rilke

It’s the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, a holiday I’ve particularly loved since I’ve been in recovery. It’s about food and gratitude and I plan to be awash in both! As far as gratitude goes, what I think I’m most deeply grateful for is the deep comfort I feel with just being myself and living my own life.

It comes of course from my partnership with the great Whatever (H.P., God, whatever), from working the Steps, and from the fellowship.

So here’s to life and all it gives me for which I’m thankful.

I went to visit my husband tonight at the psychiatric hospital. It was good to see him, and he seems ok. They are dosing him with methadone, and they insist that they can’t not. Apparently, there is a federal law that mandates a patient who is receiving methadone maintenance continue to receive his or her dose if that person is kept away from the clinic; however, this same law doesn’t protect patients who are indigent from being cut off by the methadone clinic when they can’t pay.

I am almost impressed by the elegance of the Catch 22s my husband is…

I did have some real clarity that something in my financial world had to change, though. I was tired of overdraft notices comming from my bank, tired of not having money for rent on the 1st of the month, tired of not knowing from one week to the next how I was going to make it.

Insite would save $14 million over 10 years. I don’t doubt it. And, as I’ve said before, Vancouver’s HIV rates call for radical action. However, if RAND’s previous calculations are correct, 10 years of Insite’s budget* spent on treatment would result in $175 million dollars in savings. If they were advocating both/and, the discussion might be a little different.

* Assumes a $2.5 million annual budget. I’ve seen references to $2 million and $3 million, so I split the difference.

I was really angry at sobriety over the weekend. And while I was pissed at sobriety, I was even more upset with the disease of alcoholism.

In the wake of a breakup earlier in the fall, I have done my best to dive deeper into the program and understand how I could have stayed as long as I did in a romantic relationship that was essentially extremely self destructive. And I wondered how I could have denied so many of the warning signs I saw with this ex significant other.

 And after writing pages of inventory on the relationship, I…

If you’re on Suboxone or are considering Suboxone treatment for opiate addiction, or you know someone on Suboxone or even if you’re just curious, I’d like to recommend a blog I recently found.

The Suboxone Talk Zone blog is authored by Jeffrey T Junig MD PhD. He is a psychiatrist, and he is also an addict in recovery. He used to be an anesthesiologist, until his addiction ended that part of his career. Now he treats addicts in his psychiatry practice, runs a treatment center, and is a professor of Psychiatry. All that and he manages to update his blog frequently and substantially!

Besides…