Personally, I’d like to see McLellan get the job.

I’m also concerned about some of Ramstad’s positions on the war on drugs (WOD), but what I find noteworthy about the article is the high profile that the Drug Policy Alliance has established. They’ve been successful in shifting their identity from radical outlier (They do favor a blanket decriminalization of drugs.) to respected “liberal” advocacy group.

I agree with them in several areas, but I worry about them becoming the de facto liberal voice on drug policy. I consider myself pretty liberal and in attempts to apply liberal values to drug policy, I find…

Findings like this are piling up. (Wink, wink. Nudge, nudge. To the 85% of alcoholics who are smokers.)

In case you were wondering, “it’s all good” in India.

Seriously, I thought you might be interested in a peek at drug policy in other countries.

[hat tip: Andrew Sullivan]

…everything looks like a nail.

Oy vey.

It also brings to mind this quote from H.L. Mencken: “For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.”

An important question in the new issue of Psychiatric Times:
A diagnosis of MDD is warranted, according to DSM, when a patient has at least 5 of 9 specified symptoms for at least 2 weeks, and the 5 symptoms include either depressed mood or an inability to derive pleasure from life. The sole exception is that bereaved patients are not considered to have a disorder if they otherwise meet the criteria, as long as their symptoms are not unusually severe and last no longer than 2 months. The reason for the bereavement exclusion seems obvious: people who respond to the loss…

News Feature from www.jointogether.com
By Bob Curley

Drugs — and the addiction issue in general — got very little attention during the recently concluded presidential campaign, but now that Obama has won, his duties prior to taking office on Jan. 20 include selecting candidates for some of the top positions for his forthcoming administration. And although the job of director of the…

I had a wonderful week-end.  Saturday night I went to see The Soweto Gospel Choir, which was a joy-filled, uplifting, spiritual, energizing experience.  I was also blessed to get the tickets for free, which made the event even sweeter.

Sunday morning I got up, feeling great, went to my church, then attended my boyfriend’s church where he was singing in the choir.  He looked so handsome and when we saw me in the congregation his face lit up like the sun had suddenly burst forth in the room.  After church we came home for lunch, he returned to church for a…

by William C. Moyers

They pitched a big tent on the roof of an office building overlooking the Capitol rotunda the other day for a party to celebrate a new law that treats mental illness and addiction like any other chronic disease. But the tent still wasn’t big enough for the man standing almost alone amid the crowd.

“I don’t dare tell anyone I am a recovering alcoholic,” he whispered to me as if somebody might overhear his revelation in the noisy tent. “It’s way too risky.”

His boss, an influential member of Congress, doesn’t know. Neither do the directors of the federal…

From a column in the Washington Post:
There is a simple strategy that Obama and his congressional colleagues
could take that would save about $6 billion a year: Cut supply-side
spending by the Office of National Drug Control Policy and require that
two-thirds of its funding be spent on demand-side programs. While that
is simple, it won’t be easy.

When my husband first started recovery for sex addiction, I used to try to give him these helpful practical tips for how to not cheat on me. After all, I was very successful at not cheating on him. In “Not Cheating on my Husband,” I was getting an A+; I had an absolutely flawless record. He, on the other hand, was getting an F in Not Cheating on his Wife and was clearly in need of some tutoring. And who better to get guidance from than me?

In theory, doing such exceptional work at Not Cheating wasn’t easy for me. After…

We live in such a diverse society in the USA (and most other Western countries) that we sometimes have difficulties coming to terms with the holiday season.  In my family alone are Evangelical Christians, Catholics, Atheists, Methodists, people who don’t know what they are (and don’t care) — and at least one Buddhist Agnostic.  I can extend that, by listing friends and acquaintances, to Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Secular Humanists, a Quaker, Presbyterians, Unitarians, Episcopalians, and a bunch of recovering alcoholics who are too scared of what God might be thinking and won’t admit to any beliefs at all.

Thank goodness for…

First of all, I miss having time to focus and relate and apply myself the way I did until recently.  I miss having time to reflect in front of a keyboard.  I have enough time for superficial kinds of stuff like facebook, but anything beyond casual observation also requires time, and that commodity has become scarce.

I am supposed to be committed to post here 3 times a week, and I could do that, but you’d get some pretty superficial stuff; stuff I wouldn’t want to put my name on.  I’d rather that what I have to contribute here be a…

My doctor’s office called Friday afternoon. Seems that I’m not just lazy after all! My thyroid test came back low, which explains a lot of the soul-crushing fatigue I’ve been feeling lately. I have an appointment to adjust my medication on Monday, and then there will be some waiting while my body catches up. But hopefully I’ll be feeling better sooner than later.

Something good has come out of this though. I’ve been forced to work on my boundaries, to enforce those limits that I’m always violating in the name of not making anyone around me unhappy.

My friend was over last…

When I was about eight or nine, I took my beloved uncle’s cigarettes away and started flushing them down the toilet. I didn’t want him to die prematurely (as he did anyway). Even as a child, I was sure that if I showed him how desperately I did not want him to kill himself, he’d stop. He never did. I wanted that change to somehow be within my power, yet it was completely out of my control. Sometimes death comes before change.

When I was trying to have children, I feared I wouldn’t be able to get pregnant. And once I…

I love the sharp crack when I open a fresh can, the hiss of carbonation escaping, the ice cubes popping in my freshly poured drink.

Mmmmmm…sweet, sweet, Coca-Cola - my love for you is becoming a problem.

My whole family drinks Coke. It was always in the fridge growing up, in the cooler at the beach, with our burgers at McDonalds. My mom even gave it to us when we had upset stomachs - a treatment I practice to this day. In fact, I’m drinking a Coke right now.

Sure, I’ve given up Coke from time to time. Back when I used to…

Regarding the next drug czar:

Our goal is to get someone who supports treatment, not incarceration; science, not religious moralizing; and civil liberties, not punitive policies. We’re also going to do some legislative Judo, flip the agency’s budget on its head, and refocus it on health and human rights. Imagine a Drug Czar that is required by law to reduce the number of nonviolent offenders behind bars — or required to implement policies that protect people’s privacy.

I’m all for treatment and ending the criminalization of addiction, but what, exactly, do “religious moralizing”, human rights and “protecting people’s privacy” mean?

I hear a lot or…

Wired in has another great post that makes the case for addiction as a disease.

A new online community has been launched in the U.K.

It’s got content for addicts (both in and out of recovery), families and practitioners.

They’ve got a great post about low expectations, bias against residential treatment and recovery capital.

If the comments are any indication of what’s to come in this community, I’m excited. One thought about the debate in the comments–while there is too much either/or thinking in the field and not enough both/and thinking, there really are sides and we can’t ignore this. People who don’t believe addicts can recover, shouldn’t work with addicts. This isn’t to say that all services should…

Okay, I had to have very minor eye surgery, which required that I be awake. After talking over the risks/rewards with my doc of taking Valium (given that I am a drunk and a junky who’s–hallelujah–in recovery) I decided to risk 2 milligrams in the interests of having my best shot at avoiding permanent eye damage.

Since I’m sworn to tell the truth, I must admit that a very high percentage of my pre-operation thoughts were fixated on taking that pill. I was both appalled and amused to realize that I WAS LOOKING FORWARD TO IT!!!! I beamed right back twenty…

I’ve always thought that there was a link between alcohol abuse and domestic violence. Statistics do indicate a connection between alcohol and drug abuse and domestic violence. In fact, 92 % of domestic abuse assailants reported use of alcohol or other drugs on the day of the assault, according to an article in JAMA.

But there are other studies that question whether there is a cause-and-effect relationship. Although research indicates that among men who drink heavily, there is a higher rate of assaults resulting in injury, the majority of men classified as high-level drinkers do not abuse their partners. Also, the…

Family therapists and addictions therapists tend to part ways when it comes to whether or not to cut off, in the name of not enabling, the “sick” member of the family, the one who steals the silverware to pay for the cocaine, the alcohol, the heroin.  Pick your substance, none of them are free.

Not that we’re naive.  We understand that an addict will do anything to get substances, and will exploit the family, in all kinds of ways, as a coping strategy under stress.  Object?  Get drugs.  Drug seeking. 

But family therapists like to keep the door cracked, the lines of…

My husband called today and asked if he could drop by to see me and talk about stuff. I don’t have a lot of work, so I told him sure.

He says he’s going to turn himself in to the probation office. He’s had a warrant for his arrest for some time now, so who knows what is going to happen…if he’ll really turn himself in, or what will happen if he does.

For this moment, I am ok with whatever happens. I am trying not to invest too much of myself in his latest story, as I’ve gotten myself all worked…

In the original (non-Disney) version of Cinderella, the evil stepsisters, unable to fit their large feet into Cinderella’s tiny glass slipper, cut off their toes. I always wondered what they were thinking. Of all the places to try to hide a bloody foot, a clear glass slipper isn’t exactly the best spot. Yet, they are so desperate to be the woman the prince wants that they are willing to grotesquely hack off body parts to do it.

The action is so horrific, it seems unthinkably insane, and yet today, I was thinking that it’s exactly what I’ve done and expected others…

“Being a sponsor has been an important part of my recovery from growing up with alcoholism. In fact, as a sponsor I never give as much as I get…When I have the privilege of hearing the secret of a sponsee expected to carry in silence for a lifetime, I am reminded of how relieved I was to finally lay down the burden of my secrets with my sponsor…In becoming a sponsor, I cultivate a listening heart for others as well as for myself.”..Hope for Today – August 23.

There are no musts in Al-Anon, except the purpose states that you are…

AlterNet reviews the prospects for drug policy reform under Obama.

AlterNet has an article on harm reduction in Vancouver.
Vancouver has essentially become a gigantic field test, a 2 million-person laboratory for a set of tactics derived from a school of thought known as “harm reduction.” It’s based on a simple premise: No matter how many scare tactics are tried, laws passed or punishments imposed, people are going to get high. From winemaking monks to coca-leaf-chewing Bolivian peasants to peyote-chomping Navajos to caffeine-fueled office workers to the junkies of Vansterdam, human beings have never been willing to settle for our inherently limited palette of states of consciousness.

If you accept the notion that…

How do you know when you’re doing the best that you can?

I don’t know why, but I’m finding lately that I doubt myself on this quite a bit. I mean, on the one hand, I think that I’m doing the best that I can given my situation right now. But there’s always this voice, which sounds suspicously like my mother, in the back of my mind telling me that there’s really nothing wrong with me and I’m just lazy.

Probably I should just ignore that voice, but it’s difficult to do at times. I had the kind of mom and dad…

I’ve had two days that were pretty awful in a row, and neither of them had anything to do with my husband! I’m somehow excited about it. Yesterday, I found out that a major system in my house is failing, and I’m going to have to come up with several thousand dollars to replace it. Today, I took my dog to the vet, and she lost her mind and bit the veterinarian and me.

Living with addiction has certainly given me an interesting perspective on bad thing in my life. These bad things are MY bad things. I didn’t necessarily create…

A while ago I wrote a post about my two co-workers at The Second Road who were going through some very rough times.  Both of their sisters were battling metastatic breast cancer.  Beth, our development director, has been spending the last couple of months taking care of her sister, her 7 year old nephew and 10 year old niece, and re-scheduling her entire life to be available to attend to her sister during this horrific period of transition.  Melissa, our Executive Director, has been going back and forth to New York for the last several months, trying to manage her…

Its problems are different, but every bit as dysfunctional as the treatment system in the U.S..

Too many highlights to quote, just read the whole thing here.

Previous comments on the subject here.