Category
Treatment
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North America, Studies, Treatment
Are you my type?
This may be the newest pick up line in a bar since “What’s your sign?” The reply might be something like “I don’t know what type are you?”
Thanks to the good people at the NIH (National institutes of health) this answer couldn’t come at a better time. With the holidays approaching and the office parties […] -
North America, People, Treatment, Websites
If you say so!
12.06.07 | Permalink | 2 CommentsRecently while doing a bit of reading and research about alcohol treatment and rehabilitation, I stumbled upon a few very interesting articles and then I followed the threads from there, and into what seems to me a fantasy world of delusion and denial. From there it went into one of perverse irony and implausible denial.
Let […] -
Studies, Treatment
Party animals
Sometimes I wonder if there isn’t more validity to concepts such as karmic retribution and reincarnation than some of us may believe. The whole reward and punishment dogma pertaining to personal behavior good and bad is the basis for more than one belief system around the world. How much value an individual gives to this cycle is often supposedly a determiner of how you’ll spend your next existence and unless you come to terms with this, and start getting with the existential program you’re doomed to repeat the same futile cycle over and over.
The real questions are “Where are you?” “Where have you been?” and “Where are you going?” Far be it for me to know about anyone else, least of all myself, but there are moments where I feel like I get a small but fleeting glimpse that gives me small but undoubtedly valuable insight to these answers, enough anyway to allow me to connect some of the dots to this mortal coil.
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Treatment, Websites
‘Tis the season to…relapse
That’s just the way it goes. Life isn’t fair, so suck it up and admit it. It isn’t anyone else’s fault that you drink or dope too much, and the holidays are the time of year when everyone else does too. They (or at least they think they can) handle it and you couldn’t/wouldn’t/didn’t want to and now here the holidays are again, for another year, just like the next, and the year after that about to foist all your social weaknesses, foibles and shortcomings out there for all to see, or ignore or to talk about behind your back, or whatever the case may be.
The bottom line is this, whatever the substance of choice is for anyone with an addiction, whether sober or still waist deep in the pudding, the holiday season can present a nightmarish dilemma for many. Temptations abound, rationalizing can be manifest and old habits can die hard. For some it can be a time of happiness and joy. For others it can be a downward spiral of despair, and for others it can be an orgy of unbridled indulgence, usually followed by some magnitude of regret.
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Treatment
A new generation of addiction fighting drugs
One of the best things of living in this day and age is the almost daily advancement in medical treatment.
For the sake of brevity and to stick with the subject matter of the website I’ll only address some of the new medications and the approaches being used in conjunction with these drugs to help individuals who face substance abuse, and the inherent addiction that results.
If you are an adherent to the “12 step process” which to be sure is a tried and true methodology that has worked for thousands upon thousands of people for decades these drugs are not a replacement, but an adjunct and a new option for addicts. I may be somewhat remiss in that there is a part of me that feels I should write up a more comprehensive article on the history and the mechanisms on the use of drug therapy in addiction. Drugs such as Antabuse andNaltrexone have been around for years and have proven effective for many physicians treating addiction but they do have some significant drawbacks. It may seem simplistic to say it, but the one that seems to prove the most difficult (alas it’s the case with most medical treatment) is the patient simply stops taking the medication. Antabuse is a perfect example of this. Why take medication that makes you sick or gives no buzz when the booze/opiate makes you feel so much better? More often than not an addicted individual has to hit a very low point for this approach to have even a remote chance of working.
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Treatment
Theodore Dalrymple on Drug Treatment
In his latest column for City Journal (“Treating” Drug Abuse, 25 August 2006), Theodore Dalrymple has excoriated an editorial in the August issue of the British Journal of Psychiatry that endorsed the use of a drug treatment technique called “contingency management treatment”, whereby drug abusers are rewarded for passing urine tests by, in one example, being given vouchers (“positive reinforcers”) to spend on retail goods and services. Noting that the scheme is predicated on the notion that the consumption of drugs can be halted voluntarily, the inescapable conclusion must be that addiction “is not a disease in any reasonable sense of the word”. Ipso facto, if
it is not a disease, there can be no treatment for it, only “treatment.”
What is then left is plain and simple “bribery”; a moral hazard that the editorialist, psychologist Nancy Petry of the University of Connecticut School of Medicine, simply ignored or failed to see.
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North America, Treatment, War on Drugs
Naloxone to be trialled in Boston
In a move similar to that undertaken earlier this year in Lanarkshire, Scotland, health authorities in Boston, Massachussets are planning to trial a program that will see heroin addicts be given a supply of a heroin antidote, Naloxone, in case of an overdose. According to the Boston Globe, the trial, which will start in the Fall (Autumn) and last for a year, is being undertaken to combat an increase in drug-related deaths which has in large part been blamed on stronger and more plentiful heroin. This trend cannot have been helped of late by batches of heroin lined with fentanyl hitting the streets with deadly effects.
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North America, The Media, Treatment, War on Drugs
Better to have brain tumour/heart disease/cancer/AIDS than drug addiction?
I’d be better off with a brain tumor. That way you wouldn’t put off getting me the help I need. You’d understand that my condition is only going to get worse and not to hope it will go away by itself. If I had a brain tumour you’d understand I need treatment not indifference.
Partnership for a Drug-Free America advertising campaign
The Partnership for a Drug-Free America wants you to know that drug addiction is a disease, comparable to AIDS, cancer, heart disease or a brain tumour. And until it is recognised as such, addicts will continue to be stigmatised, not receive the attention their problem deserves and thus not come forward for help. In fact, right now you’d be better off having those diseases instead of a drug addiction.
As part of their “Hope, Help & Healing: Using the Media to connect people with help for addiction” campaign, a series of advertisements and a public service announcement video containing this message will go national, after being piloted last year in Houston and Cincinnati.
It is sure to annoy or anger quite a few people, including:
- those who don’t think it is a disease and would note that, unlike cancer or AIDS patients, addicts have managed to give up with limited or even no treatment;
- critics of the War on Drugs who see the illegality of drugs as a major reason why addicts are stigmatised and hesitate to come forward for treatment; and,
- AIDS, cancer, heart disease and brain tumour patients who’d rather take their chances with a drug addiction that others have managed to kick (and not die from).
For more about the campaign and the arguments for and against it, see this article from the Houston Chronicle. Below are all the poster ads, with the “quotes” on them duplicated below. The video can be accessed from the Chronicle article.
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Asia, Treatment
Football therapy for Indian drug addicts
There’s a nice story from AFP about Sahara, an NGO based in south New Delhi that provides treatment for ex-drug addicts and those with HIV/AIDS. What is interesting is that football - soccer - has been used as a key form of therapy for its men in this cricket-mad country. Its female patients receive vocational training in handcrafts and pig farming, which can lead to self-employment.Sahara has been around for 28 years and seems to have a reputation for innovative programs designed to give those previously marginalised in general society the confidence and opportunity to become more integrated with the wider community - and hopefully vice versa. It caters for about 200 patients at any one time.
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Kids and Drugs, Legislation, North America, Treatment
Parents in Alberta, Canada allowed to force kids into detox
Parents in Alberta, Canada will now be able to compel their kids to attend drug detox programs if approved by a provincial court, thanks to the passing of The Protection of Children Abusing Drugs Act on the first of July. Eight successful applications have already been granted in Calgary, with more likely to follow. It is aimed at alcohol- and drug-using children who are at risk of endangering themselves or others, and can be utilised by either parents or legal guardians.
Although some supporters of the bill, tabled by Red Deer MLA Mary Anne Jablonski in October 2005, wanted a 90 day-length detox period, only five days was eventually granted. While disappointed, they thought it was better than nothing and gave support to parents who have lost control. Chris Uttley of Parents Empowering Parents thought that it would at least give the kids “a chance to start thinking clearly”.
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