Dear William: A Father's Memoir of Addiction, Recovery, Love, and Loss #health #holistic

The officer standing in the doorway raised his arm when I stepped forward, blocking my entrance to my son’s apartment. I tried to peer over his blue-uniformed shoulder to gaze around the corner to where the body of my son sat on the couch. My precious William—I saw him take his first breaths at birth, and I’d cried as I looked down at him and pledged to keep him safe forever. Now, within a day of his final breath, I wanted to see him again.“Please,” I said to the officer.“Listen,” he said, and I dragged my eyes from straining to see William to the officer’s face. His brown eyes were stern but not unkind. “You don’t want to see this.”“I do,” I said. “It’s my son.”He glanced over his shoulder, then back at me. “Death isn’t pretty,” he said. “He’s bloated. His bowels turned loose. That’s what happens when people die and are left alone for a day or more.”I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t.“And there’s something else,” he said.“What?”“He’s still got a $20 bill rolled up in his hand used for whatever he was snorting.”I felt the pavement beneath my feet seem to tilt. I reached to steady myself on the splintered doorjamb one of the officers had forced open with a crowbar just minutes before.At his hip, the officer’s radio squawked. I knew the ambulance would be here soon. “Your son—we found him with his iPad in his lap. It looks like he was checking his email to see what time he was due at work in the morning.”Yes, William was proud of holding down that job at the Apple Store. He was trying to turn things around.“It’s typical, really,” the officer continued. “That’s how addicts are. Snorting a fix while hoping to do right and get to work the next day. It’s always about the moment.”This past year, William had been the chief trainer at the Apple Store, and he’d been talking again about heading to law school, the old dream seeming possible once more now that he was sober. He seemed to have put the troubles of the previous year, with his fits and starts in treatment, behind him. They’d kicked William out of one center in Colorado because he drank a bottle of cough syrup. Another center tossed him out because he and a fellow rehabber successfully schemed over two weeks to purchase one fentanyl pill each from someone in the community with a dental appointment. They swallowed their pills in secret, but glassy eyes ratted them out to other patients, who alerted counselors. When asked, William confessed, hoping the admission might move the counselors to give him a second chance. But they sent him packing back to Nashville, where his rehab treatment had begun. One counselor advised us to let William go homeless. “We’ll drop him off at the Salvation Army with his clothing and $10,” he said. “Often, that’s what it takes.”We knew that kind of tough-love, hit-rock-bottom stance might be right, but our parental training couldn’t stomach abandoning our son to sleep at the Salvation Army. Instead, my wife and I drove five hours from our home in Mississippi to Nashville to pick him up. He was fidgety but he hugged us firmly, looking into our eyes. We took him to dinner at Ruth’s Chris Steak House, and, Lord, it felt good to see his broad smile, our twenty-two-year-old son adoring us with warm, brown eyes. We told stories and laughed and smiled and swore the bites of rib eye drenched in hot butter were the best we’d ever had.The next morning, after deep sleep at a Hampton Inn under a thick white comforter with the air conditioner turned down so low William chuckled that he could see his breath, we found a substance treatment program willing to give him another chance.“This dance from one treatment center to another isn’t unusual,” a counselor explained at intake. “Parents drop their child off for a thirty-day treatment and assume it’s going to be thirty days. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg.” My wife and I exchanged a look; that’s exactly what we’d thought the first time we got William treatment. Thirty days and we’d have our boy home, safe and healthy.The counselor continued, “If opiates and benzos are involved, it often takes eight or nine thirty-day stays before they find the rhythm of sobriety and self-assuredness. The hard part for them is staying alive that long.”When we left William in Nashville for that first thirty-day treatment, weeks before Thanksgiving, we imagined we’d have him home for Christmas. In early December, we bought presents that we expected to share, sitting around the tree with our family of five blissfully together. But William needed more treatment. Thanksgiving turned into Christmas, and Christmas turned into the new year, and the new year turned into spring. We missed William so much, but finally, the treatment was beginning to stick. We saw progress in William’s eyes during rare visits, the hollowness carved by substances slowly refilling with remnants of his soul.Now, when parents ask me how they can tell if their kid is on drugs, I say, “Look into their eyes.” Eyes reveal the truth, and eyes cannot hide lies and pain. In William’s eyes, we saw hopeful glimmers that matched improved posture and demeanor. Progress, however, can become the addict’s worst enemy since renewed strength signals opportunity. Addicts go to rehab because substances knocked them down, yet once they are out of treatment and are feeling more confident, they forget just how quickly they can be knocked down again.Yet we, too, were feeling confident about William’s prospects. He’d always been scrappy, a hard worker. In college, he ran the four-hundred-meter hurdles in the Southeastern Conference Outdoor Track and Field Championships, despite the fact that he had short legs for a college hurdler. He overcame that by being determined, confident, and quick. And all the time he was competing at the Division 1 level, he was an A student in the Honors College. He’d set his mind on law school and people had told us that with his resumé he could get into most any law school in America.During that year after his graduation, in 2012, when William was in and out of treatment, I decided to quit my job as a newspaper editor to spend more time with him. I wanted to keep an eye on his progress and be there if he started to slide, so I visited him in Nashville every other week. He worried I was throwing my career away, but I would throw away anything to help him. Also, I had a plan. Instead of the daily grind of editing a newspaper, I thought quitting might provide the opportunity to return to a book project I’d abandoned. The Greatest Fight Ever was my take on the John L. Sullivan versus Jake Kilrain bare-knuckle boxing match of the late 1800s. The Sullivan-Kilrain fight was an epic heavyweight championship held in South Mississippi, lasting seventy-five rounds in sultry July heat, part showmanship theater and part brute brawl. I had researched the story for years and was once excited about explaining its role in the playing—and hyping—of sports today. I enjoyed sharing anecdotes over the years, like how the mayor of New Orleans served as a referee. Or that the notorious Midwestern gunslinger Bat Masterson took bets ringside on the fight, which set the standard for sports’ bigger-than-life culture that continues today.I had written other books by then, including some that found commercial success, but looking back at them from a distance, I judged none to be as excellent and useful as they could have been. I wanted the Sullivan-Kilrain fight story to change that. But William noticed as we visited that my enthusiasm for the story had evaporated. I wasn’t spending time crafting the manuscript.“You need to finish your book,” William said that April when I visited him in Nashville. We were eating breakfast at a café known for pancakes, but I was devouring bacon and eggs as William wrestled with a waffle doused with jelly.“I’m trying,” I said between sips of coffee. “It’s easy to tell a story, but it’s more difficult to tell a good story. That’s what I’m working at.”“You are a good writer. You can do it if you get focused.”“It’s hard to immerse yourself in a championship boxing match from the 1800s when you and your family are in the fight of a lifetime,” I said.William looked at me over his jelly-slathered waffle. He knew I wasn’t just referring to his struggles. I was referring to my own as well. Two years earlier, I’d almost destroyed our family completely through a string of spectacularly bad decisions, and we, individually and collectively, were fragile.“William,” I said. “I’m worried about you. I’m worried about me. I’m worried about all of us.”We hadn’t talked so much about my own self-immolation. But now William turned to me. “I’m sorry if the mistakes I’ve made were what made it worse for you. I mean—” he looked off and took a breath. “For so long, I thought drugs were for fun, and I didn’t realize how deep I was in. And then it was too late. I needed them. I’m sorry for making it harder on you and Mom.”“No, William, don’t put that on yourself. I caused my own problems. And I want to apologize to you too. I’m sorry for when you struggled in college and I was so caught up in my own life or career that I wasn’t there when you needed me. I failed you.”We went on that way for a while, saying the things that had burdened us, the things we’d needed to say for a long time. That weekend was our best, most direct connection in years. I was glad to sit beside my son over coffee and a breakfast we could live without for conversation we’d been dying for, glad I’d quit a decent editing job, glad even to stop pretending I was writing a book that no longer held my interest.“Maybe there’s another book you should be writing, Dad,” he said.“About sports?”“About us.”I looked at his plate, the waffle barely eaten. I looked at his eyes, shining with encouragement.“Do you ever think maybe other people could learn something from hearing about our story? I mean, when we were growing up, no one would have looked at our family, this all-American family that pretty much lacked for nothing, and predict how bad we’d crash. But maybe hearing what happened to us could help people. Maybe that’s the story you should tell.”“Maybe we should tell it together,” I said after a bite.“I’m not ready yet,” he said. “But one day, we’ll do it.”“Yes,” I said, clutching his hand in mine. “One day, we’ll do it.”We said goodbye then and told each other we loved each other, and I walked to my car.“Dad,” William called out.“Yeah?” I turned over my shoulder.“Make sure you finish that book,” he said.I stopped. “What book? The Greatest Fight Ever?”He smiled and waved goodbye.I wiped tears away, then drove home.That was the last time I ever saw my firstborn child.Five sleeps later, William died. He didn’t plan on dying. But the early days of sobriety can be the loneliest days. And it’s never hard for an addict to find an excuse. Excerpted from Dear William: A Father's Memoir of Addiction, Recovery, Love, and Loss by David Magee, available November 2, 2021 at Amazon and elsewhere.

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Individual dietary choices can add – or take away – minutes, hours and years of life #health #holistic

Vegetarian and vegan options have become standard fare in the American diet, from upscale restaurants to fast-food chains. And many people know that the food choices they make affect their own health as well as that of the planet.But on a daily basis, it’s hard to know how much individual choices, such as buying mixed greens at the grocery store or ordering chicken wings at a sports bar, might translate to overall personal and environmental health. That’s the gap we hope to fill with our research.We are part of a team of researchers with expertise in food sustainability and environmental life cycle assessment, epidemiology and environmental health and nutrition. We are working to gain a deeper understanding beyond the often overly simplistic animal-versus-plant diet debate and to identify environmentally sustainable foods that also promote human health.Building on this multi-disciplinary expertise, we combined 15 nutritional health-based dietary risk factors with 18 environmental indicators to evaluate, classify and prioritize more than 5,800 individual foods.Ultimately, we wanted to know: Are drastic dietary changes required to improve our individual health and reduce environmental impacts? And does the entire population need to become vegan to make a meaningful difference for human health and that of the planet?Putting hard numbers on food choicesIn our new study in the research journal Nature Food, we provide some of the first concrete numbers for the health burden of various food choices. We analyzed the individual foods based on their composition to calculate each food item’s net benefits or impacts.The Health Nutritional Index that we developed turns this information into minutes of life lost or gained per serving size of each food item consumed. For instance, we found that eating one hot dog costs a person 36 minutes of “healthy” life. In comparison, we found that eating a serving size of 30 grams of nuts and seeds provides a gain of 25 minutes of healthy life – that is, an increase in good-quality and disease-free life expectancy.Our study also showed that substituting only 10% of daily caloric intake of beef and processed meats for a diverse mix of whole grains, fruits, vegetables, nuts, legumes and select seafood could reduce, on average, the dietary carbon footprint of a U.S. consumer by one-third and add 48 healthy minutes of life per day. This is a substantial improvement for such a limited dietary change.Relative positions of select foods, from apples to hot dogs, are shown on a carbon footprint versus nutritional health map. Foods scoring well, shown in green, have beneficial effects on human health and a low environmental footprint. (Austin Thomason/Michigan Photography and University of Michigan, CC BY-ND)How did we crunch the numbers?We based our Health Nutritional Index on a large epidemiological study called the Global Burden of Disease, a comprehensive global study and database that was developed with the help of more than 7,000 researchers around the world. The Global Burden of Disease determines the risks and benefits associated with multiple environmental, metabolic and behavioral factors – including 15 dietary risk factors.Our team took that population-level epidemiological data and adapted it down to the level of individual foods. Taking into account more than 6,000 risk estimates specific to each age, gender, disease and risk, and the fact that there are about a half-million minutes in a year, we calculated the health burden that comes with consuming one gram’s worth of food for each of the dietary risk factors.For example, we found that, on average, 0.45 minutes are lost per gram of any processed meat that a person eats in the U.S. We then multiplied this number by the corresponding food profiles that we previously developed. Going back to the example of a hot dog, the 61 grams of processed meat in a hot dog sandwich results in 27 minutes of healthy life lost due to this amount of processed meat alone. Then, when considering the other risk factors, like the sodium and trans fatty acids inside the hot dog – counterbalanced by the benefit of its polyunsaturated fat and fibers – we arrived at the final value of 36 minutes of healthy life lost per hot dog.We repeated this calculation for more than 5,800 foods and mixed dishes. We then compared scores from the health indices with 18 different environmental metrics, including carbon footprint, water use and air pollution-induced human health impacts. Finally, using this health and environmental nexus, we color-coded each food item as green, yellow or red. Like a traffic light, green foods have beneficial effects on health and a low environmental impact and should be increased in the diet, while red foods should be reduced.Where do we go from here?Our study allowed us to identify certain priority actions that people can take to both improve their health and reduce their environmental footprint.When it comes to environmental sustainability, we found striking variations both within and between animal-based and plant-based foods. For the “red” foods, beef has the largest carbon footprint across its entire life cycle – twice as high as pork or lamb and four times that of poultry and dairy. From a health standpoint, eliminating processed meat and reducing overall sodium consumption provides the largest gain in healthy life compared with all other food types.Beef consumption had the highest negative environmental impacts, and processed meat had the most important overall adverse health effects. (ID 35528731 © Ikonoklastfotografie | Dreamstime.com)Therefore, people might consider eating less of foods that are high in processed meat and beef, followed by pork and lamb. And notably, among plant-based foods, greenhouse-grown vegetables scored poorly on environmental impacts due to the combustion emissions from heating.Foods that people might consider increasing are those that have high beneficial effects on health and low environmental impacts. We observed a lot of flexibility among these “green” choices, including whole grains, fruits, vegetables, nuts, legumes and low-environmental impact fish and seafood. These items also offer options for all income levels, tastes and cultures.Our study also shows that when it comes to food sustainability, it is not sufficient to only consider the amount of greenhouse gases emitted – the so-called carbon footprint. Water-saving techniques, such as drip irrigation and the reuse of gray water – or domestic wastewater such as that from sinks and showers – can also make important steps toward lowering the water footprint of food production.A limitation of our study is that the epidemiological data does not enable us to differentiate within the same food group, such as the health benefits of a watermelon versus an apple. In addition, individual foods always need to be considered within the context of one’s individual diet, considering the maximum level above which foods are not any more beneficial – one cannot live forever by just increasing fruit consumption.At the same time, our Health Nutrient Index has the potential to be regularly adapted, incorporating new knowledge and data as they become available. And it can be customized worldwide, as has already been done in Switzerland.It was encouraging to see how small, targeted changes could make such a meaningful difference for both health and environmental sustainability – one meal at a time.[You’re smart and curious about the world. So are The Conversation’s authors and editors. You can get our highlights each weekend.]Olivier Jolliet, Professor of Environmental Health Sciences, University of Michigan and Katerina S. Stylianou, Research Associate in Environmental Health Sciences, University of MichiganThis article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Do I Need To Quit Drinking? 6 Surprising Signs #health #holistic

How do you know when it’s time to quit drinking or take a break from booze? 

I used to google this topic endlessly.

Because I wasn’t a rock bottom drinker, I was never sure if I was overreacting or not. 

But there are always clues that it’s time to stop.

Here are 6 surprising signs you probably haven’t considered yet… 

Key points

1. You’ve always got one eye on the booze

You know exactly how much is left in the bottle. You keep an eye on what everyone else is drinking and wonder if there’s enough left; you often feel anxious about getting to the shops in time so you can buy more.

 

2. You’re touchy about your drinking

Perhaps a friend makes an offhand, jokey comment about your love of wine and you replay the remark over and over in your head. What did they really mean by it? You worry about what other people think. 

 

3. You’re relieved when you can drink

You worry that you won’t be able to drink in the way you want, so it’s a relief when you can. You feel delighted when someone else volunteers to drive, or you get home early so you can have a few drinks alone.

 

4. You create a lot of rules around your drinking

Perhaps you make yourself wait until a certain time of day. Maybe you have rules about what you can drink or where. These rules can appear to work initially, but you’re soon back to square one.

 

5. There’s a lingering feeling of fear and unease

You have this sense that something bad is about to happen, you’re just not sure what. Perhaps you’ve already had a few close calls or put yourself in situations that could’ve ended with you hurting yourself or someone else. 

 

6. You’re here

If you’re asking yourself whether you need to quit drinking, then there’s a very good chance you do. If alcohol is making you unhappy, you have nothing to lose by experimenting with sobriety and taking a proper break from booze.

The post Do I Need To Quit Drinking? 6 Surprising Signs appeared first on The Sober School.

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Tarzana Recovery Center #health #holistic

Tarzana Recovery Center (TRC) is a residential treatment center based in the San Fernando Valley neighborhood of Tarzana that provides treatment for substance use disorder, alcohol use disorder, dual diagnosis, and more. The facility offers an accredited sub-acute detox program certified by Integrated Management Systems. Treatment at Tarzana Recovery Center also features an array of in-residence plans and case management, as well as a partial hospitalization program (PHP) as part of their program aftercare. As their website notes, their inpatient treatment seeks to assist clients in achieving and sustaining long-term sobriety, and to guide clients on "a path of physical, mental, and spiritual health."Surveyed alumni gave a number of reasons for choosing TRC for treatment. The most frequently cited factors were the quality of treatment and accommodations, privacy, price, and location, with quality of treatment ranking highest among respondents. One alum noted that the staff and fellow clients "felt like family, [and] I will remain in touch and some will remain lifelong friends, I hope." Accommodations, which were the second most frequently cited reason, range from shared rooms with roommates to single room options; roommates were "very respectful" and even "awesome." Clients are expected to keep their rooms clean but are not assigned chores. Alumni described their fellow residents as a "refreshingly wide range of people." Clients were a mix of men and women of all ages and ethnicities, and many were described as professional, but there were "college student age people" as well. Alumni considered their fellow clients "regular people looking to address what was holding them back in life." The average length of stay was 30 days, and the most common issue driving respondents to seek treatment at TRC was substance use disorder. Others sought help for alcoholism or "dual addiction(s)," "gender-identity issues," "relationship issues," and "compulsive behaviors."The food served at TRC was described as "very gourmet" but also with a "home meal feeling." Meals were frequently described as "healthy" and clients were allowed to "have choices and input" on the menu selections. Clients with vegan diets were pleased with the range of options available to them, while fresh fish and seafood and Italian food were cited as favorite meals, as was the cookout that is offered as part of TRC's many activities. Coffee was made several times a day, and snacks were both plentiful and healthy. One alum felt the food was "too healthy," while another was "grateful to have a meal."Alumni described their days at TRC as "busy," with frequent involvement in a number of different activities. A couple former residents noted that staying busy is "part of the deal at Tarzana," with an emphasis on "getting and staying involved in your life." The program was "well-structured" and "with an emphasis on recovery through recreation and learning to have fun sober." TRC's treatment includes a "custom treatment plan" developed with the client, as well as one-on-one meetings with a residential treatment case manager – typically, a certified alcohol and drug counselor and a personal therapist. Evidence-based therapies such as cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), dialectical behavioral therapy (DBT) and eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) are also offered, as is meditation, equine therapy, pet therapy, music therapy, yoga, and professional massage therapy.While TRC's program does include a 12-step element, alumni viewed it as just one part of their treatment plan. "I think the foundation is somewhat 12-step, but they were really trying to provide me with something I wouldn't find in meetings alone," wrote one alum. Others appreciated the fact that the emphasis seemed to be more on "learning to actually live one's life sober and have fun." Most cited the groups and interaction with the staff as the most memorable element of their stay at TRC. Staff was regarded as "very caring and engaged" and "very understanding," but also with an element of tough love, which many considered "out of love and care."During non-treatment hours, clients had a number of activities and amenities available to them. The latter includes a pool, gym facilities, and fitness classes, while volleyball, cooking classes, bike riding were among the many activities. Clients could also take advantage of numerous off-site activities, including trips to the beach, surfing, bowling, virtual reality gaming, go-kart racing, and other weekend options, which were "super enjoyable."Access to a phone was described by alumni as "liberal" but also restricted while in detox, during group sessions, as well as after 10 p.m. (phones were returned at 10 a.m.). Access to television, Internet, media, and work obligations were "frequent" and the staff was "accommodating" in that regard.TRC's treatment includes 24/7 care from a diverse array of medical professionals, from doctors and nurse practitioners to therapists, mental health counselors, and alcohol and drug rehab technicians. The staff was described as "very helpful" and "always on call." Doctors were even available upon request via Facetime and Zoom, which was "helpful," while counselors at TRC were described as "exceptional."When asked about how they've fared since treatment at TRC, all respondents answered that they had been successful in maintaining sobriety for months, with some approaching their first year without substances. Some found it more challenging that others; as one alumni noted, "It is a daily reprieve. However, the tools they provided me have helped me stay clean for nine months now." Another reported feeling "far better equipped to handle things in my life" and one summed up: "I have never been this proud of myself."When asked to summarize their time in treatment at TRC, many alumni expressed gratitude for the center's staff. "I feel VERY fortunate to have found this treatment center," wrote one alum. Another noted that the staff made them feel "at home," and praised the staff for being "here to help me with whatever I needed." One cited an example of the staff's willingness to help by noting that transportation was arranged for a homeless client to come to Tarzana and stay for free, adding that the client "turned his life around."Another seemed to encompass their fellow alum's feelings by "highly recommend[ing] it to the next addict." They added that "the program helped me become the person I am right now, and I can't thank them enough."

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7 Ways 'Back To School' Can Help You Create a Better Routine #health #holistic

January may be the time for New Year’s resolutions, but for many people September presents another opportunity for a fresh start. Kids return to school, the chaotic summer schedules quiet down, and many people transition into their fall and winter routines. That makes September a perfect time to check in on your routines, evaluate what’s working and what’s not, and make the changes you need to live your healthiest life.Here’s how to get started.Check in with yourselfBefore you make any big changes, take some time to check in with yourself. Journaling can be helpful, but you can also just take yourself on a walk or find another way to have an internal conversation, uninterrupted. Ask yourself what feels good in your life right now? What changes are just screaming to be made? Use these as directions to evaluate what you should do next.Make a listAfter you’ve taken some time to think about what you’d like to keep and change in your life, get out your pen and paper and make a list. The staff at Sunshine Coast Health Centre, a non 12-step drug and alcohol rehabilitation center in British Columbia, recommend making three lists to evaluate different areas of your life. First, start with a list of things you’re grateful for. Next, list your preferred activities, or the ways that you enjoy spending time. This can guide you in deciding how to prioritize and schedule your time. Finally, list the resources that are available to you if needed.Update your routineSummer can be a tough time to keep on schedule. The free and easy living is nice, but can become overwhelming after a while. Think about what you let slip from your routine, and what you would like to reincorporate. This is especially important as society begins opening up again. You might have the opportunity to volunteer, participate in alumni programs or take in-person classes for the first time in more than a year. Look back on your list of preferred activities and determine how you can incorporate more of those into your days.Get organized. Cooler weather means that most people will be spending more time inside during the coming months. To keep yourself happy and healthy, you should start with a clean slate in the house. Removing unnecessary clutter can help you keep a clear head, and knowing that all of your belongings have a physical space where they belong can help you stay organized. If you feel overwhelmed, start with one room at a time, donating things you no longer use and finding systems that work for the things you have left.Reach out for help.Think back to that last list you made: the resources that are available to you. These might be community programs, alumni supports or people you have close relationships with. Now, think about the areas in your life where you could use a bit of extra support. How can you use your resources to build your strengths in those areas? Maybe you’re looking to get more physical activity, and could recruit a friend to be your gym or walking buddy. Perhaps you can utilize a free community credit resources to help get your finances back in order. Remember: we all need support sometimes, and reaching out for help is a strength, not a weakness.Set a sleep routine. What’s the key to good mental, physical and emotional health? For many people, it’s getting a solid night’s sleep. Tweek your routine so that you get the recommended 8 hours of shut-eye. If you are a parent, try to get the kids in bed earlier so that you can have some time to yourself, but still get to bed at a recent hour. If you have trouble sleeping, remember to shut down the screens and turn to an old-fashioned book or bath in the hour before bed.Decide to say no.Sometimes, what you say no to is just as important as the things you decide to do. Especially after a year at home, there’s a temptation to take every opportunity, but that can leave you overstimulated and overtired. Instead of diving back into everything all at once, choose a few meaningful (or preferred) activities to focus on. Set boundaries on things that stress you out, whether it’s joining the PTA or helping with carpooling. Remember, your time is one of your most valuable resources, and you get to decide how to spend it.It’s not a new year, but it is a new start in many areas of North America. At this junction you can decide what you want your fall and winter to be like, and what you would like to leave behind.Sunshine Coast Health Centre is a non 12-step drug and alcohol rehabilitation center in British Columbia. Learn more here.

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How Long Have You Been Worrying About Your Drinking? #health #holistic

How long have you been worrying about your drinking? 

Can you remember the first time you thought, “Ok, perhaps I should do something about this?”

It might be further back than you think. 

This kind of information is really important, but we’re very good at misremembering it.

In fact, I recently discovered I’d been getting this wrong too…

Key points:

Why we get this wrong

When it comes to alcohol, our brain wants to tell us that our drinking isn’t really that big of a deal. We want to believe that it’s not bad enough for us to stop; that it’s not the right time yet. That way, we don’t need to change or take any action.

 

Why this matters

If you’ve been quietly worrying about your drinking for months – or years – you will have lost hours thinking about it. You’ll have spent days beating yourself up and wondering if you should change. That matters. The cumulative effect of that shouldn’t be overlooked.

 

Getting the date right

Look for evidence – when was the first time you took a small step to tackling your drinking? Perhaps you bought a book about alcohol free living. Can you work out when and where? If you follow my blog, how long have you been receiving my emails for? Is it longer than you think?

 

Ready to take a break from drinking and create an alcohol free life you love? Click here for details of my online course.

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What Is the Difference Between Street Fentanyl and Pharmaceutical Fentanyl? #health #holistic

Statistics regarding the number of overdoses and fatalities involving the synthetic opioid fentanyl continue to paint a grim picture in the United States. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released preliminary data showing that overdose deaths in the United States rose 29.4% in 2020 to an estimated 93,331, including 69,710 involving opioid drugs, mainly fentanyl. Every state has reported a spike or rise in fatal overdoses during the COVID pandemic. One prevalent issue is that the COVID crisis is now getting worse due to the abundance of illicit fentanyl and fentanyl analogues on our streets.Furthermore, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention noted that drugs like fentanyl are the primary reason for a 38% increase in overdose deaths between May 2019 and May 2020. During that same time period, 18 U.S. jurisdictions with available data on synthetic opioids saw increases of more than 50%, while 10 Western states reported a 98% increase. Adding to mounting concerns is the reduced availability of treatment options due to the COVID-19 pandemic.Fentanyl continues to be at the heart of the overdose epidemic, mainly illicit but also in prescription form. Fentanyl analogues are made from raw materials originating primarily in China and manufactured and sold to the United States by Mexican drug cartels. Though both forms are extremely powerful and possibly lethal, variants found in illicit mixtures are far more dangerous and affect users differently.The prescription form of fentanyl is a Schedule II controlled substance, which means that the medication is considered a drug "with a high potential for abuse, with use potentially leading to severe psychological or physical dependence," as noted in the Controlled Substances Act, which is overseen by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Prescription fentanyl is used primarily to treat patients enduring severe pain from surgery, cancer, or significant traumatic injuries.Illicit fentanyl comes from two sources: it is diverted from prescription medication and sold on the street, or manufactured from other chemical sources, and then sold. Diverted fentanyl can be obtained by extracting the drug from the patch and then converted to injectable form, or by prescriptions obtained illegally from a medical professional or a person with a valid prescription. While diverted fentanyl poses serious dangers to illicit users, the illegally manufactured form fentanyl has a myriad of ways to harm individuals. The raw materials produced in China are made without quality controls imposed on the pharmaceutical variety; two milligrams of the drug can be enough to cause a fatal overdose, depending on the individual's tolerance and other health factors. The DEA has reported seizing counterfeit medication containing 5.1 milligrams of fentanyl per tablet – twice the lethal amount and more than capable of killing multiple users.Even users who seek to avoid using fentanyl may inadvertently ingest the drug. Numerous state and federal investigations have found fentanyl used as a cheap additive to boost the potency of drugs like heroin, cocaine, MDMA (also known as ecstasy or molly), or methamphetamine. It has also been found in counterfeit analogues of prescription opioids such as oxycodone. Combining such potent narcotics in a single dose has caused fatal interactions in increasingly high and frequent numbers.Symptoms of fentanyl overdose are similar to those experienced with other narcotics: chest pain, labored breathing, vomiting, pale or bluish color to the face, fingernails, and lips. Seizure or unconsciousness frequently follows, and unless treatment is immediately sought and revival is attempted with the opioid overdose reversal drug Naloxone (Narcan), the afflicted individual can lapse into a coma or possibly even suffer a fatal overdose. Additionally, recent scientific data suggests that the toxic effects of fentanyl and its analogues may include compromised pulmonary function due to mechanisms not reversible by naloxone alone. Immediate comprehensive medical care is needed for every suspected drug overdose situation.How to combat this rising tide of fentanyl overdose? Although addiction is a multi-facet condition, Clare Waismann, a substance use disorder counselor, addiction specialist, and the founder of Waismann Method, an opioid treatment program and rapid detox center, believes that mental health care and medically assisted detox should be accessible not just to those who can afford it but also to those who are in need. In today's world, we are living through such an unsettling reality. Additionally, so many people have to deal with the trauma and consequences caused by COVID and its attendant restrictions— medical treatment for opioid dependence must be available in public hospitals along with necessary psychological support, says Mrs. Waismann. Additionally, we need a more substantial commitment to combating the rise of opioids, especially the influx of fentanyl to every corner of our country."We have the medical science and resources to help those suffering from fentanyl addiction. Now we need the right priorities." - Clare Waismann.  https://ift.tt/3ncLQ0T

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I Want To Quit But My Partner Still Drinks #health #holistic

“I want to quit drinking, but my partner isn’t interested.”

“I don’t think I can do it without their support.”

I know it can feel hard when you’re thinking about going alcohol free, but your other half has no plans to stop.

So how do you navigate this? There’s one big thing you need to remember, as I explain in this video:

Key points:

Having a partner who drinks doesn’t have to be a problem

If you’re adamant that you can’t quit unless your partner does, here’s what you need to know: about half the women I work with have husbands and wives who don’t want to stop. It’s not a big deal, provided you’re getting support elsewhere.

Remember this too: I work with plenty of women who are single, or who have the most supportive partners you could imagine – and yet those women have still found sobriety hard. Having zero temptation at home isn’t the key to success.

 

Stop making your circumstances your problem

Here’s the hard truth: when you blame your life or your circumstances for your drinking, you’re always going to find a reason why this can’t happen for you. We’ve got to stop waiting to feel supported by others and start supporting ourselves first. 

The good news? When you take ownership of the fact that you’re 100% responsible for your drinking, it’s also very liberating, because it means that you don’t have to change anyone else in order to change you. Changing yourself is much easier than trying to change others! 

 

Remember: you are your own person

Take a moment to think about all the ways in which you are different from your partner. There will be many areas of life in which their behaviour does not influence your beliefs, choices or habits. 

Letting go of alcohol can be just another one of those things where they make one choice and you make another. Your relationship is about so much more than the liquid you pour into your glass. 

 

For help and support to quit drinking, click here for details of my online class

Download your free Wine O'Clock Survival Guide!

(It’ll help keep you on track tonight)

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The Gold Cure for Alcoholism #health #holistic

One of the most interesting aspects of the study of early addiction treatment is seeing that so many concepts which are believed to have been originated by AA and the modern disease theory were actually fully developed by the end of the 19th century. Another is that the battle between those who promote pharmaceutical treatments for addiction and those who promote spiritual solutions also dates back to the 19th century.The story of addiction treatment in the late 19th and early 20th centuries is a fascinating story of a battle between medical dogmatism, pragmatism, and profiteering. Orthodox medicine of the 19th century promoted the dogma that the only possible treatment for alcoholism or other addictions was confinement in inebriate asylums for years at a time, where inmates could be remade through moral therapy. The inebriate asylum movement got its start in the mid-19th century with the founding of the Binghamton, New York Inebriate Asylum (opened 1864) and the Washingtonian Home in Boston (opened 1857). The inebriate asylum movement, led by orthodox doctors specializing in mental disease, held that pharmaceutical treatments for inebriety were an impossibility and that inebriates could only be treated by moral means such as work and religion. Their stance was that pharmaceuticals were only to be used during detoxification, and sparingly even then.Then, in 1886, a Russian doctor named Nikolai M. Popoff published an article stating that when alcoholics were given injections of strychnine nitrate, they spontaneously stopped drinking in two to three days. The use of strychnine as a medicine may sound strange to 21st century ears; however, strychnine was an extremely commonly used medicine in the 19th century, one of its most common uses was as a cardiac stimulant.An English-language summary of Popoff's article was published in the May 1, 1886 issue of the British Medical Journal, and this summary was reprinted in countless English-language medical journals. Numerous other Russian doctors replicated Popoff's experimental treatment, and these were also translated and published in many English-language medical journals. However, the Quarterly Journal of Inebriety, America's only specialty addiction treatment journal during this era, pointedly ignored the Russian discovery and did not print a single word about it.However, a railroad surgeon and patent medicine salesman named Leslie E. Keeley, who lived in the dusty little prairie town of Dwight, Illinois, heard about the Russian cure, and decided to give it a try. Keeley had already been selling a patent medicine which he called the Double Chloride of Gold Cure for alcoholism since 1880. The main ingredient in Keeley's Gold Cure appears to have been tincture of red cinchona, and it is questionable how efficacious it was. It contained no gold. But when Keeley added the strychnine injections to his treatment regimen in 1886, he found that he had a miracle cure on his hands. Keeley found that calling his treatment the Gold Cure was a great marketing strategy, so he retained the name, although the treatment still contained no gold.Keeley, of course, never gave any credit to the Russians for the discovery of the cure. Instead, Keeley marketed the cure as a secret formula which he had discovered through years of painstaking research and experimentation. It was a motif which Americans ate up: the simple country doctor who solved a medical problem which had baffled the great and learned doctors on the east coast. The stories of Thomas Edison and the Wright brothers are examples of this same motif.At first, the news of Keeley's miraculous Gold Cure spread by word of mouth, then, in February of 1891, Joseph Medill, editor of the Chicago Tribune, published an endorsement of the Keeley Cure in his newspaper, giving it national publicity. Medill had initially been skeptical of the Keeley Cure; therefore, he had sent several of the worst drunkards in Chicago to Dwight for treatment in order to test the efficacy of the cure. All had returned to Chicago unable to drink whiskey. The floodgates broke, and by the end of 1891, Keeley was treating nearly 1,000 patients a day at Dwight. Subsequently, 126 Keeley Institutes opened worldwide, and at least 300 imitators popped up, running institutes which claimed to offer a gold cure which was as good as or better than Keeley's. By the time the Keeley Institute closed in 1966, half a million people had taken the Keeley Cure.The members of the inebriate asylum movement hated the Keeley Cure. The inebriate asylum movement had never been a success, only a few were ever opened. Moreover, their cure rate was only about 20% to 30%. Dr. Keeley bragged that his success rate was 95%. Although Keeley was clearly exaggerating, it is quite clear that those who completed a 28-day course of injections at a Keeley Institute were unable to drink whiskey when they left the institute, although some made an effort to overcome their aversion and eventually resumed their drinking careers. Many others used the initial treatment as a springboard to permanent abstinence from alcohol. Keeley graduates also banded together to form a mutual support group called the Keeley League, which had over 30,000 members at the height of its popularity. The members of the inebriate asylum movement mounted vicious attacks on the Keeley Cure in medical journals and the popular press; these attacks were, however, filled with specious arguments and logical fallacies. Rather than engage in debate, Dr. Keeley simply ignored them and laughed all the way to the bank.The Keeley Institutes began encountering some stiff competition when the Neal Institutes were opened in 1909. The Neal Institutes offered an early form of conditioned taste aversion therapy which paired an emetic with a drink of whiskey, causing the person to immediately vomit up the whiskey. Although vomiting when intoxicated does not create an aversion, vomiting while sober does. Later research at the Shadel Sanitarium in Seattle Washington in the 1940s would produce statistics which proved that this form of aversion therapy was highly effective for alcoholics. However, Dr. Benjamin Neal and the Neal institutes were satisfied in finding the treatment highly profitable. Whereas the Keeley Treatment took 28 days and required hypodermic injections four times a day, the Neal Treatment only took three days, and no injections were used. About 80 Neal Institutes were opened worldwide.Treatment demand fell precipitously around the time the US became involved in World War One (1917 - 1918), and most of the proprietary cure institutes had closed by the advent of national alcohol prohibition in 1920, although a few managed to survive. After the repeal of prohibition in 1933, many new proprietary treatment facilities such as the Samaritan Institutions and the HALCO institutes sprung up; however, these new institutes all relied on aversion therapy with emetics, which was simpler and faster than the strychnine cure. The Gold Cure was available in only a few surviving Keeley Institutes and by the late 1940s, the Keeley Institute in Dwight had abandoned the Gold Cure in favor of 12-step treatment.When I began researching the early proprietary cure institutes of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, I found that there were no detailed accounts of their history in existence. Most articles written about them had simply and uncritically repeated the diatribes attacking these institutes which had been published in the medical journals of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Therefore, I felt compelled to write a detailed history of these immensely popular treatments. This required going back to primary sources, i.e., the newspaper stories, medical journals, pamphlets, etc. published during this era. A fascinating and previously untold story emerged which I have published in two books, Strychnine and Gold (Part 1) and Strychnine and Gold (Part 2). Each is over 400 pages in length, and they are available at Amazon.  

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Why using fear to promote COVID-19 vaccination and mask wearing could backfire #health #holistic

You probably still remember public service ads that scared you: The cigarette smoker with throat cancer. The victims of a drunk driver. The guy who neglected his cholesterol lying in a morgue with a toe tag.With new, highly transmissible variants of SARS-CoV-2 now spreading, some health professionals have started calling for the use of similar fear-based strategies to persuade people to follow social distancing rules and get vaccinated.There is compelling evidence that fear can change behavior, and there have been ethical arguments that using fear can be justified, particularly when threats are severe. As public health professors with expertise in history and ethics, we have been open in some situations to using fear in ways that help individuals understand the gravity of a crisis without creating stigma.But while the pandemic stakes might justify using hard-hitting strategies, the nation’s social and political context right now might cause it to backfire.Fear as a strategy has waxed and wanedFear can be a powerful motivator, and it can create strong, lasting memories. Public health officials’ willingness to use it to help change behavior in public health campaigns has waxed and waned for more than a century.From the late 19th century into the early 1920s, public health campaigns commonly sought to stir fear. Common tropes included flies menacing babies, immigrants represented as a microbial pestilence at the gates of the country, voluptuous female bodies with barely concealed skeletal faces who threatened to weaken a generation of troops with syphilis. The key theme was using fear to control harm from others.Library of CongressFollowing World War II, epidemiological data emerged as the foundation of public health, and use of fear fell out of favor. The primary focus at the time was the rise of chronic “lifestyle” diseases, such as heart disease. Early behavioral research concluded fear backfired. An early, influential study, for example, suggested that when people became anxious about behavior, they might tune out or even engage more in dangerous behaviors, like smoking or drinking, to cope with the anxiety stimulated by fear-based messaging.But by the 1960s, health officials were trying to change behaviors related to smoking, eating and exercise, and they grappled with the limits of data and logic as tools to help the public. They turned again to scare tactics to try to deliver a gut punch. It was not enough to know that some behaviors were deadly. We had to react emotionally.Although there were concerns about using fear to manipulate people, leading ethicists began to argue that it could help people understand what was in their self-interest. A bit of a scare could help cut through the noise created by industries that made fat, sugar and tobacco alluring. It could help make population-level statistics personal.NYC HealthAnti-tobacco campaigns were the first to show the devastating toll of smoking. They used graphic images of diseased lungs, of smokers gasping for breath through tracheotomies and eating through tubes, of clogged arteries and failing hearts. Those campaigns worked.And then came AIDS. Fear of the disease was hard to untangle from fear of those who suffered the most: gay men, sex workers, drug users, and the black and brown communities. The challenge was to destigmatize, to promote the human rights of those who only stood to be further marginalized if shunned and shamed. When it came to public health campaigns, human rights advocates argued, fear stigmatized and undermined the effort.When obesity became a public health crisis, and youth smoking rates and vaping experimentation were sounding alarm bells, public health campaigns once again adopted fear to try to shatter complacency. Obesity campaigns sought to stir parental dread about youth obesity. Evidence of the effectiveness of this fear-based approach mounted.Evidence, ethics and politicsSo, why not use fear to drive up vaccination rates and the use of masks, lockdowns and distancing now, at this moment of national fatigue? Why not sear into the national imagination images of makeshift morgues or of people dying alone, intubated in overwhelmed hospitals?Before we can answer these questions, we must first ask two others: Would fear be ethically acceptable in the context of COVID-19, and would it work?For people in high-risk groups – those who are older or have underlying conditions that put them at high risk for severe illness or death – the evidence on fear-based appeals suggests that hard-hitting campaigns can work. The strongest case for the efficacy of fear-based appeals comes from smoking: Emotional PSAs put out by organizations like the American Cancer Society beginning in the 1960s proved to be a powerful antidote to tobacco sales ads. Anti-tobacco crusaders found in fear a way to appeal to individuals’ self-interests.At this political moment, however, there are other considerations.Health officials have faced armed protesters outside their offices and homes. Many people seem to have lost the capacity to distinguish truth from falsehood.By instilling fear that government will go too far and erode civil liberties, some groups developed an effective political tool for overriding rationality in the face of science, even the evidence-based recommendations supporting face masks as protection against the coronavirus.Reliance on fear for public health messaging now could further erode trust in public health officials and scientists at a critical juncture.The nation desperately needs a strategy that can help break through pandemic denialism and through the politically charged environment, with its threatening and at times hysterical rhetoric that has created opposition to sound public health measures.Even if ethically warranted, fear-based tactics may be dismissed as just one more example of political manipulation and could carry as much risk as benefit.Instead, public health officials should boldly urge and, as they have during other crisis periods in the past, emphasize what has been sorely lacking: consistent, credible communication of the science at the national level.Amy Lauren Fairchild, Dean and Professor, College of Public Health, The Ohio State University and Ronald Bayer, Professor Sociomedical Sciences, Columbia UniversityThis article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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