Sober N Clean

It's an uphill battle many alcoholics struggle with: resisting the craving to drink. While it's certainly no cure, some doctors say a monthly shot could help more alcohol-dependent patients fight the urge.

“Vivitrol is an injectable form of a medicine known as Naltrexone. Naltrexone is available in oral form, but this is an injectable form, which is given to the patient once-a-month for several reasons: to increase compliance, so patients don't have to worry about taking the pill; and it delivers a level of drug, which is really very adequate for dealing with alcohol issues,” says Clinical Assistant Professor at NYU Dr. Steven Lamm.

Using a drug to treat addiction may seem ironic, but doctors say it can work. How? The drug blocks the brain receptor that may associate reward benefits with drinking. There are other drugs to help with alcohol addiction, but they have to be taken daily, and often with pretty harsh side effects like sweating, vomiting, and rapid heart beat.

Doctors say the once-a-month injectable cuts down on that. One patient says she wouldn't call the shot a miracle drug, but it's the only thing that's helped her with 15 years of addiction.

“It's been very helpful. I haven’t been drinking as much. I don't drink every day. I used to before I took Vivitrol and when I do drink, I drink a lot less than I used to,” says the recovery alcoholic, who asked to remain anonymous.

While the shot doesn't necessarily stop alcoholics from drinking, doctors say being able to dramatically reduce the amount of heavy drinking days for patients has a huge impact on physical and emotional health.

“Our belief has been that abstinence is the goal for alcoholism and I believe that myself, but at this point I am at least satisfied my patients are drinking significantly less,” says Dr. Lamm. “When they are drinking less there quality of life and their family's quality of life is dramatically improved and these people can then maintain and hold a job.”

However doctors and addiction experts alike make it clear, the shot is no magic bullet.

“We need to continue to look at this medication and others to determine their efficacy,” says substance abuse treatment program Odyssey House president Dr. Peter Provet. “Ultimately, such medications, though, need to be combined with psychosocial treatment for a broad range of addicts and alcoholics.”

source: http://capitalnews9.com

Sandra was part of the damaged goods when her mother's drinking fractured home life, but she found strength and focus in fellowship. She tells that Alateen can help young people regain life.

Sandra grew up in a very middle-class alcohol-affected family.

As much as it appeared very normal, things were very wrong.

``The house was still running, jobs were still going, everything was fine on the outside,'' she said.

``But you walked on eggshells inside.''

Inside, that's where the secrets burned, where the shouting and arguments behind closed doors confused and isolated a young teenaged girl.

It's where a gloom hung in the air, it's where Sandra didn't want to be.

Her mum was the drinker.

She worked two jobs but drank in the closet, always secreted it away, but eventually her illness became the elephant sitting in the middle of the lounge room that no one was willing to talk about.

Sandra, not her real name, was not subjected to violence or abuse but was emotionally deprived and felt intensely lonely and had little self-esteem.

``I had feelings of not depression but I was always searching for something to make me feel better,'' she said.

She reacted in a teenage way, spent as much time away from home as possible, out with friends.

``I did everything early, I rebelled,'' she said.

She evaded the genetic trap of alcoholism herself but in her way was cruelled by the disease.

She needed support independent from her family and once her mother had hit the bottom and met realisation that she needed to act they both found shafts of light.

Sandra was 16 when her mother started attending Alcoholics Anonymous.

Her mum liked the life, AA helped her recover and thought her daughter might be able to experience some of the same.

So it was that Sandra started attending Alateen and her life started returning from muted to vibrant colours.

Alcoholics Anonymous offers help for the drinker, Al-Anon offers help and hope to their families and friends. Alateen offers strength, learning and tools for life for young relatives and friends of alcoholics.

``It probably helped me stay in school and get through school,'' Sandra said.

``It gives you tools to help with what you're dealing with and it's very much about it not being your fault.

``You learn that you didn't cause it, you can't control it and you can't cure it.

``But you can start to enjoy your own life regardless of what's going on at home.''

Sandra would take an Alateen survival book to school with her for quick looks in the privacy of her bag when she needed strength.

She'd cut up Al-Anon slogans on slips of paper to keep in her pocket _ one day at a time, easy does it, first things first, how important is it?

They helped her maintain perspective, and the fellowship at weekly Alateen meetings helped her escape.

Her mum stayed sober but for a while the road was emotionally rocky. She and her husband divorced.

Alateen helped Sandra complete year 12. She became a Bachelor of Arts and gained post-graduate qualification in education.

She left Alateen but couldn't do anything else but return to it as a sponsor for other young people. She became Australian Alateen chairperson.

Her mum has stayed sober for 16 years. Sandra says their relationship has grown through the fellowship of AA.

And the daughter, now a radiant mother, is certain of what Alateen gave her.

``Hope,'' she says without hesitation.

``Hope.''

source: Alcoholics Anonymous Reviews

...at the Shack

Our National Drug - A Rant


"Our national drug is alcohol.
We tend to regard the use any other drug with special horror. "
William S. Burrows

(Thanks, SoberMusicians for the quote of the day)

I'm speaking at another town hall meeting in April. I fell asleep thinking about it, if only because it was the thing least likely to cause stress or cause me to jump up out of bed, full of inspiration begging to be captured. No, I just turned things over in my head, thought back to the last two town hall meetings, and tried to approach it from a different angle. I think I'll actually use notes this year.

The topic, by the way, is underage drinking. It's always the topic. This is rural Pennsylvania. One graduates very quickly from Pin the Tail on the Donkey (do kids still play that?) to Find the Keg in the Woods. Or, as I hear these days, Find the Right Road to Camp. With all we know about underage drinking, parents are still offering "safe places" to drink as an alternative to their kids so that maybe they'll avoid a serious drug problem in said kids.

more....

Intensive 12-step therapy regimen combines with the daily tasks of farm life into an unusual recovery program...

A month after spending his nights on San Francisco's streets, penniless and addicted to speed, James Jennison tenderly petted a calf that he'd helped deliver about an hour earlier.

The calf wobbled as it nuzzled Jennison, who was grinning from his morning's work at this drug rehabilitation dairy farm in the rolling hills near Petaluma, about 40 miles north of San Francisco.

"It was, I'd have to say, one of the most amazing things I've ever seen," said Jennison, 29, a former AOL computer technician.

Jennison, like some 22 million Americans, has struggled to lead a life while addicted to drugs or alcohol.

Now, after several years on the streets, he is one of 40 men living at St. Anthony's Farm, an unusual program that offers some of California's poorest addicts a way to get clean.

Birthing calves is one of the many chores the men do as part of an intensive 12-step therapy program that weaves the daily tasks of farm life into recovery.

Although homeless people account for just a fraction of the country's addicts, they are the least able to afford treatment and the ones often in need of the most medical help.

So unlike many treatment centers, the 315-acre dairy farm run by the San Francisco-based St. Anthony's Foundation has provided its services for free since 1954. In fact, only residents who have no income qualify for the program.

None of the men have medical insurance, most don't have a home, and nearly all of their families have severed ties with them.

"Generally, when people have gotten to the point where they are homeless, they have lost the support of their families, the support of their job," said Robert Lindsey, president and CEO of the New York-based National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence, the country's oldest national advocacy health organization that deals exclusively with alcoholism and drug dependence.

The dairy farm makes about $162,000 a year by selling more than 1,800 gallons of organic milk a day to help fund its treatment program, which costs about $600,000 a year, said Francis Aviani, a spokeswoman with St. Anthony Foundation, a nonprofit organization that provides 11 clothing, housing, employment and rehabilitation programs for the San Francisco area's homeless people. The rest of the farm's budget comes from donations and private grants.

The 315-acre dairy farm also plans to sell organic butter.

It has an organic vegetable garden and powers some of its buildings with a methane digester, which turns cow manure into electricity.

Besides attending counseling and group meetings, the men at the farm follow a structured schedule, a common feature of most treatment programs. But unlike recreation or games found in other settings, the schedule here involves early rising required for running a dairy farm.

Sam McBride, 42, wakes at 5:30 a.m. for breakfast before heading out to the maintenance shed at 8 a.m. His job one recent January day was to paint the dorm rooms where the men bunk while they are here for six months.

It's a far cry from the touring musician's life that McBride led as the lead singer of hard rock bands Fang and the Resistoleros - most of it addicted to heroin, which has clearly aged him.

The dairy farm is the first treatment center McBride has stayed at for more than eight days. He's been there nearly three months.

"I knew if I kept going on that path, I would end up back in prison or dead," said McBride, who in the 1990s served six years in prison for manslaughter. "This is a safe environment. You're in a forced environment living with other people where you can work through things."

The men here are electricians, musicians, software engineers and landscapers. Several have college degrees and once drew six-figure salaries.

In most cases, they are learning how to function again - with the help of some gentle cows.

"They all have this common quandary of finding a way through their addiction and living a healthy life," said Gale Priestley, the farm's director. "A cow is not going to care if you're a drug addict or an alcoholic."

Ryan Medlin, who owned his own software company in Charlotte, N.C., is learning to sit up straight after sleeping for nearly a year in his Suzuki hatchback on San Francisco's streets. When he arrived two months ago, he walked hunched over and struggled with the outside work.

Although the 33-year-old found jobs last year in San Francisco, he would spend his six-figure paycheck to get high. To his co-workers, he appeared to be a quiet person, but he didn't want questions about his lonely life on the streets after work, he said.

"I was in San Francisco for 10 months. I had no friends. It was easy to be under the radar," he said. "I don't feel that alone anymore."

When Medlin lost his last job, he said, he realized he needed help.

At the milking pit, 24-year-old Charles Onraet spends several hours a day hooking up pumps to the 250 cows that come through for milking twice a day.

It's mundane but peaceful work that Onraet hopes will earn him an internship in the farm's creamery once he has completed the rehabilitation program. If he's accepted at the creamery, he would live at a house on the property and after six months would leave the farm with $2,400 in his pocket.

Other program participants like Medlin plan to get help in San Francisco, where the foundation will set them up in transitional housing and help them get jobs after they leave the farm.

McBride says he is focusing first on becoming a better person at the farm so that when he leaves, he can be a father to the two children he says he dumped on his ex-wife because of his addiction.

"As an addict, I became very self-centered and selfish in everything I did," McBride said. "So it's important for me to work on humility and giving back and looking how I affect other people. I think that's something you can get here by shoveling cow manure."

source: Associated Press

We have our share of teetotalers, alcoholics and everything in between that relates to using alcohol here in Southwest Florida.

A survey about alcohol usage probably would show that 99 percent of people who drink are merely “social drinkers.” One percent would have no opinion or could not remember.

While chatting with friends about how we all probably drink more or at least more often than our parents and grandparents did, I wondered what being a “social drinker” means.

Most people probably would say a social drinker is anyone who drinks about the same amount he or she does.

It’s like asking what being “middle aged” means. I think of middle age as about 10 years older than I am, although that definition increasingly strains credulity.

Back to drinking — Let’s face it. Southwest Florida is, for many people, Party Central. We who live here full-time spend much of it entertaining visitors who want to go out and play. Alcohol sometimes is involved or at least always accessible.

My late father never drank other than maybe a beer or two every month or two. When he retired to Marco Island, he enjoyed the socializing here, at the condo pool or the beach or at dinner, in homes or out. Alcohol was always there for the asking.

“Sometimes people seem to get insulted if you don’t take a drink when it’s offered,” he remarked.

Eventually, Dad occasionally enjoyed a Bloody Mary before dinner, but never more than one. When I asked him about that, he said, “Well, I just don’t want to become a drunkard like a lot of folks around here.” He was being prudent, not prudish.

One of the pleasures for some social drinkers is “The Dress and Drink.” We learned that from a friend up north who often attends dressy social events.

“It’s just nice,” Rick said, “when my wife and I are getting dressed, often for formal occasions, to share a cocktail or a glass of wine while she does her face and I try to tie a bow tie.”

He’s right. Those dress and drink moments are fun, but they don’t last very long here in paradise, mainly because when we go out, it’s usually in shorts and short-sleeved shirts (the lady prefers cropped pants.) It takes so little time that finishing a drink is usually out of the question.

Social drinkers often seek ways to limit their intake without limiting their sociability.

“I always have a glass of water between drinks,” says a friend.

That’s nice, but often impractical. At a cocktail party with servers passing drinks, they usually don’t have water on the trays. If you ask and he says “Sure, right away,” and returns 20 minutes later, just long enough for you to have a second drink while waiting.

A drinking cliché is that you may be an alcoholic if you drink alone. What if your spouse is at golf or garden club and you’re having a burger and a beer on the lanai? That’s drinking alone, right? What to do? Call the dog and have it come sit with you?

I know people who always mix alcohol with other stuff, maybe scotch and soda, gin and tonic, vodka and cranberry. They act as though a whiskey on the rocks will morph them into Britney Spears. Some people drink because they really like the taste.

In my social-drinker-opinion of things, a great vodka cannot be improved by adding another beverage to it.

I know a guy who drinks Glenlivet and Coke — cola for the taste and the scotch for the buzz. I also know a guy who drinks scotch and milk. He thinks it helps his ulcer.

Here’s the true test of whether you’re a social drinker, safe from the ravages of demon run, or a tippler on the slippery slope toward being a toper.

If you could drink shots of your favorite spirits or glass after glass of your favorite wine or beer with no intoxicating effect, would you?

That is, if somebody could make a delicious premium vodka, a 20-year-old single malt scotch or a bottle of Bordeaux’s best without any alcohol in it, would you enjoy it as much as the distilled version?

If so, then you’re not even a social drinker; you’re a thirsty person who can appreciate hops or old vine grapes in their pre-processed state.

Anyone interested in the impact of alcohol on human society will enjoy a book by a friend and former NBC News Correspondent, Eric Burns, now a media critic for Fox News Channel.

In “The Spirits of America,” Eric writes about the impact of alcohol on the founding of this nation:

“We read that the Revolutionary War was conceived in the watering holes of colonial America, but never ask why.

“Why did New York merchants gather at Burns’s Tavern to plan a boycott of British goods in response to the Stamp Act? Why did Bostonians organize their tea party at the Green Dragon Tavern?

“Why did John Adams meet George Washington for the first time at the City Tavern in Philadelphia?

“Why did (so few) of these take place in homes, churches, town halls or schools?

Reason: “No other meeting place offered the same guarantee of attendance and devout attention as a tavern. Booze was food, medicine and companionship in the early days of America. It was how the tongue got loose and the mind receptive, how the body unlimbered and the future grew bright.

“It was a shield against loneliness, a light in the midnight hours when the stars were hidden and the moon otherwise occupied.”

So, social drinkers, unite. If a touch of the grape or a dram from the Highlands can help build a mighty nation, it can’t help but make a weekend evening even more pleasant, socializing under the swaying palms of Southwest Florida.

But don’t forget — the Founding Fathers didn’t have to drive home. I’m just sayin.’

source: http://naplesnews.com

The Yellow Quill reserve's drinking problem turned deadly long before Kaydence and Santana Pauchay were left to freeze in -50 prairie winds by a father, suspected by his family of being drunk.

Two years ago, after several young people on the Saskatchewan reserve died of alcohol-related causes, the band council began a fierce debate about how to fix the community's rampant alcohol problem, councillor Larry Cachene said.

A group of elders advised them to establish a dry community - a common but rarely successful solution to epidemic drinking.

The Yellow Quill Tribal Council immediately championed the idea.

But, like hundreds of Canadian communities before it, the reserve soon learned the difficulties of turning a community dry.

"There were legal issues, enforcement issues, issues around housing - all sorts of issues preventing us from going through with it," said Mr. Cachene, a six-year veteran on council.

"We all supported the idea, but we wanted to do it right. That takes time."

Two years after the idea of a dry community arose, a council resolution to ban alcohol is on the books, but there is still no bylaw.

Searchers discovered the bodies of three-year-old Kaydence Pauchay and her baby sister Santana, dressed in nothing more than T-shirts and diapers, in a snow-covered field Tuesday and Wednesday.

Their father, Christopher Pauchay, was found nearby Tuesday morning and taken to hospital suffering from frostbite and hypothermia. Eight hours passed before he was able speak well enough to ask about his daughters.

Yellow Quill Chief Robert Whitehead expressed remorse Wednesday that a drinking ban was never enacted, saying that it may have prevented the deaths.

Those who've witnessed other dry towns suggest otherwise.

"The chief shouldn't be agonizing as if a ban was a magic bullet," said sociologist Richard Thatcher, author of Fighting Firewater Fiction: Moving Beyond the Disease Model of Alcoholism in First Nations. "In many cases, you're having to rebuild family systems and personal thinking styles. The solution isn't as simple as, 'Let's have a dry reserve.' "

Yellow Quill council's enthusiasm for an alcohol ban diminished soon after the idea was first proposed.

It considered penalizing drinkers with fines, but realized financial punishment could do more harm than good. "The majority of people on our reserve barely make enough money to support a family," Mr. Cachene said. "By fining a person, you're also penalizing the children in their family. You're caught with a double edge."

One section of the community even threatened to challenge any such bylaw on human rights grounds.

More than 230 native communities in Canada have enacted intoxicant bylaws, according to Margot Geduld, spokeswoman for Indian and Northern Affairs Canada.

Many of those are remote northern communities with no road access, where banning alcohol sales usually sparks a hearty trade in black market and bootlegged liquor.

In Kimmirut, a dry Nunavut community, liquor distribution carries at $10,000 fine. Even so, alcohol use is common, say residents, many of whom believe liquor played a role in the murder of Kimmirut RCMP Constable Douglas Scott last year.

In Alkali Lake, B.C., a dry town famous for curing many of the substance abuse problems that plagued it during the seventies, stopping liquor sales alone didn't solve the problem.

"There was no quick fix," band councillor Irene Johnson said. "We found that we had to help heal people as well, set up treatments centres, hold sobriety events and healing circles."

Nearly 25 years after the town started drying out, substance abuse still lingers.

"We still have our struggles, our suicides, our car accidents," Ms. Johnson said. But with a 65-per-cent sobriety rate, "at least the young people have some community members as role models."

Had a ban been in place, Mr. Cachene believes the deaths of Kaydence and Santana Pauchay "probably wouldn't have happened."

But he also knows it will take more than bylaws to dry out his community. "You've got to sell the idea that there is a better life without alcohol," he said.

"That's tough, especially at a time like this."

source: The Globe and Mail

By Take The First Step
Dr. Michael Levy

Dr. Levy: I was both appalled and shocked at your column regarding "Is abstinence the only answer for alcoholics?" I am a recovering alcoholic and have recently completed a five-month stay at a sober house for both alcoholics and drug abusers..I have.lived with both drug and alcohol abusers who have repeatedly relapsed because they felt they could maintain control over their addictions. The mere suggestion that they may some day drink socially or occasionally is insane.

Insanity as defined by AA is continuously repeating the same.behavior and expecting a different outcome. As any educated alcoholic knows from attending AA meetings or therapy, the addictive brain, when re-introduced to its drug of choice, will behave in exactly the same way time and time again.

I had abstained from alcohol for more than two years and thought I had it beat. Then one hot, summer afternoon when I was at a friend's house for a cookout, I had two beers. This was not an excessive amount and I was not in the least bit intoxicated. However, those two beers reactivated that euphoria in me and I spiraled downward in the next few weeks, frequently blacking out and nearly destroying my life and those I love. Had it not been for the teachings of AA as well as the sober environment that I was fortunate to have lived in,.I would still be trying to take that one social drink and denying the fact that abstinence is the only answer for alcoholics.

I'm sorry to say that your article will not be interpreted by many addicts in the manner in which I'm certain you meant it, but rather, because of your credentials and knowledge of addiction, as permission to try it again and to continue this insane lifestyle of personal destruction.

A: Thank you for writing and expressing your opinion. As I stated in that column, this is a very controversial subject..Your experience with alcohol is similar to many others: one drink leads to uncontrolled drinking along with the destruction of life. In addition, as you articulated quite well, the main reason a relapse occurs for many people is because they are unable to accept that they cannot have one drink. As you did, they erroneously believe that one or two drinks will be fine. But instead, they lead to a major relapse.

However, I still contend that some people with past alcohol dependence can learn to drink in moderate ways that do not cause them problems. This is something everyone who struggles with alcohol needs to figure out for themselves. I know this adds a gray area and ambiguity to the treatment of alcohol problems, but nonetheless, this outcome has been well documented.

As you wrote, some people who have been abstinent may interpret what I said as permission to try to drink again, which is not what I intended. I hope this does not occur..In fact, I am very glad for the opportunity to restate what I originally wrote: if abstinence is working, I would not do anything different. This is very important to remember.......

nnn

source: http://www.newburyportnews.com