How Do You REALLY Keep Your Kids Safe From Addiction?

How do you really keep kids safe from addiction 1

New YouTube video from the Addiction Policy Forum highlights 10 things parents can do to keep kids safe from addiction.

The Council on Recovery and the Center for Recovering Families have programs to help you implement these useful suggestions. Call 713-942-4100 for more information or contact us here.

The Lifelong Quest For Sobriety…The Ultimate Hero’s Journey—Part 41

Odysseus 1Guest Blogger and long-time Council friend, Bob W. presents Part 41 of a series dealing with Alcoholism and Addiction from a Mystical, Mythological Perspective, reflecting Bob’s scholarly work as a Ph.D. in mythological studies.

There is a literary device that was originated in classical literature and theatre known in Latin as in medias res. It denotes that literary device of starting a story in the middle, “in the middle of things,” as the Latin might be translated.  We all know many stories, in literature, theater and movies that utilize this device; it is usually accompanied by multiple flashbacks and “jumping forwards” as a complex story is revealed. The Odyssey, which we keep talking about as a classic “hero’s Journey” story, uses this device; the story of Odysseus’ long journey home starts in the middle and is told in many, seemingly disjointed, subplots from different parts and different times in the overall story.

If we look at the lives of all of us in addiction and in the long journeys of recovery, this device might seem like a constant for us.  We really do start our recovery “in the middle of things,” usually somewhere in the middle of our lives.  The long story from our early days in the disease, into our descent to the darkest of moments, maybe many such moments, then the excruciating crawl to complete abstinence and the purposeful pursuit of the steps and tools…it is all a long, long story with the critical, pivotal elements appearing “in the middle.”

Odysseus has been traveling around the Aegean and Mediterranean Seas on a 10 year journey trying to find his way home after the Trojan War.  His story, the Odyssey, begins in the ninth year of this journey with his 20 year old son, Telemachus, whom Odysseus hasn’t seen since his infancy, setting out to visit his father’s fellow Greek warriors to gain some news of his father’s possible fates.  Meanwhile Odysseus has landed on the island of Scheria, having lost everything – all his ships, all his possessions, all his men, and any scrap of clothing he may have had on.  Naked, drawn and exhausted, he is at a real bottom.  He is encouraged to tell his story and he does so starting at the beginning after the sack of Troy.  The story unfolds with Telemachus and him finally landing back on Ithaca, Odysseus’ kingdom, and progressing through the process of regaining his rightful place as King.

After we gain some semblance of sobriety and begin to work the steps, the critical element is in telling our story, in recognizing the harm we have done in our disease, and using our new found serenity to repair the harm done to so many.  We work from the middle, back through the past, and then into the future, finally beginning to bask in the sunlight of recovery that a future in fully committed sobriety gives us.

Methamphetamine Abuse: The Other Drug Epidemic

crystal meth
Crystsal Meth

While the opioid epidemic continues to dominate the national headlines, methamphetamine addiction has emerged as a major crisis in Texas.

A big problem

Methamphetamine, known as “meth”, killed 715 Texans in 2016 compared to 539 heroin deaths. During the same period, U.S-Mexican border agents seized seven times more meth than heroin. Over 8,200 meth users were admitted to Texas health department-funded treatment programs, nearly 20% of all admissions.

Dangerous connection with Mexico

According to the DEA, methamphetamine is a major threat to Texas. Though pseudoephedrine (a key to meth production) plummeted after purchase restriction laws were implemented, production of meth simply shifted to south of the border. As Mexico filled the increasing demand, a new production technique, called the “nitrostyrene method”, also created more potent meth. It’s now the predominant form of the drug entering Texas. It is also one of the cheapest, selling for $5 a hit.

A deadly mix

Even more troubling is the uptick in fatalities from the mixing of crystal meth with heroin.  In 2016, 17% of the deaths in Texas attributed to meth also involved heroin. So, as the opioid crisis grows, this mixing and the concurrent increase in meth usage have created an even greater health crisis for the state.

Link to STD increases

The Texas meth epidemic is also being linked with an increases in sexually transmitted diseases, including HIV, according to a recent report from the University of Texas at Austin. A CDC survey in Dallas sited in the report indicated that the proportion of homosexual men who reported non-injection use of meth went from 9% in 2008 to 45% in 2014. Recent HIV trends show that use of crystal meth has more than doubled HIV risk factors.

The Council’s response

In facing the methamphetamine epidemic, The Council on Recovery has redoubled its efforts to address the problem with robust prevention and education programs. The Council’s Center for Recovering Families has also become a vital outpatient destination for individuals affected by crystal meth addiction. We provide substance use assessments, counseling, and Healing Choices, our intensive outpatient treatment program. We also work with family members and loved ones impacted by substance use disorders. For more information, call the Center for Recovering Families at 713-914-0556 or contact us here.

Yale Study: Genes May Explain Why Alcohol Detox is Particularly Hard for Some People

Detox
Yale Study Explains Why Detox Symptoms are Worse for Some, Not Others

New findings published in journal Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research

Some heavy drinkers suffer intense withdrawal symptoms when they try to stop drinking — some, less so.  A new Yale-led international study of individuals with alcohol dependence has identified gene variants that may help explain why “detox” from alcohol is particularly difficult for some people. The researchers report their findings September 25 in the journal Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research, the official journal of the Research Society on Alcoholism.

“Alcohol takes more lives in the United States every year than opioids, but there are few effective treatments to help people who have an alcohol use disorder,” said Andrew H. Smith, lead author of the study and a research affiliate in the laboratory of senior author Joel Gelernter, Foundations Fund Professor of Psychiatry and Professor of Genetics and of Neuroscience. “For people who experience intense withdrawal symptoms, that’s one more barrier they have to face while trying to reduce unhealthy alcohol use.”

Those physical symptoms of alcohol withdrawal are much worse than any hangover. Sudden cessation of alcohol consumption can lead to shakes, nausea, headaches, anxiety, fluctuations in blood pressure, and in the most serious cases, seizures.

The American team and collaborators in Denmark linked variants in the SORCS2 gene to the severity of alcohol withdrawal in people who have European ancestry, about one in ten of whom carry the variants. No such connection was found in African Americans. Intriguingly, the SORCS2 gene is important for activation of brain areas which respond to changes in the environment. The gene variants identified in the study may impinge on the ability of heavy drinkers to adapt to the sudden absence of alcohol, researchers speculate.

“Better understanding of the many genes likely to be involved in withdrawal symptoms could ultimately lead to new medications that moderate these symptoms, which could help with the discontinuation of habitual alcohol use,” Gelernter said.

The research was primarily funded by grants from the National Institutes of Health.

The Council on Recovery does not provide medical detox services, but does refer out to detox facilities in the Houston area. The Council provides outpatient services for people battling alcoholism, including Healing Choices, our intensive outpatient treatment program (IOP). Call 713.914.0556 for more information.

The Lifelong Quest For Sobriety…The Ultimate Hero’s Journey—Part 39

Guest Blogger and long-time Council friend, Bob W. presents Part 39 of a series dealing with Alcoholism and Addiction from a Mystical, Mythological Perspective, reflecting Bob’s scholarly work as a Ph.D. in mythological studies.

In Greek mythology, the heiros gamos is a holy ritual, a sacred marriage of a god and goddess, or of an archetypal masculine and feminine, that results in a perfect union of certain key elements of the human experience. It appears in many other systems – mythological, spiritual and psychological – in the same context, a glorified union of the key elements of both genders of humanity.

It occurs to me, though, that we might see just such a phenomenon in the evolution of our own individual selves in the recovery process from addictions.

In broad psychoanalytic terms, the two key elements of the human psyche could be seen as the ego, the conscious element of ourselves – how and what we see of ourselves – and the self – that part of us that is who we truly are, at the core of our beings. The ego is what is crafted from the earliest times, formed by how we fit into the world in which we are raised.  In time it may be cloaked by a certain persona that we want (or are taught) the world to see. This may or may not be akin to our authentic selves. The self, on the other hand, is who and what we are at the core, from our earliest consciousness, regardless of how we were raised, or what happened to us over our lives.  It is the self that will ultimately define us.

For those of us inflicted with the diseases of alcoholism or addiction, our egos became the ruling elements of our psyche. Maybe we strove to achieve, working hard against all odds, and built a view of ourselves that was at best majestic, at worst massively grandiose. This view fed our alcoholism, both to elevate its absurdity as well as to medicate the hidden anxiety that it created.  When it got to be too painful to perpetuate, we crashed, monumentally. We hit that point at which there had to be another way to live in the world or the grim reaper of death would become our only companion in a descent to oblivion.

The journey to recovery thus begun also became a slow and developing process to rewire our own brains.  For this alcoholic, it signaled a journey of discovery to find myself, the core of who and what I am. The last stages of this journey, for me, is becoming a heiros gamos, a marriage of my ego and my self. The ego is still important to me, to us; it is the warrior part of us, that part infused with a healthy narcissism, enabling me/us to face the world without a debilitating fear that needs medication.  But the self, that core of who and what we are, must come forward, must rise up in stature to form a true union of equals with our ego.

The union thus created by my own heiros gamos, this spectacular sensation of finally feeling, fully and completely, who and what I am and what I can be, is a gift of grace of unimaginable magnitude.  More on this in a later note….