Summer House

OrovilleMR.com — Addiction is the double-edged attraction of a feel-good experience that simultaneously suspends anything that is making you feel bad.

We can apply the concept of the double-edge to recovery, which includes the avoidance of a lifestyle that causes problems, and the building of a new life.

The concept of relapse prevention is valid. One needs to be aware of what triggers thoughts of using. As well it helps to have an idea about which triggers are most powerful and thus carry a greater need for avoidance.

Most agree that using buddies, be they friends, family or just using buddies, represent the biggest threat.

Preventing relapse is the first part of creating a new life.

In this phase of recovery we are considering that what went well with addiction may not be compatible with recovery. Casinos, liquor stores, and parties where people are getting intoxicated are examples of things that might not fit in the terrain of recovery.

As important as eliminating relapse hazards is, it is just the beginning of the new life vision. If all you do is remove items that were once important or enjoyable it would be like taking a child’s old toys and asking that they not consider what the new ones might be.

The new life vision must immediately expand to consider what will fill the void.

This is not a call to abandon the wisdom of relapse prevention, but to bring it along as we open the door to recovery promotion. It is helpful if this includes a door to one or more recovery fellowships where we can find the attributes of recovery.

While avoiding those relapse triggers we train ourselves to be ever on the lookout for what will trigger another day clean. We watch for the loving relationships we could not build in addiction. We see people driving legally and responsibly. We hear of children coming home, of amends being made, of self-esteem being repaired, of people getting jobs and going to school. We hear about healthy fun, vacations, sports and hobbies.

We hear it and we see it all around as we are choosing better environments and making a point to watch for those things that motivate recovery.

And as we do this we notice that our new focus is bringing the things that were once only seen and heard to our doorstep, and we become a recovery trigger for others who are seeking to change their life.

We learn again what we have always known, that the best way to lead is to follow the right path, and keep the double-edge of recovery sharp.

Des Moines Register — Monitoring your teen’s activities is an important deterrent to drug use.
 

Research shows that more teens begin using tobacco, alcohol, and marijuana between spring break and the summer months than any other time.
 

Parents can play an important role in helping their teen stay drug-free by setting clear rules, knowing who their friends are, and by having open and honest discussions about drugs.
 

Q. Why is summer a risky time for teens?
 

A. Summer is a time that often has little structure for teens. This can lead to boredom.

According to a study by the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse, teens who report they are "often bored" are 50 percent more likely to smoke, drink, get drunk and use illegal drugs than teens who aren’t.

Another risk factor for teens during summer is having friends who use drugs. Teens are more likely to feel pressured to experiment with drugs if their friends do.

The summer months also have more unsupervised time, which can lead to involvement in risky behavior.

Q. My teen will be unsupervised at home for most of the summer. What can I do to make sure he stays out of trouble?

A. There are steps you can take to ensure your teen stays safe and healthy.

- Lean on other responsible adults in your neighborhood. Network with other adults in your community to build a safe environment for young people.

- Use technology to your advantage. Teens these days use many forms of communication technology including e-mail, cell phones, text messaging and instant messaging, to name a few. Use these forms of technology to check in with your teen each day.

- Get to know your teen’s friends. They can be an important factor in your teen’s decisions about alcohol, tobacco and other drugs.

- Plan regular check-in times throughout the day with your teen.

- Find supervised activities in your community that your teen enjoys. Youth who are involved in constructive, supervised activities during non-school hours are less likely to use drugs. Talk with your child about what she would like to do during the summer and see if you can find a summer program in your community.

Q. How do I start the discussion about drug use with my teen?

A. Teens need to be educated by their parents about drug abuse, expectations in the home, and consequences. This can be a difficult conversation to have but the steps below can help guide you though the process.

1. Talk with your partner to agree on rules and consequences if your teen does use drugs. This information should then be shared with your teen so he knows and understands the expectations.

2. Practice ahead of time what you are going to say to your teen. Be prepared for various reactions from your teen and practice how you will react.

3. Make an agreement with yourself to not get upset or angry. Stay as calm as possible. Remember, you are the parent and you are in charge. Be kind and direct in your statements to your child. Know that you are doing the right thing.

Q. What are some signs to watch for if my teen is using drugs?

A. Look for signs of depression, withdrawal from friends and family, carelessness with grooming, or hostility. Also ask yourself, is your teen doing well in school, getting along with friends, and taking part in regular activities? Some additional signs to look for are:

- Increased secrecy about possessions or activities.

- Increase in borrowing money.

- Unexplained injuries.

- Impaired short-term memory.

- Items or money missing from home.

- Illness, shakiness, or tremors.

Q. What other resources are available?
 

A. A great resource for parents is called "The Anti-Drug," which can be found at www.theantidrug.com. This Web site has a wealth of information for parents about drug education, support from other parents striving to keep their teens drug-free, and helpful articles and advice from experts in the parenting and substance abuse prevention field.

(HealthDay News) — Drinking and alcohol dependence has increased substantially among women, particularly white and Hispanic women born since 1945, new study finds.

Alcohol use and dependency appeared to remain stable for men, while young Americans report having more lifetime alcohol problems than older Americans, despite having had less time to develop issues with drinking.

The findings were published in the May issue of Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research.

"We found that for women born after World War II, there are lower levels of abstaining from alcohol, and higher levels of alcohol dependence, even when looking only at women who drank," the study’s corresponding author, Richard A. Grucza, an epidemiologist at Washington University School of Medicine, said in a prepared statement. "However, we didn’t see any significant tendency for more recently born men to have lower levels of abstention or higher levels of alcohol dependence."

The researchers’ findings came from analyzing two large, national surveys conducted 10 years apart (1991-1992 and 2001-2002). The polls compared lifetime alcohol-use rates from the same age groups and demographics.

The "closing gender-gap in alcoholism" may be due to higher levels of problems facing women, while men have been more or less steady in their levels of dependence, he said.

"Clearly, there were many changes in the cultural environment for women born in the ’40s, ’50s and ’60s compared to women born earlier," Grucza said. "Women entered the work force, were more likely to go to college, were less hampered by gender stereotypes, and had more purchasing power. They were freer to engage in a range of behaviors that were culturally or practically off-limits, and these behaviors probably would have included excessive drinking and alcohol problems."

Shelly F. Greenfield, associate clinical director of the Alcohol and Drug Abuse Treatment Program at McLean Hospital, added to Grucza’s assessment.

"One possible explanation is that between 1934 and 1964, the social acceptability of women’s drinking increased. As it was more socially acceptable for women to drink, a greater number of them became drinkers. Because women have a heightened vulnerability to the effects of alcohol — that is, greater blood alcohol levels at similar doses of alcohol — we may therefore see a concomitant rise in alcohol dependence among those who ever drank."

Another potential factor: immigrants arriving to America from cultures with more conservative values about drinking tend to stick with their native cultural norms, but their children are more likely to follow comparatively lax U.S. norms regarding alcohol.

"We can think of U.S. culture as having been traditionally dominated by white men," added Grucza. "As women have immigrated into this culture, they have become acculturated with regard to alcohol use."

He said the added barrier of race may be what is keeping black women, who still have the lowest rates of drinking among the demographic groups looked at, from adopting the alcohol-use standards of the dominant U.S. culture.

Greenfield suggested that targeting females with gender-specific prevention programs might lower drinking rates or delay when drinking begins, which could help prevent later alcohol problems.

"It would also be helpful to educate women about the gender differences in metabolism of alcohol, and the associated heightened female vulnerability to alcohol’s adverse health consequences at lower doses than men," she said.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Sure, exercise is good for your waistline, your heart, your bones — but might it also help prevent addiction to drugs or alcohol?

There are some tantalizing clues that physical activity might spur changes in the brain to do just that.

Now the government is beginning a push for hard research to prove it.

This is not about getting average people to achieve the so-called runner’s high, a feat of pretty intense athletics.

Instead, the question is just how regular physical activity of varying intensity — dancing, bicycling, swimming, tae kwan do — might affect mood, academic performance, even the very reward systems in the brain that can get hijacked by substance abuse.

What first caught the attention of National Institute on Drug Abuse chief Dr. Nora Volkow: A study found tweens and teens who reported exercising daily were half as likely to smoke as their sedentary counterparts, and 40 percent less likely to experiment with marijuana.

Volkow knows — from her own 6-mile daily runs and from her scientific experiments — that the brain literally likes physical activity. Exercise seems to invigorate neurochemicals that sense and reinforce pleasure.

"In children, it’s innate," she notes. "Children want to move."

But the nation’s children are becoming more sedentary, as illustrated by the obesity epidemic, "screen time" replacing outdoor play and a drop in school P.E. And as youngsters approach adolescence, the run around the yard that used to be fun too often becomes a chore — the dreaded jog around the school track or the nagging to get off the couch. The sedentary teen turns into the sedentary adult.

"Why do we lose the ability to experience pleasure from physical activity?" asks Volkow.

Last week she brought more than 100 specialists in exercise and neurobiology to a two-day conference to explore physical activity’s potential in fighting substance abuse, and announced $4 million in new research grants to help.

Drug treatment programs often include exercise, partly to keep people distracted from their cravings, but there’s been little formal research on the effects.

The best evidence: Brown University took smokers to the gym three times a week and found adding the exercise to a smoking-cessation program doubled women’s chances of successfully kicking the habit. The quitters who worked out got an extra benefit: They gained half as much weight as women who managed to quit without exercising, says lead researcher Dr. Bess Marcus.

She now is working with the YMCA on a larger, NIDA-funded study to prove the benefit.

Marcus cautions that people trying to kick an addiction have a powerful incentive to exercise. Could that possibly translate into prevention? Among the clues:

– Rats were less likely to ingest amphetamines if their cages had running wheels, suggesting exercise stimulated a reward pathway in the brain to leave them less vulnerable to the drug’s rush.

– In people, exercise acts as a mild antidepressant and relieves stress. Depression, anxiety and stress increase risk of alcoholism, smoking or drug abuse.

– Volkow is intrigued that attention deficit disorder and obesity both involve problems with the brain chemical dopamine, one system that drugs hijack to create addiction.

– Baby monkeys who don’t play enough in childhood have problems controlling aggression when they’re older. The most aggressive tend to have defects involving the feel-good brain chemical serotonin — and binge-drink when researchers offer them alcohol.

– Back to rats, physical activity increases production of growth factors and stem cells in key brain regions important for learning and mood; increases formation of blood vessels; and strengthens communication networks between brain cells.

Together, that’s far too little research to know if exercise really matters for substance abuse, scientists at the National Institutes of Health meeting cautioned.

But, a few studies of school-age children suggest physical activity predicts better performance on math, verbal and other tests — and better school performance in turn is linked to lower risk for substance abuse.

And getting sedentary seniors moving improves brain function — research aimed at preventing dementia, not drug abuse, although the improvement is in an area that in younger people is linked to risky decision-making.

A caveat: If your own youth includes memories of parties with beer-guzzling athletes, well, the research concurs. A major study that tracks adolescent risk behaviors found that by 12th grade, exercise offers no protection against binge-drinking.

"Now the kids who exercise the most actually drink the most," says Dr. Lloyd Johnston of the University of Michigan. It may have to do with the celebratory nature of team sports, or getting revved for college — or, other researchers suggested, even that competition is to blame.

Meditation can be a powerful tool in relapse prevention and can become what one therapist called a “positive addiction” that provides a healthy alternative to addictive behaviors. People also report that meditation leads to new insights about the source of their cravings and helps to dissolve them.

In their book, Mindful Recovery: A Spiritual Path to Healing from Addiction, Drs. Bein and Bien offer ten “doorways” to recovery, from journaling to meditation, and they present dozens of specific meditation exercises based on their experience as therapists and meditators. Their book says: “People use addictive behaviors to avoid facing what hurts them. The Buddhist mindfulness practice offers a gentle way to begin facing pain and working with it to establish a new relationship to life. Mindfulness helps in two ways: first, by becoming aware of yourself and your environment, you understand what hurts you, what ‘triggers’ you, and second, by befriending your triggers, you can disarm them. Mindfulness provides a larger purpose, a broader context in which to see a problem. And then things fall into place more gently. If you are awake and relaxed and enjoying your life, there is less need and desire for your addictions.”

Kevin Griffin writes about Buddhism and the Twelve Steps saying this: “Buddha said that the cause of suffering is desire, and the Twelve Steps try to heal people from desire gone mad: addiction. Both systems ask you to look at the painful realities of life, to understand them, and to use this understanding as the foundation for developing peace, wisdom, faith, and compassion. The practical aspects of Buddhism is one of its main corollaries to the Steps.” His book, One Breath at a Time, is an exploration of how the two systems can work together, and he offers meditation techniques based on Vipassana and Metta practices.

“Zen is the ultimate and original recovery program,” says author Mel Ash in his book, The Zen of Recovery. “It exposes our denial of true self and shows us how all our other diseases and discontentments flow from our fundamental denial of unity with each other and the universe.”

Sogyal Rinpoche writes: “All we need to do to receive direct help is to ask. Didn’t Christ also say: ”Ask, and it shall be given you; seek and ye shall find; knock and it shall be opened unto you. Everyone that asketh, receiveth; and he that seeketh, findeth”? And yet asking is what we find hardest. Many of us, I feel, hardly know how to ask. Sometimes it is because we are arrogant, sometimes because we are unwilling to seek help, sometimes because we are lazy, sometimes our minds are so busy with questions, distractions, and confusion that the simplicity of asking does not occur to us. The turning point in any healing of alcoholics or drug addicts is when they admit their illness and ask for aid. In one way or another, we are all addicts of samsara; the moment when help can come for us is when we admit our addiction and simply ask.”