Happy Holidays!

Tue 26 Dec 06, 9:32 a.m.

Hi All,

Rex here, founder SRC Secular Recovery Community. First, Don, I was delighted to read in your recent post that you are still alive! Definitely good news!

Secondly, we owe a huge debt of gratitude to Don Phillips, our intrepid reporter, for his invaluable contributions in spearheading our new blog. Honestly, I don't where he finds the time, but Don is relentless in ferreting out interesting, unusual and important news in the fields of addictions and mental health. So, our hat is off to you, Don! Thanks very much from me personally, and I know from all of your readers as well. Look forward a lot more of your insights in the new year!

. . . And to our members, friend and fans (and even our detractors), thanks for reading, participating and your continued interest. Your presence here helps in the important work of making addicts, alcoholics and the general public aware of alternative approaches in recovery and to traditional support groups and recovery programs. Please visit our website http://www.secularrecovery.com/, remember the secular meeting directory when you need to locate non-religious support group in your area, and you are cordially invited to hang out and participate on the SRC Discussion Forum ==>
http://www.freepowerboards.com/secularrecovery/portal.php

For all of us in recovery, this time of year can be very stressful and we can find ourselves bombarded with temptations and triggers, and surrounded by "slippery" people, places and things. Please do not give into the cultural pressure to do too much, to over-extend, over-shop, over-spend, or to socialize and entertain in ways that can be difficult and downright dangerous for us. In short, please don't feel you need live up to unrealistic expectations of frivolity, and don't upset yourself trying to recapture memories of Christmas long-past, which may be more a product of Charles Dickens and Frank Capra than anything that every really happened in your life! Be that as it may, be careful of "HALT", of letting yourself get too hungry, angry, lonely or tired . . . to which I will add stressed out. Have a great holidays season, but please see to your sobriety needs first, make sobriety your Number One Priority, and let the Holiday chips fall where they may. Please . . . Don't drink or use no matter what. This time for year may be a bit uncomfortable for some of us, but thank gawd, we don't need to drink or use over it.

Have a Wonderful Holiday Season
and All The Best in 2007!

Aloha,


Rex
Rex Alexander
rex [at] secularrecovery [dot] com

Great News for Everyone (Especially Me)

Tue 26 Dec 06, 9:23 a.m.

Hi All,

I have great news for you. I'm alive. Last night I received a return phone call from a friend and she said "You're alive! Thank God. I heard that you died."

Not only alive -- but very well thank you -- at least according to my primary care Doc a couple of weeks back -- normal blood pressure and all the chem markers in the blood are on target. So maybe I'll be around for a while.

While the past year has been troubling -- worrying about what's in store for all of us, I choose to be optimistic today. I hope the coming year is one of peace, contentment and accomplishment for you. Have a great Holiday season. Don And some random thoughts~~


~~"Everyone is a unique individual with a unique learning history" --Albert Bandura "To be completely honest with oneself is the very best effort a human being can make." --Sigmund Freud "We can consider the process of healthy growth to be a never ending series of free choice situations, confronting each individual at every point throughout his life, in which he must choose between the delights of safety and growth, dependence and independence, regression and progression, immaturity and maturity." -- Abraham Maslow

Don Phillips
daphil15 [at] hotmail [dot] com

Subject: Dysfunctional Cyber-surfing, Disordered Internet Use (Abuse?), Tech Addicts, ETC

Dysfunctional Cyber-surfing, Disordered Internet Use (Abuse?), Tech Addicts, ETC

All,

I haven't become comfortable yet speaking of internet use as something that can become an addiction.

Yet: "Indeed, although definitions of addiction vary, there is a body of evidence that suggests drug addictions and non-drug habits share the same neural pathways (New Scientist, 26 August, p 30). While only a hardcore few can be considered true technology addicts, an entirely unscientific survey of the web, and of New Scientist staff, has revealed how prevalent techno-addictions may have become.

Don back. Descriptions of disorders are interesting as are some case studies. Don

Just can't get e-nough
20 December 2006
Exclusive from New Scientist Print Edition.
Subscribe and get 4 free issues
Richard Fisher

Hello, my name is Richard and I am an egosurfer. The habit began about five years ago, and now I need help. Like most journalists, I can't deny that one of my private joys is seeing my byline in print. Now the internet is allowing me to feed this vanity to an ever greater extent, and the occasional sneaky web search has grown into a full-blown obsession with how high up Google's ranking my articles appear when I put my name into the search box. When I last looked, my best effort was a rather humiliating 47th place. You know you have a problem when you find yourself competing for ranking with a retired basketball player from the 1970s.

Not that I'm alone in suffering from a dysfunctional techno-habit. New technologies have revealed a whole raft of hitherto unsuspected personality problems: think crackberry, powerpointlessness or cheesepodding (see "Modern maladies", bottom). Most of us are familiar with sending an email to a colleague sitting a couple of feet away instead of talking to them. Some go onto the web to snoop on old friends, colleagues or even first dates. More of us than ever reveal highly personal information on blogs or MySpace entries. A few will even use internet anonymity to fool others into believing they are someone else altogether. So are these web syndromes and technological tics new versions of old afflictions, or are we developing fresh mind bugs?

Developing a bad habit is easier than many might think. "You can become addicted to potentially anything you do," says Mark Griffiths, an addiction researcher at Nottingham Trent University in the UK, "because addictions rely on constant rewards." Indeed, although definitions of addiction vary, there is a body of evidence that suggests drug addictions and non-drug habits share the same neural pathways (New Scientist, 26 August, p 30). While only a hardcore few can be considered true technology addicts, an entirely unscientific survey of the web, and of New Scientist staff, has revealed how prevalent techno-addictions may have become.

The web in particular has opened up a host of opportunities for overindulgence. Take Wikipedia. Updating the entries - something anyone can do - has become almost a way of life for some. There are more than 2400 "Wikipedians", p 36 - you know where to look it up if you don't know what it means - who have edited more than 4000 pages each ("see Confessions of a Wikipediholic", below). "It's clearly like crack for some people," says Dan Cosley at Cornell University in New York, who has studied how websites such as Wikipedia foster a community. To committed Wikipedians, he says, the site is more than a useful information resource; it's the embodiment of an ideology of free information for all.

For complete article go to:

http://www.newscientisttech.com/article/mg19225831.200?DCMP=NLC-nletter&nsref=mg19225831.200

Don Phillips
daphil15 [at] hotmail [dot] com

Sometimes, the "Why" Really Isn’t Crucial - Sally Satel - Enemy of Vets

Thu 21 Dec 06, 12:50 p.m.

Hi All,

I think it might have been Maia that previously warned us that Sally Satel, as a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, was a conservative idealogue. On another listserv someone brought up her opinions about PTSD. Go to the web address below. Toward the end of that item there is a report of a meeting at the IOM on the subject of PTSD. Apparently Satel is the 'pit bull' that conservatives unleash anytime the subject of PTSD is discussed. The IOM were not pleased with Satel or her views.

Don PS She might want to avoid American Legion or VFW get togethers.

http://www.vva.org/TheVeteran/2006_05/featurePTSDstorm.htm

Don Phillips
daphil15 [at] hotmail [dot] com

Sometimes, the "Why" Really Isn’t Crucial

December 19, 2006

Essay

Sometimes, the "Why" Really Isn’t Crucial
By SALLY SATEL, M.D., NY Times

“Why do I use drugs?” I am asked every few weeks by a patient in our methadone clinic.

I take the query as a good sign; curiosity about oneself is usually healthy. But the premise behind the question — that a person can reliably identify the psychic roots of an addiction, or any other act of self-sabotage — is highly overrated.

Research psychologists have known for decades that it is very difficult to determine causation in mental life and thus, of behavior. For one thing, we can never perform an experiment. Take my patient Karen, 50, who spent most of the 1990s smoking crack. She is certain that the decade-long binge would never have happened had her mother not died when she was 12. We will never know if she is right because we cannot rewind Karen’s life, play it again, and see what would have happened if her mother had lived.

Reconstructing the story of one’s life is a complicated business for other reasons. What scientists call hindsight bias kicks in when we try to figure out the causal chain of events leading to the current situation. We may well come up with a tidy story but, inevitably, it will contain large swaths of revisionist history. It’s not that we bias ourselves deliberately; it happens because the mind tends to make events in the past appear comprehensible and orderly. We forget the uncertainties that might have beset us as we struggled in real time.

For complete article go to:

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/19/health/psychology/19essa.html?ref=psychology

Don Phillips
daphil15 [at] hotmail [dot] com

War on Drugs Expands to Catnip !!!

Subject: War on Drugs Expands to Catnip -- Beware of CLAWS

Fred Foldvary's Editorial
War on Drugs Expands to Catnip
by Fred E. Foldvary, Senior Editor

Drug warriors scored a virtual victory after the 2006 U.S. elections when they hurriedly extended the War on Drugs to a psychoactive substance previously exempt: nepetalactone, the main psychoactive ingredient in catnip. It is well known that the sniffing of catnip makes some cats "turn on." Their eyes open wide, they roll over on the floor, they hug and bite the catnip toy and kick it with the feet, and they friskily run to and fro, similar to human beings who go crazy ingesting psychoactive drugs.

While catnip does not have the same effect on human beings, the advocates of banning catnip have pointed out that children who give their cats catnip and then see the cat being "happy" might get dangerous ideas about getting high. They think, if the cat can feel good, why not them too? Indeed, the first step to marijuana addiction may well be catnip! According to the drug warriors, catnip has been a major gateway to the human abuse of drugs, and yet there has been no prohibition.

For complete article go to:

http://www.progress.org/2006/fold483.htm


Press Release - Catnap Liberation Army With Spirit Beware of CLAWS

Cats have been organizing in neighborhoods throughout the Nation, stalking supermarkets and malls with petitions and have formed an underground action group called the Catnap Liberation Army With Spirit (CLAWS). It's been reported that when they are strong enough (about six more Manx should do it) they plan to invade the White House, claw all the drapes, chew up the house plants and use the first family's shoes as hair ball depositories and litter boxes. If they can not gain enough strength for this attack, they will settle on the last white house on your block. The CLAWS should be feared. Investigations have been launched by the CIA, FBI, Secret Service and Homeland Security. Warn your friends and neighbors of this threat.

This fun little exchange did lead to getting an excellent Catnip tea recipe for sleep. DAP

Don Phillips,
your intrepid reporter
daphil15 [at] hotmail [dot] com

Male–female differences in the risk of progression from first use to dependence upon cannabis, cocaine, and alcohol

Subject: Male–female differences in the risk of progression from first use to dependence upon cannabis, cocaine, and alcoholDrug and Alcohol DependenceVolume 86, Issues 2-3 , 12 January 2007, Pages 191-198

doi:10.1016/j.drugalcdep.2006.06.003Copyright © 2006 Elsevier Ireland Ltd All rights reserved.

Fernando A. Wagnera and James C. Anthonyb, ,
a Drug Abuse Research Program, School of Public Health and Policy, Morgan State University, Baltimore, MD 21251, USAbDepartment of Epidemiology, College of Human Medicine, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI 48824, USA

Received 12 August 2004; revised 8 June 2006; accepted 16 June 2006. Available online 9 October 2006.

Abstract

Introduction

We extend prior reports about the risk of dependence on specific drugs by providing developmental-specific risk estimates for progression from first use to meeting criteria for DSM-III-R dependence upon cannabis, cocaine, or alcohol, as well as male–female differences.

Methods

The data are from the National Comorbidity Survey, with a national probability sample of persons 15–44 years old in the United States, which included many respondents who used cannabis, cocaine and alcohol on at least one occasion (n = 3558, 1337, and 6149, for cannabis, cocaine, and alcohol, respectively). Survival analysis procedures provided cumulative risk estimates of progression from first use to dependence upon each drug.
ResultsThe estimated risk of cannabis dependence among male cannabis users was 1% in the first year after first use, and reached a peak at 4% per year 2 years later, before declining. In contrast, the estimated risk of cannabis dependence among female cannabis users remained at 1% per year for 3 years, without the peak. For both male and female cocaine users, the estimated risk for developing cocaine dependence was 5 to 6% within the first year after first use. Thereafter, the estimated risk declined from the peak value, with a somewhat faster decline for females in the next 3 years after first use. For alcohol, the estimated risk period extended for many years after the first drink, with female drinkers becoming alcohol dependent at a rate of about 1% per year; with somewhat higher risk for male drinkers. For both male and female drinkers, the period of risk for developing alcohol dependence extended for a span of more than 20 years since first use; for cannabis and cocaine, the estimated period of risk was much shorter.

Comment

There are male–female differences in the risk of becoming cannabis dependent during the first several years after initiation of cannabis use, less pronounced male–female differences for alcohol, and relatively smaller male–female differences for cocaine. These results should interest scientists whose focus is upon the origins of male–female differences in the occurrence of drug dependence.

Corresponding author. Tel.: +1 517 353 8623; fax: +1 517 432 1130.


Don Phillips
daphil15 [at] hotmail [dot] com

Troubled Children - Off to College Alone

Troubled Children - Off to College Alone, Shadowed by Mental Illness

Listmates,

Excellent real life stories of youngsters with mental health disorders (bi-polar primarily) transitioning to college life. This is also a critical point where the stressors of this period could cause substance use disorders to emerge (co-occurring). The article speaks to resources available at many colleges and universities. The MH professionals treating these youngsters have played major roles -- particularly with the bi-polar disorder and the need to be so medication conscious. Increasingly universities and colleges are developing support systems for those with both MH and SU disorders. It sounds as if material may be available. Don Excerpt: "Active Minds, a student-led mental health advocacy organization founded in 2001 at the University of Pennsylvania, now has 56 chapters at schools including Georgetown University, Columbia University, the University of South Florida and the University of Maryland. The National Alliance on Mental Illness has 30 campus affiliates, with 18 more in formation, groups that are set up as student clubs and are financed by school activity budgets and fund-raisers. Programs like the Jed Foundation, a suicide prevention program, and National Depression Screening Day, held each October, offer additional resources." December 8, 2006 Troubled Children Off to College Alone, Shadowed by Mental Illness By LYNETTE CLEMETSON - NY Times Her mother called it a negotiable proposition. But to Jean Lynch-Thomason, a 17-year-old with bipolar disorder who started college this fall, her mom’s notion to fly from their home in Nashville to her campus in Olympia, Wash., every few weeks to monitor Jean’s illness felt needlessly intrusive. “I am so totally aware of the control you have over me right now,” Jean said, sitting in her parents’ living room one evening last June, before coolly reminding her mother of her upcoming 18th birthday. “In a few months the power dynamic is going to be different.” For Chris Ference, 19, who is also bipolar, the fast-approaching autonomy of his freshman year held somewhat less appeal. His parents had always directed every aspect of his mental health care. Last summer, over Friday night pizza at his home in Cranberry Township, Pa., he told them that assuming control felt more daunting than liberating. “If it was up to me, I would just have it so you could make those decisions for me up until I was like, 22,” he said. “I mean, you’ve raised me well up to now. You know me better than anyone.” The transition from high school to college, from adolescence to legal adulthood, can be tricky for any teenager, but for the increasing number of young people who arrive on campus with diagnoses of serious mental disorders — and for their parents — the passage can be particularly fraught.

Don Phillips
daphil15 [at] hotmail [dot] com

Meth Addiction Among Gay and Bisexual Men is Treatable

Listmates,

A question came up yesterday on another listserv about treatment for meth addiction -- specifically whether there are Medication Assisted Treatments available. And then this came up today. For meth addiction specifically the answer is no - see report. For the co-morbid psychiatric conditions and general symptoms that may accompany withdrawal/early recovery - yes. It is good to see a positive on treating meth addiction. Thanks Gay and Lesbian Medical Association. The report also speaks to useful therapies.

Don From Join Together GLMA Report Finds Meth Addiction Among Gay and Bisexual Men is Treatable December 7, 2006 Contact: Gay and Lesbian Medical Association (GLMA) 459 Fulton Street, Suite 107 San Francisco, CA 94102 www.glma.org info@glma.org Tel: 415-255-4547 San Francisco, CA - The Gay and Lesbian Medical Association recently released a report that contradicts the widely held perception that addiction to crystal methamphetamine is essentially untreatable, a misunderstanding shared by some health professionals. The release of the report coincides with National Methamphetamine Awareness Day. The report, entitled Breaking the Grip: Treating Crystal Methamphetamine Addiction Among Gay and Bisexual Men, highlights specific treatment strategies identified as useful by clinicians and researchers. The report also identifies a need for more treatment programs tailored to gay and bisexual men, who use methamphetamine at a rate ten times higher than the general population. "We need to get past the myth that crystal meth addiction can't be treated successfully," said GLMA Executive Director Joel Ginsberg. "Certainly there are barriers to successful treatment -- overcoming addiction is difficult, treatment options aren't perfect, and we need more programs tailored for our community. But it's important for people to know that gay and bisexual men addicted to crystal meth can get better and that they are not a lost cause." GLMA's team collected data for the Breaking the Grip project by examining the peer-reviewed, scholarly literature on the subject and by conducting eight focus groups in five cities where crystal meth use is thought to be widespread. Focus group participants included physicians, psychiatrists, psychologists and therapists working in the field of addiction, researchers in the fields of epidemiology, pharmacology and clinical psychology, and health policy experts. The full report is available at www.glma.org/breakingthegrip.