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8th September 2015 Family Help & Advice News/Articles

A Look at Cross Addiction

Waking from a fitful sleep, Sandra couldn’t believe her eyes – or her head, for that matter. She had a pounding headache and felt nauseated, but that wasn’t the worst of it. As her blurred vision began to clear, she slowly started to realize where she was. The setting was familiar, but it wasn’t her bedroom. It was the country detox centre.

Feelings of anger, depression, and self-disgust flooded her. Not again, she thought. I swore to my husband and kids six months ago that I’d never drink again. How could this have happened?

Why do people relapse? Why do people like Sandra who seem so sincere in their commitment to recovery go back to drinking and using? While the reasons people relapse are not always clear, one reason frequently stands out: they didn’t understand cross-addiction.

This article’s purpose is to help the reader understand cross-addiction in order to attain balance in recovery and avoid a possible relapse.

7th September 2015 Family Help & Advice

Dealing with Addiction for Families

Three years ago, when Rachel* got her freshman dorm assignment in the mail, the New Jersey teen excitedly logged on to Facebook to look up her new college roommate, Eleanor*. “She definitely seemed like that perfect, blonde, athletic, popular girl,” says Rachel, now 20.

But just a few weeks into their first semester, Eleanor, who had been recruited for the school’s soccer team, quit the sport when practice sessions interfered with her ability to party. Still, Rachel says she didn’t think Eleanor had a serious problem until the start of their sophomore year. “She’d go out a lot and get way more drunk than anyone else,” Rachel recalls. It also became difficult to be her roommate. “If we all went out, I’d go back to my room and go to sleep, and then she’d come in hours later with a guy — or just drunk and angry.” Rachel and her friends tried to talk to Eleanor several times about her drinking, but they couldn’t get through to her. Rachel says they didn’t know what to do.

According to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration’s National Survey on Drug Use and Health, 23.5 million people ages 12 or older needed treatment for an illicit drug or alcohol abuse problem in 2009 — and that counts only those who sought professional help. Far more struggle with addiction issues in private. “Addiction is so common that, unfortunately, you could say it’s normal,” says psychologist and substance abuse specialist Patricia O’Gorman, Ph.D. “More kids are dealing with it in their lives than not.” And while chemical dependency takes an obvious toll on those struggling with it, it also affects everyone around them. Indeed, when you’re close to someone — be it a friend, significant other, or family member — who’s regularly drunk or high, it can be difficult to know how to deal.

19th August 2015 Addiction

Is Instant Addiction Real ?

Is it possible for someone to become instantly addicted to a drug?

Most people might say no. First individuals must try a drug and realize that they like it. Then they might start to use the drug more frequently. Eventually, once they have used the drug enough, their brain begins to lose the ability to function without it. They spend all night dreaming about their next fix. They miss work. They miss birthdays. They miss appointments. There are no consequences that seem to outweigh getting high. This is addiction.

But what if individuals skip a few steps? What if they try the drug once and know immediately they are hooked, and that the urge to use again and again will likely never leave?

Instant or “born” addicts are people who claim they were hooked on a drug after using it for the first time. For these “instant addicts,” the first exposure to a drug is defined as a transformative experience. David Carr, a recently deceased writer for The New York Times (and a recovering drug addict), described the first time he tried cocaine as a “Helen Keller hand-under-the-water moment.” People who suffer from an instant addiction often describe the drug as filling a hole inside their mind that they didn’t even know was there in the first place.

As it turns out, the “hole-inside-their-mind” metaphor is surprisingly accurate.

13th August 2015 Family Help & Advice

Synthetic Drugs

The term synthetic drug refers to non-organic, chemically manufactured and unpredictably unsafe drugs such as Meth-amphetamine, MDMA, GHB, Kat and Ketamine. These drugs are manufactured by back street-chemists and are highly toxic and very often fatal.

Strength’s vary and the death toll is rising. There is a trend at the moment affecting the global population, where teenagers as young as 12 years old are trying these synthetic drugs and are having heart attacks and other major respiratory failures.
These drugs are seen as “club drugs” but kids who are not old enough to go to clubs still have access to these drugs and are abusing them at alarming rates.

Synthetic Cannabinoids and Cathinones

Synthetic Cannabinoids, commonly known as synthetic marijuana, K2 or Spice, are sold in legal retail outlets as “herbal incense” or “potpourri”, and synthetic Cathinones are often sold as “bath salts” or “jewellery cleaner”. They are labelled not for human consumption to mask their intended purpose and so that Governments around the world are not able to make it illegal.

Risk to the Public Health

The contents and effects of synthetic cannabinoids and cathinones are unpredictable due to a constantly changing variety of chemicals used in manufacturing processes devoid of quality controls and government regulatory oversight.
Health warnings have been issued by numerous public health authorities and poison control centres describing the adverse health effects associated with the use of synthetic drugs.
The effects of synthetic cannabinoids include severe agitation and anxiety, nausea, vomiting, tachycardia (fast, racing heartbeat), elevated blood pressure, tremors and seizures, hallucinations, dilated pupils, and suicidal and other harmful thoughts and/or actions.
Similar to the adverse effects of cocaine, LSD, and methamphetamine, synthetic cathinone use is associated with increased heart rate and blood pressure, chest pain, extreme paranoia, hallucinations, delusions, and violent behaviour, which causes users to harm themselves or others.

-source /www.whitehouse.gov

Lately we have seen very troubling viral videos and pictures going around on social media channels of people using these synthetic drugs and having seizures and fits. There have been posts on Facebook of people dying because of these drugs. Mothers and fathers begging and pleading for other parents to look out for the signs of drug abuse because the reality is, people are dying from addiction every day.

7th August 2015 News/Articles

Occasional Heavy Drinker? Or A Real Alcoholic?

Am I an Occasional Heavy Drinker? Or a Real Alcoholic?

By Bill Manville 08/03/15 -sourced https://www.thefix.com/

My doctor asked me if I’m an alcoholic. I lied. Telling her the truth meant the end of fun.

“Elaine” had never been arrested for drunk driving, lost a job or passed out due to booze. She’d come to the meeting—her first—to please her husband but the drunk rambles she’d just heard made her think maybe she was in the wrong place—AA was not for her.

“Eddie claims we fight because I’m an alcoholic. He says a lot of hidden anger comes out after I have a drink or two. My own feeling is that he doesn’t think it proper for ‘a lady’ to drink at all; he is very old-fashioned. I tell him the main thing wrong with our marriage is his nagging. But sometimes when I am alone with my feelings [I think] wouldn’t a little vodka right now turn the world right side up? I think maybe he’s right. Bill, how can I know if I’m just an occasional heavy drinker, or a real alcoholic?”

“Elaine, let’s do a little self-diagnosis,” I said to her. “Imagine you’re having a medical consultation with a doc who knows you very well. He looks up from your chart and says, ‘Mrs. Jones, you’ve had your last drink.’ How does that make you feel?

“For most people, the reaction would be, ‘Not even a glass of wine at a festive dinner? Oh, well, if it’s a matter of life and death, that’s not too high a price. Sure, Doc—I quit as of now.’”

When a rehab counselor said that to me, a chill went down my spine. Oh, no, I said.Never to drink again? That was death.

What made it difficult for me to see that I was an alcoholic was this: I had become unpredictable to myself. I could stop at a bar after a day at the office, have a drink and go home to dinner with my (then) wife. I was just like anyone else. See?

This ignored the fact that I could stop in the same bar at the same time the next day, order the same drink, and wake up three days later in Bermuda…so high only dogs could hear me.

31st July 2015 Testimonials

Compromising Principles

I find my experience in early recovery has had a few challenges. On one hand I’m trying to live by certain principals that I adopt from those around me in recovery and from the fellowship meetings I attend. On the other hand I’m fighting my old principals that I learnt from using drugs for so many years.
It became clear from the first time, I entered a treatment centre that my principals had been violated. I didn’t grow up with some gangster, thieving family. My people were from good stock, caring, loving high achievers. Mixing with the high society of Johannesburg wasn’t foreign to me. Our house appeared in Architecture magazines, we had a house in Portugal and by all means we lived well. With that sort of upbringing, came the morals and values of that lifestyle. Maybe I valued exterior influences more than I should have, but nothing to the extent that my life turned out to be.
I was told the normal stuff when growing up. I knew the difference between right and wrong and my family guided me as best as they could.
By the end of my active addiction I was a mess. I literally had compromised every value, moral and principle I had been taught besides murder. I was a rampant thief and liar, I couldn’t be trusted and the only way you knew when I was lying was when my mouth was open. The principles and life lessons I learnt through addiction changed my life so dramatically that when I was alone I was more dangerous to myself than to others. There is a serious problem when you sit alone and feel petrified of your own company.
As my addiction progressed to the later stages there could have been a check list of all the principles I broke.

Never use cocaine – CHECK
Never use crack – CHECK
Never use heroin – CHECK
Never use a needle – CHECK
Never steal – CHECK
Okay never steal twice – CHECK

The list can go on for hours, the point is the need to feel different or better always compromised my beliefs and principles.
Now in recovery I’m having to unlearn these behaviours and it can get really complicated. When I start looking at what are needs and what are wants. I start looking into motives and reasons. I evaluate and re-evaluate most decisions. Major decisions are done with consulting a few people who know me and my behaviour patterns.
I’m adopting new principles from those around me in the fellowship and in my peers I chose to surround myself with today.

29th July 2015 Family Help & Advice

Detoxification from Substance Addiction

Often and quite rightly so the detox part of treatment for someone addicted to a substance is the most worrying and difficult to successfully overcome. Many people worldwide remain trapped in addiction for years while avoiding the withdrawal effects during detox.

Over the past 20 years through science and medicine, chemists have created substances specifically designed to ease and in some cases almost remove the withdrawal symptoms of addictive substances. Home Detox South Africa specialise in detoxification from substance addiction both with home and rehab treatments. They also provide help, assistance and advice to many general practitioners and medical staff across Africa. It is medically safer now than ever in history to detox from addictive substances.

28th July 2015 Family Help & Advice

Relationships in Early Recovery

Relationships in addiction become toxic and unproductive. Trust is gone, lying, stealing and cheating feature in the dynamics of the relationship and it leaves both or all parties angry and confused. From the loved ones perspective, the person using is slowly killing him/herself and regardless of what you’ve done and said, nothing makes a difference. Against all your advice and love, they don’t seem to want to listen. They repeat the same mistakes over and over again, they lie and hide and keep secrets from you. They dish out false hope and false promises that “this time will be different”. What more can you do?

From the using addict side, it looks a bit different.
Yes the damage is there, you can see the destruction. You will stop this time, you promise and swear on everything you love and cherish that it won’t happen again. The strangest thing about that is, you really mean it!
Fleeting moments of clarity show you just how much damage you have caused, all the hurt, all the dishonesty and all the shame comes to the surface. Determination is running at full tilt, statements like I can do this, I’m stronger and smarter than this problem run through your mind. The truth is your determination is killing you. If you’ve ever been around treatment and a fellowship meeting, you would have heard the word surrender. Cliché’s like surrender to win come up often and it’s very important that you understand the surrender in Step One. Admitting you are powerless over your drug or drugs of choice is a vital factor to actually starting the process of change.

21st July 2015 Addiction News/Articles

The Opposite Of Addiction Is Not Sobriety

Johann Hari, author of the New York Times best-selling book “Chasing The Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs,” has been exploring the true cause of addiction, something he believes is largely misunderstood.

In a Ted Talk filmed last month, Hari challenged the belief that addiction is caused by chemical hooks, saying patients who receive painkillers after medical procedures but have no issue getting off the drugs largely disprove that theory.

“If what we believe about addiction is right, if those people are exposed to all those chemical hooks, what should happen? They should become addicts,” he said. “It doesn’t happen.”

What Hari believes to be the cause of addiction – be it drug addiction, gambling addiction or even addiction to your mobile device — is a lack of human connection.

“Human beings have a natural and innate need to bond. And when we’re happy and healthy we’ll bond and connect with each other,” Hari explained. “But if you can’t do that — because you’re traumatized or isolated or beaten down by life — you will bond with something that will give you some sense of relief. Now that might be gambling, that might be pornography, that might be cocaine, that might be cannabis, but you will bond and connect with something because that’s our nature, that’s what we want as human beings.”

Watch Hari’s Ted Talk above.

“For a hundred years now we’ve been singing war songs about addicts,” Hari said. “I think all along we should have been singing love songs to them. Because the opposite of addiction is not sobriety. The opposite of addiction is connection.”

Read Johann Hari’s blog for The Huffington Post, “The Likely Cause Of Addiction Has Been Discovered, And It Is Not What You Think,” here. Hari will be speaking on August 26th in Edinburgh, in early September in Sydney, Brisbane and Melbourne, and in mid-September in Mexico City. For details of these events go towww.chasingthescream.com.

Wrapping it up

We hope that you found this article fascinating and helpful. If you are struggling with an Addiction or know someone who is. Please feel free to contact us and we can help you with your next steps.

Cherrywood House is a rehabilitation centre for people suffering from substance and other addictive disorders. It is situated in the tranquil, semi-rural environments of Constantia, Cape Town, South Africa. We offer Residential Programmes, Aftercare Support Services, Outpatient programmes, Family Support Groups. For more information. Visit our Website Here.

9th July 2015 Family Help & Advice

This Is Your Brain On Neuroscience

By Zachary Siegel 07/05/15

Addiction science and neuroscience will make your head spin.

It’s not brain surgery Shutterstock

It’s the age of what people are calling the “neuro-disciplines.” It all began with a now well-known branch of medicine called neurology, the study of the nervous system, whose first registered use was in 1681. The Ancient Greek prefix has since attached to, well, just about every discipline under the sun: neurolaw, neuroengineering, neurotheology, neurophilosophy, neuroethics, neuroeconomics, neuropedagogy, neuromarketing.

And of course, addiction cannot escape the long-armed “neuro” prefix as there is aburgeoning body of neuroscience dedicated to the study of need, desire, and addiction. Last month, The Fix interviewed Dr. Nora Volkow, the pre-eminent neuroscientist directing research at the National Institute of Drug Abuse. Dr. Volkow said there is “physical evidence that addiction hijacks not only the ability to feel normal pleasure, but also the very circuits in charge of exerting free will.” NIDA, then, essentially determines what is mainstream addiction neuroscience.

In preparation to get the other side of the story, The Fix reached out to a number of not-so-mainstream but equally brilliant scientists and neuroscientists who are wary of the reductive simplicity—a leap from brain to behavior— put forth by an institution such as NIDA that informs drug war policymaking, what kind of research gets funded, and ultimately affects how one with addiction gets treated.

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