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7th July 2015 Addiction Information

Cross Addiction

If you understand the fundamentals of addiction, you’ll understand that it was never about the drugs or alcohol or other self-destructive behaviours.

What characterizes addiction is the obsessive and compulsive nature of the behaviour and also what happens when we do act out on that behaviour. We start a process that is exclusive to our condition, POWERLESSNESS. Powerlessness means that we lose control and our lives become unmanageable. Unmanageability can be characterized by looking at certain areas of life.

Socially, Financially, Spiritually and emotionally. If we take an honest look at those areas of our lives, we will see, specific examples where the powerlessness has affected our very core.
Cross addiction is when you swop one drug of choice for another, quiet plainly it’s just allowing the manifestation of obsession to filter into different areas.
The way the brain works in addiction is like this. Our pleasure centers get overloaded with dopamine to name but one chemical.
Dopamine is a brain chemical involved in many different functions including movement, motivation, reward – and addiction. Nearly all drugs of abuse directly or indirectly increase dopamine in the pleasure and motivation pathways and in so doing, alter the normal communication between neurons.
-drugabuse.gov

6th July 2015 Family Help & Advice

How Do Addicts Make Decisions

Learning about the economics of decision-making could mean the difference between relapse and long-term sobriety.

Most, if not all, addicts and alcoholics struggle with quitting and staying sober. And many have an equally hard time understanding why. What if would-be recovering addicts and alcoholics knew more about what goes into the making decisions—and how setting and achieving goals, and putting value on rewards, goes wrong in addiction? Learning about the economics of decision-making will not only make life in recovery easier, but it could mean the difference between relapse and long-term sobriety.

Temporal discounting

The concept of temporal discounting is not new. In fact, it can be traced back to the earliest philosophers. In temporal discounting, people put less value on more distant rewards. “A bird in hand is better than two in the bush,” as the saying goes—the distant, seemingly-uncertain reward, even while greater, appears less valuable than the more immediate, certain one.

Many studies have shown that addicted people show higher temporal discount rates.And that’s at the crux of a substance use disorder. If all the reward from using heroin, let’s say, came 20 years down the road, and the problems with relationships, or the law, came immediately, addiction wouldn’t exist in the same form as it does now. “The immediacy [of the reward] is integral to the problem of addiction,” says Dr. John Monterosso, a professor at the University of Southern California and author of an intriguing article with Dr. George Ainslie on the behavioral economics of will in recovery.

2nd July 2015 Testimonials

Living in Recovery

There is a difference between recovery and abstinence.

It took me close on ten years to figure out the difference between the two. One is a fight, the other is freedom. I’ve often heard people saying that it’s a constant fight to stay clean. In my opinion that is abstinence, if you are truly in recovery there is no fight. The desire to use has left me and my days are about freedom of choice. I know I can decide to use if I want but I don’t have that pull any longer. Don’t get me wrong, obsession is still alive and well in me, it just manifests itself in other areas of my life or tries too.

I have the ability to “log” off and sit on the couch all day watching TV. I also have the ability to let my need for pleasure take over and run my life, I don’t mean with drugs or alcohol. If something like sex makes me feel good, I have ability to become too dependent on it. The pleasure centre of my brain is abit broken it seems, my experience shows me that I will do whatever it takes to feel good. One key aspect of addiction I need to remember is that if I’m a drug addict, using drugs doesn’t satisfy that craving. If I’m an alcoholic, drinking doesn’t soothe that thirst. It shows me that the drugs were not the problem. The problem is me and what’s inside of me. My coping mechanisms are did functional, my ability to handle stress is limited, and I coped with situations by putting chemicals into my system, an exterior feeling exterminator if you will. Something had to change.

My life is not easy, I still have my struggles. My life is simpler though, I have a basic routine that I follow that seems to help keep me in check. I do all the same things that got me clean at the beginning of recovery and guess what? A miracle happens, I stay clean. Those few simple things are as follows;

29th June 2015 Family Help & Advice

Pushing Through

It’s not always rainbows and sunshine in early recovery. Gone is the myth, just because I’ve stopped using everything will be okay now. On the contrary, because you’ve stopped using or acting out on your addiction you will start to see the REAL wreckage of your past. All those feelings that have been pushed down for so many years start to surface. Don’t back away, it’s now time to move forward and start sorting through it all.

Pushing Through To Recovery

My experience with this was particularly moving. There have been very few times in my life when I have experienced such an immense amount of freedom through turmoil. Digging into the shame and guilt of the past was difficult but I noticed the harder it was to feel and deal with, the more freedom I experienced.

It isn’t and hasn’t always been easy since those days.
I’ve often heard people say “Life on Life’s terms” and I realize that I’m not only powerless over my addiction but I’m powerless over people, places and things.

9th June 2015 Information

New Relationships

Through our using we came to believe falsely that we were self-sufficient; that we didn’t need anyone else, we couldn’t stand anyone else as long as we had our drugs. Through this thinking, our interpersonal skills and abilities to communicate with others were put on hold and very possibly damaged. We were not designed to live in isolation, yet this is where addiction takes each one of us. Coming into recovery we need to un-learn these self-sufficient survival skills we taught ourselves in our addiction and learn healthy interpersonal skills in order to communicate in healthy ways with other healthy individuals. At first it is daunting to allow ourselves to become vulnerable around others; and we need to start deciphering what and who is safe, and what and who is not. We will make mistakes which are all part of our journey,remembering that learning from our mistakes is how we grow; and that believing that it is possible, we slowly learn how to build our skills and healthy relationships with others.

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Next Steps

We hope that you found this article about new relationships helpful and encouraging. 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 Programme, Family Support Groups. For more information. Visit our Website Here.

5th June 2015 Family Help & Advice

Social Media Linked to Substance Abuse

Plenty of research has demonstrated that the addictive quality of social media is very real. And according to a new study, heavy social media use may also contribute to a different type of addiction.

Psychologists at the University of Albany found that not only is social media (particularly Facebook) itself potentially addictive, those who use it may also be at greater risk for impulse-control issues like substance abuse.

The researchers surveyed 253 undergraduate students, asking questions about their social media use, Internet addiction, emotion regulation and alcohol use. They found that roughly 10 percent of users experience “disordered social media use,” meaning that they exhibit addictive behaviors in the way they use platforms like Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. To assess disordered social media use, the researchers included questions that reflected modified diagnostic criteria for alcohol dependence, such as, “How good does Facebook make you feel?” and “Do you check Facebook first thing when you wake up in the morning?”

26th May 2015 News/Articles

Integrity

Integrity is doing the right thing, even when no-one is around.

Recovery happens in secret. For many years I put up a front when I got out of treatment. Everything was fine and I was now in recovery. How did I know that it wasn’t real ? I was not the same person when I was alone as when I was in public. There were times when I knew that I could get away with certain behaviours and I indulged in that. Then the next day I would go out a different person filled with guilt and shame. Something had to change this time. Covering my history with substance abuse was not enough. ALL my addictive behaviour had to be addressed. Acting one way on the outside wasn’t enough, I was doomed to fail. My insides and outsides have to match up in order for me to stay clean, because, just like recovery, relapse happens in secret. If I’m fearful when I hand someone my phone because there are things on it that I don’t want people to see, then something is wrong. If I don’t want people to go onto my computer because there are things that I hide, there is a problem.

22nd May 2015 Family Help & Advice

Life on Life’s Terms

As we all know life throws out some curve balls. Nothing is to be expected except the unexpected. People pass away, friends leave, plans change. The only constant is that life has its own terms and conditions. I can’t control the way other people are, I can’t change the way life works, I can however change the way I react to life. Being clean has given me the ability to understand these principals. I have also come to understand that I’m powerless over people, places and things and no matter how much time I put into trying to change others it will never happen.

All I have control over is me and my reaction to life.

15th September 2014 Family Help & Advice

Personal Time

Our primary goal at Cherrywood House is to steer clients and families through their chaos and pain, to a place of freedom, reconciliation and joy. Our team and our program is specifically geared towards ‘relentless but sensitive therapy’. We believe that we have to dis-empower the dynamics of the addiction in order to empower our clients with the motivation and confidence to take personal responsibility for their life and growth.

An essential ingredient of lengthy and successful recovery, is the self-discipline of developing a healthy ‘personal time’ where clients learn how to participate in enjoying our beautiful planet and start to stop and smell the roses. The simple things of life that addiction robbed us of like walking the dog, playing on the beach, preparing a family meal or just reading in the quiet of the morning, are within our reach once recovery begins.

Once those life controlling urges of ‘getting and using and looking for ways and means to get more of the drug’ have been dis-empowered or removed, other healthy activities have to be created to exist it their stead. If life becomes all about sitting around doing nothing, or busy-ness busy-ness busy-ness, it gets terribly dreary or really tiring and these then become the climate for a relapse.

Our desire is that our clients can start to learn how to simply ‘be’ and to ‘know’ the splendour of freedom and to break away from the destructive hiding places that they ran to in chemicals.

15th September 2014 Family Help & Advice

How To Help A Drug Addict

Intervention

The goal of an intervention is to get the chemically dependent individual to accept the need for help now. Three key facets need to be considered as a means of creating as successful an intervention as possible:

Dynamic Factors: The abuse of loved ones, the possible removal of all help and support, the possibility of the loss of a job, the possibility of enforced confinement and legal implications.
Format: The intervention needs a presentation of REALITY to the chemically dependent person. This presentation could include: facts about the disease of addiction, a family discussion on the unacceptable behaviours being noticed, a recitation of crimes committed and feelings abused, personalized views of the affect on the family, friends, jobs and health.
Method: Include addiction specialists, medical specialists (family doctor), family members, and maybe one or two trusted friends. Each person then gives specific descriptions of the disease, the consequences of the disease and concerns about attitude and behaviour changes seen by family and friends.

Referral:

For family members, we suggest that you have the website of a reputable alcohol and addiction teatment centre ready to be viewed by the chemically dependent individual, straight after the initial three facets of the intervention have been applied. At that point, it is ultimatum time, but please ensure that you are ready to ‘say what you mean and mean what you say’ – idle threats always prove counterproductive.

Upon agreement to receive treatment for the addiction, the suffering addict must be transported to the pre-arranged clinic as soon as possible. In our experience, it is at this ultimatum stage that the addict usually exhibits intense resistance. This is not a bad sign if you consider the predicament in which the addict suddenly finds himself. For the addict to run at this point is not unusual. It is their distorted way of going to say goodbye to the drug and have a final hit. Eventually, they surrender – just be ready to go when they return.

Next Steps

We hope that you found this article about behavioural models helpful and encouraging. 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.

Welcome to Cherrywood House

A rehabilitation center in Cape Town offering world-class treatment

Cross Addiction

How Do Addicts Make Decisions

By Jeanene Swanson 06/02/15

Living in Recovery

There is a difference between recovery and abstinence.

Pushing Through

Pushing Through To Recovery

New Relationships

Next Steps

Social Media Linked to Substance Abuse

Integrity

Integrity is doing the right thing, even when no-one is around.

Life on Life’s Terms

Personal Time

How To Help A Drug Addict

Intervention

Referral:

Next Steps