Drug Abuse

In June of 1794, over 1000 Indians attacked a small fort in the Northwest Territory (now Ohio) engaging less than 300 Americans led by General “Mad” Anthony Wayne. Their point of defense was a makeshift defensive structure named Fort Recovery. It was built over the same ground where a few years earlier over 700 American soldiers had died in what could easily be described as a massacre. This time however, the wooden timbers of their ad-hoc wilderness fortress provided a place of safety in which the soldiers could rely upon their training and mutual support to repel the enemy marauders; Fort Recovery held and became a turning point in history described by some as the opening of the West.

I have my own Fort Recovery, and it's called a routine. General Wayne, considered an early adopter of “basic training”, drilled his troops so they would react in a proper manner in the heat of battle while protected by the walls of Fort Recovery. In a similar sense, my routines provide a defensive structure of normalcy that serve as a shield and grounding influence when life events get messy.

Click on "Read More" to see why routines are my friend...

I was going to post some fairly serious content tonight but got sidetracked doing some podcasting experimentation with my new Alesis Multimix8 USB and Behringer C-1 microphone. Nope, not going to talk about my new toys either; it’s the music I had playing in the background that has peaked my interest tonight. My wife is out of the country for a few weeks so I have been cranking up the tunes like a bachelor. Most of my solitary nights, I just put it on one of the cable music channels and let it play until lights out. I have gone through the 70’s, 80’s, classic rock, classic country, cool jazz, light classical, and even sampled opera and bluegrass for a while. Yeah I know, that kind of play mix just might cause dizziness, seizures, and possible rectal leakage but I have survived. Tonight though I got off my lazy duff and dug through my old CD’s to play some old tunes I haven’t heard in ages. One in particular sparked my interest in particular, K. D. Lang’s Drag because I remember when I bought it I said to myself, “self, this is the ultimate recovery CD/album”.

Click here for a sample track courtesy of Amazon.com

Click “Read More” to add your choices…

”In almost all cases, family members report significant reductions in depression and anxiety.”

I couldn't resist using the movie poster, but the CRAFT I am talking about has nothing to do with witchcraft or the movie. In fact I should be using the intro for HBO, because this is a review of another one of their supplemental series on addiction called Getting an Addict into Treatment: The CRAFT Approach. CRAFT stands for community reinforcement and family training. It was developed by Dr. Robert Meyers, a professor in psychology, after he grew up watching his father's alcoholism eventually kill his mother at forty-five. I had never heard of the CRAFT approach and was at first skeptical of its value, but after watching the episode I had a change of heart.

I have linked to the show through it's title above, so please watch it yourself and then click "Read More" to see my review...

"How do you know what she was thinking? She was whacked, stressed, and traumatized so there is no telling what she was thinking!"

Blogging with comments enabled, you better be prepared for people to question the validity of your content. But little did I expect that I would raise the hackles of a family member, who just might be a closet groupie (haha), by suggesting about what Britney Spears was thinking when she shaved her head between rehab visits.

I replied with the easy and short answer, “I don’t”, but a longer explanation is necessary so click on Read more for the rest…

Let me come out and say this first, I am bald. I shave my head every day and actually enjoy the ritual, the clean fresh start it gives me in the morning is wonderful. Anyone that has heard me lecture on addiction knows that I am a firm believer in benign routines; they have a positive grounding effect on one’s life.

However, and this is a BIG however, Britney Spears shaving her head between abbreviated rehab visits was anything but benign. Yeah, I know this is old news but I wanted to use her actions as an example instead of just piling on during the feeding frenzy of last month. Hopefully Ms. Spears is doing well after a protracted stay in rehab and I wish her the best of luck. Now back to our story...

Click "Read More" for the rest of the story:

"How many need opioids but don’t get them? Those numbers are hard to come by, but “pain is really undertreated in our society,” opioid specialist Dr. Christopher Evans of the University of California, Los Angeles, told the NIH meeting."~ AP Story on MSNBC"

This recent AP story is supposedly about the development of abuse-resistant painkillers but the quote above found about midway through the article makes its clear that its not just the drugs that are the problem. I do not doubt that there are legitimate cases in the US where people who really need opioids are denied them because of financial, insurance, or bureaucratic reasons. But in a society where one can limp to a doc-in-a-box and proceed to walk out with a pain medication script, sometimes twice in the same day, I find it hard to believe that pain is really undertreated in our society. I know of people with chronic pain that rely upon these drugs to restore a measure of the quality to their life; this is not an attack on them. It is more of view from the other side of the fence, because clearly the sources used to develop this AP story were medical, professional, and well intentioned but just slightly out of touch with the real world.

Read the review by clicking on the “Read More” below…