Leslie Glass's Blog, page 294

Why Food Could Be The Best Medicine Of All

From Time:

When Tom Shicowich’s toe started feeling numb in 2010, he brushed it off as a temporary ache. At the time, he didn’t have health insurance, so he put off going to the doctor. The toe became infected, and he got so sick that he stayed in bed for two days with what he assumed was the flu. When he finally saw a doctor, the physician immediately sent Shicowich to the emergency room. Several days later, surgeons amputated his toe, and he ended up spending a month in the hospital to recover.

Shicowich lost his toe because of complications of Type 2 diabetes as he struggled to keep his blood sugar under control. He was overweight and on diabetes medications, but his diet of fast food and convenient, frozen processed meals had pushed his disease to life-threatening levels.

After a few more years of trying unsuccessfully to treat Shicowich’s diabetes, his doctor recommended that he try a new program designed to help patients like him. Launched in 2017 by the Geisinger Health System at one of its community hospitals, the Fresh Food Farmacy provides healthy foods–heavy on fruits, vegetables, lean meats and low-sodium options–to patients in Northumberland County, Pennsylvania, and teaches them how to incorporate those foods into their daily diet. Each week, Shicowich, who lives below the federal poverty line and is food-insecure, picks up recipes and free groceries from the Farmacy’s food bank and has his nutrition questions answered and blood sugar monitored by the dietitians and health care managers assigned to the Farmacy. In the year and a half since he joined the program, Shicowich has lost 60 lb., and his A1C level, a measure of his blood sugar, has dropped from 10.9 to 6.9, which means he still has diabetes but it’s out of the dangerous range. “It’s a major, major difference from where I started from,” he says. “It’s been a life-changing, lifesaving program for me.”

Geisinger’s program is one of a number of groundbreaking efforts that finally consider food a critical part of a patient’s medical care–and treat food as medicine that can have as much power to heal as drugs. More studies are revealing that people’s health is the sum of much more than the medications they take and the tests they get–health is affected by how much people sleep and exercise, how much stress they’re shouldering and, yes, what they are eating at every meal. Food is becoming a particular focus of doctors, hospitals, insurers and even employers who are frustrated by the slow progress of drug treatments in reducing food-related diseases like Type 2 diabetes, heart disease, hypertension and even cancer. They’re also encouraged by the growing body of research that supports the idea that when people eat well, they stay healthier and are more likely to control chronic diseases and perhaps even avoid them altogether. “When you prioritize food and teach people how to prepare healthy meals, lo and behold, it can end up being more impactful than medications themselves,” says Dr. Jaewon Ryu, interim president and CEO of Geisinger. “That’s a big win.”

The problem is that eating healthy isn’t as easy as popping a pill. For some, healthy foods simply aren’t available. And if they are, they aren’t affordable. So more hospitals and physicians are taking action to break down these barriers to improve their patients’ health. In cities where fresh produce is harder to access, hospitals have worked with local grocers to provide discounts on fruits and vegetables when patients provide a “prescription” written by their doctor; the Cleveland Clinic sponsors farmers’ markets where local growers accept food assistance vouchers from federal programs like WIC as well as state-led initiatives. And some doctors at Kaiser Permanente in San Francisco hand out recipes instead of (or along with) prescriptions for their patients, pulled from the organization’s Thrive Kitchen, which also provides low-cost monthly cooking classes for members of its health plan. Hospitals and clinics across the country have also visited Geisinger’s program to learn from its success.

But doctors alone can’t accomplish this food transformation. Recognizing that healthier members not only live longer but also avoid expensive visits to the emergency room, insurers are starting to reward healthy eating by covering sessions with nutritionists and dietitians. In February, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts began covering tailored meals from the nonprofit food program Community Servings for its members with congestive heart failure who can’t afford the low-fat, low-sodium meals they need. Early last year, Congress assigned a first ever bipartisan Food Is Medicine working group to explore how government-sponsored food programs could address hunger and also lower burgeoning health care costs borne by Medicare when it comes to complications of chronic diseases. “The idea of food as medicine is not only an idea whose time has come,” says Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian, a cardiologist and the dean of the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University. “It’s an idea that’s absolutely essential to our health care system.”

Ask any doctor how to avoid or mitigate the effects of the leading killers of Americans and you’ll likely hear that eating healthier plays a big role. But knowing intuitively that food can influence health is one thing, and having the science and the confidence to back it up is another. And it’s only relatively recently that doctors have started to bridge this gap.

It’s hard to look at health outcomes like heart disease and cancer that develop over long periods of time and tie them to specific foods in the typical adult’s varied diet. Plus, foods are not like drugs that can be tested in rigorous studies that compare people who eat a cup of blueberries a day, for example, with those who don’t to determine if the fruit can prevent cancers. Foods aren’t as discrete as drugs when it comes to how they act on the body either–they can contain a number of beneficial, and possibly less beneficial, ingredients that work in divergent systems.

Doctors also know that we eat not only to feed our cells but also because of emotions, like feeling happy or sad. “It’s a lot cheaper to put someone on three months of statins [to lower their cholesterol] than to figure out how to get them to eat a healthy diet,” says Eric Rimm, a professor of epidemiology and nutrition at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. But drugs are expensive–the average American spends $1,400 a year on medications–and if people can’t afford them, they go without, increasing the likelihood that they’ll develop complications as they progress to severe stages of their illness, which in turn forces them to require more–and costly–health care. What’s more, it’s not as if the medications are cure-alls; while deaths from heart disease are declining, for example, the most recent report from the American Heart Association showed that the prevalence of obesity increased from 30.5% in 1999–2000 to 37.7% in 2013–2014, and 40% of adults have high total cholesterol.

What people are eating contributes to those stubborn trends, and making nutrition a bigger priority in health care instead of an afterthought may finally start to reverse them. Although there aren’t the same types of rigorous trials proving food’s worth that there are for drugs, the data that do exist, from population-based studies of what people eat, as well as animal and lab studies of specific active ingredients in food, all point in the same direction.

The power of food as medicine gained scientific credibility in 2002, when the U.S. government released results of a study that pitted a diet and exercise program against a drug treatment for Type 2 diabetes. The Diabetes Prevention Program compared people assigned to a diet low in saturated fat, sugar and salt that included lean protein and fresh fruits and vegetables with people assigned to take metformin to lower blood sugar. Among people at high risk of developing diabetes, those taking metformin lowered their risk of actually getting diabetes by 31% compared with those taking a placebo, while those who modified their diet and exercised regularly lowered their risk by 58% compared with those who didn’t change their behaviors, a near doubling in risk reduction.

Studies showing that food could treat disease as well soon followed. In 2010, Medicare reimbursed the first lifestyle-based program for treating heart disease, based on decades of work by University of California, San Francisco, heart expert Dr. Dean Ornish. Under his plan, people who had had heart attacks switched to a low-fat diet, exercised regularly, stopped smoking, lowered their stress levels with meditation and strengthened their social connections. In a series of studies, he found that most followers lowered their blood sugar, blood pressure and cholesterol levels and also reversed some of the blockages in their heart arteries, reducing their episodes of angina.

In recent years, other studies have shown similar benefits for healthy eating patterns like the Mediterranean diet–which is high in good fats like olive oil and omega-3s, nuts, fruits and vegetables–in preventing repeat events for people who have had a heart attack. “It’s clear that people who are coached on how to eat a Mediterranean diet high in nuts or olive oil get more benefit than we’ve found in similarly conducted trials of statins [to lower cholesterol],” says Rimm. Researchers found similar benefit for people who have not yet had a heart attack but were at higher risk of having one.

Animal studies and analyses of human cells in the lab are also starting to expose why certain foods are associated with lower rates of disease. Researchers are isolating compounds like omega-3s found in fish and polyphenols in apples, for example, that can inhibit cancer tumors’ ability to grow new blood vessels. Nuts and seeds can protect parts of our chromosomes so they can repair damage they encounter more efficiently and help cells stay healthy longer.

If food is indeed medicine, then it’s time to treat it that way. In his upcoming book, Eat to Beat Disease, Dr. William Li, a heart expert, pulled together years of accumulated data and proposes specific doses of foods that can treat diseases ranging from diabetes to breast cancer. Not all doctors agree that the science supports administering food like drugs, but he’s hoping the controversial idea will prompt more researchers to study food in ways as scientifically rigorous as possible and generate stronger data in coming years. “We are far away from prescribing diets categorically to fight disease,” he says. “And we may never get there. But we are looking to fill in the gaps that have long existed in this field with real science. This is the beginning of a better tomorrow.”

And talking about food in terms of doses might push more doctors to put down their prescription pads and start going over grocery lists with their patients instead. So far, the several hundred people like Shicowich who rely on the Fresh Food Farmacy have lowered their risk of serious diabetes complications by 40% and cut hospitalizations by 70% compared with other diabetic people in the area who don’t have access to the program. This year, on the basis of its success so far, the Fresh Food Farmacy is tripling the number of patients it supports.

Shicowich knows firsthand how important that will be for people like him. When he was first diagnosed, he lost weight and controlled his blood sugar, but he found those changes hard to maintain and soon saw his weight balloon and his blood-sugar levels skyrocket. He’s become one of the program’s better-known success stories and now works part time in the produce section of a supermarket and cooks nearly all his meals. He’s expanding his cooking skills to include fish, which he had never tried preparing before. “I know what healthy food looks like, and I know what to do with it now,” he says. “Without this program, and without the support system, I’d probably still be sitting on the couch with a box of Oreos.”

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Allegations Against The Maker Of OxyContin Are Piling Up. Here’s What They Could Mean For The Billionaire Family Behind Purdue Pharma

From Time:

Executives from Purdue Pharma, the manufacturer of the powerful opioid painkiller OxyContin, admitted in federal court in 2007 that Purdue’s marketing practices and interactions with doctors had understated the strength and addictive potential of the drug — an omission that many experts believe contributed to an opioid epidemic that claimed nearly 50,000 American lives in 2017 alone.

But on Thursday, the release of a previously sealed deposition from 2015 showed that Purdue executives knew of OxyContin’s strength long before that $600 million settlement. The deposition, which had been filed in court, revealed that Dr. Richard Sackler — part of the family that founded and controls Purdue, and who has served as Purdue’s president and co-chairman of the board — knew as early as 1997 that OxyContin was much stronger than morphine, but chose not to share that knowledge with doctors.

“We are well aware of the view held by many physicians that oxycodone [the active ingredient in OxyContin] is weaker than morphine. I do not plan to do anything about that,” Purdue’s head of sales and marketing, Michael Friedman, wrote in an email to Sackler, according to the deposition, which was obtained by ProPublica and co-published with STAT. “I agree with you,” Sackler wrote back. “Is there a general agreement, or are there some holdouts?”

The document’s publication comes just weeks after the release of an unredacted 277-page lawsuit filed against Purdue by Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey — itself just one of thousands of legal complaints brought against Purdue and other pharmaceutical companies by plaintiffs across the country, many of which have been rolled into one multi-district litigation in Ohio federal court. And as the evidence mounts, legal experts say Purdue could face serious consequences, from astronomical fines to injunctions that could threaten its ability to do business.

“One theme that clearly emerges from this deposition, brick by brick, is the foundation that is laid, that shows how even after this guilty plea there was a shocking lack of care for people that were at risk of abusing this drug and instead a singular focus on profit,” says Joseph Khan, a Philadelphia-based attorney who is currently bringing suits against corporations involved in the opioid epidemic.

As the New York Times reported, parts of Sackler’s deposition are in conflict with his previous testimony. For example, a 2006 Department of Justice report suggested he knew in 1999 that users in internet chatrooms were discussing abuse of the drug. In the deposition, however, Sackler said he first learned of its street value in a 2000 Maine newspaper article.

In a statement provided to TIME, Purdue said the “intentional leak of the deposition is a clear violation of the court’s order and, as such, is regrettable.” The statement adds that, “Dr. Sackler described Purdue’s efforts to adhere to all relevant laws and regulations and to appropriately reflect OxyContin’s risks of abuse and addiction as the science of opioid pain therapy evolved over time.”

Much of the material included in the deposition pertains to activity carried out before the company’s 2007 settlement, while Healey’s suit relates to post-2007 behavior. But Khan says the ramifications of the document are still relevant today, given the judgements Purdue could face from juries.

“There are straight contradictions between what’s in here and what the Department of Justice has put together. This is not something that will play well in front of a jury,” Khan says. “They don’t have as much leverage as they might want.”

The Massachusetts complaint also includes dramatic accusations about how much Purdue executives knew about their blockbuster drug, and when they knew it.

According to lawsuit, members of the Sackler family and other Purdue executives purposefully downplayed the addictive properties of OxyContin, and promoted sales tactics meant to encourage doctors to prescribe as much OxyContin, in the highest doses and longest durations, as possible — despite the potential risks for abuse, and despite the terms of Purdue’s prior settlement with the federal government. The suit also details Purdue’s plans to sell addiction treatments, helping them dominate “the pain and addiction spectrum.” Purdue’s board, controlled by the Sacklers, also voted to pay out $4 billion to the family between 2007 and 2018, the documents show.

In a statement provided to TIME, a Purdue representative said the attorney general’s office “seeks to publicly vilify Purdue, its executives, employees and directors by taking out of context snippets from tens of millions of documents and grossly distorting their meaning. The complaint is riddled with demonstrably inaccurate allegations,” they said, and “offers little evidence to support its sweeping legal claims.” Purdue fought to keep portions of the suit from being released publicly.

If successful, Massachusetts’ lawsuit could force Purdue to pay not only significant fines, but also require the company to cease certain behaviors and make efforts to remedy the damages it has allegedly caused, Khan says.

“If you think about what would restitution look like, these are staggering, almost incalculable costs,” Khan says. But the problem goes beyond money. “What would it mean to stop this epidemic they’re accused of putting into place?” he asks. “You’re not going to find anyone who knows anything about the opioid epidemic who will just say you can solve this problem overnight with a quick fix.”

Further complicating matters, Purdue’s future hinges on far more than a single lawsuit.

John Jacobi, a professor of health law and policy at Seton Hall Law School, called the Massachusetts complaint “extraordinary in the length and depth of the allegations against individual defendants,” but says it is “more or less consistent” with the roughly 1,200 complaints included in the Ohio MDL, as well as the hundreds of others individually making their way through state court systems.

And for that reason, Jacobi says, Purdue could be facing consequences much larger than those included in Healey’s complaint. Opioid manufacturers could face a situation similar to the 1998 Master Settlement Agreement with Big Tobacco, which forced five major manufacturers to pay out billions of dollars over cigarette marketing and promotional practices. (Mike Moore, the lawyer who orchestrated the Master Settlement Agreement, is now bringing a new suit against opioid distributors and manufacturers. He was not immediately available for comment to TIME.)

“Many people have suggested that the only way out of the thicket that all of these litigants find themselves in would be some sort of global settlement similar to what was achieved in the tobacco litigation, and I don’t think that’s a far-fetched suggestion,” Jacobi says. “All of those, at some point, will be gathered up and resolved.”

Khan agrees that the volume of lawsuits in the MDL could hold a major threat for opioid manufacturers. And the results of MDL cases set for trial later this year will likely set the tone for other individual suits, like Healey’s, filed around the country, he says.

“There becomes a point at which it becomes mathematically impossible for every one of those plaintiffs to receive what they’re seeking,” Khan says. “Some of these companies are not going to be equipped to survive. Purdue may or may not be differently situated.”

The post Allegations Against The Maker Of OxyContin Are Piling Up. Here’s What They Could Mean For The Billionaire Family Behind Purdue Pharma appeared first on Reach Out Recovery.

Adult Children Of Alcoholics: Humans Raised By Elephants

Elephants, clowns, and circuses – oh my! Recovery slogans and sayings abound comparing addiction to a three-ring circus with good reason. These analogies give many adult children of alcoholics and addicts the words to explain their chaotic upbringing.

Why Do I Keep Going To The Circus?

A few weeks ago I came across this meme on social media:

Don’t blame a clown for acting like a clown. Ask yourself why you keep going to the circus.

My family of origin is a circus. One or more of them are always in a crisis, and for years, I kept going back to watch their circus unfold. I had extreme anxiety because of my family’s addiction. I even moved out of state, yet I kept running back. Why? I was afraid of being punished if I don’t.

According to circus lore, baby elephants are trained by tying a rope around their neck and then tying them to a pole. The babies struggle to break free without success. Eventually, they exhaust themselves and quietly submit. This is repeated over and over until the poor babies believe that the rope, not the pole is what squelches their freedom.

Punishment Has A Similar Power

In my family of origin, my parents were both the gigantic proverbial elephants in the room. One parent was a “dry drunk” and the other was a codependent. Both parents were loud and frightening. They used anger, hatred, punishment and at times abuse to control me. Like the baby circus elephants, I quickly learned to submit to my fear of punishment. Even now as a grown up, I still feel the pull to revert back to my childhood role. My innate response is to submit to ALL others as if they actually had power over me and return to an invisible prison.

Breaking Free From The Fear

In 1978, Tony A., who is considered to be the primary founder of Adult Children of Alcoholics, wrote The Laundry List, 14 characteristics or common behaviors that detail the adult child personality. Tony A.’s original list (numbers 1 and 3) explain the invisible prison of fear:

We became isolated and afraid of people and authority figures.
We are frightened by angry people and any personal criticism.

How Do We Heal?

Wouldn’t it be lovely if I could simply say, “I’m never going to be afraid again.” Sadly, my fear of punishment is deeply rooted. To heal, I too need recovery.  In numbers 4 and 10 of The Flip Side of The Other Laundry List, we find these steps to healing:

We accept and comfort the isolated and hurt inner child we have abandoned and disavowed and thereby end the need to act out our fears of enmeshment and abandonment with other people.
We accept we were traumatized in childhood and lost the ability to feel. Using the 12 Steps as a program of recovery we regain the ability to feel and remember and become whole human beings who are happy, joyous and free.

Groups like ACA, Al-Anon, Alateen, Nar-Anon, CoDA, and Celebrate Recovery all help guide family members though recovery.

Freedom Is Worth It

Recovery wasn’t the answer I wanted to hear. I tried everything from anxiety and depression meds to family counseling. Those interventions on their own weren’t strong enough to help me break out. In fact, I was still unaware of my invisible prison. Once I finally ventured into a 12 Step meeting, everything clicked. I became AWARE of how my parent’s addiction affected me. Slowly, with the help of a Sponsor and accountability partners, I ACCEPTED my hurtful upbringing. Eventually, I was ready to take ACTION by setting boundaries and protecting myself.

I am one of the lucky ones. I’m still in contact with my family. I still love them and care deeply for them, but I put my well being first. I have strong boundaries to keep me safe when the elephants get rattled. And they do get rattled.

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50 Years Ago: The 5th Beatle Was Heroin

From Kenneth Womack @ Salon: Fifty years ago, the Beatles entered their final year as a working rock ’n’ roll band. And in the ensuing decades, the reasons for their eventual disbandment have been debated ad nauseam. Was it Yoko Ono’s constant presence in the studio? Paul McCartney’s increasingly controlling nature? John Lennon’s rage to break free of the partnership that he had brokered with McCartney after their meeting in a Liverpool churchyard in July 1957? Or simply Ringo Starr’s apathy or George Harrison’s need to strike out on his own and fulfill his promise as a songwriter in his own right?

In truth, although each of the above was a contributing factor, by January 1969 a much darker force had made its presence known in their world. During that fateful year, the Beatles suffered, as so many families do today, from the daily pain and bewilderment of an opioid addiction.

Although we have slowly come to recognize the opioid epidemic as the Western world’s most perilous health crisis, we have yet to turn the corner in terms of stemming its tide. In fact, things are getting worse. The National Safety Council recently reported that opioid addiction has become so pervasive that Americans are now more likely to die from an opioid overdose than an automobile accident.

In early 1969, the faces of heroin addiction for McCartney, Harrison and Starr — three quarters of rock music’s Fab Four — were Lennon and his wife Ono. With The White Album lording over the global record charts, the Beatles were the biggest act in the world by a wide margin. By this time, they had challenged themselves to “get back” to their roots, strip away the high-gloss production of LPs like “Revolver” and “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,” and find new levels of greatness.

And for the most part, they would succeed. The “Get Back” project would come in for a rough landing with the band’s triumphant Rooftop Concert on January 30th, and they would record a spate of new classics that summer. That fall, they would release “Abbey Road,” their magisterial swan song. While heroin had infiltrated their midst, they managed — for a time, at least — to overcome the drug’s insidious nature. The Beatles, after all, were that good.

As history has demonstrated resoundingly, the band members were no strangers to drug experimentation. They had become veteran pill-poppers during their days in Hamburg’s seedy postwar clubs, seeking out amphetamines to increase their stamina during those long nights on the Reeperbahn. Later, marijuana would come into their lives by way of Bob Dylan in August 1964. In the coming years, they would make international headlines for tripping out on LSD, and in the summer of 1968, as the Beatles had toiled in the studio to record The White Album, McCartney would engage in an extended dalliance with cocaine.

However, Lennon’s addiction left his bandmates in a state of alarm. By the advent of the “Get Back” sessions, Ono openly joked about taking heroin being the couple’s form of exercise. “The two of them were on heroin,” said McCartney, “and this was a fairly big shocker for us because we all thought we were far-out boys, but we kind of understood that we’d never get quite that far out.”

Lennon later claimed that the couple’s addiction developed in the wake of a hashish raid on his Montagu Square flat by Detective-Sergeant Norman Pilcher’s notorious drugs squad. Lennon attributed Ono’s mid-November 1968 miscarriage to the raid’s aftermath, later remarking that “we were in real pain” after the loss of their baby. Yet at other times, he would attribute his flirtation with heroin to his bandmates’ refusal to accept Ono as their equal, claiming that they began to snort heroin “because of what the Beatles and their pals did to us.”

But in truth, Lennon’s experimentation with the drug had begun much earlier—most likely, during Ono’s summer 1968 exhibition at the Robert Fraser Gallery. “I never injected,” he liked to say. “Just sniffing, you know.” But as journalist and Lennon confidant Ray Connolly observed, Lennon “rarely did anything he liked by halves. Before long, heroin would become a problem for him.”

As anyone with a friend or relative who suffers from substance abuse knows all too well, the addict’s reasons for imbibing their drug of choice are often multitudinous and frequently hurtful. The brutal truth is that they simply must have it. Whether it be alcohol or heroin—the user is powerless in the face of the drug’s delectable, unerring pull.

When the Beatles finally got to the business of recording “Abbey Road,” Lennon’s participation was delayed by a harrowing automobile accident in Scotland that left him and Ono briefly hospitalized and riddled with stitches. When he finally joined the other Beatles towards mid-July, he had a bed from Harrods installed in the studio to allow Ono to convalesce within easy reach.

Not surprisingly, the accident’s aftermath resulted in heroin being the couple’s go-to salve. Indeed, by this juncture, Lennon’s mood swings and absenteeism—the ups and downs of his erratic, unpredictable behavior—were likely the result of their protracted heroin use. As music historian Barry Miles later wrote, “The other Beatles had to walk on eggshells just to avoid one of his explosive rages. Whereas in the old days they could have tackled him about the strain that Yoko’s presence put on recording and had an old-fashioned set-to about it, now it was impossible because John was in such an unpredictable state and so obviously in pain.”

Years later, American actor Dan Richter, a friend of Ono’s, recalled making his way inside EMI Studios to provide Ono with the Lennons’ latest fix. “It felt weird to be sitting on the bed talking to Yoko while the Beatles were working across the studio,” said Richter. “I couldn’t help thinking that those guys were making rock ‘n’ roll history, while I was sitting on this bed in the middle of the Abbey Road studio, handing Yoko a small white packet.”

After the Beatles’ last photo session at Tittenhurst Park on August 22nd, 1969 — in fact, the final occasion in which all four Beatles would be together in person — the couple resolved to kick the habit once and for all. Ono sought out the help of Richter, her supplier, to assist them in breaking free of the opioid. “We were very square people in a way,” said Ono. “We wouldn’t kick it in a hospital because we wouldn’t let anybody know. We just went straight cold turkey. The thing is, because we never injected, I don’t think we were sort of — well, we were hooked, but I don’t think it was a great amount. Still, it was hard. Cold turkey is always hard.”

Today, the UK’s National Health Service has much to offer in terms of maintenance therapy and detox programs. But in August 1969, opioids were scarcely on the NHS’s radar. To Lennon’s mind, the only means at their disposal was going “cold turkey,” which denotes heroin’s abrupt cessation. Desperate to wrest himself free, Lennon reportedly ordered Ono to tie him up to a chair. For some 36 hours, he roiled in pain as he attempted to rid the drug from his system.

In an effort to memorialize his recent experience trying to shake his heroin addiction, Lennon composed “Cold Turkey,” a song that illustrated the excruciating throes of heroin withdrawal in brutal detail: “My feet are so heavy / So is my head / I wish I was a baby / I wish I was dead.” But the composer’s triumph over the drug would be dishearteningly short-lived. By the time he debuted the song for Dylan a few days later, he was snorting heroin yet again. Lennon later recalled that he and Dylan “were both in shades and both on f—ing junk.” He knew that it would take much more than a chair and a rope, admitting that “I was nervous as sh–.”

It would take several more attempts for Lennon to beat the drug. To his great credit, the musician lived his life transparently, sharing his trials and tribulations across numerous interviews. In September 1980, he lamented that back in 1969 the BBC banned “Cold Turkey” from the radio airwaves “even though it’s antidrug.” Even then — long before our contemporary opioid crisis took flight — Lennon intuited society’s inability to understand, much less combat addiction.

“They’re so stupid about drugs,” he exclaimed. “They’re not looking at the cause of the drug problem: Why do people take drugs? To escape from what? Is life so terrible? Are we living in such a terrible situation that we can’t do anything without reinforcement of alcohol, tobacco? Aspirins, sleeping pills, uppers, downers, never mind the heroin and cocaine—they’re just the outer fringes of Librium and speed.”

While we understand far more about the nature of addiction and drug treatment than Lennon could possibly have dreamt in the autumn of 1980, we are lost nevertheless in a health crisis that continues to surge. The striking similarities between the Fab Four’s predicament and today’s devastating health crisis remain indubitably clear. As we stumble forward as a culture nearly five decades after the Beatles’ disbandment, it is genuinely staggering to recognize how far we still have to go.

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Are You A Workaholic?

From Brad Klontz Psy.D., CFP @ Psychology Today: Do you work over 50 hours a week? Do you feel a need to constantly stay busy? Do you have difficulty relaxing and having fun? Are you a perfectionist? Are you unable to delegate work to others? Are you so preoccupied with “to-do” lists that you have trouble being emotionally available to others? Does your partner, spouse or children complain about how much you work? Do you forget conversations or events because you are so preoccupied with planning and work? If you answered yes to one or more of these questions, you could be a workaholic.

Workaholism Is A Disease

Workaholism is a family disease often passed down from parent to child. Workaholics use work to cope with emotional discomfort and feelings of inadequacy. They get adrenaline highs from work binges and then crash from exhaustion, resulting in periods of irritability, low self-esteem, anxiety and depression. To cope with these feelings, workaholics then begin another cycle of excessive devotion to work. Workaholics are so immersed in work they have little time to invest in family life and child-rearing. In the time they do spend with their children they pass down their unrealistic and unattainable perfectionistic standards: “A ‘B’ is okay, but you really should be getting ‘A’s.” As a result, their children feel like failures. They grow-up convinced they are inadequate, and may attempt to compensate for these feelings by losing themselves in work or some other type of compulsive behavior.

Workaholism is one of the few addictions that society values and people are quick to claim. “You think you work a lot, I spent 12 hours at the office yesterday!” While your boss may love your workaholic ways, in the end, your boss might be the only one around to love you. Understandably, children of workaholics become resentful of their parent’s emotional and physical unavailability. Promises are broken and important activities like teacher conferences, sporting events and music recitals are missed. The workaholic’s primary relationship also suffers. Research shows that husbands and wives of workaholics report less positive feelings towards their spouse and a greater sense of marital estrangement. In the end, workaholics experience more marital discord, anxiety, depression, job stress, job dissatisfaction and health problems than non-workaholics.

More Money Probably Won’t Make You Happy

A common drive behind workaholics’ obsession with work is the belief that more money is going to make them and their family happier. This belief sets someone on an endless treadmill of working harder and harder to make more and more money to achieve happiness. However, this is a fool’s errand. Decades of social science research has demonstrated beyond a doubt that for most of us, this is just not the case. Above household incomes of $75,000 a year, there is no correlation between money and happiness. So, those families who make $5 million a year are no happier than those who make $75,000 a year. If you sacrifice your relationships, your emotional well-being and your health by working obsessively, you will not achieve happiness but might succeed in becoming lonely and miserable.

Four Tips for Achieving A Healthy Work-Life Balance

If you are a workaholic, consider the following suggestions for achieving a healthy work-life balance:

1. Take what I call the “rocking chair test.” Picture yourself at retirement age sitting on your front porch rocking in your chair. Looking back on your life, where do you wish you had spent more time? At the office? On the golf course? On vacation with your family?

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2. Challenge your automatic thinking around work. The fact is, as important as we think our work is, when we are dead and gone, the world will keep rotating around the sun. When you are feeling anxious about a “to-do” list, take some time to root out and correct some errors in thinking. What would be the worst thing that would happen if you gave yourself a day off of work? Could you live with that? Would the world survive?

3. Check in with others regarding your work-life balance. Ask your friends and family if they think you work too much. Workaholics are often unaware of how immersed they are in work and are not necessarily conscious of the negative emotional and physical consequences of workaholism. Opening our hearts and minds to the feedback of those around us is an important step in getting honest with ourselves.

4. Examine your family history around work. When I heard my 100-hour-a-week-working father talk about how lazy he felt compared to his father, my feelings of guilt for only putting in a 70-hour work week suddenly made a lot of sense. Seeing this family pattern around work and becoming conscious of the consequences opened my eyes and helped me change my relationship with work.

Don’t Miss Out on Life

In his popular 1970’s folk song, “Cat’s in the Cradle,” Harry Chapin sang about a conversation between a workaholic father and son:

“When you comin’ home dad?”

“I don’t know when, but we’ll get together then son, you know we’ll have a good time then.”

By the end of the song, Chapin’s protagonist deeply regrets missing out on his son’s life. In his old age he realizes he has passed down this too-busy-ways to his son who is now not available to him in his aging years.

If you are a workaholic, turn off the computer and iPad this weekend, leave the office, and spend some quality time with those you love. It might be difficult at first to disengage from work, but it will get easier with practice. When you are rocking on the porch looking back on how you spent your life someday, you won’t regret you did.

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De-cluttering Is A Healthy Detachment

Spring cleaning is an old concept that has grown beyond dusting behind the sofa. Spring cleaning can mean a deeper kind of de-cluttering that extends from our personal belongings to our destructive personal relationships as well.

The KonMari method of de-cluttering and organizing asks that each item (or person in our story) under consideration be mused over and kept only if it “sparks joy.” The KonMari method of simplifying and organizing the home led to the runaway bestseller “The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up,” by Marie Kondo. This theory applies to relationships that have become unmanageable, too. Here’s why.

Spring Cleaning Is A Form Of Healthy Detachment

There is something cleansing about de-cluttering, culling, and tidying up: it creates space in our homes and offices. We can see more with less. This same principle applies to relationships that are unhealthy and sap us of our strength, energy and creativity. Some relationships, especially those in families with substance use disorder hurt you every day no matter how hard you try to make things better. Pruning relationships is a task that we sometimes put off for years, even decades, but detachment from those who hurt or hold us back is pruning for personal growth.

When Relationships Die Detachment Is Needed

Relationships in which others benefit from our care and love but do nothing to enhance, support, embrace, or value us literally make us die on the vie.  Our energy that could be used in a productive, empowering fashion is diverted to the unhealthy, the dried up and crumbly in a misguided attempt to renew and refresh them. It is doubly so within familial relationships, where we give and give until our energies are depleted. We suffer the angst in our own lives in all manner of lifestyle diseases including stress, high blood pressure, bloat, and diabetes. All because we see detachment as something that we just don’t do in a family.

Family Loyalty Can Kill

Families are supposed to stick together, to look out for each other, to have each other’s backs, to offer support in the face of hardship and loss, and abuse. When relationships between family members are unhealthy, we take on a role of caregiver and pour our energy into its revival. And we do it again and again, often with the same family member. Because that’s what families do. No man left behind, right? Even if it depletes, even bankrupts us in every way. Family members, like plants, have to be allowed to grow. That’s why there are pruning shears and the tool of detachment. Detachment may feel sharp as scissors but is actually a much kinder cut.

At My House We’re Waiting For Spring

The massive blue hydrangea sits in a pot by the French doors to my deck, its clustered blooms pressed against the glass waiting for Spring to arrive, so it can adorn the deck from the outside looking in. Each stem holds a fellowship of single flowers, together making a voluminous ball of blossoms. These blooms were produced from the tips of shoots that were pruned in the previous season. The plant lives only because it was pruned. We can all learn from that.

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What Happens When You’re A “Functional” Alcoholic

From Mike Metcalfe @ The Spinoff: After almost 20 years with a drinking problem, I know a thing or two about the lies you tell yourself as a ‘functional’ alcoholic.

Sweet sweet liquor, nectar of the gods. Bringer of joy the world over. Whether it’s a glass of your favourite Pinot with your wife over dinner or drinking four shots of gin through your ear (yeah…I did that once for reasons I’m still not sure about), alcohol is the world’s lubricant. And hey, we can handle it, right? We are never going to become that guy down at the mall who wets his pants and shouts inanities at long forgotten gods.

No, we’ll be functional and able to drink and maintain our careers, friends and family while spending the majority of the time drunk and happy.

Well guess what? Up until recently I was a functional alcoholic and after almost nearly 20 years I knew a few things about being “functional”

You Are Going To Smell

No matter what you do, you’ll smell. And I don’t mean of just liquor, I mean you will smell in a variety of different ways. Alcohol smells, we all know this. Whisky smells of whisky, vodka smells of vodka, beer smells of beer. But underneath it all is that persistent chemical odour of alcohol. You can wash away the smell of the particular type of liquor you may have drunk, but the stench of alcohol will remain, no matter how many showers you take or how many times you roll yourself in a blend of aromatic herbs and spices. It creeps out of your pores over many hours and covers you in an unctuous film which hangs heavy around you. It attaches itself to your clothes, to your bed covers and to any loved ones who can stand to be hugged by your greasy drunken self. I have been in meetings where I was sure the smell of a crazed weekend was pouring from my bloodshot eyes. It is an insanely difficult smell to rid you and your house of which leads to…

People Will Notice

That smell will turn heads and will get you noticed. No matter how hard you try to hide it, people will notice. And it isn’t just the smell – it’s everything about you. Frequently tired, bloodshot eyes and malodorous clothing are just the start – all that tells people is that you may have had a big weekend or night out. But then people will start to notice you are frequently tired and grumpy in the mornings but miraculously chipper after “lunch”, which might mean eating and having a beer – but also, as the alcoholism progresses, popping down to the supermarket, buying a bottle of wine and necking most of it unceremoniously in a public bathroom. Some mornings your hands will shake, your breath will be 80 proof and people will start saying things like “big night last night was it?” on a Wednesday morning. First they’ll say it with surprise (you were drinking on Tuesday night?), then with resignation (You were drinking on a Tuesday night…’protracted sigh’…). And because people are going to start noticing, get ready because…

You Are Going To Lie. A Lot.

We’ve all told our significant others that we ‘had a few’ when in actual fact we drank our body weight in alcohol, set ourselves on fire in a nightclub, then scaled a building to get through the bathroom window of drug dealer’s apartment to get our bag which we’d left in the lounge (yes, sadly that is one of the more tame situations I found myself in). But get ready to be more than just a little white liar; as a functional alcoholic you’ll wind up being a devious little s–t…about EVERYTHING. How much you drank, where you have been, why you are missing your tie, what time of day it is, why you slept on the floor – you will lie about everything to avoid anyone questioning your drinking habits.

You’ll hide bottles around the house, you’ll have stashes in the garden, and the guy at the bottle shop will start eyeing you suspiciously when you return for your third bottle of wine that day, explaining you’re ‘having a party’ at 11am on a Monday morning. You’ll make excuses about the amount of money you are spending, you’ll call in sick to work, you’ll blabber to your partner about ‘being tired’ when your sexual organs stop working properly, your whole life will be a huge ball of lies and if you’re clever enough you’ll be able to maintain these lies for years however…

You’re Going To Get Caught

Sooner or later the lies on top of lies are going to collapse like a house of cards. Why are you slurring after one beer and ‘popping outside for a cigarette’? How come you stink of liquor when no one saw you drink anything and you claim to have been sober all day? Why are you behaving in such a strange manner all of a sudden? After months or years of being an alcoholic you will be caught and the gossamer fibres of bullshit you have hung around yourself will fall to pieces. Your significant other will be upset, your employer will be wary of you and your friends will start getting tired of you. Worst of all, the bullshit you have told yourself about being “functional” will collapse. It isn’t just those around you who fall for your crap but suddenly you catch yourself out – you weren’t just lying to others, you were lying to yourself.

Sooner Or Later You’ll Screw Everything Up

I’m 37 years old. Not 50, not 60, and not 40. Thirty-seven years old. At 37 I have been arrested, written off cars, am divorced and have seriously compromised my health. I’ve been in hospital four times in the last 12 months with acute pancreatitis, a pain which is almost indescribable and only ebbs with a huge combination of morphine, fentanyl and ketamine. Yeah, sounds like fun right?

I am not Hunter S. Thompson and neither are you. Sooner or later it gets you in the end. You’ll lose relationships, money, the respect of your peers and your health. And I consider myself lucky despite all this, because it could be a hell of a lot worse. The one thing no one tells you is that you can’t be a functional alcoholic – because being an alcoholic is a dysfunctional state of affairs. Lying to your family, throwing away money, not remembering vast chunks of every weekend isn’t functioning. Sliming around the office after forgetting to shave for the fourth day running isn’t functional.

I ‘functioned’ for nearly 20 years as an alcoholic but in the end it all just falls apart.

And you’ll stink.

The post What Happens When You’re A “Functional” Alcoholic appeared first on Reach Out Recovery.

Helping Children With A Parent’s Addiction

From Buddy T @ A Very Well Mind: Children living in homes where there is parental substance abuse can find life difficult, unpredictable and confusing. Sometimes they even believe the alcohol or drug abuse is their fault.

Dealing with the chaos and unpredictability of their home life, children can receive inconsistent messages. They can feel guilt and shame trying to keep the family “secrets.” Often they feel abandoned due to the emotional unavailability of their parents.

What To Tell The Children?

If the family breaks up because of substance abuse, or if the children are removed from the home, some become withdrawn and shy while others can become explosive and violent. They often develop issues with self-esteem, attachment, autonomy, and trust.

What do you tell children when one or both of their parents are alcoholics or addicts? How do you explain the chaos? First and foremost, because trust is almost always an issue, you tell them the truth.

According to the National Center on Substance Abuse and Child Welfare, these are the messages that children, with parents who are alcoholics or addicts, need to hear:

Addiction Is a Disease

Children need to know that their parents are not “bad” people, they are sick people who have a disease. When they are drunk or high, sometimes parents can do things that are mean or things that don’t make sense.

It’s Not Your Fault

Children must understand that they are not the reason a parent drinks too much or abuses drugs. They did not cause the addiction and they cannot stop it.

You Are Not Alone

Children need to realize that their situation is not unique and they are not alone. Millions of children have parents who are addicted to drugs or who are alcoholics. They need to know that even in their own school, there are other children in the same situation.

It’s Okay to Talk

Children in homes with substance abuse need to know that it’s okay to talk about the problem, without having to feel scared, ashamed or embarrassed. They no longer have to lie, cover up and keep secrets.

They should be encouraged to find someone that they trust — a teacher, counselor, foster parent, or members of a peer support group such as Alateen.

The Seven Cs

The National Association for Children of Alcoholics suggests that children dealing with family addiction learn and use the following “7 Cs of Addiction:”

I didn’t Cause it.
I can’t Cure it.
I can’t Control it.
I can Care for myself…
By Communicating my feelings,
Making healthy Choices, and
By Celebrating myself.

Children from homes where there is parental substance abuse are often scared, lonely and many times feel isolated from society. Whether you deliver the message perfectly or not, giving them someone with whom they can talk is an important step in their recovery.

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Strawberries Hide $13M In Meth At Texas Port

From Boston 25 News: Customs and Border Protection officers made a major drug discovery hidden in a shipment of frozen strawberries.

The shipment came through the Pharr-Reynosa International Bridge cargo facility in Texas, CNN reported.

A man who is a Mexican citizen told officials he was carrying a shipment of frozen strawberries from Mexico. When Customs officials searched the truck, using K-9 and non-intrusive imaging devices, they said they found 350 packages of methamphetamines or about 906 pounds of the drug, according to a press release.

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The value of the meth was about $12.7 million, Customs officials said in a press release.

Officials seized the truck and drugs and the man is in the custody of Homeland Security Investigations, CNN reported.

The Pharr-Reynosa International Bridge port of entry processes both commercial and passenger vehicles between Mexico and the U.S. on the southern tip of Texas and handles about 175,000 vehicles a month, according to the checkpoint’s official site.

The post Strawberries Hide $13M In Meth At Texas Port appeared first on Reach Out Recovery.

How To Talk To Teens About A Parent’s Substance Use

Talking to teens about family substance use is difficult, especially when it is a parent’s. Without the full understanding of what is happening to a loved one, however, teens can’t heal or enjoy healthy communication and healthy living. Family dysfunction thrives in silence.

By utilizing these guidelines, you can help your teen to understand and cope with the substance use disorder that is harming the family.

Step One: What To Talk About

Open up the subject by giving some basic information to cover the following subjects:

What Is Addiction?

Addiction doesn’t happen overnight. Explain the stages and disease process that occurs with increased use and how substances and alcohol affect brain function. Explaining basic addiction facts and how behavior changes, helps you to educate yourself. Talk with teens about family substance use as if it were cancer or any other progressive disease in an educated, non-judgmental manner. Education gives teens the power to see that addictions are quite common, that they are not alone, and that you can help both the user and the rest of the family.

What Are The Consequences Of Addiction?

Looking at common consequences helps to frame this information as a part of the addiction picture. This helps teens understand that addictive behaviors have consequences, and sometimes the consequences are punishments. Common natural consequences include:

Traffic accidents
Falls
Overdoses
Arrests
Getting fired
Losing friends
Financial difficulties

How Can Recovery Help?

Recovery offers hope for the whole family, and much can be done to help the loved one who’s ready for or already in treatment. Discuss with them 12-step meetings, sponsors, other support groups, or individual or group counseling, intensive outpatient counseling, or inpatient treatment programs for the parent. Let them know that they can be a part of their own recovery through individual counseling, 12-step meetings, support groups, or family therapy that can occur with or without a parent present.

How Much To Share?

Acknowledge what the kids have seen and experienced with family substance use (such as a parent coming home from work drunk or getting fired for smoking pot on her lunch hour). Do not keep these events secret because that maintains the family dysfunction. In reality, your teen already has seen the behaviors and may know more than you do. However, there are some behaviors that may be inappropriate to talk about – healthy boundaries takes precedence over telling all. If you wonder about this, talk to a therapist about these boundaries.

Step Two: When To Talk About It

Talk when you are calm, when there is a quiet time with no distractions. During a fight or the aftermath of a crisis isn’t a good time. Don’t lash out with information, for example, while you’re threatening the loved one, or the loved one is screaming back. Times of high drama are not ideal for family meetings. Also, be open any time the teen might want to discuss this, and perhaps set up times for safe talk.

Step Three: How To Start The Conversation

First of all be calm and listen. While this is a very difficult and painful subject, it needs to be addressed in a quiet and non-judgmental way. The whole family needs to feels safe exploring it. After the subject is raised, then you listen, listen, and listen some more. As always, focus on inappropriate behaviors caused by substance use disorder, not the person. This also includes a focus on how they family can aid in the recovery of the substance user (if appropriate) as well as recovery for the family itself.

Addictions are difficult but you can be a positive example for your teenager(s). How you handle the situation can  empower them and help them find healthy ways to cope.  Remember that taking action is a powerful way to help your teen to go beyond the struggles into embracing recovery.

If your teens need help coping with a parent’s Substance Use Disorder, check out Al-anon family groups for teen support.

If you need help for someone’s addiction, visit Recovery Guidance for a free and safe resource to locate addiction and mental health professionals near you.

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