Leslie Glass's Blog, page 345

What To Know About Relapse

 

Demi Lovato, who was hospitalized for an apparent drug overdose, has been released and is speaking out about her struggles with staying sober. Since Substance Use Disorder is defined as a chronic, relapsing brain disease, relapses are not surprising. Not using, or getting sober, is like a remission. It’s not a cure. Because SUD is a disease, “picking up again” or relapsing, can be compared to the end of a remission. Unlike other progressive diseases, SUDs can be arrested at any time, but relapses can very dangerous. Here’s why.

From Time A number of risk factors make relapses so perilous, says Dr. Richard Blondell, vice chair of addiction medicine at the University of Buffalo’s Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences. But the major culprit is often losing tolerance, he says.

“When a relapse occurs, someone may take a dose that they think is going to be effective — and it may even be half of what they were taking before — but because they’ve lost their tolerance, those tend to be lethal,” Blondell says.

To understand why a changing tolerance is so dangerous, it helps to understand how tolerance develops in the first place. Though its impact is wide-ranging, affecting the way everything from a person’s heart to their pupils responds to a drug, tolerance begins in the brain, Blondell explains.

“In all brain cells, there’s a mixture of receptors. Some stimulate the nerve cell; some inhibit the function of the nerve cell. As you take a drug, that disrupts that normal balance, and the brain tries to then reestablish that normal balance,” Blondell says. “These drugs become incorporated in the brain function, so the brain compensates for the effects of the drugs by changing what it does someplace else.”

Over time, the brain gets good at making these kinds of adjustments, and a typical dose of a drug stops having the effect it once did. As they adapt, a user will need larger and larger doses to get the same high. And as they increase these doses over time, tolerance continues to mount.

When someone stops taking drugs, however, the brain goes back to its usual ways fairly quickly, and tolerance dissipates. Even a relatively short period of sobriety may be enough to wipe someone’s neurological slate clean, putting them at risk of taking a stronger-than-intended hit if their substance use disorder returns, Blondell says.

Dosing can be particularly complicated depending on the drug involved, Blondell adds. (The drug or drugs Lovato may have taken remain unclear.) In general, because of their strength, it’s easier to overdose on opioids than it is cocaine or alcohol, he says. But potent synthetic opioids have further complicated the issue. While a heroin user may be able to visually assess the strength of a dose fairly well, he or she can’t always tell whether the substance was cut with something like fentanyl.

“A standard dose of fentanyl might be about two or three grains of salt, and a lethal dose might be six to seven grains of salt,” Blondell says. “When that’s mixed up with powdered milk and sold in a little bag, you can’t tell what’s a lethal dose just by looking at it.”

Tammy Anderson, a professor of sociology at the University of Delaware who specializes in substance use, adds that the social factors surrounding a relapse matter, too. Many people who see a recurrence of substance use disorder begin using again because of changes in their social group or environment, or because they’ve reverted to the conditions under which they once used drugs or alcohol. All of these changes, Anderson says, can lead people to use dangerous amounts of a drug.

If there’s any silver lining to Lovato’s situation, Anderson says, it’s that her transparency about her relapse, addiction and recovery could help increase public compassion and decrease stigma around addiction issues.

“This will increase awareness and it’ll raise compassion, and that is a good thing,” Anderson says. “The opioid epidemic can hit anybody.”

Did you know the 12 Steps, which have helped millions find recovery, can also help parents find peace and serenity? Check out our latest book, Find Your True Colors In 12-Steps.

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5 Back To School Teen Parenting Tips

Some of these 5 crucial back to school teen parenting tips may surprise you. Your child will be having rollercoaster emotions and more than just academic challenges this year, so how do you prepare? You’ll face as many teaching moments and have as many choices to make as your child will. How will you handle it? Can you set boundaries? Can you listen when the news isn’t good. Can you let natural consequences be life’s best teacher? Here’s how you can be a better parent than I was.

My Terrible Teen Parenting

Sure, I was a good cook and provider. I was great at support and cheerleading, but I didn’t excel because I had limited information. You could write a book about what I didn’t know. I didn’t know that kids lie. They lie. It’s a fact of life. Some teens lie about little things. Some lie to protect you from fear and concerns. Some lie to do bad things and get away with murder. Knowing they lie doesn’t mean you have to punish them, it means you have to be aware that truth is not always part of the equation and act accordingly.

Teen Parenting Means Setting Boundaries

I also didn’t know I could challenge the lies and set boundaries. For example: I didn’t know it was my responsibility to check out backpacks and do drug tests when I suspected my kids were experimenting. Drug tests were unheard of then. Now any parent can do it. You can even ask your pediatrician to do it. Experimenting is no joke these days. It’s less safe now than even a few years ago. Know that kids die from alcohol poisoning in both high school and college, from drug related accidents. Worse still, you don’t have to be a heroin user to be at risk. Even one pill you shouldn’t take can kill. On another subject, I didn’t know I could actually let my kids fail and have a good result. We are a family of successful long term recovery from many areas of dysfunction, including substance use. If I knew then what I know now, we would have avoided a lot of pain and recovered sooner. So here are my suggestions for parenting yourself and your teens this back to school season.

Know Your Teen Parenting Rights

You have the right to set boundaries about all kinds of things. In fact, your teens want you to guide them about what’s okay and not okay to do. If you don’t guide them, no one will. When kids have no boundaries, they will continue through life doing whatever suits them, regardless of how their actions affect those around them. Setting boundaries means you’re prepared to be the adult.

Teen Parenting When Your Kid Lies

When you let your child’s lies go unchallenged, they will get bigger as life progresses. You have the right and responsibility to know the truth and deal with it. Since kids lie about what they’re doing (and you’re responsible for their safety and yours), it’s okay to check up on them. You can be a detective when necessary. Check their rooms and backpacks, forbid drug and alcohol use in your home. Arrange for drug tests if you are suspicious. You have the right to make sure your home is a safe haven for you and your other children. If your kids don’t follow your rules, get counseling for yourself. You will need it.

Teen Parenting When Your Kid is Slacks Off

It’s natural to want to help your unmotivated or slacking kid. All parents want their children to succeed. If you have a child who isn’t thriving, there may be good reasons that need exploring. Anxiety, depression, problems at home, problems learning can all cause school work lethargy. But a lot of kids, so we hear, are just not that interested and see no reason to exert themselves. That leaves you with some decisions to make. Failure can be a great motivator. As a parent you can only succeed as a guide and provider of resources. If your guidance isn’t a strong enough motivator, you have to examine your beliefs. Do you want to let your child slip slide through life? Slip sliding doesn’t work in the real world. It will catch up with your child at some point. So, you have a right to let your loafer fail. Of course, get to the bottom of the problem first. If there isn’t a drug, relationship, emotional issue and your child just doesn’t want to bother, then let natural consequences take their course. I used to say failure is not an option to my teens. That’s leaning in too far. I was wrong. Natural consequences can be life’s best teacher. You don’t have to support or pay school fees for a kid who wants nothing more than to party. Life without parental support can teach young people how to survive. Here is an area where you may need the counseling more than they do.

Teen Parenting When Your Kid Doesn’t Return Your Calls

You have the right to hear from your teen at college. If your child doesn’t return your calls, set a boundary. You have the right to know your kid is all right. Schedule a weekly call to find out how schoolwork, relationships, and other aspects of life are going. If your kid is struggling with work or substances or anxiety or depression, be prepared to get counseling before a little problem becomes a big one.

Teen Parenting When Your Kid Needs You To Listen

You want your kids to be able to come to you or advice and guidance, right? But for them to trust you, they have to feel confident you can take what they have to say and accept it as real. And you have resist trying to force solutions on them. Learning to listen is hard, maybe the hardest thing you’ll ever have to do. Your child is going to be hurt, have problems, make mistakes, do things you wouldn’t do, and they have to learn from these life lessons. The tighter you control and impose your will, the more your kid will withhold and rebel.

Being a good listener doesn’t mean you have to be a doormat without opinions. It means you have to listen first and make your actions and responses fit the situation. If your child needs a therapist, get one. If your child bullied, talk to an expert. If your child is experimenting with substances, you need counseling for yourself to know what to do. If you’re horrified by what you hear, you can always say: Let me think about this and get back to you.

You don’t have to have all the answers and solutions. You just have to be willing to learn as you go.

 

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Depression And Addiction: The Chicken Or The Egg?

From Richard Zwolinski and C.R. Zwolinski @ Psych Central:  There’s a saying in the recovery movement: Alcohol and drug addiction can cause mental illness but mental illness does not cause addiction. However, some mental illnesses, especially those that are not quickly diagnosed and treated, can trigger the use of alcohol and drugs.

Depressive disorders often cause acutely uncomfortable feelings such as overwhelming sadness, hopelessness, numbness, isolation, sleep disorders, digestive and food-related disorders. It is tempting, if medications aren’t being prescribed or used properly, for people suffering from depression to self-medicate.

This can compound the depression and make it far worse. A drink or two, a line of cocaine or two, might temporarily relieve some symptoms, but the backlash when the chemical leaves the body brings the depression to new lows. This “withdrawal depression” happens each time an abused chemical leaves the body, though many people don’t experience severe symptoms at first. The withdrawal depression itself can trigger the use of more alcohol or drugs because they will help get rid of the bad feelings.

Another compounding problem is that if drugs and alcohol are being used while medication is being taken, the alcohol or drugs can actually potentiate—make stronger—or deactivate the medication. Either way, this can put the person in medical danger.

Because of their personal life-shattering experiences with substance abuse, some people in recovery are leery of using any drugs, even prescribed ones. They have faced traumatic experiences with addiction and have a difficult time coming to terms with the necessity for medication intervention. In fact, I have had patients who have quit drinking or drugging the hard way—through willpower or cold turkey—yet are willing to endure the horrible symptoms of depression rather than take medication. Very often their social sober support network advises them to refrain from taking meds. Usually, this is not within the realm of the advisor’s authority. Dually-diagnosed patients (those with both mental illness and addiction) should speak with their psychiatrist about this issue, not a friend, no matter how well-intentioned.

One question I get asked frequently from addiction-treatment patients who are diagnosed with depression after they are diagnosed with an addiction is “did my drinking or drugging cause the depression?” The initial answer is always a resounding “maybe.” A well-trained psychotherapist will often be able to tease out the source of the depression and find out if it existed before the patient came in for addiction treatment. Therapists use a psychosocial evaluation and reports from family, friends, employers, court and police records and the like to help determine which condition occurred first.

Why Is It Important To Know When The Depression First Occurred?

Because someone who had depression before they began to abuse substances will most likely need treatment, including medication intervention, for a longer period of time compared to someone whose depression was caused by the cycle of addiction. Someone whose depression was caused by substance abuse generally will not need the same treatment as someone whose depression preceded his or her substance abuse.

Sometimes when someone comes in for addiction treatment and has a depressive disorder that was caused by addiction, they aren’t able to accurately report what is going on for them. They may be too numb or sad or unable to focus. Or perhaps a less-than-thorough psychosocial evaluation is done. Lack of reporting or inadequate evaluation may prevent the full understanding of whether the depressive disorder preceded or was caused by the substance abuse.

If a patient whose depression was caused by chemical abuse is referred to a treatment track for those who were depressed first and chemically dependent later, within a few weeks he or she usually is asking “what am I doing here? I don’t have these kinds of problems!” In these cases this isn’t necessarily a function of denial but a valid observation due to an original lack of understanding about whether the depression or the addiction came first.

Did you know the 12-steps can also help improve your mental health? Here’s a fun way get back to your true self with our new coloring book, Find Your True Colors In 12-Steps.

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10 Things To Not Say To A Depressed Friend

Remember the game telephone we played as kids? One child whispered a secret to the next, then that child whispered what he or she heard to the next. By the end of the game, the original secret was hilariously distorted. Often, this same thing happens when we try to cheer up a loved one struggling with depression. The message of help and hope is distorted into shame and condemnation.

We all want to be helpful to our family, friends, coworkers, and acquaintances, but sometimes we don’t know what to say. We either:

Say and do helpful things
Ignore the person, the problem, or both
Try to help but end up saying and doing hurtful things

10 Things Not To Say To A Depressed Friend

Remember that while you want to help, there are things to do and say that can be beneficial to one who is depressed, but the following statements are usually disheartening. Here are the most commonly offered good intentions:

“It can’t be that bad.”
“You’re just having a bad day.”
“Stop feeling sorry for yourself.”
“Pull yourself up by your bootstraps.” OR “Snap out of it.” OR “Get over it.”
“You don’t look (or seem) depressed.”
“Think about all the people that are worse off than you…” OR “You think you have problems, let me tell you about….”
“Why are seeing a psychiatrist (or social worker, counselor, psychologist)? They’re a bunch of quacks.
“Why are you taking meds? They can’t be good for you. And the BIG Book (AA) says you shouldn’t take drugs.
“What doesn’t kill you will make you stronger.”
“Have you tried…”

What The Depressed Friend Is Likely To Hear

Depression often comes with feelings of shame, overwhelm, exhaustion, and worry. When those feelings are present, they transcribe the well-intended message of hope and generate these types of responses:

Here is my list of everything that is going wrong in my life…
Well, perhaps this will kill me.
I’d love to look at the bright side, but all I can think about is sleeping, or worse yet dying…
Yep, it would be great if I could get myself out of bed.
Of course I’ve never thought about this. (Add sarcasm)
How could you be so cold and compassionless?
I’m so depressed that I really don’t care.

All of the above offered good intentions either minimize the person’s pain or try to solve the person’s problem. They border on being controlling and unkind. Comparative pain almost never cheers someone up, and doctors have yet to find any combination of words that can magically cure depression.

To help a depressed friend or relative, instead try:

Listening without judging or giving advice
Validating your friend’s feelings
Letting your friend find his or her own solutions
Unless your depressed friend specifically asks for your opinion, keep your opinions to yourself. (This is so important that we said it twice.)

For more helpful ideas on how to support a depressed friend, read our article, 10 Things To Say To Someone Who’s Depressed.

Did you know the 12 Steps, which have helped millions find recovery, can also help you find peace and serenity in depression and anxiety? Check out our latest book, Find Your True Colors In 12-Steps.

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11 Symptoms Of Codependency

From Darlene Lancer @ Psych Central: Codependency is characterized by a person belonging to a dysfunctional, one-sided relationship where one person relies on the other for meeting nearly all of their emotional and self-esteem needs. It also describes a relationship that enables another person to maintain their irresponsible, addictive, or underachieving behavior.

Do you expend all of your energy in meeting your partner’s needs? Do you feel trapped in your relationship? Are you the one that is constantly making sacrifices in your relationship? Then you may be in a codependent relationship.

The term codependency has been around for decades. Although it originally applied to spouses of alcoholics (first called co-alcoholics), researchers revealed that the characteristics of codependents were much more prevalent in the general population than had previously imagined. In fact, they found that if you were raised in a dysfunctional family or had an ill parent, you could also be codependent.

Researchers also found that codependent symptoms got worse if left untreated. The good news is that they’re reversible.

Symptoms Of Codependency

The following is a list of symptoms of codependency and being in a codependent relationship. You don’t need to have them all to qualify as codependent.

1. Low Self-Esteem

Feeling that you’re not good enough or comparing yourself to others are signs of low self-esteem. The tricky thing about self-esteem is that some people think highly of themselves, but it’s only a disguise — they actually feel unlovable or inadequate. Underneath, usually hidden from consciousness, are feelings of shame. Guilt and perfectionism often go along with low self-esteem. If everything is perfect, you don’t feel bad about yourself.

2. People-Pleasing

It’s fine to want to please someone you care about, but codependents usually don’t think they have a choice. Saying “No” causes them anxiety. Some codependents have a hard time saying “No” to anyone. They go out of their way and sacrifice their own needs to accommodate other people.

3. Poor Boundaries

Boundaries are sort of an imaginary line between you and others. It divides up what’s yours and somebody else’s, and that applies not only to your body, money, and belongings, but also to your feelings, thoughts and needs. That’s especially where codependents get into trouble. They have blurry or weak boundaries. They feel responsible for other people’s feelings and problems or blame their own on someone else.Some codependents have rigid boundaries. They are closed off and withdrawn, making it hard for other people to get close to them. Sometimes, people flip back and forth between having weak boundaries and having rigid ones.

4. Reactivity

A consequence of poor boundaries is that you react to everyone’s thoughts and feelings. If someone says something you disagree with, you either believe it or become defensive. You absorb their words, because there’s no boundary. With a boundary, you’d realize it was just their opinion and not a reflection of you and not feel threatened by disagreements.

4. Caretaking

Another effect of poor boundaries is that if someone else has a problem, you want to help them to the point that you give up yourself. It’s natural to feel empathy and sympathy for someone, but codependents start putting other people ahead of themselves. In fact, they need to help and might feel rejected if another person doesn’t want help. Moreover, they keep trying to help and fix the other person, even when that person clearly isn’t taking their advice.

5. Control

Control helps codependents feel safe and secure. Everyone needs some control over events in their life. You wouldn’t want to live in constant uncertainty and chaos, but for codependents, control limits their ability to take risks and share their feelings. Sometimes they have an addiction that either helps them loosen up, like alcoholism, or helps them hold their feelings down, like workaholism, so that they don’t feel out of control. Codependents also need to control those close to them, because they need other people to behave in a certain way to feel okay. In fact, people-pleasing and care-taking can be used to control and manipulate people. Alternatively, codependents are bossy and tell you what you should or shouldn’t do. This is a violation of someone else’s boundary.

6. Dysfunctional Communication

Codependents have trouble when it comes to communicating their thoughts, feelings and needs. Of course, if you don’t know what you think, feel or need, this becomes a problem. Other times, you know, but you won’t own up to your truth. You’re afraid to be truthful, because you don’t want to upset someone else. Instead of saying, “I don’t like that,” you might pretend that it’s okay or tell someone what to do. Communication becomes dishonest and confusing when you try to manipulate the other person out of fear.

7. Obsessions

Codependents have a tendency to spend their time thinking about other people or relationships. This is caused by their dependency and anxieties and fears. They can also become obsessed when they think they’ve made or might make a “mistake.” Sometimes you can lapse into fantasy about how you’d like things to be or about someone you love as a way to avoid the pain of the present. This is one way to stay in denial, discussed below, but it keeps you from living your life.

8. Dependency

Codependents need other people to like them to feel okay about themselves. They’re afraid of being rejected or abandoned, even if they can function on their own. Others need always to be in a relationship, because they feel depressed or lonely when they’re by themselves for too long. This trait makes it hard for them to end a relationship, even when the relationship is painful or abusive. They end up feeling trapped.

9. Denial

One of the problems people face in getting help for codependency is that they’re in denial about it, meaning that they don’t face their problem. Usually they think the problem is someone else or the situation. They either keep complaining or trying to fix the other person, or go from one relationship or job to another and never own up the fact that they have a problem.

Codependents also deny their feelings and needs. Often, they don’t know what they’re feeling and are instead focused on what others are feeling. The same thing goes for their needs. They pay attention to other people’s needs and not their own. They might be in denial of their need for space and autonomy. Although some codependents seem needy, others act like they’re self-sufficient when it comes to needing help. They won’t reach out and have trouble receiving. They are in denial of their vulnerability and need for love and intimacy.

10. Problems With Intimacy

By this I’m not referring to sex, although sexual dysfunction often is a reflection of an intimacy problem. I’m talking about being open and close with someone in an intimate relationship. Because of the shame and weak boundaries, you might fear that you’ll be judged, rejected, or left. On the other hand, you may fear being smothered in a relationship and losing your autonomy. You might deny your need for closeness and feel that your partner wants too much of your time; your partner complains that you’re unavailable, but he or she is denying his or her need for separateness.

11. Painful Emotions

Codependency creates stress and leads to painful emotions. Shame and low self-esteem create anxiety and fear about being judged, rejected or abandoned; making mistakes; being a failure; feeling trapped by being close or being alone. The other symptoms lead to feelings of anger and resentment, depression, hopelessness, and despair. When the feelings are too much, you can feel numb.

There is help for recovery and change for people who are codependent. The first step is getting guidance and support. These symptoms are deeply ingrained habits and difficult to identify and change on your own. Join a 12-Step program, such as Codependents Anonymous, Al-anon, ACA or seek counseling. Work on becoming more assertive and building your self-esteem.

We can move from COdependent to INdependent. Our Codependent in the Kitchen shares her recipes for independence and delicious foods in this charming cookbook.

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Macklemore Scheduled To Headline First Annual Recovery Fest

Above the Noise Foundation has recently established themselves as a prominent figure in the battle against the opioid epidemic. On Friday, the organization announced their first annual Recovery Fest to be hosted in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, hosted by non-other than the “Glorious” hit-maker, Macklemore.

Above The Noise Foundation is a New England-based non-profit that hosts drug-and-alcohol-free music festivals to “inspire, empower, and provide funding to U.S. cities battling the national addiction epidemic.” Partnering with the Patucket Red Sox, the event will take place at McCoy Stadium on Saturday, September 29 and be a completely drug and alcohol free event.

Along with the Seattle-based rapper Macklemore, the artist lineup will also feature Fitz and the Tantrums as well as New England natives, PVRIS and more.

Celebrating Recovery

As a public advocate of his own recovery, Macklemore released a video on Friday announcing the festival, noting that this cause hits close to home. The 35-year-old has been on the bumpy road to recovery since 2008, when he admitted into rehab for drug addiction and alcoholism himself. He then endured a relapse three years later, a slip that he makes known in his 2012 song “Starting Over,” and has since stayed sober.

“Recovery is something I’m very proud of, that I’m a part of the community, and I believe that it should be celebrated,” Macklemore said in a video he released on Friday. “It’s also about connecting with other addicts in the community, and that is why I am very proud to announce that I’m headlining the first-ever Above the Noise Recovery Fest.”

“This drug- and alcohol-free music festival isn’t just going to be a great event, it’s going to be a great safe space for community to come together and celebrate recovery,” he continued.

Recovery Fest Healing Through Music

Kristen Williams-Haseotes, who is the president and founder of Above the Noise Foundation explained the basis of the festival. “Nearly every person I know has been touched in some way by the opioid epidemic in America. Recovery Fest 2018 will allow those in recovery, their families, and those supporting them to stand together and celebrate recovery through the healing power of music.”

The president of the Pawtucket Red Sox additionally shared his sentiments.

“It’s an honor to partner with an organization that is making such a wonderful statement through the power of music,” Dr. Charles Steinberg noted. “Like baseball, music unites us, and we are pleased to be able to use our ballpark to bring together so many people from so many walks of life who share a desire to improve our community, and share a desire to enjoy the performance of Macklemore.”

Event Details

Proceeds from Recovery Fest will go to more than 75 recovery centers and non-profit organizations in the New England area. Tickets for the festival are available now here.

The festival will also feature a “matching ticket program” for individuals battling addiction who would like to attend but cannot afford the cost of a ticket. Interested parties can apply via the festival website as the foundation promises they will work to find a community member to cover the cost of a ticket.

General admission tickets are $59 each, while reserved green seats are $85. Tickets to stand on the field are $150, while VIP tickets near the stage in a pit area are at $250.

The concert is rain or shine and will take place from 5 p.m. to 10 p.m., with gates opening at 4 p.m.

From Sober Nation

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3 Kinds Of Happy People

From Psychology Today:

Happiness is about living the life that best suits who you really are, even if that means going against the prevailing norms and expectations.

For some people, the kind of life they most want to live, the life that is most deeply fulfilling, is exactly the kind of life that is respected and rewarded and celebrated at the time and place that they are living. In many contemporary societies, it is married life that is considered good and worthy. People who live their best lives by being married are in luck. They can live the lives they find most intrinsically rewarding, and all sorts of external rewards will follow.

They comprise the first category of people who have a head start on happiness. They are the people who find married life most fulfilling and they are living the married life at a time and place that values that life above all others.

For many years, I have been trying to make the case that some people live their best lives by living single. I don’t mean this in that grudging sense you often hear, that being single is better than being in a bad romantic relationship. No, I mean that for these people, whom I call “single at heart,” living single is their Plan A. It is the way they live their most meaningful and fulfilling life.

The challenge for people who would do best to live single is that it could take them a long time to realize that single life can be a good life – and for them, the best possible life. That’s not what they learn from fairy tales or movies or TV shows or novels or the lyrics of songs. Their friends and family will not gather from far and wide to celebrate their commitment to single life. Laws won’t carve out protections or tax breaks for them. The prevailing customs and the practices of everyday life will not be organized around their lives.

In her new memoir, No One Tells You This, Glynnis MacNicol describes a conversation she had with a friend when she was 40 and single. The friend asked her what she wanted. She answered, “Maybe I just like being alone.” To the reader, she admits, “For the first time it crossed my mind that being alone could be a good thing, and not evidence that I was defective.”

Then she posed this question: “Had I always actually just preferred to be on my own and not known that was something I could be without it being something I should feel ashamed about?” Looking back at two of her most significant romantic relationships – one with a married man, and another with an actor who lived far away and was involved with other women – she wondered whether she had purposefully sought out men like that. She could be with them, without having to “give up what I so cherished about my life. They were there, but not there at the same time.

In my TEDx talk, I told several other stories of people who came to realize, only in roundabout ways, that single life was the life for them. It is still a hard sell for many people, who resist the notion that anyone could be truly happy if they are single. Even people who have embraced single life sometimes talk about it in ways mischaracterize and unwittingly devalue that life – as, for example, when they refer to single people as “alone” or “unattached.” In important ways, single people are more connected to other people than married people are, and they have relationships with other people that meet all the formal requirements for genuine attachments.

People who are “single at heart” and who are living single comprise the second category of people who are setting themselves up for happiness. It may have taken them a while to get where they are, and there will always be challenges as long as so many other people consider their life to be second rate, but they are living the life that is best for them. I don’t know if you can be truly, deeply happy if you are single at heart but trying to make it as a married person (or if married life is the best life for you, but you are single).

A friend of mine who is happily married once said that yes, she was happily married, but if she were single, she would be happy that way, too. She’s an example of the third category of happy people – people for whom marital status (or romantic relationship status) just isn’t all that important. They can be deeply fulfilled either way.

There are lots paths to happiness, and plenty of impediments. People who are living the life that suits them best (for example, people who are single at heart who are living single) are on the happiness fast track. That’s no guarantee of happiness, though. All sorts of things can be happening in their lives to make them miserable. Still, I think they would be even more miserable if they were living a life that did not fit who they really are.

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Aggression, Abuse And Addiction: We Need A Social Media Detox

By Jonathan Freedland from The Guardian:

It’s August, when the talk is of holidays looming or just gone – and yet the question I find myself asking is not where, but whether.

I’m less interested in where friends or colleagues are going than whether they will fully unplug. Will they stay off their phones and, specifically, off Twitter and Facebook?

I’m filled with admiration for the pal who stayed off the tweets a full month, only now gradually re-entering that realm, blinking into the darkness. That took some serious willpower. How funny to think that we once regarded the humble email device as addictive – the CrackBerry, we called it – when, in fact, those machines exerted a tiny pull next to the iron grip of social media on a smartphone. The BlackBerry was a post-dinner cigarette compared to the full smack habit that is hand-held Twitter.

How compulsive is it? Let me take you to a golden summer’s evening in Hyde Park, for last month’s farewell concert by Paul Simon. Most of the crowd were rapt, absorbing this swansong by a musical legend. But in front of me was a woman who, clearly enough of a Simon enthusiast to have bought an expensive ticket, nevertheless pulled out her phone every 20 or 30 seconds. Four or five times during each song. She was not using it to take photos of the performance. (I was close enough, and distracted enough, to see.) She was, instead, scrolling through social media updates, thumbing her way through observations about the news – including factoids about France’s World Cup victory that afternoon. Even when Simon closed with The Sound of Silence – a transcendent, transporting moment – she couldn’t help it: she reached for the phone. She needed one more fix.

Where there is anecdote, there is also data. On Thursday Ofcom reported that the average Briton checks their smartphone every 12 minutes – which obviously means plenty are checking it much more often than that. Britons are spending an average of 24 hours online each week, with one in four clocking up 40 hours.

There are obvious reasons why this might be bad, reasons of both time and space. The time suckage is striking. I know myself how quickly an hour or more can disappear down a Twitter rabbit hole. (I’ve never really done Facebook, but I confess to a Twitter problem: I still like the speed, range of stories and expertise I’d otherwise miss.) Think of all the conversations you could have had, the books you could have read, when instead you were going deep into some thread you’ll have forgotten seconds later. I recall the cartoon of the man who won’t go to bed, even when summoned by his partner. “I can’t, this is important,” he explains. What is it? “Someone is wrong on the internet.” But it’s also the view out of the train window that you never saw, because your head was down, staring at that glowing screen.

Still, that, frankly, is the least of the harm. The real problem is that “addiction makes people crazy”, to quote internet pioneer Jaron Lanier, author of a polemic published this summer: Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now.

Just look at how people who are otherwise sane and courteous behave online: the arguments, the sarcasm, the aggression, the abuse. Of course human beings have always been capable of fighting, but something strange happens on social media. For one thing, confrontation on the screen happens more often than it ever would in our daily lives. Put a device in people’s hands, and suddenly they’re on a hair-trigger – either giving or taking offence.

 

One crucial factor is social media’s ability to stage a confrontation in public. Suddenly two individuals will be slugging it out in front of everyone else. If they’re famous, someone will post a gif of Michael Jackson munching popcorn. This has no counterpart in real, or pre-Twitter, life. In the past, TV might have hosted a bust-up between two antagonists. But the spontaneous, genuine row unfolding in real-time in front of a mass audience: that’s new.

And those exchanges often descend into the toxic. The instant they shift to Direct Message mode – without an audience – they become calmer and more considered, freer of performance and posturing. But on the platform, in public view, Lanier is right: even good people rapidly become “assholes”. If they have something else at stake – for example, their career prospects when they post on LinkedIn – they tend to behave better, he says. But when it’s just sounding off about politics, broadly defined, the asshole within reigns supreme.

Part of the problem is the lack of context. On social media, people too often approach a statement as if it is the very first that person has made (unless, of course, they want to expose the tweeter as a hypocrite, by revealing the contradiction with thoughts posted earlier). Sometimes the results are comic – when a bloke in the pub is telling a nuclear weapons engineer how nukes work – but more often it’s just infuriating. So you’re denounced for “failing to address” x, when you have, in fact, been addressing x for years and, indeed, addressed it in a tweet posted a matter of minutes earlier. It’s partly this lack of context that explains the aggressive atmosphere. Those we know well need do little to gain our attention; those we don’t have to shout and scream and swear to get noticed.

And all this is before you get to the proven, documented abuse and manipulation of these platforms by people who mean us harm, as revealed by my Observer colleague Carole Cadwalladr in her exposés of Cambridge Analytica and Facebook: witness the Russia-backed content that reached 126 million Americans via Facebook during the 2016 presidential election.

But the truth is, the problem lies not with abuse of the medium, but with the medium itself. Addiction was built into social media’s design from the start – recall former Facebook president Sean Parker describing the “little dopamine hit” the product gives users to keep them hooked – and so too was the anger. The feedback algorithm rewards “engagement”, and a swift, vicious denunciation registers as engagement of a particularly intense kind. Lanier notes that an unintended consequence of Black Lives Matter was that, thanks to the algorithm, it connected its fiercest opponents with each other online, fuelling and cohering the resurgent white supremacist movement we see today.

Philosophically, the right people to blame for these products are their producers, not their consumers – just as we ought to blame junk food manufacturers for obesity, rather than railing against individuals for insufficient willpower. That makes moral sense and we should push the tech giants to change.

And yet, for some of us, that change will not come quickly enough. Deleting our accounts – total abstinence – might feel like too great a leap, but an August holiday presents an opportunity, if not to delete then at least to detox. So when the time comes to pack my bags later this month, I’ll be taking sunscreen, a few novels, but no Twitter. I’ll listen instead to the sound of silence.

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Addiction Is A Disease. My Drug-Addicted Parents Showed Me That

By Sosha Lewis from The Washington Post:

I got out of bed and followed the smell of bacon and the sound of my parents’ voices to the kitchen. The Eagles were harmonizing from the tape deck, and I could hear laughter mixed with kissing.

Following the morning routine of fathers everywhere, mine poured a cup of coffee and flipped through the morning paper. He then noticed the time, grabbed a can of Easy-Off Oven Cleaner and sprayed it directly down his throat.

He swallowed hard, kissed my mom goodbye, told me to be good at school and left for work.

My dad. The pill hustler.

He would spend his day rocketing his white Chevy Nova over the twisting Appalachian Mountain roads to present his Easy-Off-blistered throat to local doctors in exchange for prescriptions for narcotics.

When I got home that afternoon, our tiny apartment in Oceana, W.Va., looked as if it had been picked up and shaken. There was a lingering smell of stale beer and cigarette ash. Empty pill capsules and rolled-up dollar bills littered the coffee table and floor.

My mom, Starr, was sitting in her usual place on the couch, but her makeup had slid around and formed a garish mask, and her left eye was starting to swell from a jab by my dad. Her head was slowly slumping forward like a willow that had just started weeping.

This was a scene that would be played out again and again throughout my tumultuous ’80s childhood: my parents going from giddy at the prospects of scoring drugs to petulant and abusive when they ran out.

My parents. The drug addicts.

In 2012, four years after my mom’s overdose death, I began corresponding with my dad, Steve, then an inmate in jail. He and I had been estranged for years. I blamed him for making my mother an addict — essentially, for killing her. However, when my husband and I became parents, I had an overwhelming need to know how my parents came to choose drugs over me. Steve was the only one left to ask.

His letters were filled with soul-shaking guilt and regret. Despite dropping out of high school at 16, his grammar and spelling were solid from years of reading one paperback novel after another. We found we shared some favorites: “No Country for Old Men,” “Lonesome Dove” and “Beloved.”

Steve wrote about falling in love with my mom for the same reasons that everyone fell in love with my mom — her sparkling blue eyes and megawatt smile.

Let’s see, I was 14 and Starr was 16 when we met at school. We had to sneak around.

They would meet up in alleys and sometimes sneak off to a secluded hollow to “smoke pot and drink wine.”

From his smeared southpaw scrawl, I learned that Steve’s stepfather was an abusive alcoholic and that he did his first “shot of dope” at 14. I’ve never been able to shake that feeling of warmth, it just totally engulfs you, it whispers to you that everything will be alright.

I have done every drug you can imagine . . . I always come back to opiates, to that warmth.

He and my mom didn’t choose to be addicts, he assured me, and he was sorry for how my siblings and I were raised. No one would chose the hell that comes with being an addict, Sosha. No one.

When I first read this, I burned with indignation. What a cop-out. I had chosen not to be a drug addict; it really wasn’t that hard.

Then I read through his letters again. I thought about Steve as a boy who protected his mom from her abusive husband and then curled up with the warmth of dope.

I made myself admit that I had often used alcohol as an escape route. I had not chosen addiction, but perhaps it was also that addiction hadn’t chosen me.

I’ve watched addiction swallow up loved ones, people who were smart and loving and charismatic, and it still took me decades to accept that, as then- Surgeon General Vivek H. Murthy stated in his landmark 2016 report, addiction is a chronic illness, not a moral flaw.

And it is an epidemic with a stigma attached. An estimated 20.8 million people in the United States are living with a substance abuse disorder, which is more than the number living with all cancers combined . Yet people don’t pin colored ribbons to their lapels for substance-abuse awareness or lace up their sneakers to race for the opiate cure.

We must see beyond the statistics and headlines. We must remember that buried under disease are real people and real families. And some were once just a couple of teenagers who fell in love.

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4 Reasons To Try Saunas

 

From Time A new research review has plenty of good news for people who love a good sauna session: Studies overwhelmingly suggest that the relaxing habit is also a healthy one.

A paper published Wednesday in Mayo Clinic Proceedings gathered existing findings on Finnish sauna bathing, the practice of spending time in relatively dry rooms heated to between 80 and 100 degrees, interspersed with periods of cooling. The results were culled from more than 70 studies published up through February 2018.

Overall, the research suggests that “sauna bathing, an activity used for the purposes of pleasure, wellness, and relaxation, is linked to a remarkable array of health benefits,” the authors conclude. Here are a few.

Improves Vascular Health

Research suggests that saunas can improve vascular health in a variety of ways, from lowering blood pressure and risk factors for hypertension to reducing bathers’ likelihood of fatal heart disease, stroke and neurological decline. Some studies included in the review did not account for things like reverse causation — the notion that healthier people may be more likely to use saunas, as opposed to saunas making people healthier — but more recent research has suggested that spending time in the sauna can directly affect your blood pressure, vascular function, oxidative stress, inflammation levels and more, according to the paper. In fact, some researchers have drawn comparisons between the benefits drawn from sauna bathing and moderate- or high-intensity exercise.

Enhances Breathing

Sauna bathing has been shown to enhance lung capacity and function, potentially resulting in improved breathing for people with respiratory conditions such as asthma and bronchitis, according to the paper. Sauna regulars may also have fewer common colds and flus and a lower risk of pneumonia, the study adds, suggesting that sauna bathing may also boost the body’s immune response.

Promotes Pain Relief

Research has shown that people suffering from musculoskeletal conditions, including osteoarthritis, rheumatoid arthritis and fibromyalgia, report lessened discomfort after spending time in a sauna. When interspersed with cooling periods, sauna stints may also boost the body’s natural painkilling response, according to the paper. Similar results have been observed among people with chronic headaches, the paper says.

 Improves Mood

Though many people use saunas specifically to reduce stress, research about how they affect mental health is scarce. Nonetheless, the review notes that time in saunas can boost the production of feel-good hormones such as endorphins, possibly leading to stress relief and an improved mood. Thermal therapy in general, though not specifically Finnish saunas, has also been linked with a reduced risk of depression, the review notes.

 

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