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charamanders · 5 years

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Did a slice and a half and I finally felt like a real fucking person again. Y'know until the pervasive guilt and self-loathing hit. I really do hate myself for what I did, because I've set back my recovery yet again. Still, I managed to run all these errands I'd been putting off and get legitimate work done, after I had the first bag and some caffeine in my system.

My gf was pleasantly surprised to see me puttering around the kitchen, making fejioada and listening to janelle monae, when she got in from work. I guess she expected me to still be in bed, either crying or binging netflix shows.

I got laundry done, went to home depot to both get some of the stuff I need for home repairs and priced a new stove, and paid the bills i needed to pay for the month of feb. I really don't want to tell her about what I resorted to in order to accomplish that shit, though.

I know how she can get, and I really don't want her to use my slip up as an excuse or a reason to relapse, especially since she hasn't used in almost a month, at least to my knowledge. I don't want my fuck up to become hers. I feel like I've screwed up her life enough without that.

I didn't even wanna use today as much as I wanted to be fucking functional for once. Without something other than acetaminophen for pain relief, I spend my time fucking bedridden from headaches, joint pain, anxiety, qnd executive dysfunction.

I know only some of that is from poorly managed lupus (damn do I need to see my rheumatologist), and most of it is from withdrawal. So if I stick it out, the withdrawal aspect, at least, will go away or drop off considerably.

But it's so hard doing that, letting my body & mind adjust, and spending several weeks with serious mood swings, anxiety, and sensory overload to the point where all I can do is sit and bed, shake, and have PTSD flashbacks to being raped in my own house.

That said, I also can't afford to spend a few weeks in detox, when I really need to keep going to work, and supervise house renovations. The faster I can get a security system installed here, the faster I can stop looking over my shoulder, being on high alert constantly, and wanting to use to modulate my emotions.

I'd consider outpatient detox, but the only thing they seem to want to give me in outpatient in terms of MAT is naltrexone. Naltrexone does nothing for the chronic pain and anxiety that drove me to start heavily abusing opiates in the first place, and I can't even use safe(r) substances like kratom for pain relief, because the naltrexone blocks its effects. Also if I take naltrexone less than 10 days after my last use of opioids or kratom, I go into precipitated withdrawal. Precipitated withdrawal is literally the worst thing I've been through in my entire life, which is saying a lot. I wouldn't wish that shit on my worst enemy, that's how bad it is.

Ideally, I would get prescribed something like suboxone that doesn't leave me completely up a creek with no paddle, but I'm terrified of asking my psychiatrist about it, for fear that he'll tell me to go inpatient if I'm doing that poorly. He already hates prescribing me benzodiazepines, and I've been prescribed those since 2009, which means tapering off too fast could either send me into the DTs or kill me.

Ugh.

After today, I'm gonna try to stop using again, and try to stick to kratom and imodium to manage things. I've done it successfully before. I know I can do it. I don't want to be in constant physical and emotional pain, but I also don't want severe opi addiction to become my whole life again. I don't want to cause my gf to relapse with me, and I don't want to spend all my $ trying to cop and/or commuting to my connect.

Yeah, I only spent $10 on those 2 bags today, but I know how fast $10 can become $40 and even $100+ as I develop a tolerance for this garbage.

I think I'll go to an NA meeting tomorrow. I hate that higher power bullshit these 12 step programs push, 'cause after everything that's happened to me (the sexual assaults, the chronic pain, etc), I'm more mad at god than anything else, assuming the fucker even exists. But I need to be around people who understand and can empathize with what I'm going through. If nothing else, meetings are at least good for that.

I gotta get back on the right track.

I want to get back on the right track.

I know I can do it, I just have to commit to it again. If I can get through the first three days, it'll get a lot easier.

I got this. I got this.

#heroin #opiate withdrawal

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radiumeater · 5 years

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Alcoholics Anonymous is famously difficult to study. By necessity, it keeps no records of who attends meetings; members come and go and are, of course, anonymous. No conclusive data exist on how well it works. In 2006, the Cochrane Collaboration, a health-care research group, reviewed studies going back to the 1960s and found that “no experimental studies unequivocally demonstrated the effectiveness of AA or [12-step] approaches for reducing alcohol dependence or problems.”

The Big Book includes an assertion first made in the second edition, which was published in 1955: that AA has worked for 75 percent of people who have gone to meetings and “really tried.” It says that 50 percent got sober right away, and another 25 percent struggled for a while but eventually recovered. According to AA, these figures are based on members’ experiences.

In his recent book, The Sober Truth: Debunking the Bad Science Behind 12-Step Programs and the Rehab Industry, Lance Dodes, a retired psychiatry professor from Harvard Medical School, looked at Alcoholics Anonymous’s retention rates along with studies on sobriety and rates of active involvement (attending meetings regularly and working the program) among AA members. Based on these data, he put AA’s actual success rate somewhere between 5 and 8 percent. That is just a rough estimate, but it’s the most precise one I’ve been able to find.

I spent three years researching a book about women and alcohol, Her Best-Kept Secret: Why Women Drink—And How They Can Regain Control, which was published in 2013. During that time, I encountered disbelief from doctors and psychiatrists every time I mentioned that the Alcoholics Anonymous success rate appears to hover in the single digits. We’ve grown so accustomed to testimonials from those who say AA saved their life that we take the program’s efficacy as an article of faith. Rarely do we hear from those for whom 12-step treatment doesn’t work. But think about it: How many celebrities can you name who bounced in and out of rehab without ever getting better? Why do we assume they failed the program, rather than that the program failed them?

When my book came out, dozens of Alcoholics Anonymous members said that because I had challenged AA’s claim of a 75 percent success rate, I would hurt or even kill people by discouraging attendance at meetings. A few insisted that I must be an “alcoholic in denial.” But most of the people I heard from were desperate to tell me about their experiences in the American treatment industry. Amy Lee Coy, the author of the memoir From Death Do I Part: How I Freed Myself From Addiction, told me about her eight trips to rehab, starting at age 13. “It’s like getting the same antibiotic for a resistant infection—eight times,” she told me. “Does that make sense?”

She and countless others had put their faith in a system they had been led to believe was effective—even though finding treatment centers’ success rates is next to impossible: facilities rarely publish their data or even track their patients after discharging them. “Many will tell you that those who complete the program have a ��great success rate,’ meaning that most are abstaining from drugs and alcohol while enrolled there,” says Bankole Johnson, an alcohol researcher and the chair of the psychiatry department at the University of Maryland School of Medicine. “Well, no kidding.”

[...]

AA truisms have so infiltrated our culture that many people believe heavy drinkers cannot recover before they “hit bottom.” Researchers I’ve talked with say that’s akin to offering antidepressants only to those who have attempted suicide, or prescribing insulin only after a patient has lapsed into a diabetic coma. “You might as well tell a guy who weighs 250 pounds and has untreated hypertension and cholesterol of 300, ‘Don’t exercise, keep eating fast food, and we’ll give you a triple bypass when you have a heart attack,’ ” Mark Willenbring, a psychiatrist in St. Paul and a former director of treatment and recovery research at the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, told me. He threw up his hands. “Absurd.”

Part of the problem is our one-size-fits-all approach. Alcoholics Anonymous was originally intended for chronic, severe drinkers—those who may, indeed, be powerless over alcohol—but its program has since been applied much more broadly. Today, for instance, judges routinely require people to attend meetings after a DUI arrest; fully 12 percent of AA members are there by court order.

Whereas AA teaches that alcoholism is a progressive disease that follows an inevitable trajectory, data from a federally funded survey called the National Epidemiological Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions show that nearly one-fifth of those who have had alcohol dependence go on to drink at low-risk levels with no symptoms of abuse. And a recent survey of nearly 140,000 adults by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that nine out of 10 heavy drinkers are not dependent on alcohol and, with the help of a medical professional’s brief intervention, can change unhealthy habits. We once thought about drinking problems in binary terms—you either had control or you didn’t; you were an alcoholic or you weren’t—but experts now describe a spectrum. An estimated 18 million Americans suffer from alcohol-use disorder, as the DSM-5, the latest edition of the American Psychiatric Association’s diagnostic manual, calls it. (The new term replaces the older alcohol abuse and the much more dated alcoholism, which has been out of favor with researchers for decades.) Only about 15 percent of those with alcohol-use disorder are at the severe end of the spectrum. The rest fall somewhere in the mild-to-moderate range, but they have been largely ignored by researchers and clinicians. Both groups—the hard-core abusers and the more moderate overdrinkers—need more-individualized treatment options. The United States already spends about $35 billion a year on alcohol- and substance-abuse treatment, yet heavy drinking causes 88,000 deaths a year—including deaths from car accidents and diseases linked to alcohol. It also costs the country hundreds of billions of dollars in expenses related to health care, criminal justice, motor-vehicle crashes, and lost workplace productivity, according to the CDC. With the Affordable Care Act’s expansion of coverage, it’s time to ask some important questions: Which treatments should we be willing to pay for? Have they been proved effective? And for whom—only those at the extreme end of the spectrum? Or also those in the vast, long-overlooked middle? For a glimpse of how treatment works elsewhere, I traveled to Finland, a country that shares with the United States a history of prohibition (inspired by the American temperance movement, the Finns outlawed alcohol from 1919 to 1932) and a culture of heavy drinking. Finland’s treatment model is based in large part on the work of an American neuroscientist named John David Sinclair. I met with Sinclair in Helsinki in early July. He was battling late-stage prostate cancer, and his thick white hair was cropped short in preparation for chemotherapy. Sinclair has researched alcohol’s effects on the brain since his days as an undergraduate at the University of Cincinnati, where he experimented with rats that had been given alcohol for an extended period. Sinclair expected that after several weeks without booze, the rats would lose their desire for it. Instead, when he gave them alcohol again, they went on week-long benders, drinking far more than they ever had before—more, he says, than any rat had ever been shown to drink. Sinclair called this the alcohol-deprivation effect, and his laboratory results, which have since been confirmed by many other studies, suggested a fundamental flaw in abstinence-based treatment: going cold turkey only intensifies cravings. This discovery helped explain why relapses are common. Sinclair published his findings in a handful of journals and in the early 1970s moved to Finland, drawn by the chance to work in what he considered the best alcohol-research lab in the world, complete with special rats that had been bred to prefer alcohol to water. He spent the next decade researching alcohol and the brain.Sinclair came to believe that people develop drinking problems through a chemical process: each time they drink, the endorphins released in the brain strengthen certain synapses. The stronger these synapses grow, the more likely the person is to think about, and eventually crave, alcohol—until almost anything can trigger a thirst for booze, and drinking becomes compulsive. Sinclair theorized that if you could stop the endorphins from reaching their target, the brain’s opiate receptors, you could gradually weaken the synapses, and the cravings would subside. To test this hypothesis, he administered opioid antagonists—drugs that block opiate receptors—to the specially bred alcohol-loving rats. He found that if the rats took the medication each time they were given alcohol, they gradually drank less and less. He published his findings in peer-reviewed journals beginning in the 1980s. Subsequent studies found that an opioid antagonist called naltrexone was safe and effective for humans, and Sinclair began working with clinicians in Finland. He suggested prescribing naltrexone for patients to take an hour before drinking. As their cravings subsided, they could then learn to control their consumption. Numerous clinical trials have confirmed that the method is effective, and in 2001 Sinclair published a paper in the journal Alcohol and Alcoholism reporting a 78 percent success rate in helping patients reduce their drinking to about 10 drinks a week. Some stopped drinking entirely.I visited one of three private treatment centers, called the Contral Clinics, that Sinclair co-founded in Finland. (There’s an additional one in Spain.) In the past 18 years, more than 5,000 Finns have gone to the Contral Clinics for help with a drinking problem. Seventy-five percent of them have had success reducing their consumption to a safe level. [...] In the United States, doctors generally prescribe naltrexone for daily use and tell patients to avoid alcohol, instead of instructing them to take the drug anytime they plan to drink, as Sinclair would advise. There is disagreement among experts about which approach is better—Sinclair is adamant that American doctors are missing the drug’s full potential—but both seem to work: naltrexone has been found to reduce drinking in more than a dozen clinical trials, including a large-scale one funded by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism that was published in JAMA in 2006. The results have been largely overlooked. Less than 1 percent of people treated for alcohol problems in the United States are prescribed naltrexone or any other drug shown to help control drinking. To understand why, you have to first understand the history. The American approach to treatment for drinking problems has roots in the country’s long-standing love-hate relationship with booze. The first settlers arrived with a great thirst for whiskey and hard cider, and in the early days of the republic, alcohol was one of the few beverages that was reliably safe from contamination. (It was also cheaper than coffee or tea.) The historian W. J. Rorabaugh has estimated that between the 1770s and 1830s, the average American over age 15 consumed at least five gallons of pure alcohol a year—the rough equivalent of three shots of hard liquor a day. Religious fervor, aided by the introduction of public water-filtration systems, helped galvanize the temperance movement, which culminated in 1920 with Prohibition. That experiment ended after 14 years, but the drinking culture it fostered—secrecy and frenzied bingeing—persists.In 1934, just after Prohibition’s repeal, a failed stockbroker named Bill Wilson staggered into a Manhattan hospital. Wilson was known to drink two quarts of whiskey a day, a habit he’d attempted to kick many times. He was given the hallucinogen belladonna, an experimental treatment for addictions, and from his hospital bed he called out to God to loosen alcohol’s grip. He reported seeing a flash of light and feeling a serenity he had never before experienced. He quit booze for good. The next year, he co-founded Alcoholics Anonymous. He based its principles on the beliefs of the evangelical Oxford Group, which taught that people were sinners who, through confession and God’s help, could right their paths. AA filled a vacuum in the medical world, which at the time had few answers for heavy drinkers. In 1956, the American Medical Association named alcoholism a disease, but doctors continued to offer little beyond the standard treatment that had been around for decades: detoxification in state psychiatric wards or private sanatoriums. As Alcoholics Anonymous grew, hospitals began creating “alcoholism wards,” where patients detoxed but were given no other medical treatment. Instead, AA members—who, as part of the 12 steps, pledge to help other alcoholics—appeared at bedsides and invited the newly sober to meetings. A public-relations specialist and early AA member named Marty Mann worked to disseminate the group’s main tenet: that alcoholics had an illness that rendered them powerless over booze. Their drinking was a disease, in other words, not a moral failing. Paradoxically, the prescription for this medical condition was a set of spiritual steps that required accepting a higher power, taking a “fearless moral inventory,” admitting “the exact nature of our wrongs,” and asking God to remove all character defects. Mann helped ensure that these ideas made their way to Hollywood. In 1945’s The Lost Weekend, a struggling novelist tries to loosen his writer’s block with booze, to devastating effect. In Days of Wine and Roses, released in 1962, Jack Lemmon slides into alcoholism along with his wife, played by Lee Remick. He finds help through AA, but she rejects the group and loses her family. Mann also collaborated with a physiologist named E. M. Jellinek. Mann was eager to bolster the scientific claims behind AA, and Jellinek wanted to make a name for himself in the growing field of alcohol research. In 1946, Jellinek published the results of a survey mailed to 1,600 AA members. Only 158 were returned. Jellinek and Mann jettisoned 45 that had been improperly completed and another 15 filled out by women, whose responses were so unlike the men’s that they risked complicating the results. From this small sample—98 men—Jellinek drew sweeping conclusions about the “phases of alcoholism,” which included an unavoidable succession of binges that led to blackouts, “indefinable fears,” and hitting bottom. Though the paper was filled with caveats about its lack of scientific rigor, it became AA gospel. Jellinek, however, later tried to distance himself from this work, and from Alcoholics Anonymous. His ideas came to be illustrated by a chart showing how alcoholics progressed from occasionally drinking for relief, to sneaking drinks, to guilt, and so on until they hit bottom (“complete defeat admitted”) and then recovered. If you could locate yourself even early in the downward trajectory on that curve, you could see where your drinking was headed. In 1952, Jellinek noted that the word alcoholic had been adopted to describe anyone who drank excessively. He warned that overuse of that word would undermine the disease concept. He later beseeched AA to stay out of the way of scientists trying to do objective research. [...] As the rehab industry began expanding in the 1970s, its profit motives dovetailed nicely with AA’s view that counseling could be delivered by people who had themselves struggled with addiction, rather than by highly trained (and highly paid) doctors and mental-health professionals. No other area of medicine or counseling makes such allowances. There is no mandatory national certification exam for addiction counselors. The 2012 Columbia University report on addiction medicine found that only six states required alcohol- and substance-abuse counselors to have at least a bachelor’s degree and that only one state, Vermont, required a master’s degree. Fourteen states had no license requirements whatsoever—not even a GED or an introductory training course was necessary—and yet counselors are often called on by the judicial system and medical boards to give expert opinions on their clients’ prospects for recovery. Mark Willenbring, the St. Paul psychiatrist, winced when I mentioned this. “What’s wrong,” he asked me rhetorically, “with people with no qualifications or talents—other than being recovering alcoholics—being licensed as professionals with decision-making authority over whether you are imprisoned or lose your medical license?

#ref

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michaelandy101-blog · 4 years

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The 7 Greatest Music Playlists for Productiveness, Based on Science

New Post has been published on http://tiptopreview.com/the-7-best-music-playlists-for-productivity-according-to-science/

The 7 Greatest Music Playlists for Productiveness, Based on Science

Not lengthy after I first began at HubSpot, I used to be welcomed with a contemporary pair of orange, noise-canceling headphones. On the time, I had no clue that these headphones would carry me by many lengthy work days and a few of the deepest, darkest ranges of author’s block.

Over three years later, they’re actually the reward that retains on giving.

You see, for me, listening to music whereas working is the key to my productiveness. All it takes is the fitting Beyoncé monitor, and I’m going from idle to uber productive. (Significantly, it really works like a allure.)

The difficulty is, discovering the proper playlist is not all the time simple. With limitless streaming music potentialities at my fingertips, it may be exhausting to nail down simply the fitting tunes to get the wheels turning. So, I did what we do greatest round right here — some research.

Because it seems, there are a ton of research that discover the affect of particular varieties of music as they relate to your productiveness ranges.

That can assist you discover simply the correct mix, we have sourced and curated seven Spotify playlists designed with particular research in thoughts. Whether or not you are into Mozart or Probability The Rapper, we’re assured that there is one thing on this checklist that can do the trick.

Observe: Among the playlists comprise tracks with specific language that may not be appropriate for the workplace.

7 Science-Backed Workplace Music Playlists for Productiveness

1. Classical Music

Some of the continuously cited research associated to music and productiveness is the “Mozart Effect,” which concluded that listening to Mozart for even a short interval every day can enhance “abstract reasoning ability.”

The examine — led by researchers Gordon Shaw, Frances Rauscher, and Katherine Ky — employed 36 Cal-Irvine college students who had been divided into three teams. Group one hearken to a Mozart choice, whereas group two listened to a rest tape, and group three endured 10 minutes of silence.

After the listening exercise, all 36 college students had been issued the identical take a look at, during which the Mozart group averaged an eight-to-nine level enhance of their IQs, in comparison with the remaining teams.

Since then, the “Mozart Effect” has been hotly contested, however many researchers have gone on to discover the psychological advantages of studying and listening to classical music. One current examine, for instance, discovered that elementary-school-aged youngsters who participated in music composition training outperformed college students in a management group on studying comprehension.

Assume classical music would possibly be just right for you? Take a look at this classical-influenced playlist to seek out out for your self:

2. Video Sport Soundtracks

“Choosing the right video game soundtrack to work to is all about understanding what type of music motivates vs. distracts you when you need to concentrate,” says HubSpot’s VP of Acquisition (and former online game marketing advisor) Emmy Jonassen.

“For example, if you’re the type who gets amped and focused listening to high-energy music, rhythm game soundtracks, like those from Thumper or Klang, could work well. Conversely, if you need calm to concentrate, the serene soundtracks from exploration games, like ABZÛ and Journey, may do the trick. With thousands of games releasing every year, including many independent titles, there is a soundtrack to suit everyone’s ear,” she went on to elucidate.

Give it some thought: Taking part in a online game requires lots of focus. To make it to the subsequent degree, gamers generally must keep away from traps, dodge obstacles, and uncover secret instruments that can assist them progress to the subsequent degree. Consequently, the music selection for video games is often very strategic, in that fashionable soundtracks are likely to mirror epic, inspiring cinematic scores moderately than simply primary sound results.

And whereas research have revealed blended outcomes, there may be proof to help that avid gamers can expertise improved efficiency by enjoying a sport with the amount on.

For instance, when psychology professor Siu-Lan Tan and her colleagues John Baxa and Matt Spackman particularly honed in on the sport “Twilight Princess (Legend of Zelda),” they discovered that participants who played with both music and sound effects off performed worse than those that performed with it on.

Need to attempt it on for measurement? Take a look at the playlist beneath:

three. Nature Sounds

Based on psychophysical information and sound-field evaluation printed in The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, listening to “natural” sounds might improve cognitive functioning, optimize your capacity to pay attention, and enhance your degree of satisfaction.

Assume: Waves crashing, birds chirping, streams trickling, and the like.

That might clarify why extra consumer-facing manufacturers — from Google Home to the newer Noisli — are introducing such ambient sound options to assist listeners chill out or focus. It may also be behind Spotify’s a number of nature-themed playlists, like this soothing one:

four. Pump Up Songs

After observing that many athletes arrive on the stadium carrying headphones, Kellogg College of Administration professor Derek Rucker and three of his colleagues — Loran Nordgren, Li Huang, and Adam Galinsky — got down to reply the query: Does listening to the proper type of music make us really feel extra highly effective or in management?

So, again in 2014, the group of researchers arrange a study to gauge how music would possibly affect motivation and subsequent habits. First, they performed a number of songs for contributors in a lab, and requested them — on a scale of 1 to seven — how highly effective, dominant, and decided they felt after listening to every music. There have been three “high power” winners: Queen’s “We Will Rock You,” 2 Limitless’s “Get Ready for This,” and 50 Cent’s “In Da Club.”

Then, to gauge how the music would affect their habits, they requested contributors to hearken to the music after which decide whether or not or not they’d prefer to go first or second in a debate. Because it turned out, those that listened to the high-power playlist volunteered to go first nearly twice as typically as those that listened to a much less highly effective playlist.

The lesson? “Just as professional athletes might put on empowering music before they take the field to get them in a powerful state of mind,” Rucker defined, “you might try [this] in certain situations where you want to be empowered.”

Subsequent time you are seeking to really feel empowered earlier than a giant presentation, interview, or wage evaluate, take a look at this roundup:

Need extra? Take a look at my colleague Amanda Zantal-Wiener’s picks here.

5. Instrumental Songs

In 2015, Center Tennessee State College researchers Carol A. Smith and Larry W. Morris discovered that college students who listened to “sedative” music throughout a take a look at scored greater than those that listened to lyrical music. (That considerably contrasts their initial findings 39 years earlier, which confirmed that whereas music did not reveal an affect on take a look at scores, those that listened to “stimulative music” confirmed a major enhance in fear and extremely emotional reactions.)

That is not to say that it is fully unimaginable to cross issues off your checklist whereas listening to songs with phrases — I really desire lyrical music, however my colleague, Amanda Zantal-Wiener, has joked about hip hop verses unintentionally slipping into her first drafts when she listens to songs with phrases. If you happen to’re like she is and discover that lyrics are too distracting, you might need to experiment with some instrumental choices.

For these instances, take a look at these lyric-less tunes — we promise they will not put you to sleep:

6. “Feel Good” Songs

Buried in deadlines? Making an attempt to unearth your self from an e-mail mountain after a while off? No matter’s bugging you, typically, the most effective treatment for productiveness loss is a strong dose of “feel good” tunes — you recognize, the type that make you spontaneously use a pen as a pantomimed microphone.

However scientifically talking, music can stimulate the identical a part of the mind as scrumptious meals and different bodily pleasures. Researchers at McGill University, for instance, found that when contributors obtained the opiod-production-blocking drug naltrexone, they did not reply as positively to their favourite tunes as they may usually.

The decision? Our brains are educated to naturally produce these chemical substances once we hear our most well-liked playlist.

And whereas “feel good” songs differ from individual to individual, a search for Spotify playlists with these very key phrases yields dozens of outcomes. That stated, here is considered one of our favorites:

Cannot get sufficient? Here are a few more suggestions from my colleague Amanda.

7. White Noise

Based on a study led by Yamaguchi College, “When carrying out intellectual activities involving memory or arithmetic tasks, it is a common experience for noise to cause an increased psychological impression of ‘annoyance,’ leading to a decline in performance.”

Whether or not you are distant working with roommates or working in an workplace house with noisy colleagues, it may be difficult to focus with conversations occurring round you. Impartial, non-verbal background seems like white noise, which isn’t the identical as nature sounds, may help block out these distractions — issues just like the din of a restaurant or shopping center, an electrical fan, and even laundry machines.

And in case you are questioning — sure. Like the entire above, there is a playlist for that:

So go forth — focus, get pumped, really feel good, and rock out.

What are your favourite songs for getting work performed? Tell us within the feedback.

Editor’s Observe: This publish was initially printed in March 2015 and has been up to date for accuracy and comprehensiveness.

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vitamininfusiontherapy · 4 years

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6 Major Benefits of NAD Therapy

Picture you're running a marathon and also you get on your last stretch, however you're dying of thirst. If somebody handed you a container of water, you would consume it, right? Your cells continuously run a 24-hour marathon. They do not get a break just because you do. And also they need gas and also particular tools to keep going solid. NAD is among the most important tools you may give your cells, and also ultimately on your own. Stronger cells equates to a more powerful you. Although there are lots of benefits to obtaining NAD+ IV therapy, we have actually shared 6 benefits to get you started.

What is NAD+?

Nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD+) is a coenzyme present in almost all cells in your body. Its major objective is to sustain metabolic reactions forward, similar to gas in your vehicle. Without NAD+, your cells won't have the ability to metabolize carbohydrates, fats as well as amino acids. NAD+ additionally plays a significant function in gene expression connected to age-related illness.

IV Therapy.

NAD+ IV Treatment is an emerging vitamin treatment that is natural, all natural, as well as has revealed outstanding outcomes. IV NAD+ treatment may be the light at the end of the tunnel for lots of people struggling with addiction, age-related diseases, as well as chronic tiredness.

Even if needles make you queasy, this main treatment is well worth the short-term needle stick. Why? Carrying out a high dosage of NAD+ straight into your bloodstream, contrasted to other routes (i.e. dental) will certainly offer you a quicker, much more able result. This high dosage rapidly optimizes your NAD+ levels, which revs up the engine in your cells (called the mitochondrion) translating into more power for you.

The IV treatment may last from 3 to 15 days, depending upon your condition and your goals. It's important to deal with a fit medical professional who is certified in providing NAD+ therapy, since there are main methods.

Boost Metabolic process.

Wanting to boost your energy? Wish to stop relying upon high levels of caffeine to obtain you with the day?

NAD+ IV treatment may aid. NAD as well as it's twin kind, NADH are mostly used in redox responses to generate power within your cells. Part of this procedure consists of the breakdown of carbohydrates, or sugar. What happens when your body is flooded with sugar? In addition to elevated blood sugar levels, your cells begin to metabolism the basic carbohydrates taking to an overload of NADH. Excess NADH has actually been linked to a number of metabolic conditions.

Diabetes is one of those conditions. When your body does not have adequate NAD, or an overload of NADH, it will not have the ability to activate the superhero enzymes sirtuins. Studies have actually revealed that computer mice with raised sirtuins were less most likely to become diabetic, and also were at a decreased risk of fatty liver illness. While IV NAD therapy won't be able to reduce your blood sugar levels, it does generate the exact same effect as calorie constraint.

To put it simply, NAD+ therapy may be able to reduce your waist as well as drop weight.

Lower Discomfort.

As if the gain from IV NAD treatment couldn't obtain any type of much good, did you recognize that it might help reduce your discomfort and additionally promote managing? A 2014 research released results of IV NAD treatment as well as neuropathic discomfort. They found that providing NAD intravenously helped reduce discomfort as much as 2 days after the last injection. Although this study was done on computer mice, it's impressive nonetheless.

Enhancing your NAD degrees will certainly allow your body to recover itself much finer from injury, mainly when it comes to the regeneration of your blood vessels. Diabetic patients are at danger for developing capillary damage because of high blood glucose degrees. This type of damages might result in atherosclerosis, or the solidifying of your arteries. Not just will NAD advertise healing of your within, yet it might also decrease your danger of heart problem.

Encouraging Therapy for Dependency.

Let's be clear. NAD+ IV Therapy is NOT a remedy for addiction. It's an all-natural treatment option that recovers the mind on the mobile degree as well as kickstarts recuperation. Why is this important? This enables the person battling with addiction to have a much well possibility at doing well with managing in the long term.

Dependency is a mind condition with underlying source that up previously have actually not been properly dealt with (relapse prices are 50-90%). The closest competent therapy has been psychotherapy, which actually assists re-wire the brain. Extra research needs to be done relating to NAD+ and also the impact on the mind and also dependency. However until now, individuals as well as clinicians have actually seen extraordinary makeovers when utilizing NAD+ as a detox technique.

NAD is different from typical treatment options because:

It is natural, compared to poisonous pharmaceuticals which mostly harm your mind in the future.

It is corrective. NAD aids your cells heal as well as helps with cellular biogenesis.

It is Gas. NAD, NADH is apart of the bodily functions in continued production of ATP for power in your body.

It assists balance the body. With fixing the mithocondrial, NAD aids balance hormones and also deficiencies in the body to aid combat anxiety normally.

It is safety. NAD has revealed to be neuroprotective.

One of the most extensive effect of IV NAD+ is its ability to minimize cravings, clinical depression, and also increase energy degrees associated with detoxing from alcohol, opiate withdrawal and Benzodiazepine. NAD+ is a much more natural remedy compared to the prescription medicines suboxone, naltrexone or methadone, since there are no hazardous adverse effects from NAD+. After just 10-15 consecutive treatments of IV NAD+, individuals battling dependency have a good opportunity to have a far good lifestyle not being restrained by a routine of when and where are you going to find the nutraceuticals you need to really feel typical. With NAD+ Therapy you may be free once again.

Managing With Persistent Tiredness, Beat the Fatigue.

Those who suffer from persistent exhaustion battle with debilitating signs and symptoms everyday. It's vague exactly what triggers fatigue syndrome (CFS), as well as there's currently little being done in the types of diagnostic examinations either. Conventional treatment might include a combination of antidepressants, rest nutraceuticals, and also discomfort drugs yet this approach is like placing a bandage over an inner injury. Prescription drug made use of in time may make what appeared to be a trouble now a much bigger issue when it quits working and also you require increasingly more to maintain the plaster on.

What are the signs and symptoms of Chronic Exhaustion?

Problem staying asleep, never feeling you have actually obtained a relaxing evening's rest.

Difficulty focusing on tasks, remembering what you were working on.

Extreme tiredness for more than six months.

Not able to wake up for longer than a hr or two a day.

Daily life tasks like walking the dog make it even worse.

NAD+ Treatment may help. IV NAD treatment addresses the core problem by providing your body with the energy it needs to recover on a cellular level.

NAD raises manufacturing of ATP, which is the money your cells utilize for energy. A CFS individual of the NAD Therapy Facility states after his initial 7-day therapy:.

It struck me, I began really feeling much good. I felt amazing. I was even listening to music differently ... I just really did not have the severe discomfort that I had in the past. I really felt eight years of pain melting away.

Optimize Brain Power.

This is a huge one. As nootropics become extra popular, many people are looking to boost their cognitive performance with all-natural supplements. NAD IV treatment is probably the most mind reconstruction treatment around. It boosts the function of your neurons, safeguards your cells from damages, poisoning and also death, as well as advertises mitochondrial biogenesis. Generally, if your brain is healthy and balanced and also operating at optimal levels, you'll make good decisions, be more productive, and also achieve more.

Cognitive decline is a trademark signs and symptom for aging. As we get older, our memory ends up being blurry and we assume a little slower. Neurodegeneration describes the loss of structure or feature of the nerve cells. Research is emerging regarding the neuroprotective effects of sirtuins in the mind. Sirtuin 1 (SIRT1) in the hippocampus has actually been linked with an increase in memory and knowing in mice. In addition, SIRT1 may secure versus amyloid proteins related to Alzheimer's and various other neurodegenerative problems. SIRT1 depends on NAD+ as well as acts to shield your mind and also nerve cells.

The majority of people who experience NAD IV therapy express the following mind benefits:.

Raised focus.

Boosted memory.

Enhanced psychological quality.

Improved state of mind.

Boosted balance.

Improved vision.

Boosted hearing.

Get Your Anti-Aging On.

Do you want to really feel more youthful, have much more power, extend your life-span? Dr. David Sinclair as well as his associates at Harvard found that NAD levels decline as we age and also this likewise has an impact on other procedures that rely upon NAD. A class of enzymes referred to as sirtuins, plays a large role in exactly how the body ages by regulating inflammation as well as DNA protection. Sirtuins rely on NAD to start as well as quit safety paths that are linked to pathologies of age-related conditions. In other words, sirtuins have the ability to "switch on" and also "switch off" certain genetics like a light switch.

Why is reducing inflammation in the body vital?

Swelling creates damage to your DNA and also other frameworks in your cells, which may take to cell death. When we eat inflammatory foods, inhale contaminants, or are revealed to various other hazardous chemicals, and also germs our cells are at threat.

When the body has an autoimmune illness, the protective body health system may cause damages to its very own tissues and create such conditions of arthritis, fibromyalgia, and muscle discomfort. With plentiful amounts of IV NAD and also dental supplements, your cells have the ability to trigger enzymes to avoid and also remedy DNA damage. Superhero enzymes, such as sirtuins, enable your cells to live lengthy and also healthy and balanced lives, resulting in a good quality of life for you.

The article “ 6 Major Benefits of NAD Therapy “ was published first on NAD Treatment Center

Know more about the benefits of iv vitamin therapy and how it may help you achieve optimum health. The IV Lounge is an IV drip clinic in Toronto. Go check them out at www.theivlounge.ca

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aestherians · 7 years

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One of the reasons the kin community is really unpopular is because it has appropriated terms that actually oppressed and marginalized groups use to describe their own experiences

It would be nice if you could give me some examples, so I didn't have to guess which terms you're talking about, though I assume it's about species dysphoria.Species dysphoria is not an appropriation of gender dysphoria. Dysphoria is a thing you can get completely unrelated to your gender, and is, among other things, a common symptom of depression and withdrawal. Other things that have been known to cause dysphoria include:>Major depressive disorder (unipolar) and dysthymia>Bipolar disorder>Cyclothymia>Borderline personality disorder>Premenstrual syndrome>Premenstrual dysphoric disorder>Stress>Adjustment disorder with depressed mood>Anxiety disorders such as post-traumatic stress disorder>Dissociative identity disorder>Dissociative amnesia>Depersonalization disorder.>Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder>Mixed anxiety-depressive disorder>Gender dysphoria>Borderline personality disorder>Dependent personality disorder>Antisocial personality disorder>Substance withdrawal>Body dysmorphic disorder>Akathisia>Hypoglycemia>Schizophrenia>Sexual dysfunction>Body integrity identity disorder>Insomnia>Chronic pain>Drug withdrawal>κ-opioid receptor agonists like salvinorin A, butorphanol, and pentazocine>μ-opioid receptorantagonists such as naltrexone and nalmefene >Antipsychotics like haloperidol and chlorpromazine>Depressogenic and/or anxiogenic drugsDysphoria really is the best word to describe feeling unhappy because your body feels wrong. And no, dysmorphia is not a good alternative, as discussed here http://aestherians.tumblr.com/post/159820771264/All this has already been discussed to death, so if you're interested in a more in-depth discussion, here are a some from my archive:http://aestherians.tumblr.com/post/158465095749/http://aestherians.tumblr.com/post/153118896079/Now, are we saying that species dysphoria is as legitimate as gender dysphoria and should have equal status in medical fields? No. No, we aren't. We just want people to be aware that it is a thing and that we're using the right terminology when we call it dysphoria.

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detoxnearme · 7 years

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bluewatsons · 5 years

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Jesse S. Summers, Addiction by Any Other Name, 22 Phil, Psychiatry, & Psychology 49 (2015)

Why characterize addiction at all? George Graham reasonably points out that a good understanding of addiction should exchange “surface resemblances…[for] real facts about explanatory forces” (Graham 2015, 45). Understanding causes and cures of addiction will indeed help addicts’ lives more than the best characterization could. But we should beware the false dichotomy. Determining “real facts about explanatory forces” is valuable, and so is characterizing “surface resemblances.”

Philosophers’ déformation professionnelle often inclines us to look for essential features of natural phenomena, leading to broad definitions that capture disparate phenomena. But, instead of characterizing addiction in general, why not separately characterize heroin addiction, gambling addiction, and so on? For that matter, why unify types of addiction by the object of the addiction? Is there just one characterization of all alcoholics? The partying alcoholic, the shameful alcoholic, the depressive alcoholic, the self-medicating alcoholic, and the bad-influences alcoholic have different etiologies and patterns of use. These differences are lost in speaking of ‘the alcoholic,’ and even more in speaking of ‘the addict.’

I want to keep three criticisms separate. (1) My characterization in particular may not be the right one; (2) no characterization of addiction may be correct; and (3) there may be no value even in looking for a characterization of addiction. My limited response to (1) and (2) is that my characterization captures the range of addicts, which is some evidence that it is a good characterization—although I doubt there is only one right characterization. This leaves (3), the question of whether any characterization of addiction is valuable.

First, however, does my characterization of addiction actually fit the range of cases? Graham suggests that my characterization may not capture willing, wanton, and resigned addicts. Benjamin R. Lewis, by contrast, doubts that my characterization captures the unwilling, akratic addict.

Graham rightly points out that willing, wanton, and resigned addicts do not fit our stereotypical views of addicts. They are not described by the still-common characterization of addiction as a ‘chronic relapsing disorder,’ nor by talk about addicts’ ‘struggles’ with their addictions. These addicts have no internal struggle over the addiction, do not try to quit, and therefore do not relapse. Call this group ‘no-conflict addicts’: addicts who are not struggling with or even opposed to their own addictions.

My characterization does much better with no-conflict addicts than most alternative characterizations. Consider a good alternative characterization: [End Page 49] the addict cannot quit, even if she (actually or counterfactually) wants to. We may quibble with this characterization, about whether an addict genuinely ‘cannot’ quit, but, regardless, this alternative does not capture the problem with no-conflict addicts. Their problem is that they do not want to, not that they cannot.

The larger problem with this alternative characterization, however, is that it also characterizes non-addictions, which one similarly ‘cannot’ quit. Smokers can more easily quit smoking than sleeping or eating, but that does not make eating a more serious addiction. So, although this alternative characterization is in fact a plausible description of many addictions, it is a description that does not distinguish addictions from passions and appetites.

My characterization makes this distinction explicitly, and thus better captures no-conflict addicts. An evaluative element and an element describing reinforcement are relevant, on my proposal, to characterizing addicts, including no-conflict addicts. These two elements exclude normal patterns of appetitive and passionate activity that otherwise resemble addictions, which helps to characterize the no-conflict addict in a way that distinguishes him from the non-addict.

Consider a hard case: how to distinguish the alcoholic who prefers bourbon from the bourbon connoisseur who drinks the same amount and would also steadfastly refuse to give up his passion, but who is not an alcoholic? The first element of my characterization helps here, because (I assume, arguendo) we will not say of the second person that his underlying motivation is misguided, that he ‘misvalues’ bourbon. Or, to the extent that he does misvalue bourbon, his misvaluation is reinforced differently from the alcoholic’s, as the second part of my characterization captures. An alcoholic’s motivation has some non-thinking, irrational (or ‘arational,’ anyway) element (what I call ‘impulsive’). Together, these elements distinguish addicts from those who make deliberate but misguided decisions. The bourbon connoisseur may drink way too much, but if every drink is chosen so that he can add an entry to his bourbon-tasting notes notebook, this is a passion. At worst, it is a worthless hobby. But that is not an addiction. Neither a pattern of bad decisions nor a pattern of unthinking actions is itself an addiction; both elements of the characterization, appropriately related, are necessary.

The distinction is murkier in actual cases. For example, the bourbon connoisseur is difficult to distinguish from the no-conflict, bourbon-loving alcoholic because the no-conflict alcoholic may rationalize her addictive actions. She may say that she wants to keep drinking so that she can fill her notebook with tasting notes on each and every bourbon, when really she is filling the notebook as an excuse to keep drinking. This is an important way in which an addict may be a no-conflict addict. Rationalization also sheds light on Lewis’s question about whether my characterization captures the akratic addict.

The akratic addict acts despite his judgment or valuation, suffering from a weakness of will (Holton 2009). My account emphasizes the role of impulsivity as a form of unthinking action that reinforces a misvaluation, and I believe that is the chief role of impulsivity in addiction. Although I do not want to rule out akrasia, I am skeptical that—as usually described—it characterizes much of addiction. It is nice (for us and for addicts) to imagine that they are struggling valiantly at every moment against an addiction that, itself, occasionally overcomes their (other) desires (Frankfurt 1988). That story may even be true for the newly abstinent, for whom every moment may be a struggle, and the story may remain therapeutically valuable for others. But, although addicts may not rush eagerly into their addictions, I doubt the story of constant struggle is quite right either.

More likely, the addict is not akratic in the way of constant struggle and occasional overpowering, but instead regularly experiences rationalizations and judgment shifts (Levy 2011; Yaffe 2013). Addicts do not typically just ‘find themselves’ acting addictively, despite all efforts to resist. Rather, they talk themselves into using: just tonight, only socially, I have proven that I can quit if I want to, and so on (Watson 2004). These addicts then look more like no-conflict addicts, but they were turned into no-conflict addicts by their addictions. Their lack of conflict is not exactly willing or unwilling, not resigned, but not clearly akratic either. I will not speculate (here) on what more to say about willingness and akrasia.

I do, however, want to say why we should care about giving any characterization of addiction at all. Does it matter whether Paul Erdös’s use of amphetamines was addictive, a decision to maintain his high level of work despite any consequences, or some rationalized combination of the two? What is so special about the word ‘addiction?’

Characterizations serve different purposes. Sometimes we want to know why something should be called a ‘disorder’ at all. Sometimes we want to capture a disorder’s etiology for the sake of research and prevention. Sometimes we want to direct treatment: naltrexone is not prescribed for procrastination but is for addiction, although addiction and procrastination are both patterns of action that prioritize short-term pleasures over long-term benefits. Treatment, research, and prevention should all be informed by knowing what the problem to be treated is, which requires characterizing the problem in a way that distinguishes it from others, although different characterizations may be useful for different distinctions.

My own characterization of addiction starts from a philosophical concern to distinguish the disorder of addiction from patterns of action that are not disordered—or are not disordered in the same way. This is motivated by some background concerns about when we are responsible, how we guide our own behavior, and what makes behavior irrational (Graham 2010; Shoemaker 2015). What is wrong with spending all of one’s money developing an extensive knowledge of bourbon is not the same as what’s wrong with spending all of one’s money on bourbon-centered alcoholism, even if both spend too much money on bourbon.

All true characterizations—for whatever purpose developed—should be compatible, and at best they illuminate each other. For example, my characterization highlights why addiction is not just a pattern of regular drug use. If we are not aware of this, we cannot have productive discussions about use of cognitive enhancers, painkillers, or even recreational drugs. My characterization alone will not settle when each of those patterns becomes an addiction. But without a good characterization of what is wrong with addiction, we are too easily swayed by the superficial features of addictions— like a difficulty in quitting—that addictions may share with non-addictions. We are then likely to count too much or too little as addictive, which ultimately may make a difference to treatment, research, and prevention. My characterization is only one of many good characterizations, but it does what philosophical reflection on mental disorders can do. It describes the clear cases in a way that helps us to think more clearly about both the easy and the hard cases, a small step toward dividing human action more finely than into just ‘rational’ and ‘irrational.’

References

Frankfurt, H. 1988. Freedom of the will and the concept of a person. In: The importance of what we care about, 11–25. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Graham, G. 2010. The disordered mind: An introduction to philosophy of mind and mental illness. New York: Routledge.

Graham, G. 2015. Words, worlds, and addictions. Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 22 no. 1:45–7.

Holton, R. 2009. Willing, wanting, waiting. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Levy, N. 2011. Resisting ‘weakness of the will’. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 82, no. 1:134–55.

Lewis, B. R. 2015. “The drugs didn’t mix”: On the overvaluation of misevaluation. Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 22 no. 1:41–3.

Shoemaker, D. 2015. Responsibility from the margins. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Summers, J. S. 2015. What is wrong with addiction. Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 22, no. 1:25–40.

Yaffe, G. 2013. Are addicts akratic. In Addiction and self-control, ed. N. Levy, 190–213. Oxford: Oxford University Press. [End Page 51]

#definitions of addition #addiction #drugs #willing addict #akrasia #no-conflict addicts #paul erdos #substance abuse #drug use #george graham #explanatory forces #phenology #distinction #tax office #characterization

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haileyjayden3 · 7 years

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The Pill to Cure Alcoholism?

There are a number of medications that are on the market to treat alcoholism. But do they really work?

Inverse says that “Overall, there is no evidence for a significant reduction in serious adverse events or in mortality” when considering all of the medications currently available to treat alcoholism (nalmefene, naltrexone, acamprosate, baclofen, and topiramate).

So they did a meta study and they found that, for the most part, there is not much evidence to support that any of these medications are really helpful when it comes to treating alcoholism.

I would throw my own 2 cents in and state that, at one time during my addiction, I voluntarily starting taking Antabuse, which is a drug that makes you sick if you drink while taking it. My own subjective experience with this medication is that it simply did not work for me, because I was still in denial and I had no real intention of quitting at the time, and therefore when I felt like I wanted to drink I simply quit taking the pill for a few days beforehand.

I knew that as soon as I stopped taking the pill that I was going to drink eventually, and even that brought some relief. So it didn’t work for me because I was too smart for my own good. I couldn’t just force myself to take the pill every day and be done with it. Instead I wanted to play games and keep going back to the bottle. I wasn’t ready to quit.

Now these various medications that are used to treat alcoholism can work in different ways. Some of them are designed to reduce cravings for alcohol rather than to make you sick when you drink. Some of them are designed so that if you do end up drinking alcohol that you will not be as prone to drink to excess, and therefore they are supposed to curb the amount you drink.

But while you can typically show at least some progress in a double blind, placebo controlled study with most of these medications, what the meta studies are revealing is that in the long run–over a period of years or decades–these medications appear to have almost no impact at all.

Very discouraging. I do not believe that science is going to stop, however, or that medical research is going to give up on seeking a pill to cure addiction. There is a market there and it is largely untapped at this point and therefore drug companies will continue to try to figure it out. And maybe some day they will, and we will have a new medication that has a serious impact on the success rate of alcoholics in recovery. For now, it very much feels like they these medications are just one more thing to be tried, but by no means are they anywhere near a cure.

What I would want to caution you about more than anything else when it comes to these kinds of anti-addiction medications is this: Seeking them out too earnestly is a red flag. Now what do I mean by that?

What I mean is that I have watched a lot of people in early recovery who were trying to sober up, and the people who most eagerly sought out these kinds of medications to help them to beat their addiction are often the people who relapsed.

Why is this?

I think if you look at the way these drug trials are constructed you can see evidence of why this is true.

First of all, in these drug trials that are testing the effectiveness of these new anti-alcoholism pills, they typically go to a rehab setting and find people who are attempting to get clean and sober. Then they would pull maybe 50 of these people out and offer them to participate in a clinical drug trial. These people would elect to be in the trial and attempt to use the new medicine to help them to quit drinking, knowing that they might get the placebo or they might get “the real thing.” In addition to taking a pill, they are instructed to follow through all of their normal aftercare from rehab: Go to AA meetings, go to intensive outpatient therapy, see a counselor or therapist on a regular basis, and so on.

So note that the trials are not just a magic pill–the trials are constructed so that the people are following through with all of their regular aftercare recommendations, which includes a lot of meetings and therapy. In other words, the drug manufacturers are saying “this pill can help you, but don’t just expect it to be a miracle cure, you have to do some work on your recovery as well.”

Now here is the tricky part–addicts and alcoholics are typically smart people. And everyone, including addicts and alcoholics, secretly believe that they are smarter than the average person in this world. Everyone believes this for the most part, including those who are clearly not above average intelligence.

Why is this important? Because the typical alcoholic, believing that they are smarter than average, is going through rehab and listening to what is recommended for them for recovery: Go to 90 AA meetings in 90 days, get a sponsor and work through the steps, spill your guts to a therapist, be in therapy, and so on. It’s a whole mountain of hard work and uncomfortable sacrifice for anyone to tackle, and no one really wants to sign up for all of that hard work if they can avoid it.

So the alcoholic, feeling smarter than average, reasons that if they can just take this magic pill that everyone is talking about at rehab, the pill that reduces your cravings to drink alcohol, then they would be on easy street. They hear that you are supposed to go to meetings and do all of your normal aftercare along with the medication, but they reason that they can get away with far less than this because they happen to be fairly smart, and if they just had this magic pill that reduces cravings, then they would be good to go.

And that is the dangerous mental trap that I believe alcoholics fall into–they hear about a pill that can help them with alcoholism, so they assume that they can skate by with far less effort if they are able to take this medication. And the truth is that none of these medications on the market have anywhere near that kind of power over addiction. None of them even come close to being a cure, or to being the kind of cure that allows you to ignore therapy and AA and working through steps and all of the normal aftercare recommendations.

So my hope is that they do develop a miracle drug at some point that can fix alcoholism for good. For now, I would caution people to focus very strongly on the aftercare suggestions that they are given when they leave inpatient treatment. No anti-addiction pill is strong enough at this point to overcome the need for therapy, treatment, and social support in addiction recovery.

The post The Pill to Cure Alcoholism? appeared first on Spiritual River Addiction Help.

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roberrtnelson · 7 years

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The Pill to Cure Alcoholism?

There are a number of medications that are on the market to treat alcoholism. But do they really work?

So they did a meta study and they found that, for the most part, there is not much evidence to support that any of these medications are really helpful when it comes to treating alcoholism.

Why is this?

I think if you look at the way these drug trials are constructed you can see evidence of why this is true.

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journalingthisjourney · 7 years

Text

The Pill to Cure Alcoholism?

There are a number of medications that are on the market to treat alcoholism. But do they really work?

So they did a meta study and they found that, for the most part, there is not much evidence to support that any of these medications are really helpful when it comes to treating alcoholism.

Why is this?

I think if you look at the way these drug trials are constructed you can see evidence of why this is true.

The post The Pill to Cure Alcoholism? appeared first on Spiritual River Addiction Help.

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bobbiejwray · 7 years

Text

The Pill to Cure Alcoholism?

There are a number of medications that are on the market to treat alcoholism. But do they really work?

So they did a meta study and they found that, for the most part, there is not much evidence to support that any of these medications are really helpful when it comes to treating alcoholism.

Why is this?

I think if you look at the way these drug trials are constructed you can see evidence of why this is true.

The post The Pill to Cure Alcoholism? appeared first on Spiritual River Addiction Help.

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violetsgallant · 7 years

Text

The Pill to Cure Alcoholism?

There are a number of medications that are on the market to treat alcoholism. But do they really work?

So they did a meta study and they found that, for the most part, there is not much evidence to support that any of these medications are really helpful when it comes to treating alcoholism.

Why is this?

I think if you look at the way these drug trials are constructed you can see evidence of why this is true.

The post The Pill to Cure Alcoholism? appeared first on Spiritual River Addiction Help.

from RSSMix.com Mix ID 8241844 http://ift.tt/2ClBpxP

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emlydunstan · 7 years

Text

The Pill to Cure Alcoholism?

There are a number of medications that are on the market to treat alcoholism. But do they really work?

So they did a meta study and they found that, for the most part, there is not much evidence to support that any of these medications are really helpful when it comes to treating alcoholism.

Why is this?

I think if you look at the way these drug trials are constructed you can see evidence of why this is true.

The post The Pill to Cure Alcoholism? appeared first on Spiritual River Addiction Help.

from RSSMix.com Mix ID 8241841 http://www.spiritualriver.com/news/pill-cure-alcoholism/

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alyssamanson5 · 7 years

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Drug Companies are Marketing Via Judges Now

There are certain courts of law here in the United States that have come to be known as “Vivitrol courts.”

Why? Because the judges of those courts are essentially offering criminals Vivitrol treatment as part of their sentence, and in some cases, you could make the argument that they are effectively forcing this on people.

NPR says that “…at least eight courts out of the several dozen in Indiana that say they only allow Vivitrol treatment.” That doesn’t leave many options for people, and you could argue that people are being forced on a certain medication.

So they judge may give someone an option of jail time or addiction treatment with probation, and the treatment would normally include several options. But the only option they are offering in this case is Vivitrol.

What is Vivitrol? It is a medication known as Naltrexone which blocks certain opiate receptors in the brain. This means that alcoholics using Naltrexone will have less heavy drinking days, and opiate addicts who use Vivitrol will have less cravings for their drug of choice.

It is not a perfect medicinal “cure” but it has been proven to help based on clinical trials.

However, there are alternative treatments for both alcoholism and opiate addiction, and those alternatives are not even presented as an option any more.

Why? Because the drug companies have campaigned to push their own product at the level of the court system.

Is this a good thing or a bad thing? Either way, this is the new reality. It is happening. So we have to make the best of the system that we find ourselves in, or we need to change the system.

Before you get too bent out of shape in regards to the fact that this medication is practically being forced on to struggling addicts, and the fact that they do not really get to choose which type of medication they use to assist them in treatment, let’s look a little bit closer at the real truth.

The truth is that we make it sound as if these medications that assist with addiction recovery are something similar to a real “cure,” when it fact they are far from it. In clinical studies these medications are shown to be more effective than a placebo, but that is only when combined with counseling and social support such as AA or NA meetings, and even then, the statistical significance of the “cure” is not that impressive.

Meaning that medications such as Suboxone or Vivitrol are not exactly the miracle cure that people hope they are.

This doesn’t really become a problem until we expect them to function like a miracle cure, which is actually pretty typical of most addicts and alcoholics who seek them out as their solution.

What do I mean by this?

There is a difference between the person who is in court or in rehab who says “I have heard about this Vivitrol and I want to use it to help me with my addiction” and someone who is assigned to a random study in which they are given an unknown pill that is supposed to help them while they go through treatment and therapy for addiction.

In the first case, the addict or alcoholic has heard about MAT (medication assisted treatment) and they want to try it for themselves. In the second case, a randomized study is done and people who are already planning on rehab along with counseling and therapy are given the chance to enter into a study in which they either get Vivitrol or a placebo.

In the first case, the addict is seeking out the MAT. In the second case, researchers are suggesting it to someone to see if they want to try it.

This, in my opinion, makes all the difference in the world.

If the addict or alcoholic is actively seeking out MAT as their solution, they are very likely to relapse. This is my opinion and it is merely based on my own subjective observations in the world. I have watched thousands of people go through the recovery process, and some of them sought out MAT and others did not. Of the people who I witnessed who were actively pursuing MAT as their solution, nearly all of them relapsed.

Why?

Again, my opinion here: I think they relapse because they have the wrong approach, the wrong attitude. They hear about a medication such as Vivitrol that can help reduce cravings, and they assume that in their case it will function as a cure. They believe this because they are a reasonably intelligent person who is normally very capable. So they think to themselves: “I am not like these other addicts and alcoholics because I am fairly smart, so if I just use this medication that helps with cravings, I should be fine.”

And so what really happens is that they talk themselves out of the hard work. The people who are giving them medications such as Vivitrol are saying “Make sure you stick with your meetings and your counseling and your therapy when you take this medicine, because it works alongside of those things in helping you to remain clean and sober.”

But the people who seek it out as a solution are playing a mental trick on themselves. Secretly, in the back of their mind, they are telling themselves that they will of course follow through with all of that treatment and therapy stuff, but in reality they are going to see if their cravings go away, and then it will be easy street. This is the secret thing that they are telling themselves, that they can just coast through their recovery as long as this medicine eliminates their cravings.

And this is why people set themselves up to fail. If a person is too eager to try MAT then my belief is that they are a very poor candidate for it. The face that they are drug seeking for a solution for their addiction means that they are looking for the easier, softer way.

These MAT solutions are not yet at the point where they can magically cure an addiction. We are just not there yet in terms of medical technology, and we may never get there. Addiction may continue to confound us and baffle as for decades to come. While MAT can be helpful to some people, those who seek it out the most adamantly are not the best candidates to benefit from it.

Again, that is mostly my own opinion based on casual observations, but I certainly stand by the ideas presented here. If MAT is to be effective then the counseling, meetings, social support, and rehab has to be the main priority, and MAT has to be a secondary solution. My 2 cents anyway.

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