Sobriety, Surgery and PAINKILLERS

Posted on June 15, 2015 by MainAdmin

Very few people recover from surgery without the use of painkillers, but for the recovering addict, painkillers can be a dangerous taste of the past. Many addicts fear that using painkillers prescribed for any reason may cause a relapse or inhibit their addiction recovery. Physicians and addicts should work closely together to create a safe plan for pain management.

Preparing for the Surgery

When you learn that you will be having surgery, begin to plan for your pain management as soon as possible. Choose a healthcare provider who understands addiction and is willing to listen to your concerns. Meet with your doctor to discuss what kind of pain you can expect and how long you can expect it to last. It is vital that you are completely honest with your doctor about your addiction to ensure he or she does not prescribe you a risky medication that could compromise your sobriety. Share your concerns regarding addiction and ask which medications are safest for you. Learn how long you will need to take them and what risks may accompany the use of these medications.

Keep in mind that opioids are dangerous medications for addicts. If your doctor prescribes morphine, codeine, fentanyl or oxycodone, you may choose to request a safer drug to manage your pain. Taking opioids to manage any level of pain is rarely worth the risk for a recovering addict.

Safe Alternatives to Narcotics

Remember that there are many safe ways to help relieve pain such as topical pain relief creams or gels, ice, heating pads, breathing exercises, and over-the-counter medications such as anti-inflammatories. Combining these pain-relief options with a safe but sometimes less effective painkiller may provide adequate pain relief comparable to that attained by using narcotic painkillers.

While taking prescription painkillers, listen closely to concerns from friends and family. If they see warning signs concerning changes, take those concerns seriously and seek help immediately. It’s also important to listen to your own body’s messages and communicate openly and honestly with your provider if you feel worried. Remember the 12-step recovery process.

Recovering addicts have numerous options for safe, effective pain relief after surgery. To reach a safe and healthy outcome, choose the right provider who understands and supports sober living, share your concerns, plan for pain relief ahead of time, and monitor for signs of addiction.

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Heroin and 12-Step Recovery: The Face and End of Heroin Users

Posted on June 8, 2015 by MainAdmin

The death of Philip Seymour Hoffman was a tragic loss of a talented actor, friend, and father. Addiction affects those who use and those who eventually lose the loved ones in their life. Being there for those that have stopped during addiction recovery and then relapsed can make a difference between life and death. Learn about the signs of heroin use and addiction and its harmful effects.

Drug Addict laying on the floor in agonyWhat Heroin Does to the Body

Heroin is an opiate that has the strongest effect when injected through a syringe. Other methods dull the user’s experience of the drug. Once it enters the body, it becomes morphine and creates a relaxed and euphoric effect. The heart rate slows, blood pressure decreases, and many addicts fall asleep and never awaken, as the brain fails to send the necessary signals to continue beating and breathing. Heroin can be cut with fentanyl, seen on the East Coast, which makes it more potent and more difficult for users to judge the right amounts for their next high.

The Symptoms of Heroin Addiction

Heroin users and long-term users may show symptoms apparent to the observant eye.

Heroin users will display:

  • Dry mouth
  • Shortness of breath
  • Constricted pupils
  • Sudden alterations in behavior
  • Confusion
  • Hyper alertness followed by sleepiness
  • Physical fatigue showing as a “droopy” appearance
  • Lying and deception
  • Avoiding eye contact
  • Extensive time sleeping
  • Incoherent speech
  • Poor hygiene and little attention to appearance
  • Little motivation towards other goals
  • Withdrawal from close connections
  • Stealing
  • Hostility towards loved ones
  • Wearing of long pants and sleeves to hide track marks from needles

Heroin use requires paraphernalia. Such items can include:

  • Syringes and needles
  • Burned silver spoons
  • Aluminum foil
  • Small plastic bags
  • Water pipes

How Heroin Addiction Leads to Death

According to the Centers for Disease Control, heroin is one of the #1 killers of illegal drug users. Heroin addicts can use for a long time but with long term use become more susceptible to an “overdose.” Addicts die more often than new users. Their body craves more of the drug, but the physiological responses of the body cannot handle the effects of the drug and simply stop the automatic functions of breathing and regular heart beats. A heroin overdose can cause heart failure and infectious endocarditis, an infection of the heart. Those that have been off of the drug during addiction recovery and then return are more susceptible to an overdose, as they cannot judge the amount necessary for use and may have a drug that has been cut with other substances.

Keep an eye out for loved ones and recognize the signs. Your help can make the difference in 12-step recovery.

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Death: My Feelings for Good Grief

Posted on May 25, 2015 by MainAdmin

Dealing with grief is a part of life that recovering addicts can learn to overcome while working their 12-step recovery program.

Grief can make recovery more difficult, but it doesn’t mean you have to give up on changing your life for the better. It’s important to know that grief is only temporary and that it affects recovery, requiring you to adjust your 12-step program. With extra support, you can deal with grief in a positive, healthy way.

Grief Is Temporary

Sober living requires focus and positivity, but the untimely death of a loved one or some other unfortunate event can cause a flood of negative emotions to wash over you. While the pain may seem unbearable, it’s only temporary. Sharp emotional pains will fade away to dull aches and, eventually, distant memories. However, addiction recovery is an emotionally challenging time, especially toward the middle and later stages when withdrawals set in. This makes it important to adjust your routine for grieving periods.

Grief’s Impact on Recovery

Addiction recovery is a healing process that consists of physical and psychological therapy. Grief can affect your energy levels, making it difficult to get motivated to work out. It can also make it difficult to focus on your triggers and enablers, causing you to lose your ability to change your habits. The negative, painful emotions associated with grief can be overcome, though, and you can make it through recovery.

Getting Extra Support

You can supplement your 12-step recovery program with extra support in the form of family, faith and friends. You can also have additional one-on-one sessions with counselors and medical experts. Your addiction recovery and sober living goals can be fulfilled; you just need extra support to deal with the grief.

If you’re in recovery or are thinking about entering a program, do not let grief get in your way. Remember that life is full of ups and downs and that sticking with a 12-step recovery program will make things better, even if your grief seems unbearable.

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Spiritual Awakenings: Looking for a Higher Power and Finding Faith

Posted on May 18, 2015 by MainAdmin

The gift of a spiritual awakening is not one that is easily come by, as any recovering addict in a 12-step recovery program can attest. Those who have achieved it, though, can tell you that reaching the 12th step was a profound moment in their life — and continues to be for as long as they remain in recovery. Before addicts can carry the message of the 12 steps to others, they must travel those steps for themselves. Before sharing with others that a higher power could restore them to sanity, they must first come to believe it in their own hearts.

“We came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.” – The Big Book, Step Two

In some ways, the second step is more difficult than the first. Nearly all addicts can tell of times they tried on their own to put down their drug of choice and step away from it but found that willpower alone was not enough to break the hold it had over them. It is often self-evident that they are powerless over the drug. Finding and accepting a higher power, which many refer to as God, can be more of a challenge. As long as you approach the process with a willing mind and an open heart, the road to recovery is open to you.

A kitchen door need only be opened a crack to allow the morning sun in all its glory to stream through. Who, upon seeing a ray of light, does not wish to open the door ever wider and bask in its warm glow?  So, too, it is with a higher power, and so it is also with 12-step recovery programs. However you define the higher power, whether it be God, the supreme being, or some other concept, it can be found by all those who search for it. Many discover the higher power by reading scripture. Others come to know it through meditation or prayer.

However we come to accept this higher power, by whatever path we took, the important thing is that we did. Once we have traveled down this road ourselves, whether it meant returning to the faith of our childhood, finding a new concept that works in our lives today, or simply surrendering ourselves to a God we already believed in but kept at arm’s length, we can then help others do the same. Thank God, however you understand him, for that.

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Is My Relationship Love or Addiction?

Posted on May 11, 2015 by MainAdmin

Love is a powerful emotion that can give you a rush and make you feel euphoric, just like an addictive drug. For some, love becomes an addiction that can damage their lives and make them miserable instead of joyful. If you’re concerned you may be addicted to love, be sure to consider the signs and patterns of behavior below; then, make a change for the better.

Signs of Love Addiction

Some people cannot be alone. They constantly need to be in a relationship and in love. This is one of the telltale signs of love addiction, because it illustrates an addict’s craving for love. Some addicts fall for the wrong types of people, ultimately bringing pain and suffering into their lives. So if you have a fear of being alone and you always find yourself in bad relationships, you may well have a love addiction.

Impact of Addiction

Love addiction can lead to temporary happiness, but often it ends in heartbreak, disappointment and grief. Addicts can be used by partners who don’t actually care for them. Many addicts end up being taken advantage of emotionally and financially, which makes addiction recovery and sober living an essential part of addicts’ survival.

Recovery Programs

In order to deal with love addiction, you need to seek out and partake in an addiction recovery program. This will help you return to sober living and deal with your negative patterns of behavior. Recovery programs will help you find things in your life that will help you cope with your needs for acceptance, attention and emotional support. Once you recover, you can enter into healthier relationships with a real chance for long-term happiness.

Love addiction can be overcome with the help of a recovery program specifically designed to deal with this powerful emotion. Do not let love become a problem and damage your life when assistance is available to help you get past your addiction.

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How Many Recovery Meetings Should I Go to in a Week?

Posted on May 4, 2015 by MainAdmin

When you’re in recovery, the number of meetings you attend affects your ability to get well. As a result, you need to develop a strategy to fit the right number of meetings into your program. When planning your schedule, consider the following reasons and strategies.

Importance of Recovery Meetings

When you enter a 12-step recovery program, you’re embarking on a journey to a better life. Part of that journey includes group meetings where you discuss your addictions, enablers and other issues with substance abuse. Meetings are an important part of the healing process, because they allow you to seek support from like-minded individuals who have empathy for your situation. Meetings can help you get through the hard times and stay clean while on the road to addiction recovery.

Strategies for Meeting Attendance

You can plan your attendance strategy around your overall emotional and physical stability while in treatment. Some people attend meetings every day for the first 90 days of their 12-step recovery program while others attend every other day or even less often. The magnitude of your addiction will likely determine the frequency of your meeting attendance. If you are suffering from grief or another emotional stressor, then you may want to attend meetings every day until you’re well on the road to addiction recovery. The more you’re struggling, the more meetings you need to attend.

Consequences of Foregoing Meetings

If you decide that meetings are not for you, you’re substantially lessening your chance for successfully completing your recovery program. You need to talk about your addiction and learn about how others are coping with their urges to relapse if you’re going to beat addiction. Without meetings, you’ll feel alone and have a harder time letting go of bad habits, which can keep you from reaching your full potential.

Attending recovery meetings can help you overcome addiction and live a cleaner, happier life. The number of meetings you attend matters, making it important to develop an effective attendance strategy.

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What Is This Al-Anon Thing?

Posted on April 27, 2015 by MainAdmin

What Al-Anon Is All About

Al-Anon began as an adaptation of the Alcoholics Anonymous 12-step recovery process to focus on the support of friends and loved ones of recovering alcoholics. Friends and family often feel guilt, anxiety and sadness when loved ones suffer from an alcohol addiction, but Al-Anon provides a means by which friends and family achieve peace and happiness even if the alcoholic they love continues to drink. Al-Anon focuses purely on alcohol related issues, not narcotics. Al-Anon uplifts and galvanizes family units that are affected by someone else’s drinking.

The Al-Anon Process

The most important principle of Al-Anon’s 12-step recovery process is that the focus is on family members who are affected by alcoholism. Hours spent worrying about the alcoholic’s choices are what lead most people to Al-Anon. The 12-step process focuses on the strengths, hopes and experiences of its members in order to help them grow in how they deal with people, especially the recovering alcoholic. In the process, members share the story of their life’s journey while listening to the real-life stories of others, which helps all of the Al-Anon members recover in the process.

An essential component of the process is that there are no judgments regarding how any member feels. If one person has felt a certain way, odds are great that others have felt the same at one point or another. At its core, Al-Anon is a mutual support group where everyone shares and listens while transitioning into a triumphant recovery.

Al-Anon Promotes Healing and Restoration

As members move through the recovery process, the end goal is to feel restored and healed. Once members recognize that they have choices and their choices can be made to improve their life regardless of whether or not a loved one drinks, then attitudes can be changed. At its core, Al-Anon is designed to help members realize that their life circumstances do not define their existence. Choices can be made that promote healing and restoration, which in turn fosters the attitude necessary for living a fulfilling and healthy life.

For anyone affected by drinking and alcoholism in their family life, a loving Al-Anon community is waiting with open arms to provide members with a community of openness and healing. Al-Anon has helped the lives of millions, and will continue to be a success story for millions more in the years to come.

 

 

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Am I Depressed? Or Do I Just Feel Depressed?

Posted on April 20, 2015 by MainAdmin

Stressed young woman sitting on couchHave you been feeling down in the dumps? More tired than usual? Are you suffering from anxiety? If so, you may need to visit a professional to talk about your feelings. In many situations, without proper intervention, these situations can become worse; however, with help, depression can be managed.

One of the first things to understand is the difference between situational depression and clinical depression.

Situational Depression

Situational depression is often referred to by doctors as an adjustment disorder. It is a short-term type of depression that usually takes place after some type of traumatic change in your normal, day-to-day life. This includes the death of a loved one, loss of a job, or a divorce. However, there are other triggers as well, such as natural disasters, accidents, or other traumatic events.

While the symptoms associated with situational depression can be similar to clinical depression, there are a number of key differences.

Clinical Depression

Also known as major depression, clinical depression is often accompanied by feelings of despair and hopelessness almost all of the time.  It is often difficult to work, concentrate on studies, and even to sleep or eat.  Oftentimes, clinical depression is generational and occurs more frequently in women.

Differences between Clinical and Situational Depression

There are quite a few different reasons clinical depression can take place, but situational depression is the result of a person not adapting to changes brought by some type of event or change in their life.

Some of the symptoms that occur in situational depression, which typically appear within 90 days after the trigger event include: sadness, anxiety, lack of concentration, restlessness, poor concentration and withdrawal from work and loved ones. Even though those suffering from clinical depression can have these symptoms as well, they usually appear in groups of at least five at once. Clinical depression can also cause a number of forms of psychosis such as delusions and hallucinations.

There is no question that both situational and clinical depression can take a toll on someone – mentally, socially, and physically. This is why it is so important to use the help that is available. From visiting your doctor to taking part in therapy sessions and in daily activities that get you up and moving and socializing, you can find a number of ways to help yourself feel better.

Help to Overcome Depression

In addition to medication and therapy, there are a number of other ways to combat the feelings associated with depression.

  • Set goals for yourself so that you can overcome the feeling of not being able to accomplish anything.
  • Eat right. When you eat a healthy diet, you will be able to avoid overeating; a symptom that often accompanies depression.
  • Exercise. There is nothing better than a brisk walk or swim to boost your endorphins and help you get into a new mindset.

Fighting depression is not something you have to do alone. There are a number of ways to overcome the symptoms and begin to feel happy and whole again.

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I Can’t Stop Eating – Eating Your Feelings

Posted on April 13, 2015 by MainAdmin

Woman Can't Stop EatingWhen your overeating is triggered by stressful situations, you can become a victim, turning to high-calorie and high carbohydrate foods that often have very little, if any, nutritional value. When you struggle with emotional eating, you regularly have factors that might trigger your overeating episode. Emotional eating is a real addiction often diagnosed by health assessments that evaluate physical, emotional, or mental wellness.

A major part of addiction recovery involves teaching the individual better, healthier ways to look at food while creating healthier eating habits. This wellness step begins when you are able to recognize triggers that prompt overeating behaviors. Prevention begins as you learn healthier ways to cope and alleviate stress. Emotional eating, like other addictions, has the potential to grow into other problems, such as obesity or diseases that include diabetes type 2 or other health problems.

Addiction recovery involves teaching the sufferer healthier ways to view food, learning better eating habits, recognizing triggers that evoke such behavior, and developing appropriate ways to prevent and alleviate stress. As you begin your journey towards breaking the cycle, you learn to view food as a source of fuel, not a problem solver. Recovery involves finding constructive ways to deal with your emotions instead of turning to food. Many former drug or alcohol addicts turn to emotional eating in a process called shifting addictions. An ongoing part of their recovery remains learning healthy ways to deal with emotions.

Emotional eaters crave foods known as comfort foods. These foods are described as high carbohydrate or high calorie junk foods with very little nutritional value. Emotional eaters are diagnosed by professionals as sufferers of atypical depression. Many emotional eaters are not clinically depressed, but are chronic sufferers of stress who turn to eating as a means of coping.

Research shows girls and women are at higher risk for eating disorders, but men are not immune. Cortisol is a hormone that produces symptoms similar to those produced under stress, like increased breathing and faster heart rate. This response to stress results in emotional eating of comfort “junk food.” Also, studies show that emotional eaters try to fill a void with food. Some studies suggest a lack of nutrition or food used as a reward or punishment in youth could have played a role in creating the emotional eater.

Recovery opens up a whole new world of possibilities. With a greater understanding of your emotions, you choose alternatives that keep you in control. This strengthens you more and more each day as you emerge a winner over emotional eating.

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12-Step Recovery Saves Lives: Warning Signs of Meth Addiction

Posted on April 8, 2015 by MainAdmin

Addiction recovery is never easy. When you’re in recovery, it can feel like you have to deal with the same junk over and over again. In Greek mythology, Sisyphus had to roll a boulder up a hill and watch it roll down again, continuing this action indefinitely. Sometimes it feels like immense pressures are placed upon a person to take up harmful habits, but the pressure of addiction recovery is so much more. The best thing to do is to avoid that path to begin with. Meth has effects on the brain and the body. Know the signs of meth addiction and save yourself or a friend the pain of addiction.

The Body on Meth

There is no free deal here. The high users feel is accompanied by profound consequences on the body. Use of methamphetamine interferes with the body’s innate ability to heal itself. Tissues and blood vessels are destroyed. Wounds take longer to heal. Skin appears decades older and acne emerges. Many users have scabs from skin picking arising from formication. Weight loss may seem like a benefit, but meth users end up looking gaunt, not sexy. Their oral hygiene deteriorates, resulting in stained and rotting teeth. “Meth mouth” refers to the condition where a meth addict’s teeth are blackened, rotting and falling out.

The Effects of Meth on the Brain

The drug results in the brain releasing excessive amounts of dopamine. This neurotransmitter controls feelings of pleasure. Meth produces the “mother of all dopamine releases.” Prolonged use alters the user’s ability to experience pleasure by destroying dopamine receptors. Damage to cognitive abilities may be permanent in areas such as memory, judgment, and motor coordination. Adrenaline is also released during use. This results in “tweaking.” During this time, users show hyperactive and obsessive behavior. Heavy chronic users can show psychotic behavior. They may exhibit paranoia, hallucinations, aggression, and delusions. Use increases sex drive, and people on meth demonstrate high-risk sexual behavior patterns. Chronic use destroys good looks and the ability to perform. “Crystal dick” is a term used to describe the impotence resulting from meth use. Others feel aroused for long period of time without the ability to climax.

There is hope for meth addicts. There are 12-Step recovery programs is available to provide support, education, and inspiration to go another day without using. Addiction isn’t something to mess around with. It’s a serious disease that can destroy a life. Russell Brand said, “Addiction is a serious disease; it will end with jail, mental institutions, or death.” Supporting each other through the recovery process is essential to staying sane, safe, productive, and ALIVE. One day at a time, one story at a time, we are ALWAYS there for each other in addiction recovery.

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