The 12 Things Your Gay Friends Don’t Want You To Know About Our New Epidemic, Crystal Meth
1. In one major study, 25% of gay men admitted to using the drug at least once. So if you know 4 gay men, one’s probably used and might still be using today. 2. Meth can be instantly addictive, like crack.
Avoid the Pathways to Psychic Pain
David Foster Wallace had a cavity. He’d never had one before-but now the dentist who’d always praised him for his pristine teeth was telling the 14-year-old boy that he was not invulnerable. “I remember him . . . being stunned and disgusted,” recalled his sister Amy Wallace.
Hard to imagine where we would be today had the blinders-on policy of the Reagan administration actually been something based on science, research, and statistics. Just say ‘no’ was a failure of epic proportions. Like all those who died of AIDS under the Reagan watch, thousands lost their battle with addiction either through death or incarceration. It’s about time we made up for lost time and got with the program.
Obama: Addiction is a preventable disease
“Regardless how individuals get into theses situations. We don’t know everything. There may be genetic components. Addictions may be different for different people. What we do know is there are steps that can be taken to get through addiction and get to the other side, and that is under-resourced.”
I am currently loving the place I find myself in recovery, safely cocooned between two beliefs: faith and science. Of course science, by definition, is supposed to be more than faith, but time and time again we find research that negates other research, so how are we supposed to believe that? Well, faith, I guess. I know my issues are far more than behavioral, social flaws. But even when ‘the program’ allows for the disease model of addiction, some people insist it’s all a matter of faith. Or of just not picking up that drink. I’ve come to believe that. But only because I have removed my ability to get high or drunk. Literally. No cash, no credit cards, full transparency with my loved one. Otherwise, until my brain reprograms itself with the help of time, behavior modification, and chemistry (medication), I would likely still be taking risks even when I desperately don’t want to. A great read.
Risky Rats Help Shine Light on Brain Circuitry Behind Taking a Chance
When people make risky decisions, like doubling down in blackjack or investing in volatile stocks, what happens in the brain? Scientists have long tried to understand what makes some people risk-averse and others risk-taking. Answers could have implications for how to treat, curb or prevent destructively risky behavior, like pathological gambling or drug addiction.
I used to struggle with doubt every time I posted a video of me singing on Facecrack not because I care what others think of my singing (they’re all first takes with me accompanying myself, not an easy thing for me to do like rubbing my belly and tapping my head!) but because I questioned my own reasoning for doing so. Do I really need external validation so badly? Perhaps reasons for doing it chance with each video, but as I become more and more clear in my path of recovery, one reason always rises to the top: IT FEELS GOOD! DOH! And it doesn’t take rocket science for me to understand the extent to which my braincells are firing when I do it. So I say, sing, sing a long, sing a song!
Singing show tunes helps fight off dementia: study
The hills are alive with the sound of music, which could help people with Alzheimer’s stave off the effects of the debilitating disease. A study by U.S. scientists has shown that the brain function of those suffering from dementia can be improved if they belt out their favorite show tunes.
What’s wrong with being Confident? What’s wrong with being sober? Not a f**king thing! Got a bit of a crush on this one.
11 Inspirational Life Lessons From Demi Lovato
Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP Demi Lovato rang in four years of sobriety on Tuesday, taking to Twitter to announce the news. “This last year I experienced so much life and too much death… But I made it through… Sober,” she wrote alongside the hashtags, “#4Years #GodsWill.”
I don’t believe there is a more reasonable man alive than David Brooks. I’m often shocked watching the PBS NewHour when Shields and Brooks go at it because, come on, Brooks is a Republican and we all know what that has come to mean. But he truly is the embodiment of what being a Republican used to mean when Republican wasn’t synonymous with intolerance. In any case, I love his take on social media and shame. I fight with the concept all the time……
The Shame Culture
In 1987, Allan Bloom wrote a book called “The Closing of the American Mind.” The core argument was that American campuses were awash in moral relativism. Subjective personal values had replaced universal moral principles. Nothing was either right or wrong. Amid a wave of rampant nonjudgmentalism, life was flatter and emptier.
I’ll never get down off this particular soapbox. How do we recover from anything without exercising? Seriously? Can we? Obviously, the answer is yes, but for me the rate at which I recover and the quality of life into which I am hoping to recover to is all a matter of getting my ass moving. The say a life unexamined isn’t worth living. I also say a life without exercise isn’t worth living. It’s that important. I think most people either get it or they don’t. For those who don’t, find someone to encourage you and to try to tempt you onto the other side. Because it truly makes all the difference in the world.
Such a sad but utterly timeless scene. If you’ve been there, you’ll know; it’s likely your story too.
I could see how this works. We always talk about trying to play the tape through which is usually aligned with our inability to say ‘no’ and the repercussions thereafter. But what if we were able to practice saying ‘no?’
POSTED: Sunday, February 28, 2016, 12:55 PM
By Amanda Orr
HOUSTON (Reuters) – Addicts in a new study at the University of Houston will strap on virtual reality headsets and navigate a “heroin cave” to help them try and kick their addictions.
Researchers are looking to see if making their way through a simulated house party crammed with stimuli aimed at evoking cravings for the drug will help better equip those who suffer from addiction to do so in the real world.
The heroin environments, a house party where the drug is snorted and one where it is injected, took nearly a year to complete to ensure realism, its creators said.
The study from the University of Houston Graduate College of Social Work uses an eight-camera infrared system that projects life-sized 3D avatars and environments with which participants can interact in a virtual reality chamber known as the “heroin cave.”
Details from an open pizza box on the back patio to cash tossed on a table next to a cigarette lighter are meant to augment sensations and trigger a heroin craving.
“In traditional therapy we role-play with the patient but the context is all wrong,” said Patrick Bordnick, an associate dean of research and one of the study leaders.
“They know they’re in a therapist’s office and the drug isn’t there. We need to put patients in realistic virtual reality environments and make them feel they are there with the drug, and the temptation, to get a clearer picture and improve interventions,” Bordnick said.
Data from Bordnick’s past virtual reality studies on other types of addiction such as cigarettes have shown that participants report a higher level of confidence to resist temptation in the real world after learning coping skills in virtual environments.
“We want to know if decreasing craving in a lab modifies heroin use in the real world,” Bordnick said.
(Reporting by Amanda Orr; Writing by Jon Herskovitz; Editing by Alan Crosby)
Amanda Orr
Reuters
So damn important….just happy I’ve found a holistic approach that doesn’t discount each branch of recovery. Read this…..
In today’s NYTimes Opinion section—glad it’s in the opinion section and not elsewhere because it seems an awfully oversimplified case. Wonder what Brene thinks?
The Burgess Boys by Elizabeth Strout
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Some writers can mask their characters’ inner worlds with plot, description, and dialogue. Some can tear off those masks and show us a startling reflection of our own inner worlds in those characters with a gently placed sentence at the end of the book. That’s what Strout does. She disguises the inner world for most of the book and then, BAM, you read a sentence and your own mask has been suddenly ripped from you. Not a bad way to write and to make a difference in a reader’s life.
I have to admit that once we start adding more ‘laws’ than the first law, they all seem to meld, blend, and become a cohesive thing that at first glance seems to lose it’s individual pieces. After posting the first law last week, (reap what you sow, want happiness—be happy, whatever we put out there comes back at us), I really did try to think about it as I went about my daily life. One particular example comes to mind, however, in that it seemed to exemplify this law and helps clarify the first from the second law.
By Saturday, I’m pretty tired. I’ve dealt with 3 shifts of retail, working next to a bar, trying to get all the other work of the business done while adding constant foot traffic and possible sales opportunities. As an introvert, this is a mask I put on so that I can make the customer feel good about who we are, our brand, and their possible purchase. I can enjoy wearing the mask if my stress levels are being managed. I can sit in my chair, say, “Hi,” and go back to my computer. I can engage in a conversation. I can tell a story, ask questions. Or I can turn on the floodlight of energy that is “Spencer, Dial 10.” But when I’m tired, it’s hard.
As I was walking from my car to my long Saturday shift I specifically said out loud, “Today is going to be a good day. Today I’m going to be happy.” It was simple. Then I went to work and had the best shift I’ve ever had in the 3 summers at the gallery. And I didn’t even sell anything! But the energy pouring off the people who came into the shop was exactly the kind of energy I give when I am ‘on.’ Would that have happened had I not said that affirmation at the car? I don’t know. Would those same people have come in and offered me their energy? Possibly. But it was the joining of the two that made the experience. I had to participate in my own happiness, not just affirm it as a desire or hope for it because I pasted a fake smile on my face.
Law two talks about actively participating in the world around you. Participation is the act of Creation. Sometimes I get hung up with the notion of being “creative,” being an “ARTIST” (caps intended), living a creative life, etc. when in reality if I am actively participating in my life with positive intention, I am living creatively. I am living the Law of Creation.
How does this play out in recovery? I have to tell you, sometimes the process of recovery is depressing. The rooms are downright depressing. Joining a group of 50 people, half of whom are still talking about the same issues they were dealing with 3 years before (let alone 3 decades) without visible growth, all of whom define themselves as an addict first and foremost, can be depressing. Often when I have spoken/shared, I can feel an energy that I give off; it’s simply who I am. But as an introvert, I can only give so much before needing to be refilled either by myself or by others. I have discovered while exploring my creative world that there are few people out there who fill my coffers. And not because I am reclusive and an introvert. I, like many, need to rediscover who I am, and sometimes because I have focused so exclusively on SOBRIETY, I started to loose faith that the creative still existed. Sometime I need a break from the rooms in order to take a leap into myself as opposed to carefully treading one step at a time.
I am trying to honor my ‘self.’ “Be Yourself.” Novel. Creative. Unique. Passionate. Loving. I have to remember to look at what I am surrounding my ‘self’ with: If I’m not happy, perhaps I need new surroundings.
Intolerable: A Memoir of Extremes by Kamal Al-Solaylee
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
At times I found myself forgetting the narrator was gay and making choices to ensure he could live as a gay man man because I was focused on its historical/political/socioeconomic portrayal of the Middle East. I learned a lot and am once again a bit ashamed of our school systems because I knew nothing of the area. Also a bit embarrassed I hadn’t taken it upon myself to soak in the news of the last 3 decades in order to better understand everything from religious extremism to the Arab Spring. Then, just in writing this review, the videos of gay men being thrown off towers to their deaths popped into my head, and it all came together. It’s an important read, one I recommended my teacher partner take to his HS seniors.
Seriously? Against All Odds? Could you possibly pick a better song to represent the longing, the angst, the desire of a young boy in 1984? I went to see this movie with a good friend, a female, one in a rather long list of ‘friends’ who decided I was the one. This friend, a senior at the time, subsequently did a really good job of trying to convince me to have sex over the next few years. Even after she graduated and I told her, “I’m having feelings for someone….a guy.” This was the start of it all—a song to help me speak my truth. Music does that, you know? A beautiful rendition by Blaine that took me, and still takes me, back. 1984 wasn’t the best year for coming out in high school, but I am sure glad I had the music to get me through.
It’s hard not to discover some great blogs out there; makes me wonder sometimes whether mine is redundant or necessary. Regardless, what my blog is doing is helping guide me into my next steps. Putting it Together, as the song goes. This might not last as long as I originally had planned but that will only be because my sights have become more and more focused on personal creative projects which, up until I gathered the confidence to start these websites, had suffered from lack of drive and confidence. I’ve been building those things up, and low and behold, everything else gets built up along with drive and confidence. Creative energy, esteem, hope, positive outlook. Why? Well, the LAWS OF KARMA! Doh!
I’ve always inherently believed in the Laws of Karma, believed in the synchronistic power of the universe and the energy that is ME. But life makes you forget, and before you know it, your are swirling down the drain into the unseen world of pipes, plumbing, and cesspools. So when I came across this great post reminding me there is actually a list of “laws” which I firmly believe hold true in my world, it was a relief. Like finding a plumber you can trust so you can put your faith in the seals, the welds, and know there will be no leakage if I use the system correctly and don’t overwhelm it. (did I take that imagery too far??)
So I’m going to post them one by one. Starting with:
I seriously don’t know how people do this blogging thing. It’s utterly overwhelming even for someone who considers himself technically savvy. But there’s a big difference between figuring out how to rewire a fuse box and trying to figure out how to manage all the various venues, outlets, and platforms of social media. I suppose the younger generations have the same leg up as those who graduated shortly after me and who learned HTML along with their normal spelling lessons. Oh, right, there were no spelling lessons because spell-check made that obsolete! I’m trying to figure this out, trying to set boundaries (No twitter, no Instagram) but perhaps my biases against the ‘see what I am doing right this instant’ mentality is unfair. I don’t know. All I do know is that this is incredibly time consuming. All consuming. Breathe, step away, doing something for myself first, then blog.
Every Love Story Is a Ghost Story: A Life of David Foster Wallace by D.T. Max
My rating: 0 of 5 stars
Knowing when to give up is a gift. DFW killed himself at 46, a creative genius haunted by mental illness and addiction. Hmm….I’m 47, haunted by my own issues, creative (I’ve never be called ‘genius’), years of meds and suicidal ideation. C was kind in thinking I would get something out of the read; unfortunately too much. I last 60 pages and realized it wouldn’t be healthy to go further. I skipped a couple hundred pages, read the last page of “how he did it,” then went to play the piano. Knowing when to give up a book is the gift. Knowing when to hold onto life is another.
Here’s what gets me upset: regardless of the program, therapy, rehabilitation program, or self-help book off the shelf at B&N, attempting to tame an addiction without a thorough investigation into one’s mental health by a professional (not a therapist, not a sponsor, not a general practitioner, but someone with the specific credentials to understand mental health “disorders” and the drugs that can possibly help), is like teaching braille to someone with complete hearing loss. It might open up a new world of sensory exploration for your fingers, offer an insight and language with which to communicate with a specific group of people who share a different physical problem than your own, but it does not address the bigger issue of not being able to hear. And lumping all mental health disorders into one massive category and allowing non-professionals to diagnose and prescribe, even via a casual personal story, is no less harmful than saying addiction to alcohol is the same as every other addiction whether it be sex, bath salts, binging/purging, meth, heroin, and on and on.
Too often, addiction is a symptom, not the problem, but in the hands of the wrong people, that claim can be turned on its head and used as some form of sick proof one is “in denial” or that their ego is fighting against the fact they are really just a ‘bozo on the bus’ and not being honest with themselves about their true condition, a condition through which adherence to a few simple steps can bring freedom, serenity, and joy.
Somewhere along the way, it became cool to be a part of a larger program of recovery; that’s great. Actors step forward and claim their seat. Writers do the same. Politicians even. But it seems that with this new esteem has come the bashing of psych-meds, medications that not only save lives but that treat the problem, not the symptom. I could run through the list of diagnoses I have been given by various professionals throughout my adult life, could tell story after story of how I fooled some professionals into giving me the exact diagnosis I wanted to hear at the time, and more tales of unsolicited advice from people who insisted they knew what I was going through because they, too, shared the label, “Addict.” Or they were a family member of an addict or a whole family of addicts. Often, these people are the ones out there shouting the loudest in a well-intentioned attempt to bring relief to others. Often their shouts just confuse the issue for those of us suffering from something other than our addictions.
Lithium. What does that word bring to mind? To me it’s looney-bins, ‘One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” Francis Farmer (or rather Jessica Lang), and on and on. So unfair, so off-target, such a stereotype from an old generation of labeling. I don’t know a thing about Lithium outside of what I just read in the below article. Not a thing.
But I do know about Wellbutrin, Effexor, Zoloft, and Prozac. In the first three, up until last December, I held my hopes for some relief along with a heavy dose of therapy and 12-step. Why the first three and not Prozac? Because of magazine ads, commercials on TV, suggestions from friends, and stories in ‘the rooms.’ These were the newer, cooler, if you will, medications that could and would bring relief.
A week before the end of a 90-stay in my first rehab, 90 days after having tried to shoot an 8-ball of meth into my arms with a 4 year-old rusty veterinarian’s needle previously used on our cat, 11 weeks after telling one of my rehab counselors I wanted to die to which she replied, “Oh Spencer, leave the drama for the stage,” 5 days before leaving that rehab, my other counselor said, “You don’t need that Effexor. Just stop taking it.” Literally. I was advised to go cold turkey days before heading home. What happened after isn’t the point; the point is this person wasn’t qualified to discuss psych meds, a psych med that had been prescribed by a physicians assistant the previous year.
I stayed off that med and all others until 5 years later Wellbutrin and Zoloft were prescribed by that Harvard trained psychiatric nurse. They worked as well as they could while I secretly kept my truth: I was raiding the needle-exchange closet of all the used needles dropped off by the meth users in town, sometimes scraping the residue out of those needles and using the clean needles on the shelf above, but at other times, just filling the used needle up with water, shaking the left over crystals together with the client’s blood and shooting it into my veins. At work. Yes, I hit a major bottom, nearly killed myself by going septic, and eventually went away to the PRIDE institute. There, the doctor, a pediatrician, gave me her diagnosis and psychiatric recommendation. A pediatrician.
A few more years later, last fall, when I finally accepted I couldn’t stop thinking about killing myself, I finally admitted to my therapist these fears (they had become not just ideations but a fear I would succeed), and I saw a psychiatrist for the first time in my life. There was an initial diagnosis, multiple visits to ensure ‘bi-polar’ was not appropriate, and a thorough discussion of my med history and my current two meds (Wellbutrin and Zoloft). We eventually landed on my needing to stop Zoloft and to add Prozac. Prozac? Isn’t that so 80’s? Wasn’t that the catch-all drug of a generation of self diagnosed depressives? Wasn’t it a joke? I had to check my biases, my baggage, my history in order to hear what he was saying and to realize he was the one with the expertise who could possibly give me my life back.
He did. As did Prozac. You see, I’m on the obsessive compulsive spectrum which I never really knew. My binging, purging, love of sticking needles into my arm, self-mutilation, and addictions were as much a part of obsessive compulsion and they were in what I thought was an inability to stop (addiction.) Suddenly (weeks later), instead of a tiny unexpected thought creeping into my head creating a chorus that would scream, “DO IT (‘it’ being whatever desire was hitting me at the moment), I heard the initial voice and could stop other voices from joining it. Instead of crying on the way to get drugs, hating myself because I couldn’t stop, I could now see my thought process. Where before I had no control over where those thoughts went, now my thinking was under my own reigns. My obsession wasn’t in control That is a big difference in the mind of a depressed, self-destructive addict.
I write this because I cannot emphasis enough how important it is to seek professional help, to question the baggage of all those non-professionals offering help, and to make sure you cover all your bases. If you were recovering from a car crash, you wouldn’t just have your bones reset; your medical team (TEAM) would cover all the basis. Putting all our eggs in one basket only makes for a big helping of raw, scrabbled eggs.