I need to stop this

What If My Child Isn’t Motivated to Get Treatment for Addiction?

Suggesting Treatment to a Loved One

Intervention – a Starting Point

Drug Use, Stigma, and the Proactive Contagions to Reduce Both

Details: Published: 06 September 2023; Hits: 436

I'll speak generally here, because the lessons I've learned from my near 35 years of experience are mainly universal, and not necessarily from within the confines of my own family. Some have been observed through other close relationships in my personal life , which is to say, they aren't my stories to tell.

However, if I feel a lesson is beneficial to this community, I'll share it , just in a respectful way. The last thing I'm out to do is hurt anyone's feelings or speak out of turn. That being said, I have plenty of experience on the matter at hand, in many different facets and forms. While I may be nonspecific at times, understand it's out of empathy, not shame or fear.

Real substance abuse problems absolutely tear families apart over entire lifetimes if families allow it to go unaddressed for that long. And many do. Many do because they don't know what else to do, other than what they've always done. Be it drinking or a drug. If they’re the user or acting like they don't know what the user is doing or if they’re the loved one.

It not only tears apart entire close families, but it does so from the inside out, in the most merciless, unforgiving, and ugly of fashions imaginable. Addiction and alcoholism don't care about you or your family's feelings. They don't care what happens to your wife, husband, mother, father, brother, sister, or kids.

They [addicts] lie because they think it is the truth that will crush their loved ones, but again, just the opposite is true. While yes, lies or omitting certain truths may be easier in the moment or at first, they are never the real solution. I don't care who tells you otherwise or how they justify it, they can spin it any way that helps them sleep at night. Lies are never better.

I know from watching how lies and omitting truths destroy entire families, with the root almost always being a drink or a drug…

Brian Brewington (webmd.com)

Details: Published: 10 August 2023; Hits: 592

We have seen an increasing number of autistic adolescents and adults with signs of substance addiction, usually alcohol but also illegal substances such as marijuana, amphetamines and opiates and the misuse of prescription medication such as benzodiazepines. Why are autistic individuals at risk of developing substance addiction? The simple explanation is to engage or escape reality and moderate intense emotions.

A study by Helverschou et al.and colleagues (2019) found that typical interventions for treating addiction are often unsuitable for autistic adults. They recommended regular staff education on autism and accommodating the characteristics of autism in group sessions. The study also affirmed the perception of autistic participants in therapy as being drug ‘experts’ and who could provide advice to staff and fellow residents on drug doses and combinations of drugs. The research also identified a tendency for autistic individuals to end their drug use their own way and not follow a recommended reduction plan. Most addiction treatment services offer abstinence-orientated treatment only. However, research indicates that controlled substance use may be justified for autistic individuals (Kronenberg 2015).

Our clinical experience confirms that sometimes the autistic person can decide to end an addiction without a therapeutic plan and support. This takes great determination and relies on one of the characteristics of autism: once a decision has been made, the person is unwavering in seeking a resolution and the desired outcome.

The stress of group engagement, accepting treatment models, and staff not understanding autism can lead to premature voluntary discharge from residential rehabilitation services. The autistic person may become convinced that such services can never be effective. Rehabilitation services need to become more autism-friendly, and psychologists and psychiatrists need to develop an addiction treatment model specifically designed for the characteristics of autism and reasons for substance addiction in collaboration with autistic adults who are or were addicted to substances.

(For more: Professor Tony Attwood and Dr. Michelle Garnett https://attwoodandgarnettevents.com/autism-and-substance-addiction/ )

Details: Published: 13 July 2023; Hits: 650

Abstinence From Drugs of Abuse in Community-Based Members of Narcotics Anonymous

Results: Respondents were 71.5% male; the mean age was 38.1 years; 68.2% were White; and the principal drug problems comprised cocaine (28.5%), heroin (27.5%), other opiates (13.4%), methamphetamine (12.9%), alcohol (8.6%), marijuana (6.6%), and other stimulants (2.5%). Eighty-seven percent had prior treatment for a substance use disorder. On average respondents had first encountered NA at age 26.9, they had been abstinent an average of 5.7 years at the time they filled out the questionnaire, and 47.5% had served as sponsors. Ninety-four percent designated themselves as spiritual, and only 29.6% designated themselves as religious.

Conclusions: NA offers support for long-term abstinence from diverse misuse of drugs among users of different backgrounds.

(Source: Journal of Studies on Alcohol & Drugs)

Details: Published: 20 June 2023; Hits: 683

Portraying Abstinence Recovery as Puritanical Is in the Interest of Those Who Sell Addictive Drugs:

Abstinence has long been a central facet in recovery as defined by people with severe SUDs as their lived experience. Abstinence is critical for people on the far end of this spectrum for whom use often leads to suffering and death. Lumping it all under the term recovery is unhelpful at best, doing so conflates substance misuse that may respond to attempts to moderate with more severe conditions in which a person uses until death unless they abstain from use

…We also have to be careful to do so in ways we do not normalize problematic drug use and addiction in ways that we allow people to continue to suffer under the guise of choice. Addiction is a brain condition impacting cognition. This movement is unintentionally creating additional suffering for persons with severe SUDs.

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Details: Published: 04 June 2023; Hits: 689

The Longer You Abstain from Alcohol the Lower the Risk – After 20 years of alcohol abstention, the increased mortality risk disappeared.

Best health practices should always be on the table – always. The continual couching of abstinence as a ‘bridge to far’ is not only disingenuous to those self-harming with alcohol, but also disempowering. One thing best-health care practice should do is empower, enable, and equip people to not only discover, but persist in health maximising endeavours. (Source: American Journal of Preventative Medicine May 2023)