Alcoholism In The Family

The effects of alcoholism in a spouse can be devastating not only for the marriage but for the children as well. Because the alcoholic spends an inordinate amount of time thinking about and consuming alcohol, it robs the other family members of his attention and love.

How can you tell if your spouse is an alcoholic? There are several signs to look for:

1. A history of alcoholism in the family. People inherit a hereditary predisposition for alcoholism. All of us can become addicted to alcohol if we drink enough of it, but those with a history of alcoholism in their families become addicted more easily than those without this history.

2. A history of heavy drinking. The earlier a person began to drink, the more years he has been drinking, the more frequently he drinks and the more he consumes, the more likely it is that he has become addicted to alcohol. Any amount beyond two drinks each time alcohol is consumed suggests the potential for a problem.

3. Denial about one's drinking. Alcohol has become the alcoholic's best friend because it always provides her with a high or temporary relief from stress. As a result, she will do anything to protect her use of it. Even when it is obvious to everyone else, the alcoholic will vigorously deny she has a problem. One person with a twenty year history of heavy drinking and five alcohol-related arrests told me with a straight face he didn't have a drinking problem. End of discussion. Another who admitted he had been drinking a six pack of beer every day for twenty-five years denied he was addicted to alcohol. Alcoholics show us how great is the human capacity for denial and self-delusion!

4. Problems caused by drinking. DUI arrests, bad fights at home, absenteeism at work, complaints of friends, spouses and children, medical conditions caused by drinking--all are indications that alcohol has become a serious problem.

5. Blackouts. Blackouts are a loss of memory, but not a loss of consciousness, which occur when a person is intoxicated. Others remember, perhaps all to painfully, what she did last night, but the alcoholic can't recall a thing.

6. Preoccupation with drinking. Making sure there is an adequate supply of alcohol at a party or in the house. Also, drinking before a party.

7. Gulping alcohol. Drinking quickly to get the high as soon as possible.

8. Sneaking drinks. Hiding bottles in the house.

9. Loss of control of drinking. If a person plans to stop at the local bar for two beers and often stays much longer until he's intoxicated, chances are he has a drinking problem. The bottom line question about alcohol is, "Do you control it or does it control you?"

10. Failure to stop drinking. Let's assume a person has become concerned about her drinking and so vows to stop or control it. The fact that she can't is another sign that drinking has become a serious problem for her.

For an alcoholic to seek help, he has to decide himself he has a drinking problem.
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Alcoholism And Drug Addiction-change To Recovery

The American Psychiatric profession believes, Once an alcoholic, always an alcoholic. Once a drug addict, always a drug addict. Alcoholism/drug addiction is a disease and Relapse is part of recovery.

Not true says, Dorothy M. Neddermeyer, PhD, Holistic Healer.Using a holistic approach. Body, Mind and Spirit people can be healed of alcoholism and drug addiction without relapse and without cravings by healing the underlying causes which precipitate the need to use alcohol or drugs to cope. A holistic approach incorporates life coaching, massage therapy, acupuncture, hypnotherapy, yoga, physical fitness, spiritual awakening, as well as Chinese herbology.

The Once an addict always an addict and Relapse is a Part of Recovery? paradigm has crippled and doomed many people to a life of struggle and self-deprecation throughout the world. You are not an alcoholic or an addict. You are not incurably diseased. You have merely chosen a substance to cope with the underlying conditions that you can heal, at which time your dependency will cease completely and forever.

Today, having healed hundreds of people labeled?alcoholics and drug addicts, I speak with complete certainty that alcoholism and addictions are not diseases.

If not a disease, what are they? The answer is that they are labels used to describe the states in which you find yourself after you have used alcohol or addictive drugs in large quantities or long enough period of time to have developed a dependency on them, meaning that someone addicted can?t permanently discontinue their use without help.

Alcohol and drugs are not the problems; they are what people use to numb the internal pain, thus helping oneself cope. These issues have both physical and psychological components?anything from anemia, hypoglycemia, or a sluggish thyroid to attention deficient disorder, brain-wave pattern imbalances, or deep emotional pain?Depression, Anxiety, Panic, OCD, Anger, Sadness, Fear.

There are Seven Steps to recovery, which address these causes, but foundational to them all is this key premise: When the underlying painful issues are discovered and healed, the need for alcohol or drugs disappears.

The Seven Recovery Steps include: Recognize, Re-Look, Re-Feel, Re-Experience, Respond, Release and Renew.

This process will open your mind to new ways of thinking that will cause you to see your dependency, and perhaps your entire life, in a whole new light. It will help you understand that all dependency is a symptom, not a problem. Seeing your dependency in this new light will enable you to heal yourself more quickly and more effectively than ever before?and permanently.

Author: Dorothy M. Neddermeyer, PhD
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Can Drug Treatment Help Our Teens..?

All drug abusers will have a medical condition of his/her own only one of its kind drug treatment and psychoanalysis. They all share a general aim: to become physically and mentally free from drugs. How they go regarding achieving that objective, however, is as diverse as snowflakes.

Like everything else, a procedure for booming addiction cure relies seriously on atmosphere. Individual make a decision and brainpower are necessary, but atmosphere is typically the deciding reason between an optimistic prediction and a pessimistic one. Drug treatment for young adults is no different.
Drug treatment and therapy centers propose a second chance and not just from the failures of drug dependence. Booming treatment through practicing everyday determination and a dedication to serious living, offers youthful adults a changed enthusiasm for life.

The initial factor in efficient drug treatment is biological isolation. It is not exceptional to send drug or alcohol abusers to boarding schools, where they are cut off from the attraction to drink or do drugs. Some rehabilitation centers take it a step further, providing residents with the pleasure of being in beautiful surroundings. Such locales are, in a way, essential for the change of a young person's life. As addiction is rinse out from the body, attractiveness is once again realized in itself.

Out-of-the-way from atmosphere, a drug treatment and therapy center should offer young adults an array of optimistic back up, like group therapy and individual analysis, arts, youth actions, and vocational instruction. This comprehensive approach is more efficient than a shorter program, which strong point focus exclusively on detoxification. In young adults, addiction put away much of their power and energy. When an addiction is broken, the vacant space left by substance-abuse must be replenished with encouraging elements. Mental treatment is, in the long run, more significant than corporal improvement.

As you can observe, it is enormously essential to classify a dual diagnosis, as opposed to severely a drug or alcohol trouble. If an inhabitant is recognized as having a dual diagnosis, either his or her mental troubles and substance-abuse must be addressed independently. Only by doing so can development will be measured in each department

Remember, addiction generally takes grip over a young adult after they have put down the lid themselves off from the external world. Drugs become an alternate for normal forms of helpful support, like peer relationships, family bonding, and school grades.

Drug addiction cure are just as much about judge in oneself as about physically detoxifying the body. One of the major aims of treatment should be to replant the thought that every inhabitant is only one of its kinds. Over the track of drug cure and treatment, residents should be positioned in situation of responsibility, where they are reintroduced to the eternal concepts of teamwork, faith, and determination.
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Recovery And Healing

Victims of abuse in all its forms – verbal, emotional, financial, physical, and sexual – are often disorientated. They require not only therapy to heal their emotional wounds, but also practical guidance and topical education. At first, the victim is, naturally, distrustful and even hostile. The therapist or case worker must establish confidence and rapport painstakingly and patiently.

The therapeutic alliance requires constant reassurance that the environment and treatment modalities chosen are safe and supportive. This is not easy to do, partly because of objective factors such as the fact that the records and notes of the therapist are not confidential. The offender can force their disclosure in a court of law simply by filing a civil lawsuit against the survivor!

The first task is to legitimise and validate the victim's fears. This is done by making clear to her that she is not responsible for her abuse or guilty for what happened. Victimisation is the abuser's fault – it is not the victim's choice. Victims do not seek abuse – although, admittedly some of them keep finding abusive partners and forming relationships of co-dependence. Facing, reconstructing, and reframing the traumatic experiences is a crucial and indispensable first phase.

The therapist should present the victim with her own ambivalence and the ambiguity of her messages – but this ought to be done gently, non-judgementally, and without condemnation. The more willing and able the abuse survivor is to confront the reality of her mistreatment (and the offender), the stronger she would feel and the less guilty.

Typically, the patient's helplessness decreases together with her self-denial. Her self esteem as well as her sense of self-worth stabilise. The therapist should emphasise the survivor's strengths and demonstrate how they can save her from a recurrence of the abuse or help her cope with it and with her abuser.

Education is an a important tool in this process of recovery. The patient should be made aware of the prevalence and nature of violence against women and stalking, their emotional and physical effects, warning signs and red flags, legal redresses, coping strategies, and safety precautions.

The therapist or social worker should provide the victim with lists of contacts – help organisations, law enforcement agencies, other women in her condition, domestic violence shelters, and victims' support groups both online and in her neighbourhood or city. Knowledge empowers and reduces the victim's sense of isolation and worthlessness.

Helping the survivor regain control of her life is the over-riding goal of the entire therapeutic process. With this aim in mind, she should be encouraged to re-establish contact with family, friends, colleagues, and the community at large. The importance of a tightly-knit social support network cannot be exaggerated.

Ideally, after a period of combined tutoring, talk therapy, and (anti-anxiety or antidepressant) medications, the survivor will self-mobilise and emerge from the experience more resilient and assertive and less gullible and self-deprecating.

Author: Sam Vaknin
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An Introduction to Mobile Psychiatric Rehabilitation

People who are mentally ill also seem to be chronically afraid of hospitals, or at least seem to want to avoid medical attention in a hospital setting. Looking at it from the perspective of someone who is confused or otherwise mentally unstable, the sterile and instrument-laden halls of a hospital are indeed terrifying, and can even be considered "creepy" by a person who is not suffering from a mental condition.

Mentally ill people do not want to come to a hospital, and they do not want to seek treatment, making it difficult to get that treatment to them. This is why mobile psychiatric rehabilitation units have been established. Mobile psychiatric rehabilitation is designed to help people who are suffering from a mental illness regain or maintain the skills that will help them function in society, allowing them the comfort and security of being treated in an individualized fashion by a caring person in their own homes.

The mobile psychiatric rehabilitation program is individualized to each person, with a specialist conducting an assessment of each person to whom the mobile psychiatric rehabilitation unit is assigned. They work with the mentally ill individual to determine their strengths, and their personal and community resources. From there they work to determine a plan of service to help outline the tasks and goals of the individual. Both the patient and the representative have tasks between each visit to make progress toward these goals.

The mobile psychiatric rehabilitation units are tailored to meet the wants as well as the needs of each individual. They can meet an individual in their own home, at their school, their work, or even in their neighborhood. These services are short term and are goal oriented, allowing people, through their own personal choice and at their own speed, to develop the skills and the support that they need to become self-sufficient and to have a more satisfying life.

Mobile psychiatric rehabilitation can help to allow a person to manage their own home through the acquisition of new skills such as budgeting, nutrition, and other self-care skills, as well as skills in areas such as the use of public transportation. Mobile psychiatric rehabilitation can help to teach mentally ill individuals or mentally deficient individuals to use their time more productively, both in the community and at home, and can help them to manage mental health issues like their medications.

Mentally ill people can also benefit from mobile psychiatric rehabilitation to help them use community resources such as employment specialists, advocacy groups, program participant groups, and other community support to their advantage. They will learn how to enjoy and make use of the love and support of their family, friends, and community, even co-workers, and will work on their ability to coordinate their care between their service providers and their support systems at or near home.

Mobile psychiatric rehabilitation focuses not on medicating or treating mentally ill patients, but on helping individuals medicate themselves and assisting them in managing their own diseases so that they can live out their lives as best as they can. A mentally ill individual could make use of mobile psychiatric rehabilitation to learn how to live on their own and how to use the features available to them, from busses and trains to employment specialists.

People working with mobile psychiatric rehabilitation can learn how to utilize their co-workers as a support system, and about how to reach out for the help that they need in managing their everyday life. The mobile psychiatric rehabilitation programs can also help people to learn about their own homes and lives, allowing them to learn about things such as budgets so that they can become even more independent.

It feels good to work with a friendly person to reach a goal that you personally have set. Whether your goal is to learn how to get to work all by yourself or how to buy groceries or clean your own house. Mobile psychiatric rehabilitation is a wonderful service for the mentally ill, and can help people who might otherwise fall apart to get on their feet and learn to move forward, perhaps for the first time in their lives.

Mobile psychiatric rehabilitation is for anyone who is a functional mentally ill person. This program, if it is available in your area, can help you or a loved one learn to make use of their functional capacity to live independently.

by: Megan Hazel
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Smoking Addiction

The addiction to smoking, which implies addiction to the substance nicotine has several components. The better one is aware of these components and understand them, the better is the chance for succeeding in stopping the smoking habit. Here is a survey of the components that addiction to smoke consist of.

THE SOCIAL COMPONENT

To some extend the habit of smoking is a product of socialization. Socialization is simply the tendency to repeat patterns of behaviour one sees other persons in the society exhibit. Socialisation is one major way children and young people learn social skills. Children and teenagers learn skills necessary to live and work in the society by a socialisation process.

If one lives or works together with other smoking individuals, one will more or less automatic adopt these individuals? smoking habits.

If the other individuals also make moves to threaten or freeze out an individual trying to brake this bad social standard, the difficulty of breaking out of the habit will be even greater.

THE NEED FOR SUCKING AND CHEWING

Every person have a need for sucking and chewing. This need is necessary in early infanthood, but it also persists into adult life to some degree. Some persons use cigarettes or other smoking devices and the smoke as a means to satisfy this need.

If you want to stop smoking, you can try to satisfy this need by other means, for example by always keeping something in your pocket that you can put in your mouth to chew at when the need for smoke appears.

AUTOMATIC REPEATING

When a person have done something many times and frequently enough, there will be created a pattern of automatic repetition of that particular behaviour. This is especially true if the particular action is done in a distinct recognizable situation.

Then try to avoid these situations or environments where you use to smoke, or to deliberately alter these situations.

NICOTINE USED AS A SELF MEDICATION

Nicotine has a tranquilizing effect upon nervous feelings. A person suffering from nervousness or from depressive symptoms may feel that the smoking helps him against his mental symptoms.

However, gradually there will be a need for steadily higher doses of nicotine to give these good effects, and if there is a lack of nicotine in the body, the nervous or depressive feelings will be greater than before.

This gratification, but with the need for steadily higher doses to get the good effects is a major incentive for the smoking habit. You should consider if this anti-depressive or tranquilizing effect is a reason for your smoking. If the depressive feelings are more serious, some appropriate treatment can be necessary.

THE PLEASURE COMPONENT

There is to some degree a plain and direct pleasure connected with smoking.

If the plain pleasure of smoking is a main reason for your habit, then you should try to find other sources of pleasure instead, for example some good food, some good music or some erotic action.

THE GENETIC COMPONENT

Not all people get equally easy dependent of nicotine. Perhaps some persons have receptors on their nerve cells that more easily get trigged by nicotine than others, or perhaps some people have more receptors with the ability to get trigged by nicotine, and this is inherited in the genetic code.

THE NERVOUS MECHANISMS WORKING BY ADDICTION

The normal brain has signal substances with a tranquilizing effect, and substances with a stimulating effect upon nerve cells. Like most narcotic substances, nicotine act like a signal substance by fitting into receptors on some brain cells.

Nicotine attaches itself to some receptors and thus give the nerve cell having these receptors a signal. The cells getting such a signal from nicotine, will react by secreting another signal substance, dopamine that influence still other cells. Dopamine will tranquilize some brain cells and stimulate others, and the total effect of this is the pleasurable effects of smoking.

However, when nicotine steadily induces dopamine release, the brain will gradually decrease the production of dopamine when nicotine is not present, and the brain will feel a steadily greater need for nicotine to work normally and feel well.
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