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5/25/2009 8:15 PM UTC
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Recovery Now! is weekly radio show for people struggling with addiction in themselves or their loved ones. It discusses the process of recovery including features on addiction causes, symptoms, stories, programs, spiritual support, and treatments.
dawicker104
Date / Time: 11/30/2009 9:00 PM UTC
Category: Health
Call-in Number: (646) 727-2939
Joins us as we review all of the 12 steps and give you insights about getting the most out of the program and because a new person in recovery!
Upcoming Episodes
12/7/2009 9:00 PM UTC - Learning how to recover from alcohol and drug addiction
12/14/2009 9:00 PM UTC - Learning how to recover from alcohol and drug addiction
12/21/2009 9:00 PM UTC - Learning how to recover from alcohol and drug addiction
Date / Time: 10/28/2009 2:23 PM UTC
Date / Time: 10/28/2009 2:20 PM UTC
Which came first, the chicken or the egg? You can debate the issue all you want, but when the end result is that you're either dinner or you're breakfast, what difference does it make? Now hold that thought. If your teenage child starts drinking alcohol, or starts smoking marijuana, does it really matter which they do first? When with either the end result may be addiction, to alcohol or pot or perhaps to some other, more powerful drug? The point is they are in jeopardy either way.
Parents worry about their teens using illegal drugs about teenage drug addiction, but alcohol is just as dangerous, and it is readily available, perfectly legal and socially acceptable. As children enter their teenage years they want to separate from their parents, and part of the teenage experience is to stretch out and experiment with substances. Even the most conscientious parents may not be able to protect their teens from the predatory lure of alcohol. It is readily available, maybe in your own home.
Borrowing a sports analogy, the best defense against teenage drinking is a good offense. Parents need to equip themselves with solid information about teen alcohol use, a realistic view of their child and access to professional help if there is any early warning signs of alcohol abuse.
Parents need to begin their offensive preparations long before the teenage years. See the problem of drinking before it comes into their home. Be proactive and establish their own game plan for educating their child on the topic, handling the problem if it arises and limiting the damage. Parents don't want to believe that "Little Johnny" or "Little Jane" is going to drink, or worse yet is having a problem with alcohol addiction. That's something that happens to somebody else. This is not true.
Alcohol is everywhere, so parents need to be savvy and look for the warning signs. Don't assume that the problem is going to pass you by because you're the "right kind of parents." Human nature hasn't changed over centuries and if parents are honest, they will recall their own view of the world when they were teens.
Warning Signs of Teen Alcohol Abuse/Addiction:
School: Is your child keeping up with his/her school work? Have they lost interest in going to school and look for excuses to stay home? Call the school and keep track of your child's attendance in class. I coach football and basketball for middle school and high school. I get attendance records and if a teen has missed class, they don't play in the games. But do you know your child skipped second period math class? Are there days when you think your child has gone to school, but the attendance records do not match up?
Children who are in trouble with alcohol or teenage drug addiction will often begin failing classes, not turning in homework assignments or in general just fall behind. "I can't believe Johnny is failing math, it was always his favorite subject." A new pattern has emerged and it isn't pretty. Schools have open campuses, allowing kids to come and go. They can easily slip into the community and get into trouble.
Health: As a person slips into alcoholism a variety of physical signs point to drug to the problem. Are they listless all of the time? Kids don't want to get up in the morning anyway, but they don't always refuse to get moving. Weight loss and weight gain are signs. Are there changes in eating habits? The eyes are an indicator. Has the life gone out of their eyes, or is there a major change?
Appearance: This can be a difficult area to discern, as fashions change and often times what adults feel is acceptable dress may not have anything to do with current trends. Watch for changes in dress. Does a child lose interest in how they look? Kids want to fit in and there is peer pressure influence on the way they dress. Girls, especially, are bombarded with images on appearance. Has there been an attitude shift? Have grooming habits changed?
Attitude and Behavior: As children enter their teen years it is natural for them to want to break away from the family. When kids go to extremes to make sure you don't know who they're with or what they are doing, the red flag should go up. When they become secretive and guarded, when their privacy at home prevents your open access to them, look for something beyond mere adolescent rebellion.
Money can be a sign. If their only interaction with the parents is to ask for money, and when asked why they need money they refuse to answer, or become indignant, that is an indicator of possible drug abuse. Worse yet, they may steal items from home to buy beer or liquor.
Communicating with teens can be a challenge, especially because they are beginning to spread their wings and desire independence from mom and dad. Stay calm. The most common mistake parents can make is trying to force ideas and values on the defiant teenaged mind. I was that way.
There's a leadership responsibility that always needs to be in evidence, and parents need to be parents. Trying to be "best buddies" is not a good strategy. However, parents need to meet their children where they're at. That means trying to understand the situation from your child's perspective.
Teenagers will probably come up with some very wrong reasoning; seriously flawed ideas and their whole world-view will likely be counter to that of their parents. But they have a NEED to be heard and respected. It's one thing to accept an opinion counter to your own, and it's quite another to approve of it.
Try working with your teen's ideas and concepts, and have an open and non-threatening discussion about them. You can establish rules of engagement with your teen and agree that both of you are allowed to express ideas and opinions without fear of retribution.
The key is to remember that the parent needs to be the one in control. As a chaplain, I do a lot of counseling work and my approach is entirely patient-centered. They establish the themes of the conversation, but even though I am not deciding the topic, or necessarily directing the conversation, I am still in control.
Remember that your teenager, like a patient in a hospital, is probably going to be very myopic. He/she will see things only from their perspective. Take a step back and see the entire situation. Go with their feelings, their concerns and walk down their path. Share the experience.
Parents are the front line of the fight against teen drug addiction. Don't push that responsibility off to the schools. Rather, partner with the school counselors, teachers and administrators, never forgetting that you are the one responsible for your teen. If alcohol abuse or addiction enters your home, seek professional help and form another partnership in the effort. Be in control. Be honest. Be alert. Be proactive.
Ned Wicker is the Addictions Recovery Chaplain at Waukesha Memorial Hospital Lawrence Center He author's a website for addiction support:
Drug-Addiction-Support.org or Drug Addiction Symptoms
Original Air Date: 10/26/2009 8:00 PM UTC
Date / Time: 10/23/2009 10:44 PM UTC
Heroin addiction is something we associate with "skid row" and the downtrodden portion of American society. They are junkies and no accounts. They use dirty needles and contract hepatitis and HIV/Aids. They commit crimes and wind up either dead or in jail.
That's the way we see heroin users. But what if one of those heroin users isn't living in squallier, or what if they carry a high grade point average, or what if they are living in the bedroom next to yours?
Heroin isn't confined to the dirty streets of abandoned urban areas, it is in suburbia, in our schools and readily available. The target audience gets younger as the years advance. The internet, movies and television, and especially music bring it forward every day. That trend has not gone unnoticed.
"Although heroin abuse has trended downward during the past several years, its prevalence is still higher than in the early 1990s," said Nora D. Volkov, M.D., Director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse. "These relatively high rates of abuse, especially among school-age youth, and the glamorization of heroin in music and films make it imperative that the public has the latest scientific information on this topic. Heroin also is increasing in purity and decreasing in price, which makes it an attractive option for young people."
Parents are so often in denial about this, because surely THEIR child would never stoop to such a tragic and disgusting low. But kids rebel, they experiment. They have no idea what they are getting into and without the proper knowledge and experience in life, they make bad decisions. They are the "good" kids, the social outcasts and even the athletes. Heroin addiction is an equal opportunity killer.
It is happy to destroy any life if given the opportunity, and clueless parents are all too welcome in this modern story of destruction and despair. Even when faced with evidence that something has gone wrong in their child's life, there are parents, well to do parents, who simply deny that anything is wrong.
Heroin addiction is treatable. In the last 10 years new opiate addiction treatment programs have been made available. New pharmacological interventions have been developed, to go along with behavioral therapies. Buprenorphine (suboxone), approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 2002, is an alternative to methadone. The new therapy offers greater help in reducing cravings for the opiate ad it also helps to make withdrawal a little easier. But, if parents are looking in the other direction, intentionally or otherwise, there is no treatment and the disease progresses.
Those who would distribute heroin to young people are counting on parents to help them move unnoticed in the shadows. Mom is a professional person with strong community ties. Dad is likewise a successful businessman and does not want the stain of something unseemly to get in the way of his social standing. They are easily deceived because they are myopic. They don't talk to their kids about things that really matter; they instead talk about status and career.
In order to succeed in business, companies, entrepreneurs and drug dealers need to find new markets. Those who are older, wiser and more educated are less susceptible to making foolish decisions in the name of experimentation or peer pressure. Think of it this way, if a pride of lionesses is out on a hunt, do they take down the biggest and fastest wildebeest? No, they target the young ones, the less experienced. Children in high school and middle school are prime targets.
Date / Time: 10/23/2009 10:41 PM UTC
STEP TWELVE: Having had a spiritual awakening as a result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to addicts and to practice these principles in our affairs.
There is no teacher like experience. The final step in the 12 Step process speaks to experience, which gives those who have walked through the tunnel of addiction a depth of understanding that non-addicts don't have, nor ever will have.
So many counselors and therapists I have met over the years are in recovery themselves, and because of their experience, they are tuned into the thinking process and lifestyle of the addict. A person who truly knows the experience of addiction is ideally suited to help guide someone else through the tunnel.
Unfortunately, drug addition strips us of our ability to reason and our humanity, leaving only "You'll have to learn the heard way" as a means of getting the message through to us. Highly addictive drugs, like crack cocaine, can grab a person immediately and push them down that destructive path.
From the outside, the observer sees the addict's craving as being absolute lunacy, but for the one addicted, the craving is for something they desperately want to satisfy the need to feel better, or normal. Any intervention to prevent the addict from using is seen as an act of betrayal at worse, or the silly attempts of a non-understanding, uninformed individual at best.
It's hard for anyone who has not been addicted to understand this. Therefore, those who have walked through the tunnel of addiction and come out the other side are invaluable resources to those who struggle with the disease. There is a certain bond. Call it a commonality or a non-spoken understanding, but the experience of former addicts resonates well with current users.
That's why a woman I recently met has hope for her recovery. She, like her two older sisters, is an addict, but the two older ones have come out of the tunnel. Her counselor at the treatment center is a recovering addict, so she is surrounded by people with intimate, personal knowledge of the disease.
The sisters' behavior had been a strong influence on their "baby" sister, but instead of feeling guilty for dragging her into addiction, once they were freed from the chains of the disease, they got into the fight to save her. They understood what she was thinking, knew what she needed and were prepared to do their part. Even though the haze of methamphetamine addiction, the little sister knew that somebody cared.
Meeting with the counselor at the treatment center, the older sisters mapped out a plan to get their little sister into treatment, and a plan of what the recovery process would look like. The counselor said it was like having additional arms and legs to do the job. He had overcome addition to cocaine years ago, and as he put it, "I know all the tricks," referring to any pushback from the client. But he had the two older sisters in his arsenal. "Sometimes the family gets in the way because they are so used to being enablers," he noted. "But (the sisters) know what she needs and they know how to help."
Getting back to the question of whether it is necessary for someone to have been an addict in order to help an addict, the answer there is definitely no. However, knowledge and understanding are necessary. Families need to know what they have to do to help. Had the older sisters not been in recovery, the counselor was prepared to offer resources for support and education. The older sisters were ahead of the curve, so they were in a good position to be utilized.
The treatment center has answers, but organizations like Alcoholics Anonymous, Al anon and Narcotics Anonymous have connections to help families train to do their part in the battle. The 12th step is sort of a call to arms, if you will, an opportunity for the recovering addict to help users return to wholeness. Even if 12 Step is not your preferred means of recovery, the idea of reaching out to others is noble, and in the end, the pain and suffering you experienced can be for the good of someone else.
Date / Time: 10/23/2009 10:39 PM UTC
At some time or another you've probably all heard the Bible saying that you cannot serve two masters. "No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to one and despise the other..." Jesus of Nazareth was talking about serving God and wealth, but for conversation, let's shift it to mean you cannot drink and be in recovery.
There is a growing school of thought that suggests it's ok to drink and be in recovery, or you can go into treatment and some day you'll be able to drink again in moderation. But what is true; does one drink while recovering from drinking? Of course it is understandable that the one abusing alcohol would want to get back to a point of balance in their life. You can read the blogs and on internet chat rooms. People want to drink.
I believe the whole mindset is a form of denial. Through will power and some sort of behavior modification, I can still drink. I can partake in that which is killing me and ruining my life, because I am going to control my impulses. It's like going out into a busy street and dodging cars. You may not get hit today, or tomorrow, but someday you're going to get run over. Or worse yet, you run over somebody else. It happens all the time in Wisconsin. Somebody who has his/her life under control and knows for certain that they can drink and drive, and goes out and kills somebody.
If you've had a problem with alcohol, why would you even risk it? Is alcohol so important that life lacks joy and fullness without it? Or, are you so completely selfish that you insist on having it your own way? Alcoholics Anonymous established a critical boundary over 70 years ago-- that people need to abstain in order to manage their disease. There is so much more to life than alcohol, yet there are those who insist that you can have it both ways.
Denial is a powerful mechanism, because logic and truth have nothing to do with making a good decision. I'm doing this because I want to, and if I get into trouble with my drinking again, I'll just go back into treatment until I can drink and not have a problem with it. I'm not denying that somebody out there can do this. The probability says otherwise. If you don't drink, you won't have the problem while you are going through recovery. How long is that? It's a chance in lifestyle. It's permanent. Why play Russian Roulette with your health?
We want to drink to feel good. What is missing from your life that alcohol is necessary to feel good? Can God help fill the voids? Or, is one's own self-determination the only solution? You can see that in the recovery field, there is a tug-of-war going on between the spiritual and the secular. People who have faith, regardless of their religion or denomination, have a completely different viewpoint, a different understanding.
People who do not believe in God have their own inner resources. They may have friends for support, and in that you can recognize or identify a "power greater than ourselves," but it is still human driven power, and limited by its very nature. Sadly, many people cannot accept the idea of a god of some kind, or God, as many understand him. They may be successful in curbing their drinking habit, but unlike those who are honest, open and willing to immerse themselves in a 12-Step program, there is no transformation from being battered and broken into being whole.
You cannot serve two masters. If God, as you understand him, is your master, there is no room for the other master who is destroying your life.
Alcoholism-Support.org
or
Alcoholism Symptoms
Original Air Date: 10/19/2009 8:00 PM UTC
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