Addiction Relapse | Death By Addiction – Let’s Honor Corey Monteith By…
Addiction relapse | death by addiction. It’s tragic. It’s unacceptable. It’s stoppable.
Yes – stoppable. Cory Monteith lost his life to the RELAPSING brain disease of addiction on Saturday, July 13, 2014. But Cory was not the only one who died of this disease or an accidental overdose of drugs and/or alcohol that day. In America, it is more than 200 every day, according to estimates by the CDC. Take this across the world, and the numbers increase exponentially.
Addiction Relapse | Death by Addiction – We Can Stop This!
Tragic. Unacceptable. Stoppable.
Yes – stoppable! How?
We need to understand that a very significant part of the disease of addiction is RELAPSE. We need to shatter the shame that surrounds this disease.
Relapse Can Be Part of the Disease of Addiction
As regular readers know, The Addiction Project is one of my all-time favorite resources. That’s because it’s a collaborative effort of the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA), The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and HBO. It shares the ongoing, continually updated research and information about all things addiction.
To briefly explain addiction relapse, I quote from Anna Rose Childress, Ph.D.’s piece on The Addiction Project’s, “What is Relapse?,”
Relapse is a cardinal feature of addiction, and one of the most painful.
Most people who struggle with addiction will have one or more relapses – the return to drug use after a drug-free period – during their ongoing attempts to recover. This can be extremely frustrating for patients and for families, as they have already experienced great pain.
What leads to relapse?
Multiple – and often interactive – factors can increase the likelihood of relapse. These are some of the commonly cited precursors:
- drug-related “reminder” cues (sights, sounds, smells, drug thoughts or drug dreams) tightly linked to use of the preferred drug(s) can trigger craving and drug seeking
- negative mood states or stress
- positive mood states or celebrations
- sampling the drug itself, even in very small amounts
The motivation to seek a drug, once triggered, can feel overwhelming and sometimes leads to very poor decision making: the user will pursue the drug, despite potentially disastrous future negative consequences (and many past negative consequences). Read the rest here…
What leads to relapse? Why is drug addiction a chronic, relapsing disease? Quoting from The Addiction Project’s, “Understanding Relapse,” section,
…Experts explain that relapse is not the failure of treatment but part of the disorder. Through repeated drug use, the brain’s “stop” system has been compromised, making it difficult to resist drug triggers. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) is recognized as the most successful technique for strengthening the brain’s “stop” system. Watch the video here…
What Can We Do to Fight Addiction Relapse | Death by Addiction
We can band together to Shatter the Shame of Addiction and to spread the word that this disease is not treated in 28 days – it is a chronic, often RELAPSING, brain disease. It is a disease that requires long-term continuing care just like any other disease.
You see – disease – by it’s simplest definition, is something that changes cells in a negative way. Addiction (whether to drugs or alcohol) changes cells in the brain, which is what makes it a brain disease. When managing other diseases, such as cancer or heart disease or diabetes, medical professionals employ the disease management approach, which involves three levels of care: 1) detox/stabilization, 2) acute care/rehab and 3) continuing care. This is how other diseases are treated. This is how we must treat addiction. Now, quoting from The Addiction Project’s, “What is Addiction Treatment?,“
It is best to think of three stages of addiction treatment, each with a different function in the larger picture of care:
- detoxification/stabilization
- rehabilitation
- continuing care
Specific to Continuing Care
The first 3-6 months following addiction treatment is the period of greatest vulnerability to relapse. Consequently, continuing care services are designed to monitor the emotional health of recovering people, remind them of their commitment to lifestyle change and support their needs as they attempt the difficult job of living their former lives with a new perspective and resolve.Click here to read the remainder of “What is Addiction Treatment?
So let’s do our part to honor Corey Monteith and the hundreds of others who died of this disease or an accidental overdose on Saturday, July 15, 2013, and the hundreds more who will die every day henceforth, by taking a stand.
Addiction is a chronic, often relapsing, brain disease – but it’s a highly a treatable brain disease. It is a disease from which a person can recover and move into the enjoyable life they were meant to lead, something that is made more doable if along their addiction recovery journey they receive continuing care and our help, support, encouragement and love. This is what we provide to those who suffer from other kinds of diseases without question. This is what we must also provide to those who suffer from addiction. We must shatter the shame that surrounds this disease and keeps millions from understanding it for what it is, which in turn keeps them from seeking and getting the help they need. So please…
Help Shatter the Shame of Addiction
Lisa Frederiksen
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Utter rot.
Addicts stay addicted because they have no better option. When they do have a better option they quit if the substance is harming them.
Drug and alcohol treatment is purely what Marx called IDEOLOGY. That is, when the society excludes and alienates the “addicted” individual, when it is as the ancient Cynics maintained artificial and unnatural, not at all the environment man has spent most of his natural history in, then the locus of the pathology is “found”, not in civilization generally or modern society in particular, but in the individual. AND there are sociopaths and idiots like yourself who make a business out of it.
You’re DISGUSTING.