Breakingthecycles.com – Changing the Conversations

by Lisa Frederiksen

Here are three key concepts for alcoholism recovery that a person who has been diagnosed with alcoholism or one who has decided on their own they are an alcoholic may want to focus on:

1. Accepting that alcoholism is one of the diseases of addiction; addiction is a chronic relapsing brain disease (which is what makes it impossible to drink any amount of alcohol and succeed in long-term recovery).

2. Accepting one has the disease (which is what helps a person accept they cannot  successfully drink some amount of alcohol some day).

3. Understanding there are many options to help with successfully treating the disease and that various options work better than others, depending on the individual and on their stage in their recovery process.

For more information on these three concepts:

for #1, click here

for #2, click here

for #3, click here and/or click here.

Rev. 2/26/10

by Lisa Frederiksen

Alcohol enters the bloodstream through the walls of the small intestine. Because alcohol dissolves in water, the bloodstream carries it throughout the body (which is 60-70%) water, where it is absorbed into body tissue in proportion to the body tissue’s water content.  [The brain is mostly water, by the way.]

Alcohol is metabolized by the liver, thanks in large part to enzymes produced in the liver. This is the process by which alcohol leaves the body. The liver can only metabolize a certain amount of alcohol per hour, which means alcohol leaves the bloodstream more slowly than it enters. This is why a person’s BAC can continue to rise after they have stopped drinking.

A very GENERAL rule of thumb is that it takes about one hour for the liver to metabolize one standard drink. A standard drink is defined as 5 ounces of table wine, 12 ounces of beer or 1.5 ounces of hard liquor. Using this very GENERAL rule of thumb, it will take two hours to metabolize two drinks — even if the drinks were consumed back-to-back, and it’s been over an hour.

BUT, no two people will necessarily metabolize alcohol in the same manner. People who weigh less, for example,  have less body water as compared to someone who weighs more, and thus drink for drink a person who weighs less will have more alcohol concentration in their body water than someone who weighs more. People who have lower amounts of the liver enzymes that metabolize alcohol will take longer to metabolize the same amount of alcohol as someone else. There are other factors that influence how much is “too much” for one person as compared to another.

The key message is the liver can only metabolize a certain amount of alcohol per hour. Until the alcohol is metabolized, a person still has alcohol in their bloodstream.

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©Lisa Frederiksen, www.breakingthecycles.com. The information contained in this post may be freely used and copied for education and other non-commercial and non-promotional purposes, provided any use or reproduction of the information be accompanied by an acknowledgment of Lisa Frederiksen, Breaking the Cycles.com, as the source.

by Lisa Frederiksen

Likely you are well aware that I preface the key points of just about every one of my talks, articles and posts with a comment about the “new brain research of the past 10-15 years has ______.” So when I read this article by Dr. Nora Volkow, Director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), published on the Dana Foundation website, in which she summarizes some of the biggest advances in brain research in the past decade — the decade after the “Decade of the Brain,” I knew had to share it with you.

The following is just the beginning of what Dr. Volkow has to say… I urge you to read the rest of her article, “A Decade After the Decade of the Brain, Challenges and Opportunities in Drug Addiction Research:”

Neuroscience is at a historic turning point. Today, a full decade after the “Decade of the Brain,” a continuous stream of advances is shattering long-held notions about how the human brain works and what happens when it doesn’t. These advances are also reshaping the landscapes of other fields, from psychology to economics, education and the law.

Until the Decade of the Brain, scientists believed that, once development was over, the adult brain underwent very few changes. This perception contributed to polarizing perspectives on whether genetics or environment determines a person’s temperament and personality, aptitudes, and vulnerability to mental disorders. But during the past two decades, neuroscientists have steadily built the case that the human brain, even when fully mature, is far more plastic—changing and malleable—than we originally thought.¹ It turns out that the brain (at all ages) is highly responsive to environmental stimuli and that connections between neurons are dynamic and can rapidly change within minutes of stimulation.

Read more…

Fighting Addiction With Understanding
The 2003 Statistics Canada report on Mental Health and Well Being reported that 10 per cent of Canadians over the age of 15 claimed to have symptoms consistent with alcohol or illicit drug dependence. It also found that youth are more likely to report substance use disorders than any other age group. Read more…

Great Idea to Screen Teens Differently for Suicide
Teenagers are different, especially when it comes to killing themselves. That is why we all should be eternally grateful to Dr. David Shaffer and his working group for recommending a separate questionnaire to identify teens at risk for suicide. Finally, common sense trumps common practice. Read more…

One very difficult part of family recovery from a loved one’s alcohol misuse is learning to talk to one another in a manner that the other can ‘hear.’ And, a big part of that is the blaming that went on for so long… “If you’d just stop drinking so much, things would be fine!” or “If you’d stop nagging me all the time, I wouldn’t drink!”

The following video, “Blame and How It Hurts Relationships,” can help. It was created by Jim Hutt, Ph.D., MFT, www.counselorlink.com. Dr. Hutt specializes in relationships, family, parenting and addictions counseling.  What he has to say about communicating with a partner will be especially helpful to couples whose relationship has been deeply affected by a partner’s drinking.

I recently discovered this website, Physicians and Lawyers for a National Drug Policy. There is SO MUCH on this site. I encourage you to browse through it.

To get you started, I’ve quoted from their introduction below:

Alcohol and other drug problems are concerns of the public health and justice systems, including the criminal, civil, and juvenile branches. The impact of alcohol and other drug problems in the justice system are not limited to cases involving drug-related offenses. Alcohol and other drug problems compound many of the complex issues the justice systems handle every day, including assault, vandalism, child abuse, and divorce.

While most attempts to decrease the number of drug-related offenses have often solely emphasized drug interdiction and incarceration, research has shown that they have had minimal—if any—impact on decreasing substance abuse or the violence associated with criminal activity by individuals with alcohol and other drug problems (Marlowe, 2002).

Effectively addressing problems requires an integrated public health and public safetyTreatment decreases drug problems, crime, and recidivism while improving health conditions. Treatment also saves money, and in today’s climate of growing fiscal constraints, it is imperative to re-evaluate spending priorities. Alcohol and other drug problems place a huge burden on our economy—resulting in high health care costs, productivity losses, and other expenses associated with crime and accidents (Belenko et al., 2005). A large portion of this economic burden falls on state justice systems (Join Together, 2006).

Here is an excellent video created by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) and the Office of Research on Women’s Health, National Institutes of Health, titled, “Alcohol: a Women’s Health Issue,” appearing on the Research Channel.

Supersized Cocktails
The Adios Mo-Fo is among the most popular drinks sold at Howl at the Moon, at Universal CityWalk in Los Angeles. A friend and I ordered one on a recent visit, then watched the bartender deftly hoist and upend four bottles at once—rum, gin, vodka, and blue Curaçao—letting loose long strands of colorful liquid, as if from the udder of a magical cow. Read more…

How Alcohol Abuse Affects Family
When someone experiences alcohol problems, the negative effects of drinking cost dearly, not only the drinker, but also on their partner and other family members. Often alcohol abusers have a blind spot when it comes to the ravaging effects it can have on loved ones. Recent data suggest that approximately one child in every four (28.6%) in the United States is exposed to alcohol abuse or alcohol dependence in the family. Read more…

Benefits of Meditation
People from all walks of life, in all the countries of the world belonging to all the possible religions, meditate for a wide variety of reasons. The same technique offers something different to each according to his needs and motives. Some of the motives for which people meditate today are: Read more…

This is a guest post from my good friend, The Discovering Alcoholic, who writes a top rated recovery blog, www.discoveringalcoholic.com, covering alcoholism, substance abuse, treatment and recovery issues.

Joanne Kimberlin of The Virginian-Pilot has written an in-depth piece on prescription medication abuse in the US with a focus on the state of Virginia. It begins with an assessment of current conditions by Cathy Pederson, a Norfolk undercover drug agent who explains addicts no longer fit the old stereotypes.

More and more, she finds herself busting business executives, lawyers, teachers, gray-haired grandmothers, teenage girls – all caught in the grip of a blossoming addiction to opiates like OxyContin, Vicodin and Percocet. Pederson has noticed another common thread: “They didn’t meet opiates at a party. They didn’t start taking them for fun. There’s usually a car accident or a surgery somewhere in their background, and they became addicted to their pain meds.”

A sidebar gives the stats on the alarming number of people abusing prescription drugs, mostly pain killers.

Who are the drug abusers?

- $50,000-plus The family income bracket reported by 42 percent of oxycodone abusers.

- 1 in 4 Troops admit abusing prescription drugs within a one-year period.

- 1 in 10 High school seniors say they’ve abused Vicodin.

- 40-49 The age bracket that accounts for about half of all prescription drug abuse.

- 9 million Americans currently abusing prescription drugs. Pain relievers are by far the most popular.

- 180 Estimated number of health care professionals arrested for prescription crimes in 2009 by a special unit of Virginia’s State Police.

The article is extremely detailed and informative covering the urgency and size of the problem, how it is occurring, and what authorities are doing about it. I found it odd but not surprising though that not once was methadone treatment discussed, especially since this is one of the most effective and accessible means known to treat long term addiction to opioids. It has been my experience that there is general misunderstanding of this treatment that many consider either taboo or just plain counterproductive despite the obvious benefits.

There’s an epidemic of opioid (pain med) drug abuse and addiction sweeping our nation and if we have any hope of keeping up with those that are “Jones-ing”… then we better start looking at methadone maintenance and medically assisted recovery programs as a solution instead of a stigma.

by Lisa Frederiksen

This is a common question of many family members with a loved one who has entered a treatment program or started AA or promised to really stop this time.

The short answer to the question is, “You can’t.”

And, it’s this short answer that runs counter to everything a family member believes — beliefs generally anchored in the notion that a person can stop if only they wanted to badly enough.

So what’s a family member to do?

As counter-intuitive as it sounds, the best ‘thing’ a family member can do to help their loved one succeed in recovery is to help themselves.  To help family members who are new to this whole ‘thing’ get started,  I thought I’d repeat one of my previous posts below titled, “The World of Enmeshment.”

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By the time I finally began (at age 49, now 7 years ago) my own road to understanding what had happened in my life as the result of loving/living with various loved ones who abused or were addicted to alcohol (alcoholics) [whom I collectively refer to as "Alex" in my work], I was one angry, frustrated, resentful person. The more Alex drank or broke his promises not to drink or to cut back on his drinking, the more vigilant I became.

I knew the next “fix” would be the one that would finally work. When that didn’t happen, I would step up my efforts — admonishing, nagging, pleading, arguing, crying, pouting, ignoring, and so on. My common theme was, “If you loved me, you’d stop!”

I deeply believed and figured that if I just managed our household more efficiently or did a better job of scheduling activities or _______________ (fill in the blank, I’m sure I tried it), then he’d quit drinking so much and our lives would finally be happy. And, when I couldn’t control his drinking, I’d step up my vigilance to manage the next inevitable crisis as a way of wresting control of the situation — and in a complex life of marriage, jobs, children, ex-spouses, friends and family, there was an endless source and variety. Little did I understand that focusing on the next crisis was a way of trying to control some aspect of my life, but in fact, it often created problems of a different nature (like my daughter setting aside her own needs in order to make me happy when she sensed I was upset with Alex, for example). But, as long as I focused “over there,” I didn’t have to face the underlying problem right in front of me — alcohol, Alex’s use of it and my reactions to his use.

For you see, unknowingly at the time, I was living in the dangerous world of “enmeshment” — the place where I had absolutely no concept of boundaries. I didn’t know where “I” ended and “someone else” (Alex, for example) began. In my world, the “I” and the “someone else” were one and the same. My identity was thoroughly entangled in the notion that it was my job to make sure others were happy, toed the line and succeeded at work, in school and life in general. It was my job to see the world as others saw it or to make sure they saw it the way I did. I’d reduced my world to rigid absolutes — good or bad, right or wrong, the truth or a lie — because with absolutes, there was a target, an objective, something that could be argued and fought for until a “winner” and a “loser” could be declared. And, by gosh, I was going to “win” this battle over my loved one’s drinking or the next crisis because my whole being was caught up in what others thought of me. If “they” (whomever “they” were) thought I was good or right, then I was good or right.

Luckily for me, Alex entered a treatment program, which plunged me into a whole other world — a world that included terms and concepts like codependency, adult children of alcoholics, 12-step programs, co-addictions, dual diagnosis and the role a family member has in the denial that protects a loved one’s drinking. Lucky for me, it had a strong family-help component, and I was finally DONE — I didn’t know what “done” meant, I just knew I was exhausted, angry, fed-up, DONE — that’s when I finally opened my heart and mind to figuring out just what had happened to me and why and what I could do to change it — finally, there was a chink in the armor that had kept me “safe” all those years.

Stay tuned for my next post on the concept of “powerless over alcohol.”

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