Robin Williams enters rehab for alcoholism. [August 2006]

addiction, genes, creative people "So is the world better off without people with a biological susceptibility towards becoming addicted? If the answer is yes, bioethicist Dr. Tom Koch points out that people like Dylan Thomas, William S Burroughs, and Miles Davis might not have existed and brought their art and music into the world. All were artists who struggled with substance abuse." > from article: Myth of an 'Addict Gene' by Jeffrey Helm > related article: Gifted, Talented, Addicted - by Douglas Eby

 

"12-Step Is Out Of Step."  Addiction Expert's New Website Helps People Find Science-Based Treatment Options. Beverly Hills-based addiction management expert, Marc Kern, Ph.D., is using his new website habitdoc.com to alert and educate people about the severe shortcomings of Alcoholics Anonymous/A.A.-style treatment programs. These traditional approaches have failed miserably to connect with the mindset of today's youth and knowledgeable adults, Dr. Kern notes. Even President George Bush chose not to use a 12-Step program for help with his own drinking problems. "No matter what your addiction may be -- alcohol, drugs, sex, shopping, gambling or food," states Dr. Kern, "I can help you construct a personalized strategy that will lead you to the joys and accomplishments of an addiction-free life."

Achievement, Anxiety, and Addiction - by Rajendra K. Misra, D. Phil.
Drug abuse is a response to fear of failure; it helps us to withdraw from the pressures of achievement by inducing and maintaining a sense of apathy toward the standards of excellence in society. Tensions and stress of lifestyle in urban and developed societies are marked by pressure for achieving goals that subscribe to the so-called “approved” quality of life.

Actors and Addiction - by Douglas Eby
Best Actor Oscar nominee Philip Seymour Hoffman [“Capote”] admits he used drugs and alcohol earlier in his life. A lot. "It was anything I could get my hands on. I liked it all." He got sober, he says, because "You get panicked. I was 22, and I got panicked for my life." An exceptionally talented actor, Hoffman is far from alone: many of us use and abuse for many reasons, often as a strategy to cope with painful lives.

Alcoholism And Drug Addiction FAQ's - by Timothy J. Falcone, Baldwin Research Institute
"In 1976, the writer Ivan Illich warned in a book, Limits to Medicine, that 'the medical establishment has become a major threat to health'. At the time, he was dismissed as a maverick, but a quarter of a century later, even the medical establishment is prepared to admit that he may well be right." (Anthony Browne, April 14, 2002, the Observer)
History and science have shown us that the existence of the disease of alcoholism is pure speculation. Just saying it's so, doesn't make it true. Nevertheless, medical professionals and American culture lovingly embraced the disease concept and quickly applied it to every possible deviant behavior from alcohol abuse to compulsive lecturing.

Are You Addicted To Your Activities? - by Margaret Paul, Ph.D.
Activities - such as sports, creative projects, reading, work, TV, meditation - can be a wonderful way to relax, express yourself, or connect to yourself. Or they can be an addiction. How can you know the difference?

Breaking Out of the 12-Step Lockstep - by Maia Szalavitz, Washington Post
In the 1980s and '90s, 12-step programs like Alcoholics Anonymous were the gold standard for addiction treatment. Even among the non-addicted, they had become an accepted part of American culture. In Tim Robbins's 1992 film, "The Player," the title character attended AA meetings not because he drank too much but because that's where the deals were being made. 

College Students Use Alcohol as Way of Coping with Social Anxiety - by Deanne Repich

Comfortably Numb  by Jess Barron
"An examination of depression and drug use among American women in the 20th century focusing on Prozac and heroin use among the upwardly-mobile college educated in the 1990s."

Drug Addiction as a Psychobiological Process - by Michael A. Bozarth [State University of New York at Buffalo]
This chapter addresses the etiology of drug addiction. The emphasis is on biological mechanisms underlying addiction, although some other factors influencing drug addiction will also be discussed. The presentation is limited primarily to psychomotor stimulants (e.g., amphetamine, cocaine) and opiates (e.g., heroin, morphine) ...

Emotional Intelligence and Addiction - by Susan Dunn
Emotional Intelligence creates or extends that space between stimulus and response, which does not exist for the addict. No one has less freedom than an addict. Nobody's expressed intent is to become addicted. Their intent is pleasure, or to relieve suffering, to have fun, to fit in, to quel anger, or any number of other things.

Gifted, Talented, Addicted - by Douglas Eby
Writer Pearl Buck commented, “The truly creative mind in any field is no more than this: A human creature born abnormally, inhumanly sensitive.” A number of people with exceptional abilities have used drugs and alcohol as self-medication to ease the pain of that sensitivity, or as a way to enhance thinking and creativity. Sometimes they risk addiction.

Evidence Suggesting the Role of Specific Genetic Factors in Cigarette Smoking  by Caryn Lerman [Health Psychology journal]

Helping Women Recover: Creating Gender-Responsive Treatment - By Stephanie S. Covington, Ph.D., L.C.S.W.
Research demonstrates that addiction is rarely, if ever, a single-dimension issue for women.  Addiction is always a part of a larger portrait that includes a woman's individual history, and the social, economic, and cultural factors that create the context of her life.

How can psychoanalysis help problem drinking?
Psychoanalysis is both a theory of the functioning of the mind as well as a mode of psychological treatment for emotional and psychological difficulties. Psychoanalytic theory has two basic premises: 1) a great deal of our mental activity is beyond our conscious awareness, that is, it is unconscious, and 2) what we think, feel, and experience in the present is affected by our past.

If You Are Addicted... - By Sylvia White
Living with an artist isn't easy, particularly if you are the significant other. One of the first things most non-artists have a hard time understanding is the concept of addiction and how it is related to art making. Most artists I know go through classic symptoms of withdrawal when deprived of their work environment for too long. ... artists need to be able to create as much as they need food or oxygen.

Lifelong sobriety is not recovery from alcoholism  [Onlypunjab.com]
Pursuing lifelong sobriety is not a sign of recovery from alcoholism, as Alcoholics Anonymous claims. Staying away from booze one day at a time is treating the symptom instead of the fundamental underlying problem, and merely a damage limitation exercise.
So say former alcoholics Lilian and Murdoch MacDonald from Ayrshire in Scotland. They argue that alcoholism is not an incurable and progressive illness or disease, as Alcoholics Anonymous would have us believe, but rather a self-harming behaviour problem with its roots in childhood.

New Roads to Sobriety - A Controversial Look at Alcohol Abuse and Treatment Options - By Rebecca Raphael, ABC News

Making It A "Happy" New Year - by Marc F. Kern, Ph.D
We strive annually to "take stock" and to "feel better" this time next year. In my experience, the most central feature for successful lifestyle change is to challenge the "feel good" paradox. Specifically, that successful lifestyles must satisfy the same desires that brought about unhealthy lifestyles: it must feel good. ... Learning to trust your own self-leadership, your own intuition, is essential to making you a happier person and more enjoyable to be around.

Myth of an 'Addict Gene' by Jeffrey Helm

The other effects of getting high - by Judy Foreman
"The son of a friend of mine is 17, tall, good-looking, quiet -- and a prime example of how much and yet how little many kids know about illegal drugs. Asked what he has used, the teen rattles off pot, alcohol and 'shrooms (mushrooms)... The latest government figures.. show that illegal drug use is up among young adults between 18 and 25. There may be much that my friend's son, and America's other 16 million illicit drug users, don't know about how street drugs affect the brain."

Psychosocial Theory of Drug Abuse - A Psychodynamic Approach - by Herbert Hendin, M.D.
Amphetamine abuse was particularly common among college women. It served the function of helping these women move in directions that they thought they should go but to which their actual inner feelings were opposed. Most commonly, that direction was academic success which they felt was expected by their family and their own image of themselves... One of them dreamed of herself as a puppet. Another who dreamed of herself as a marionette saw amphetamines as necessary to move her strings and to keep her performing. It is interesting to note that while college women were using amphetamines to help increase their achievement levels, college men were using marijuana to help ease or withdraw from competitive pressures.

Smoking Cessation Harder For Women Than Men

The Surprising Truth About Addiction - by Stanton Peele [Psychology Today, May-June 2004]
Change is natural. You no doubt act very differently in many areas of your life now compared with how you did when you were a teenager. Likewise, over time you will probably overcome or ameliorate certain behaviors: a short temper, crippling insecurity. For some reason, we exempt addiction from our beliefs about change. In both popular and scientific models, addiction is seen as locking you into an inescapable pattern of behavior. But this fatalistic thinking about addiction doesn’t jibe with the facts. More people overcome addictions than do not.

Teenagers and alcohol - Teen drinking linked to health problems in young adults - By Elizabeth Querna [U.S.News & World Report]
Alcohol deterrence programs have sprung up in middle schools, high schools, and community centers around the country thanks to a flood of research showing that adolescent drinking causes all sorts of immediate problems, ranging from sleeplessness to reduced cognitive functioning to an increased likelihood of trying other drugs. Researchers at the University of Washington tracked a group of Seattle students, now in their 20s, to see whether adolescent drinking can have longer-term health consequences as well.

When speed slows you down - by Donna Williams
There are many ways people slow down and the chronic use of speed is one of them. People slow down when they can’t sleep anymore, one of the first side-effects of chronic use of speed, along with increased irritability, emotional instability, a delusional feeling of invincibility and equally the flat emotional ‘deadness’ of dysphoria, panic attacks and eventually paranoia.

Why Self-Recovery? - by Jack Trimpey
It is not well-known that self-recovery is commonplace. For ages, seriously addicted people have simply quit the use of alcohol and other drugs and then gotten on with their lives. Today, millions of seriously addicted people simply get fed up with the results of their addictions, make a decision to abstain no matter what, and discover new and better satisfactions. Free from undertow of addiction, these independent people immediately feel better and do better in every respect.

Women and Alcohol - by June Russell
Due to hormonal changes which affect the menstrual cycle, pregnancy, menopause and sometimes beyond, women have a less predictable response to alcohol both physically and psychologically. Women are more sensitive to the effects of alcohol during ovulation (about 2 weeks before her period), and alcohol is reported to result in reproductive and sexual dysfunctions ... Tolerance for alcohol decreases during PMS and alcohol increases depression.

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> more articles :

Alcohol columns - by Judy Foreman, Health Sense
Is Moderate Drinking the Answer?
Here's to your health, the benefits of drinking outweigh the risks, but only within limits
Alcohol's insidious grip
Drink up - or not? studies in women are at odds on alcohol's risks and benefits