Promising new medical treatment options for drug addiction!!!

October 17th, 2011

Researchers are attacking the issue of drug addiction from multiple angles, and the results seem to be more and more ways to help. Some promising new developments in pharmacological (as in medication) therapies include a new cocaine-vaccine, as well as expanded use of Buprenorphine, for the treatment of opiate (heroin, morphine) addiction.

• These medications are best used along with behavioral treatment in order to increase to probability of treatment success.
  
• By reducing cravings, as well as reducing the effects of the drugs themselves, these medications can increase the length of time that patients will stay in treatment, which is the most reliable way of producing better treatment outcomes.

What else is new aside from medications?

There are also some exciting developments in the behavioral treatment, including Contingency Management (CM), a treatment method that tries to reteach addicts positive, drug-free behaviors by reinforcing those over the use of drugs. While some people still have problems with programs that use CM because of the notion of rewarding drug addicts for not using drugs, I say use whatever works!

Lastly, as early as 2003, researchers have noted that proper drug treatment may take longer than the 14-30 day programs that are currently being offered (1). In fact, while the article I’m referring too speaks specifically about methamphetamine addiction, we now know that the long use of many drugs, including cocaine, leads to long lasting brain changes that can take up to a year to show significant recovery.

I personally think that proper drug treatment for long time addicts (anyone with more than a year or so of heavy use) should take on the order of 6 months to a year, and should be supplemented by some outpatient post-care for an extended period of time (I’m far from the only one calling for this, see article 2). It’s the only sensible thing to do given the long term changes that such drug use creates in the brain…

I think it’s about time that insurance companies step up the plate and recognize that the huge cost of drug problems for our society (estimated at more than $100 billion annually) can be vastly reduced by providing sound, scientifically based, medical treatment options for those who need it.

citations:
(1) Margaret Cretzmeyer M.S.W, Mary Vaughan Sarrazin Ph.D., Diane L. Huber Ph.D., R.N., FAAN, CNAAc, Robert I. Block Ph.D. & James A. Hall Ph.D., LISW( 2003) Treatment of methamphetamine abuse: research findings and clinical directions. Journal of Substance Abuse Treatment Volume 24.
(2) A. Thomas McLellan, PhD; David C. Lewis, MD; Charles P. O’Brien, MD, PhD; Herbert D. Kleber, MD (2000). Drug Dependence, a Chronic Medical Illness: Implications for Treatment, Insurance, and Outcomes Evaluation. Journal of the American Medical Association, Volume 284, pp. 1689-1695.

Question of the day:
Do you know anyone who’s been through residential drug treatment?
How long were they in for?
How many times?
Did it help?

Posted in:  Drugs, Drugs, Education, Medications, Treatment Tags: Buprenorphine, cocaine, contingency management, drug treatment, Drugs, heroin, medical treatment, medication, residential treatment

Addiction stories: How I recovered from my addiction to crystal meth

October 15th, 2011

By the time I was done with my addiction to crystal meth, I had racked up 4 arrests, 9 felonies, a $750,000 bail, a year in jail, and an eight year suspended sentence to go along with my 5 year probation period. Though I think education is important to keep getting the message out about addiction and drug abuse, there is no doubt that addiction stories do a great job of getting the message across, so here goes.

My crystal meth addiction story

The kid my parents knew was going nowhere, and fast. That’s why I was surprised when they came to my rescue after 3 years of barely speaking to them. My lawyer recommended that I check into a rehab facility immediately; treating my drug abuse problem was our only line of legal defense.

I had long known that I had an addiction problem when I first checked myself into rehab. Still, my reason for going in was my legal trouble. Within 3 months, I was using crystal meth again, but the difference was that this time, I felt bad about it. I had changed in those first three months. The daily discussions in the addiction treatment facility, my growing relationship with my parents, and a few sober months (more sobriety than I had in years) were doing their job. I relapsed as soon as I went back to work in my studio, which was a big trigger for me, but using wasn’t any fun this time.

I ended up being kicked out of that facility for providing a meth-positive urine test. My parents were irate. I felt ashamed though I began using daily immediately. My real lesson came when I dragged myself from my friend’s couch to an AA meeting one night. I walked by a homeless man who was clearly high when the realization hit me:

I was one step away from becoming like this man.

You see, when I was in the throes of my crystal meth addiction, I had money because I was selling drugs. I had a great car, a motorcycle, an apartment and my own recording studio. After my arrest though, all of that had been taken away. I just made matters worse by getting myself thrown out of what was serving as my home, leaving myself to sleep on a friend’s couch for the foreseeable future.

Something had to change.

I woke up the next morning, smoked some meth, and drove straight to an outpatient drug program offered by my health insurance. I missed the check-in time for that day, but I was told to come back the next morning, which I did. I talked to a counselor, explained my situation, and was given a list of sober-living homes to check out.

As I did this, I kept going to the program’s outpatient meetings, high on crystal meth, but ready to make a change. I was going to do anything I could so as not to end up homeless, or a lifetime prisoner. I had no idea how to stop doing the one thing that had been constant in my life since the age of 15, but I was determined to find out.

When I showed up at the sober-living facility that was to be the place where I got sober, I was so high I couldn’t face the intake staff. I wore sunglasses indoors at 6 PM. My bags were searched, I was shown to my room, and the rest of my life began.

I wasn’t happy to be sober, but I was happier doing what these people told me than I was fighting the cops, the legal system, and the drugs. I had quite a few missteps, but I took my punishments without a word, knowing they were nothing compared to the suffering I’d experience if I left that place.

Overall, I have one message to those struggling with getting clean:

If you want to get past the hump of knowing you have a problem but not knowing what to do about it, the choice has to be made clear. This can’t be a game of subtle changes. No one wants to stop using if the alternative doesn’t seem a whole lot better. For most of us, that means hitting a bottom so low that I can’t be ignored. You get to make the choice of what the bottom will be for you.

You don’t have to almost die, but you might; losing a job could be enough, but if you miss that sign, the next could be the streets; losing your spouse will sometimes do it, but if not, losing your shared custody will hurt even more.

At each one of these steps, you get to make a choice – Do I want things to get worse or not?

Ask yourself that question while looking at the price you’ve paid up to now. If you’re willing to go even lower for that next hit, I say go for it. If you think you want to stop but can’t seem to really grasp just how far you’ve gone, get a friend you trust, a non-using friend, and have them tell you how they see the path your life has taken.

It’s going to take a fight to get out, but if I beat my addiction, you can beat yours.

By now, I’ve received my Ph.D. from UCLA, one of the top universities in the world. I study addiction research, and publish this addiction blog along with a Psychology Today column and a number of academic journals. I also have my mind set on changing the way our society deals with drug abuse and addiction. Given everything I’ve accomplished by now, the choice should have seemed clear before my arrest – but it wasn’t. I hope that by sharing addiction stories, including mine, we can start that process.

Posted in:  Addiction Stories, Alcohol, Cocaine, Drugs, Drugs, Education, Marijuana, Meth, Sex, Sex Tags: addiction, addiction recovery, addiction stories, arrest, bail, choice, cocaine, crystal, crystal meth, crystal meth addiction, drug abuse, drug use, felony, homeless, ice, jail, marijuana, meth, meth addict, my addiction, outpatient, parole, prison, probation, problem, recovery, rehabs, sober, sober-living, Speed, stealing, substance abuse

How much alcohol is too much drinking? Knowing your BAC can be key!

June 27th, 2011

There has been some research suggesting that training people to better estimate their Blood Alcohol Content (BAC), can help reduce accidents and improve risk-taking while drinking among college students (see here and here respectively).

I’m including a recent piece from one of our readers, telling us about her first over-21 drinking experience in Las-Vegas. I think this story exemplifies that young adults may often consume more alcohol than they are aware of while underestimating its effects Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in:  Addiction Stories, Alcohol, Drugs, Education, For others, Tips Tags: 21, Alcohol, BAC, drink, drinking, drinks, drunk, las vegas, risk, too much, total drinks night, training, vegas

The appeal of anonymous internet sex – Weiner is not alone

June 21st, 2011

I’m going to come right out and say it – I’ve been in Anthony Weiner’s shoes.

Fortunately for us, my family and I didn’t have to go through all of this on public television and no-one asked me to resign my position because my sexual misdeeds were never publicized. But after all my efforts and successes quitting the drug addiction that had plagued my life I had to deal with a darker, more secret, set of issues that almost brought down everything I’d worked so hard to build. Sex can be tricky.

So yes, somewhere out there are explicit pictures I sent to women I met online although I had long ago erased the sexy pictures they had sent my way. It was part of the purging process I went through with my wife as we tried to build our trust after a simply devastating betrayal; a long purging process that to some extent is still going on more than a year after everything came out. Like I said: Sex – tricky.

The day I was found out was probably the most embarrassing, gut-wrenching, ego-shattering day I will ever experience. It trumped going through a cavity search on my way to jail or seeing my family in the courtroom as I plead guilty to count after count in my drug case. There’s nothing quite as humbling as standing in front of the person you love admitting you betrayed them, lied to them, and did so repeatedly with multiple people.

A number of pieces I read on the topic suggested that feeling “hot” or “sexy” was the most important factor in Weinergate prompted me to write this piece even though I’ve obviously been mulling this over since the whole Weiner-sex thing became public. There is no doubt that impressing these random women and getting their approval of my sexuality was an important part of the appeal for me and it’s true that this is not something many men experience in their everyday life. Still, I don’t think it was the only part and it certainly didn’t feel like the most important.

As I’ve written about numerous times in regard to my drug use and addiction, I have impulsivity issues. I always have and likely always will although I’ve learned to function relatively well with them. The problems arise when the behaviors I engage in are kept private and for me, online sex-chatting with women was a pretty normal thing that had started in the days of MySpace and continued on unabated. The problem was that I obviously wasn’t going to let anyone in on the extent of it. When I would get in relationships online chatting would take a backseat,  but it never really disappeared.

There’s something appealing, at least for someone like me, about the idea of unattached women who are ready to act a little “dirty” whenever we were both in the mood without really expecting anything in return. The more involved I got the more resources I found for finding these women and the more effort I put into impressing them so I could get what I wanted in return. In some ways, it gave me a way to hold onto the freedom of being single without having to cross some imaginary physical boundary I had convinced myself was the real version of “cheating” I knew I wasn’t to cross (full disclosure – I’d already done that).

When you combine a long single life, the immediate gratification of online sex-chatting/image-swapping, and bad impulse control you end up with some pretty messy results. I ended up using every opportunity I could to get a glimpse of the next picture a woman sent me, read an explicit message, or follow up on a response to a picture I’d sent. I no longer had drugs and this semi-anonymous sex was my quick fix. The rush was very similar and given the relationship between my old meth use and sex it makes a lot of sense.

At first I’d diagnosed myself as a sex-addict, which seemed fitting given my experience with drugs and my previously-mentioned impulsivity. Now I think that at least a good portion of it has to do with the above influences along with a pretty distorted view of the male-female relationship I had put together from my early exposure to porn. But I’ll leave at least some of that to a later date.

For now, whether it offends others or not, I feel Anthony Weiner’s pain. I am almost certain that as deliberate as this behavior seems to everyone else it had become so compartmentalized in Anthony’s head that even he didn’t know the extent of it. Shameful, taboo, and somewhat compulsive behaviors tend to do that. I know they did for me. I hope he gets to keep his family as I got to keep mine. It took a lot of work and understanding from my amazing wife, but it’s possible. Sex is tricky, especially when it’s secret.

Posted in:  Education, Sex, Sex Tags: anthony weiner, anthony weiner's, online sex, online sex chatting, Sex, sex tricky, tricky, women

Addiction stories: Hellish Heroin – Bambi’s heroin addiction story

May 14th, 2011

Addiction stories seem to have an impact that objective research can never have. This is another in a series of addiction stories submitted by our readers. I hope that everyone will benefit from learning about others’ experiences. There’s no doubt that Bambi’s experience of escalation in use from what seemed initially innocent is a common one. If you, or someone you know, needs help with their opiate addiction, try our rehab-finder for the best way to get reliable, verified, rehab recommendations.

A harrowing tale of heroin addiction:

When most people hear the word heroin, some things come to mind. Those of you who have never even thought of doing a drug like heroin, would never understand. And for those of you who you know who you are, whether you have found your way out, or are slowly still slipping away… Believe me, if you know who you are, then you know how it is. Realizing you’re addicted to something doesn’t hit you, until you mentally find your way out by accepting what has happened and letting go with only one hell of a memory. Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in:  Addiction Stories, Drugs, Opiates Tags: addiction help, addiction stories, dope, drug withdrawal, finder, heroin, heroin addiction, heroin addiction stories, hydrocodone, hydrocodone withdrawal, methadone, methadone treatment, OC, opiate addiction, opiate addiction stories, opiate withdrawal, oxy, oxycodone, oxycodone addiction stories, oxycontin, oxycontin addiction, oxycontin addiction stories, rehab, rehab-finder, suboxone, suboxone treatment, time

Sometimes it just takes blind faith – Depression and drug use

April 19th, 2011

I don’t normally like sharing this kind of stuff, but I think that if the point of the blog is be truthful, I need to cover all bases. When it comes to depression and drug use, I have personal experience with the connection.

When depression hits – Drug use and self-medication

I don’t always wake up ready to take on the day.

I know that what I’m doing is important, and I know that if I keep going I’ll be successful. Still, sometimes I wake up and feel like there’s really no point; like getting out of bed is useless and that I’m doomed to be nothing. Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in:  Addiction Stories, For addicts, Opinions Tags: belief, depression, drink, drug, drug use, faith, feeling, help, help depression, hope, isolation, know, pain, weed

Recovery from addiction: Stigma and many obstacles, but no excuses!

December 11th, 2010

Many of the people in my life nowadays forget that I’m an ex-convict. Still, I get daily reminders that the “ex” part of convict doesn’t carry much weight. I also know that I have it easy because I have a Ph.D. after my name. For many others in recovery, things are even harder.

Still, when filling out job applications, considering possibilities for the future, or trying to start anything new, my past convictions are ready to jump out as the first hurdles.

Stigmatization after recovery from addiction

My first encounter with this sort of stigmatization came at my first job search after I got out of jail in 2003. I was applying for an Apple Store job and did well. Even though I told them that I’d been arrested on the job application, I got a second interview. Then the coveted email letting me know I was to report for training next week. Only the background check remained. But that final email never came. I never heard from Apple again and none of my emails and phone calls were ever returned. I can only assume that they found out that my arrest resulted in 9 felony convictions and decide to “pass.”

When I started at UCLA (no questions about felonies on school applications), I tried to volunteer at the Los Angeles Big Brothers and Sisters organization. I was rejected as soon as the background check was completed. People wouldn’t even let me volunteer and I had been drug free for over 3 years and attending a doctoral program at UCLA… It was frustrating to say the least

Being licensed is probably also going to be an issue if I want to become a clinical psychologist in the future. It was one of the reasons I didn’t try to go to medical school or law school. The hassle of having to fight for the right to work in my chosen field wasn’t something I was looking forward to. Apparently though while I wasn’t quite ready for the fight then, fighting addiction stigma is something I feel strongly about now. Between our “Anonymous No More” campaign and my efforts on and off the website, I think we’re going to be able to slowly move public opinion away from either the notion that drug use in itself is a terrible thing or that addicts are lepers and should be kept at a distance.

Recovery success, there is a life after addiction

Still, I am constantly reminded that success follows perseverance. When I’m told “No”, I feel disappointed, but I pick my head up as soon as possible (my great fiance often helps) and try to figure out another way in. That was true when I first set on my path and its true today. I’m proud of my achievements and by now, more than eight years after the last time I used crystal meth, they are many.

I know my worth, I believe in my purpose, and I’m not going to let anyone else hold me back. Yes I have nine felonies and I used to sell drugs for a living. But I’m done with that and I’m trying to do the best that I can.

I think my recovery is pretty damn good – I’ve got All About Addiction that is visited by thousands of people a week, more than a dozen publications and articles about addiction in professional and popular journals, and I’ve spoken at literally hundreds of sessions, classes, and conferences about addiction and the problems associated with it. If you believe in yourself, you need to think the same of your own work. Stay on the right path. Don’t let anyone stop you.

Posted in:  Addiction Stories, For addicts, Opinions, Tips Tags: addiction, addiction stigma, apple, background check, believe, ex convict, job, recovery, rehabilitation, stigma, UCLA