Depression is a leading cause of disability and disease for people around the world. It often begins during adolescence, especially for females, may continue or recur in adulthood and tends to become a lifetime chronic health condition.
More than 300 million people suffer from this mental health disorder worldwide. Depression is not only about feeling blue. It can also harm one’s social relationships, school or work and physical health. Poor mental health and depressive symptoms may also be associated with the recent increase in midlife premature deaths of despairdue to suicide, alcohol and drugs.
Although treatment methods and intervention efforts continue to advance, many depressive conditions remain irreversible. The push for prevention and early, affordable and feasible intervention is stronger than ever, especially for young people.
We are both social demographers who study family processes and health. We use a life course perspective in our research, meaning that we use longitudinal data to follow individuals as they move through various stages of life and examine how the social contexts they experience influence their health.
Recently we were interested in understanding how mental health changes from adolescence through mid adulthood. We wanted to see if we could identify family processes that might protect teens from depression in adolescence and later. We found that close and cohesive family relationships, understanding, and shared good times protected them then and later.
Prevention a Worthy Goal
It is well known from the scientific evidence that close family relationships reduce the risks of depression during adolescence, a life stage when depression often begins, especially for girls. We were interested to know whether the mental health benefits of close and cohesive family relations in adolescence last into young adulthood, and so we used longitudinal data from a nationally-representative sample to address this question.
The family context is a key area that draws wide scholarly and public attention for early intervention efforts. Most research on the role of the family context for depression focuses on risk factors, such as neglect, abuse and financial insecurity. We wondered, however, whether preventive efforts may be more effective if focused on protective factors. We could not find major studies that could shed enough light on the topic.
Some small cross-sectional studies with clinical and community samples suggest that being part of a close and cohesive family in adolescence helps alleviate depression symptoms for teenagers.
But does this protective effect last long into adulthood when adolescents move out of their parent’s house and embark on their independent lives? This intriguing and pressing question remains unknown due to a dearth of longitudinal studies that follow the same people over time.
A study, which we published on Oct. 7 in JAMA Pediatrics is, so far as we know, the first to examine this topic in a nationally representative sample by tracking individuals over a 30-year life course from early adolescence to midlife. Our findings suggested that, yes, the protective effect not only helps in the tough teen years but also protects later.
Some Good News, and Good Insights
The data we used come from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health, a nationally-representative study that has followed over 20,000 adolescents starting in 1995 into adulthood. The group of adolescents who started in the cohort have been re-interviewed five times, adding valuable knowledge about development over the course of life. The new data from the 2017 round of interviews have enabled us to examine how what happens in adolescence matters for later life mental health.
Our findings provide a new contribution to the research on early family experiences and lifetime depression and insights into how depression can be prevented from developing into a lifetime illness.
First, we found gender differences in depression over time. Females experienced significantly higher levels of depressive symptoms than males between early adolescence and their early 40s.
The overall trajectory of depressive symptoms was high in adolescence, fell in the early 20s, and then slowly rose again in the late 30s. The growth curve of depression is flatter for men than women.
Teenage girls are vulnerable to high levels of depression during middle to late adolescence. Teen boys, in comparison, experienced a shorter period of depression in late adolescence. Women then experienced the highest levels of depression in their late 30s. Men’s highest levels of depression occurred in their mid-30s to early 40s in the face of increasing challenges from work, family and social life.
Our primary interest, however, was to examine whether cohesive family relationships in adolescence protect young people from depression in adulthood and how long those protections last.
Our findings indicate the mental health benefits of cohesive family relationships during adolescence last through midlife. Individuals who experienced positive adolescent family relationships had significantly lower levels of depressive symptoms from early adolescence to midlife (late 30s to early 40s) than did those who experienced less-positive family relationships.
We also see this benefit working differently for men and women. Women benefit more from positive adolescent family relationships than men, especially in adolescence and the early 20s. But men with low parent-child conflict benefit for a longer time throughout young adulthood than women.
Living in a cohesive home, having someone around who understands and pays attention, and having fun together as a family can build up warmth, trust and attachment between the family members and adolescents and positive feelings for teens. The absence of parent-child conflict reinforces parental support and approval for them. Close relations may provide sources of social and emotional support that encourages the development of skills for coping with changing and cumulative stressors.
Our research findings emphasize the urgent need for early preventive interventions of depression in adolescent family life. Adolescence is a critical life stage where profound transformations in neurological, biological, cognitive and social development take place. These profound changes during adolescence make teens especially vulnerable to the development of lifetime depression.
Public health initiatives can teach and encourage parents and family members to nurture positive family relationships with their adolescents. Programs can be developed to promote family cohesiveness for adolescents by providing tips on how families can show affection and understanding, spend time together and work through conflict. This preventive approach will be most effective in fostering long-term healthy mental development into adulthood.
Our study, however, does not imply that adolescents in less cohesive families are doomed to lifetime depression. Depression is an extremely complex mental disorder. No one knows exactly what causes it. Factors such as genetics, abuse or serious illnesses can increase risks of depression too. Teens may be able to find similar sources of social support and gain coping skills through other social connections with friends, in religious and other institutions, and in the local community.
The skills and strategies that youth learn to cope with emotional problems may last throughout life, continue to promote mental health well into adulthood, and help to prevent negative outcomes and premature deaths due to suicide, alcohol or drugs in middle age.
[ You’re smart and curious about the world. So are The Conversation’s authors and editors. You can read us daily by subscribing to our newsletter. ]
Ping Chen, Senior Research Scientist, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Kathleen Mullan Harris, Professor of Sociology, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
By: Ping Chen, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Title: Strong Family Ties During Teen Years Can Help Ward Off Depression in Later Life
Sourced From: www.thefix.com/strong-family-ties-during-teen-years-can-help-ward-depression-later-life
Published Date: Thu, 06 Feb 2020 07:27:46 +0000
At New Horizon Drug Rehab, we understand addiction. If you or a family member are afflicted with addiction or substance abuse we can help. We work with the top centers throughout the US to provide the best detox and addiction treatments available.
Call Now: (877) 747-9974
Whenever the topic of faith comes up, there are almost always variations of opinions and strong viewpoints.
Let’s look at dispelling five of the most common myths about faith-based addiction treatment programs.
Myth #1: Patients Are Not Interested in Faith Programming
Dr. David Rosmarin is a psychology professor at Harvard and the Director of Mental Health and Spirituality at McLean hospital, ranked number one in psychiatric hospitals for adults in the county by Healio Psychiatry. Dr. Rosmarin was a guest on my Faith in Recovery radio show in June 2018. What’s interesting is that of the top ten psychiatric hospitals throughout the country, McLean hospital is the only one that has a spirituality program. McLean conducted a study on the significance of spirituality as it relates to mental illness.
In a study on the significance of spirituality as it relates to mental illness, 58.2% of patients coming into McLean’s psychiatric unit requested to have spirituality/faith programming as part of their treatment. According to an article McLean published on April 25, 2013, “Our work suggests that people with a moderate to high level of belief in a higher power do significantly better in short-term psychiatric treatment. The study concludes belief in God is associated with improved outcomes in psychiatric treatment.”
This brings us to the obvious question! Why is McLean hospital the only one of the major psychiatric hospitals who offers faith programming? I believe it has much to do with the increased politically correct environment. People are afraid to offend anyone, in particular regarding the topics of religion and mental illness. People may feel as if they are walking around on egg shells, which results in overlooking programs that are proven to be effective. Let’s not put political correctness over the many people afflicted with mental illness or substance use dependency who are in desperate need of help.
Myth #2: Faith Programs Are Judgmental and Condemning
As a Chaplain in our Faith in Recovery program, the three things I hear the most are: “Why does God allow suffering?” “How do I know what God’s will is for my life?” And the last one is a statement: “I stopped going to church because I was forced to go when I was young and all I felt when going was guilt, shame and judgement, so I stopped going.”
According to the 2017 Lifeway research survey, “66% of Americans between 23 to 30 years old stopped attending church on a regular basis after turning 18.” It’s a sad commentary on the Church, especially since it’s supposed to be a place of healing and acceptance. I experienced the same thing growing up and as soon as I was old enough to stop going, I did just that.
Not all churches have a judgmental environment. There are some incredible churches out there, but the damage has been done and it’s difficult to turn the perception around. What is disturbing is the fact that the teachings of Christ and all that He did were the exact opposite of guilt, shame and judgement. Apparently somewhere during the past two thousand years some churches didn’t get the memo.
A faith-based program in a treatment setting at its core must be non-judgmental. The majority of our patients are coming in with tremendous guilt and shame. The last thing they need is to have more of that directed their way. In fact, one of our groups is called “Overcoming Guilt & Shame.” When coming into treatment for substance use dependency or mental health disorders, patients need to be treated with respect, and they need to know that God loves them. He wants to forgive them and has a plan for their lives. It must be emphasized that they have value and a purpose and most importantly God values them. When people truly begin to realize these things, the light begins to open their eyes and the seeds of hope emerge. It’s an incredible sight to witness and I am blessed to have a front row seat on a daily basis.
Myth #3: I Won’t Fit In, I’m Not Very Religious
I think this is similar to any topic that we do not feel we are well-versed in or do not know much about. In general, we tend to shy away from the things we are unfamiliar with or which we associate with a bad experience. Not fitting in is simply not the case. We meet every client right where they are at on their spiritual journey, even if they have no spiritual journey at all. We have patients who grew up in the Church and fell away, those who never stepped foot in a church, devout atheists, agnostics, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, and those coming out of the occult. All are welcome and treated the same.
Often times in 12-step treatment, the default setting is “I already heard this.” This contrasts with the faith programming most patients have never heard. This is all new information to them, which gives us a fighting chance to keep their attention. More importantly, our patients begin to face their fears. They realize they are much stronger than they think they are.
Myth #4: They Will Force Me to Convert
One of the things we hear in our faith program is: “I liked it because beliefs were not forced on me.” As one of our former patients, Richard, said in his testimonial video, “One of my biggest things is there’s a connection with God, but I don’t want Him shoved down my throat all day long… it’s so far from that, but it’s so connected it’s amazing.” I believe the reason so many feel this way relates back to what we discussed earlier: They were forced into attending church. We all know when forced into something–especially in our adolescence–we tend to rebel against it.
The reality is God gave us the gift of free will. He never forces us to do anything, so why should we force Faith on someone? All we can do is plant the seeds and water them. God is the one who transforms people’s hearts. We do not have the capacity to change someone’s heart.
Myth #5: We Will Not Be Allowed to Share Our Views
This point actually came from a group in our Faith in Recovery program after I asked for their feedback on myths about faith programming. A few patients stated that one of the concerns they had prior to coming into the program was that they would be talked down to and their opinions would not be heard. After experiencing the group, the consensus was that it was the opposite of this concern; that they were actually encouraged to share their thoughts and perspectives on their faith and to always ask questions.
When patients feel that they are not being heard, they tend to shut down completely. This is the exact opposite of what we are trying to have them accomplish in treatment. Transparency and being completely open is an essential part of getting better. Most patients have been suppressing things for far too long so the last thing we want them to do is shut down.
It’s not surprising that people have this preconceived notion of faith programming as they may be associating it with the years of sitting in the pews being preached to with little opportunity to ask questions. We focus on who our patients are becoming, not on who they were in active addiction. What I witness on a daily basis is patients encouraging one another, praying for each other and providing a listening ear to someone who is struggling.
If those who are in treatment are given the opportunity to speak, you will be surprised at the profound and insightful things they have to say.
By: Anthony Acampora
Title: The 5 Most Common Myths About Faith-Based Addiction Treatment Programs
Sourced From: www.thefix.com/5-most-common-myths-about-faith-based-addiction-treatment-programs
Published Date: Wed, 05 Feb 2020 07:23:04 +0000
At New Horizon Drug Rehab, we understand addiction. If you or a family member are afflicted with addiction or substance abuse we can help. We work with the top centers throughout the US to provide the best detox and addiction treatments available.
Call Now: (877) 747-9974
I’m 50 years old and 7 years sober and I’m still terrible and completely freaked out by adulting. This is not something I’m proud of. I make jokes about it like “I’m a Jew” or “I’m a woman” to explain away my ignorance of electronics and mechanics. (I recently killed my computer’s battery by keeping it plugged in 24/7 and didn’t have my oil changed for 2 years.) But, let’s be honest, that’s racist and sexist and absolute bullshit. Truth is, I spent half my life battling drug addiction and mental illness and was pretty much absent for that learning curve that included taxes, car maintenance, building your credit, budgeting, and relationship skills. So basically at 50 I’m learning stuff that I should have learned at 25.
I’ve also been coddled, apart from the drug addiction and mental illness. I went from my father handling everything to my ex-husband handling everything. When that marriage tanked and I ended up in treatment and sober living for the umpteenth time, my best friend stepped in and started handling everything. I’m still on her phone plan and my car is still in her name because when I got divorced and relapsed, I had the worst credit on the planet. Having good credit wasn’t something I had ever worried about and not something that anyone had ever taught me. To be blunt, people were concerned with keeping me alive because I had been trying to kill myself for years with drugs and suicide attempts. Credit scores don’t seem super important when your kid/friend/wife can’t keep a needle out of her arm or a knife away from her wrists.
But with aging and ill parents and no partner, the reality of my lack of life skills is more evident than ever. Per usual, I try to make it funny as I beg my friend to help me with my taxes, saying “Hey I have other skills like making a soda bottle into a crack bong or hitting a rolling vein.” However, at seven years sober and hitting middle age, is that really an excuse anymore? Here’s the truth: Your car doesn’t care. The IRS doesn’t care. Nobody really cares why you can’t do basic life shit. At my age, it’s just kind of pathetic.
I’ll be honest, part of it is fear. It’s unfamiliar. Thanks to the classic addict mentality, I’m afraid of responsibility. The unknown is scary. I don’t want to learn this stuff. I’m lazy. I want to be taken care of. Still. It’s gross, I know.
I’ve been fired from every job I’ve ever had except for an editing one I held for six years that I recently quit to pursue a bunch of freelance stuff. The only reason that job was remotely viable was because I got to work from home in my holey sweatpants and my boss loved my irreverent, inappropriate attitude. Nobody else would have put up with it.
Despite a book and speaking gigs and my podcast whoredom, I’m still not fully self-supporting. And sure, I’ve managed to stay afloat but some of that is my weird ability to manipulate people into taking care of me, mostly men. It used to be based on my brokenness or them wanting to fuck me. Now it’s that I’m seen as the Golden Goose, the next new whatever. It’s not ideal but considering it was my survival technique for 20 plus years, I have to cut myself a little slack.
I dress like a 22-year-old stoner skater girl in ripped up vintage t-shirts and cords and weird suede booties. That’s fine and attracts many men in their 30’s who are fooled by my faux weird youthfulness, but it’s not so good when I’m booked to speak at a conference or a fundraiser. That’s when terror steps in. I’ve managed to cobble together a vintage style that seems to fly but you’ll find me dead before you’ll see me in a blazer.
I can’t really cook either. I never learned mostly because I couldn’t be less interested. Again, I make some corny joke that the only thing I can cook is dope. But again, how long into sobriety or middle age is that really funny or appropriate?
I will give myself some props. I have health insurance because I have to–thanks to my epilepsy. And even my cat has health insurance. I am my mom’s social security payee and handle all her bills but that’s solely because it was forced upon me as her only child when she developed dementia. So yeah, I can man up–or woman up, I should say–when it’s necessary.
We’ve all heard the saying that when you get sober you’re the mental age of when you started using. I’m not sure if I agree with that; I see stunted growth in myself and also in others that started to use later in life.
Drugs and alcohol hinder the prefrontal cortex, which is the part of the brain responsible for impulse control, reasoning, and critical thinking. If those parts are shut down by addiction, well obviously you aren’t going to acquire the skills to navigate life. We learn by making mistakes, but addicts tend to make the same mistakes over and over again, slow to learn or gain any new perspective.
Just to check my science, I asked Dr. Howard Wetsman. “Well, that is the current party line, but I think whether we’re using or not, having low dopamine self-centers us so we are prone to making those impulsive self-centered mistakes again and again. As dopamine is necessary for long term potentiation (memory), we may not actually learn as well or as permanently as others. I don’t know if there’s enough evidence to say either way, but we all have to just do the best we can day to day.”
Thankfully, I’m not too proud to ask for help, and luckily, people in the program and friends are happy to offer it.
By: Amy Dresner
Title: Learning to Adult in Recovery
Sourced From: www.thefix.com/learning-adult-recovery
Published Date: Thu, 02 Apr 2020 07:23:07 +0000
At New Horizon Drug Rehab, we understand addiction. If you or a family member are afflicted with addiction or substance abuse we can help. We work with the top centers throughout the US to provide the best detox and addiction treatments available.
Call Now: (877) 747-9974
Singing the national anthem at the NFL Championship game is considered a great honor, even if it can be rather unforgiving in terms of criticism. This year the honor was given to Demi Lovato, singer, pop-culture icon, mental health activist, and, perhaps most notably, a person in recovery for substance abuse.
Of Singing and Substance Abuse
It appears as though the media and the public have had a positive reaction to Lovato’s singing of the national anthem. Her release of a new single, “Anyone,” a few weeks earlier have marked a sort of career revival for Lovato. This is significant, considering that the musician was considering leaving her music career behind after a near-fatal overdose two years ago.
Before the overdose, Lovato had been in recovery for nearly six years. In various interviews, she admitted to abusing alcohol and cocaine, mentioning that she frequently smuggled it onto planes and into other venues. Lovato’s addiction problem became so bad that it began to affect her career and her ability to perform. Regardless, the singer’s return to the public scene provides a stark lesson regarding the nature of recovery. Relapses may be devastating, but they are not always absolute. One can come back from a relapse and still live and flourish in recovery.
A History of Substance Abuse
From the start of her career, Demi Lovato struggled with mental health challenges. She ultimately found herself in an inpatient rehab facility. Following her treatment, Lovato maintained sobriety and went on to hit several career highs. While in recovery, Lovato released some of her top-selling albums, built a loyal and energetic fanbase, and became involved with mental health activism, even going on to speak about the topic at the 2016 Democratic National Convention.
In July of 2018, Lovato suffered an overdose from oxycodone laced with fentanyl. She was rushed to a hospital and revived with naloxone. The overdose occurred after six years of sobriety for Lovato. Following the overdose, Lovato thanked her fans for her support, but went on an extended hiatus. Her performance at the NFL Championship game marks her return to her music career, and is a testament to the process of recovery.
People Like us…
Demi Lovato is an example of how living in recovery can be empowering. Despite various mental health and substance abuse challenges, and a near-fatal relapse, Lovato has chosen to reclaim her career and her life in recovery. While her continuing involvement in mental health activism remains unconfirmed, Lovato’s story provides an honest snapshot of the recovery process.
Yet, Lovato is but one example of a person making their way in recovery. Everyday people face the specter of relapse, the niggling little temptations to break sobriety. It’s important to remember that recovery is a journey. Sometimes the journey gets tough. But the will to keep going, regardless of the challenges, is the key to finding peace and freedom from addiction.
The post Demi Lovato: Snapshot of Recovery appeared first on Recovery.org.
The road to Paul Little’s addiction began during a hard day at work. He took one pill to ease a headache, which turned into nine-month habit.
“I got up to 20 to 30 Percocets a day,” the former Air Force doctor said. “I was eating them like M&Ms.”
Kathy Thomas took opioids for two years until a doctor told her she was being unnecessarily medicated. She still lives with the psychological consequences.
“I still don’t think that I have cognitive functioning back where it needs to be,” the former Army program manager said.
Ted Flores, who suffered from a pinched nerve and a couple of degenerative discs from a car crash, knows how ordinary people can get hooked on pain pills. As a pharmacy technician, he saw customers who looked like him.
“I was one of the many.”
In 2018, 47,590 people died of an opioid overdose, and more than 2 million suffer from opioid addiction disorder, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health. The rising death and addiction toll has followed a decade-long surge in the distribution of prescription opioids — according to federal data, more than 76 billion pills flooded the country from 2006 to 2012.
Medical experts say genetics account for about half of the risk of addiction, but mental health issues, violence in the home and access to drugs also contribute. Law enforcement officials blame illegal drug diversion by corrupt doctors and an overabundance of supply sent out by drug companies that fail to properly monitor suspicious orders. The companies blame bad doctors and individuals who abuse their products.
Earlier this year, The Washington Post asked readers to share their stories about how opioids have affected their communities. More than 700 people responded. Hundreds wrote about the devastation to their hometowns, their families and themselves. Scores of chronic-pain patients said they needed opioids to live full lives and were concerned about efforts to restrict the supply during what they believed to be a period of hysteria about opioids.
Many readers said it was easy to get hooked on the pills, whether they were taken to treat an injury or at a party. Once addiction took hold, the consequences were life-altering.
Five people described turning points in their lives — the moments that led them down a trail of dependency and addiction.
It started with a car crash
Late at night in November 2011, Ted Flores was coming home from running errands in Highland, Ind., when a car T-boned his at an intersection. He was lucky. He was diagnosed with only a pinched nerve and a couple of degenerative discs.
He tried physical therapy, but it didn’t take the pain away. Then a doctor gave him a prescription for hydrocodone. The drugs took away his pain and made him feel more energetic and sociable. Even though he was no longer in pain, he went to another doctor to get more opioids, this time oxycodone.
“I didn’t want it to stop,” said Flores, now 30. “Eventually, I started taking a little more than what I was supposed to and would tell myself, ‘I’ll take less next time.’ ”
He ran out of pills two weeks into a month-long refill. He would develop flulike symptoms whenever he finished his prescription early.
“I had to call sick into work,” he said. “I couldn’t even leave my room.”
During this time, Flores got a job as a pharmacy technician at CVS. He said he constantly saw other people like him, coming in to fill prescriptions they didn’t need. Some would wait in their cars in the parking lot before the store opened.
Six years after the crash, finally fed up with the cycle of withdrawals, Flores booked an appointment at a Suboxone clinic and got clean.
“I bear guilt or the sense I was part of the problem, giving other addicts their medication,” he said. “Seeing recent statistics about how many pills flooded my area, I’m not surprised: I was one of the many.”
It started with picking up a prescription for a friend
When Mary Young had to take pain pills after foot surgery, it felt like a chore.
A real estate agent in San Diego, she usually spent 10 hours a day on her feet. One day in 2005, a bone in the ball of her left foot split in half. She was on crutches for three months, reaching four times a day for bottles of oxycodone and Vicodin, which contains hydrocodone.
“When I took the last pill of my prescription, I didn’t think anything of it,” said Young, now 45. “If anything, I was happy to be done with it.”
Four months later, a friend asked her for a ride to the pharmacy so she could get her Vicodin prescription.
“Hearing the word ‘Vicodin,’ I don’t know why but I felt like fireworks erupted in my brain,” Young said.
“Yes, but can I have one?” she asked her friend. The friend handed her a small white tablet that Young took home. Sitting in her living room, she swallowed it and soon felt euphoria.
“It was a feeling I wanted to chase,” she said. “It only took one pill.”
The friend, who wasn’t feeling any relief from her medication, willingly handed over as many as Young asked for. At the height of Young’s addiction, she was siphoning 20 a day from her friend, who suffered from stomach pain.
For six years, Young kept getting Vicodin from her friend. She says she could not have functioned without it. When she traveled, she worried about running out. When out with friends, she wouldn’t drink, fearing she could “lose the high.” At night, she would count how many she had, and if it didn’t add up to 20 for the next day, she drove to her friend’s and picked up more.
Finally, visiting family in West Des Moines, Iowa, she decided to move home and go to a recovery center. She has been in recovery for nearly a decade.
“Sometimes I look back and feel so much shame for lying to my friends and family, keeping my addiction under wraps,” she said. “I used to be so confident, but my self-esteem is now at zero. I’m still working toward building back the trust of my family — as well as my own.”
It started with a headache
Paul Little’s job as an Air Force physician at Goodfellow Air Force Base in Texas was a stressful one. It was his first job after completing his residency. He felt he had more patients and paperwork than his experience qualified him for. He was a captain, but he felt his job was one for a major.
In 1979, Little was sitting in his office on the base and plagued by a migraine. He knew that he had leftover pain pills from a hernia repair in his desk. He took one. “It was an especially difficult day,” he said.
That one day led to a year-long habit. To get more, Little would tell patients that they needed pain-pill prescriptions and then would skim some, he said, taking up to 30 five-milligram Percocets a day. He successfully hid his addiction, continued to treat patients and even won a base-wide award for his work.
He eventually realized “this insanity couldn’t go on,” and he confessed to his commanding officer. He was given an other-than-honorable discharge, his medical license was suspended and he went to prison for a year.
It took years of sobriety to earn his way back. Once he had, he wanted to do the opposite of prescribing opioids: Little, now 60, he works at a detox center in San Diego and runs a telemedicine Suboxone clinic in West Virginia to help other addicts.
It started with a chronic pain
Kathy Thomas had a senior civilian position with the Army, managing a group of nine people who reviewed complex contracts. Shortly before she retired, she was prescribed an array of pain pills in 2012 for a rare, incurable form of neuropathy.
After Thomas’s pain from her neuropathy dissipated, doctors left her on the pain pills, furthering her dependency on the drugs. When she went to the Mayo Clinic for a sleep study, a doctor noticed the drugs on her chart.
“He said: ‘Oh my God, you have been on all these drugs for two years. What is your pain management doctor’s plan to taper you?’ ” said Thomas, who is now 68 and lives in San Antonio. She said she was not given a plan.
Thomas went through group therapy to be weaned off the pills. She said everyone in the room was just like her — their addiction and dependency had crept up on them without them noticing.
Even in recovery, Thomas retains symptoms of dependency: She’s developed an eating disorder, gaining 45 pounds. Today she has difficulty remembering what day it is or showing up for doctor appointments.
Thomas also compulsively shops. At the peak of it, six boxes a week would appear at her front door. She said she had no recollection of ordering anything.
“My husband would hold up a box and ask me what it was, and I had no idea,” she said. “I wasn’t like this. I used to be unstoppable, not just mentally but physically.”
Now Thomas spend her days repeating tasks she’s already done because she forgot what she did earlier. “There’s a lot of side effects that go along with using these drugs long term that I don’t see being addressed,” Thomas said. “I don’t think a lot of people think of that.”
It started with a soccer injury
In 2001, when Kayla Leinenweber was 13, after she had wisdom-teeth surgery, her mother doled out her pain medication as prescribed. The pills did not create a problem for her.
“I was in a public high school, where most kids — including myself — were experimenting with marijuana and mushrooms, not pills,” she said.
However, after transferring to a private school in Alpharetta, Ga., Leinenweber saw her peers snorting cocaine and taking opioids. She went into her parents’ medicine cabinet to steal oxycodone pills after she tore a ligament in her leg playing soccer. The injury prevented her from playing the sport.
“I thought my life was over,” she said. “I wasn’t going to college without soccer because I was dumb.”
At 15, her school tested her for drugs and she failed. She was sent to an inpatient clinic in Washington state, but sobriety didn’t last.
“I was struggling with depression and feelings about my sexual identity,” said Leinenweber, who is now 31 and out as a lesbian. “I was my own harshest critic.”
At 22, she got a DUI, her first of two. She lost her driver’s license. She abused heroin. She went to nine treatment facilities. She overdosed three times, twice on heroin and once on Ambien. At the peak of her addiction, she would score up to $200 heroin a day.
“For the last few years, I was sick all of the time,” she said.
By 2013, Leinenweber was exhausted. She had overdosed again. With her clothes in two trash bags, she couch-surfed until she opened a sober-living home she could live in. Now she lives in Sneads Ferry, N.C., and mentors people on their treatment options.
This story was originally published by the Investigative Reporting Workshop, a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom at the American University School of Communication.
By: Meryl Kornfield, Investigative Reporting Workshop
Title: “It Only Took One Pill”
Sourced From: www.thefix.com/it-only-took-one-pill
Published Date: Tue, 31 Mar 2020 07:22:19 +0000
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Of the many lines which have stayed with me after reading Hala Alyan’s book The 29th Year, one of my favorites is, “I have held the engine of myself against my own ear and, dear miracle, I recognized the song.” Perhaps because I’m currently twenty-nine, I found Hala’s acts of reflection so honest and piercing that the book lies on my table like a footprint in the earth. Like something has passed through here, heavy and fast.
In some ways, every poem made after (during) survival is about survival, whether this truth is spoken directly or as undercurrent. The 29th Year does a little of both while Hala traces the mosaic of her identity and how it’s shelled her experience of remaining brilliantly alive, despite the world and despite her own actions.
This book is Hala’s debut collection of poetry, following up the 2017 release of Salt Houses, a novel which narrates a middle-class Palistinian family, one generation after another, and as they migrate across countries. That novel was widely acclaimed and included in the Best of 2017 list compiled by NPR.
Her poetry debut, which came out in early 2019, similarly engages what it means to be Palistinian, but also Woman, Wife, Dreamer, Fighter, Drinker, plus so much more. This parapet of poems introspects backwards from the point of transition between emerging adulthood and the full unalloyed thing. Simultaneously, much of the collection is devoted to registering the timeline of getting sober, shaped like a metal spring, with all its behavioral switchbacks.
Another piece of language from The 29th Year that stays with me is “How a wound becomes a heart.” The collection represents a thrilling extension to the poetics of recovery, and the relationship between them and The Twelve Steps. There are many parts of this conversation I want to tattoo on the inside of my eyelids to reread every night.
I’m still thinking about intention ever since I did a workshop with Vincent Toro last summer at DreamYard in the Bronx. Can you tell me some of the important intentions of your new book?
Wait, did you say intention or tension?
IN-tention [laughs]. Although we can talk about tension if you want.
[Laughs] Oh, IN-tention. The Twenty-Ninth Year was driven by experience, and particularly a concentrated time when I started feeling a lot of essential crises about where I was in my life. I was finishing my training to be a psychologist and I was sort of entering the world in a number of ways. This all happened in my 29th year, literally.
For several months I was having a lot of vivid and intense dreams and feeling almost assaulted by memory. It felt like my mind was cycling back. On a physiological level, I had so much cortisol–that’s the unromantic explanation. I was in a state of panic. But then being a poet [laughs] I was like, what’s the story here? I did a lot of excavation and a lot of organizing and re-ordering of my understanding of who I was and how I got here.
Hm.
So there was tension too. I can never tell these stories accurately because I’m always going to be editorializing. In the end the collection was a surrendering to that, being like, “Ok, I can’t know for sure what was accurate, so I have to tell it the way I’m experiencing it right now.” The intention was setting that record. I’m the type of person who is programmed to resist. To resist things that are difficult. To resist comfort. This was the first time I had a lot of practice at accepting.
Let’s talk about addiction. Lately, I’ve been seeing things through the lenses of social work and public health so I’m going to approach this question from those places, but I think this approach will open up more tactile conversation. What are some risk factors for addiction that are unique to Palistinians, of course, acknowledging experience various across diaspora and due to other social variables?
I speak from diasporic experience. I don’t think there is much research about this, so I’ll speak intuitively and from having conversations with people. There is a sense of dislocation and missing something that feels crucial and then filling the loss with whatever you have at your disposal. That could lead people to seek forms of self-soothing that aren’t ideal. I also believe when you belong to an identity that is marginalized and subjected to both literal and rhetorical annihilation you kind of internalize that. You learn to annihilate yourself.
There’s a line from “Call Me Prayer,” “In the exile’s suitcase, a carpet of dead grass. Seven persimmons. A dandelion stem skinny as a grenade pin.”
I can remember parts of your book where imagery of war was imprinted into descriptions of emotion. I think about that, hearing what you just said about annihilation, and wonder if there is a connection.
It’s tough to talk about collectively because it’s the least intentional and the least premeditated connection, but instead one we are most driven by experientially and needing to capture that and put it into language. But one hundred percent afterward when I was reflecting and editing my manuscript. Through more and more conflict and more and more dislocation that becomes your city, your day-to-day. And it makes sense addiction would come from that.
A similar question…in the experience of being a woman in this world, what are some of the risk factors for addiction?
The answer is similar to the previous position of being Palistinian. Womanhood is an identity that comes with trying to be controlled, trying to be made as small as possible. There’s vitriol, hatred, and violence. Again, I don’t think it’s a long walk from receiving violence from others to committing violence towards the self.
I’ve always thought of addiction as a violent act that people endure and live through. So it’s a similar thing.
What your book does well and thoroughly is chart the lines between womanhood, violence, addiction, marriage, the major points of the web, but also the small ones that fill everything in.
Thank you so much for saying that. I struggle with this writing sometimes but experientially and existentially I don’t know how to move through the world without one of those identities missing or not present.
In reading this book I thought about the people in recovery who are already poets or who want to be poets. For you, how did The Twelve Steps lend to the writing process or producing the poems. Or–and I will throw this question out there in a different way and you can navigate either however you want–how are The Twelve Steps already poetry, in terms of what they ask you to produce?
Oh, I love that. Beautiful. First, a disclaimer. I did not get sober through AA. I isolated myself and didn’t turn to anyone for support. I now look back at it as a violence I inflicted upon myself in my own way. I would do it differently now and look for community. By myself I looked up the steps and interpreted them. I’m not advocating that, but it’s just what I did. Later I thought about the Steps as I was writing the book and going through the intense period of tumultuousness, suffering, anxiety… I asked myself, “Well how did you move through the world when you were getting sober?” The taking stock of what you have. Thinking about what decisions or missteps got you here, retracing them, questioning how we can make amends.
The steps can be useful when we think about poetry and poetic device in that there is a certain surrender that comes from making art. There is a certain amends-making that comes from making art. Again you sit down with what you have, you take stock of it, you make sense of it, then you try to create some sort of meaning out of it. I think there’s definitely a simpatico there.
I personally had a similar recovery in the sense…just as in addiction, then in recovery, I did a lot of it in isolation–
Yes, I know what you mean–
So I feel that. There is a spectrum of AA practitioners, with more orthodox folks on one end who believe there is a clear right and wrong way, and then on the other end, people who say, “You can take what you want and leave the rest.”
Exactly, exactly.
For a while, I also didn’t find traction with AA and The Twelve Steps. It wasn’t for me. But the more I go now I start to feel that regardless if you subscribe to it medically, culturally it’s wicked important to recovery culture–
Agreed–
Unless you’re in a cave and you never read anything related to recovery, you’re gonna absorb a bit of it. It’s inevitably in the air.
It’s so out there. Do you remember when you were getting sober, did you rely on some of the tenets and ideas?
The first meeting I ever went to, when I was 19, I remember hearing a speaker say, “Just keep the plug in the jug,” meaning, no matter what happens in your life, no matter how bad it gets, if you remain sober at least you have that. Things would only be that much worse if you’re using. I’ve clung to this throughout sobriety.
For a while I didn’t like AA, because I didn’t know how to navigate the spiritual component. But nowadays the more I go to meetings I’m appreciating the little sayings, and appreciating The Twelve Steps as cultural objects you can find healing through, and less like medical instruments.
Like less instructional and more metaphorical. I love that.
Although, some folks believe in rigorously adhering to the Steps as they’re written in the Big Book and I want to acknowledge how this approach is valid for them. Well…with all that being said, want to look at some of your 12-Step poems?
Sure.
In your poem “Step One: Admit Powerlessnes,” it seemed like you were drawing a line between two types of powerlessness, the kind that can happen during sexual violence, and then the admission of an inability to control drinking. Again, maybe I’m just thinking like an epidemiologist, but within this poem are there multiple types of powerlessness being associated across time?
Yes, and it’s not just powerlessness in terms of sexual violence. At the end of the day, we are powerless in the face of everything we’ve experienced. That does not mean we can’t take back some power in the telling. I’ve been thinking a lot about the difference between pain and suffering lately. Pain is what happens to us that is nonnegotiable and suffering is what we do with that pain–
Wow–
So positioning the pain is what makes us suffer. It’s been on my mind a lot. Whether it’s trauma or addiction it took me a long time to get the powerlessness thing, but in both cases it was the first step towards walking through it and being liberated and being able to tell a different story. So definitely in that poem there is the tension between the two.
I feel the ending lines resonate with what you said, “Through the bar window a lightbulb exploded like a white tusk and when the sun finally rose I believed in a different god.”
You’re different once you go through it. You’re different when you go through anything big and transformative. There can be a morning, but it’s not always a pleasant or easy process.
Alright, howabout “Step Two: Higher Power”? There is the line, “I guess you could say I love the city like I love prickly pears, which is to say not very much, only when I’m starving.” Perhaps I’m projecting because the higher power portion of The Twelve Steps wasn’t something that came easily to me, but the poem seems to be saying, “Alright, I’m not all in on this, but I will accept it right now out of necessity.”–
I don’t have a choice. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
There’s also the line, “This is how a year passes, with hundreds of lies, like that midnight walk in the French countryside dark, my sister giggling nervously, no streetlamp for miles. One footstep after the other, and the only way out ahead.” I’ve considered different interpretations of this. Was faith something you were lying to yourself about in order to help you survive?
It’s less about disbelief in faith…There’s a quote I really like, “Trust in god but always tie up your camel.” I have never resonated with the idea you just 100% lay down and give it all over. What I like about the quote is…you can have faith, but do your part. That idea of me walking with my sister at night, having faith the ground wasn’t going to open up and swallow us. We will reach the place we need to go. Faith is deeply important. Even if people don’t put faith in God or a higher power, that’s fine, but having faith in something, even if it’s just yourself, or having faith in other people, or having faith in time. That stuff is so crucial, because that’s what keeps people moving when there’s no indicator that there’s a way out.
I feel like I want to say “Wow” every time you answer my questions. Let’s move on to your poem “Step Four: Moral Inventory.” It made me think…all contexts aside, there’s nothing evil with wanting to be beautiful. Of course, it’s wrong to hurt people and it’s unhealthy to hurt ourselves and we shouldn’t necessarily excuse the hurtful actions which might stem from the feeling. But the feeling itself is forgivable.
Totally. Wanting things, to be beautiful, to be young, there’s shame attached to it. So being able to own that, and acknowledge that side of yourself that hungers and longs. It’s the same thing with addiction. Being able to look your hunger in the eye is an important step in terms of entering that conversation with yourself, where desire can be negotiated.
So “Step Eight: Make Amends ”…Making amends is a process in The Twelve Steps, but the poem for me also spoke outside that. It made me think of how women are pressured to apologize for things, and for taking up space.
This poem connects to your interpretation of the earlier one…about having to apologize for wanting, having to apologize for loving, to apologize for eating. Then there is the question…how much is making amends coming from a place that is genuine, versus you’re doing what you’re trained to do? At what point is amends-making another act of violence or self-hatred? This goes back to your first question, about intention. What is the intention behind a behavior? That explains a lot of why we’re doing what we’re doing. There are some amends, quote unquote “apologies” I’ve done because I felt like I was supposed to, not necessarily because I needed to.
You’re a practicing clinical psychologist. This is wholeheartedly a book of literature and I couldn’t detect much of your day job in there, at least not explicitly. I wonder how it might be showing up as an undercurrent. Does the overlap of these two lives appear in your book?
If there was overlap it wasn’t consciously put here or there like an easter egg. Psychology has taught me to ask better questions, and to be on the lookout for patterns, including false ones, like the false stories we tell ourselves and believe. The book was a work of excavation, or making sense of things, so my background in psychology might have helped in the style of inquiry.
The book spans the globe, sometimes on a line-by-line basis, a piece from one landscape stitched to another. “Highway 17 in Texas; we stop to watch buzzards / supping on roadkill porcupine. The mountains are a Persian rug of emerald and brown, wolfish clouds / gathering rain,” is a line from the poem “The Temperance (XIV) Card,”
I find your book to be double-headed to the extent it’s focused inwards while at the same time lush with observations.
I think of myself and my identity as disparate depending on where I was. I moved and traveled. I was a different person in different places. When I revisit the phases of childhood and adolescence, or college years, with that comes revisiting Beirut, and Oklahoma, revisiting all these different places. My mind drags along with it all the significant places I’ve been to.
There are many poems in the book addressed to a “you.” That “you” is constantly changing, from a husband, to an ex-lover, a friend, an enemy, or even the reader. Because it’s a poem, you’re writing it alone, sitting at a table, thinking about what the poem means to you. But it’s like the letters written to someone else are in a small way written to yourself.
Even the poem, “Dear Layal,” That’s my cousin. It’s also a letter to myself and the ways I intersect with my cousin. Or things I wish I’d said before. Even if on the surface it’s directed towards her, it’s an exercise taking place internally. Once it’s out in the world people can read it. But until that happens the process of making belongs only to the writer.
Well…we’ve reached the end. What’s going on for you in terms of writing right now?
Poetry-wise, I’m sort of lying low. I’ve been working on a series of poems based on choose your adventure books, where the reader gets to be involved in the process. That’s been fun. In terms of fiction, I have a second novel coming out with Houghton Mifflin in the next year or so.
By: Christian Arthur
Title: The Engine of Myself: Interview with Poet Hala Alyan
Sourced From: www.thefix.com/engine-myself-interview-poet-hala-alyan
Published Date: Wed, 01 Apr 2020 06:03:07 +0000
At New Horizon Drug Rehab, we understand addiction. If you or a family member are afflicted with addiction or substance abuse we can help. We work with the top centers throughout the US to provide the best detox and addiction treatments available.
Call Now: (877) 747-9974
