Drug Detox Central

Loving What Is

I just finished reading Byron Katie’s book Loving What Is and it had a profound effect on me. As I was reading, I kept on thinking about addiction. We think that we’re powerless over these chemicals; I have come to believe that addiction help is just a thought away.

If you are not familiar with Byron Katie and her work, here is the basic premise: if you believe your thoughts you suffer. When people come to her for help, she asks them:”Who would you be without your story?” She calls her process “The Work” and it has four questions. You think a thought. You think: “I can’t stay sober.” That’s a thought you thought. And your Work is to question that thought.

The first question you ask is “Is it true?” Is it true that I can’t stay sober? You might immediately say Yes! It is true because past experience has shown that you’ve not been able to stay sober. The second question is “Can you absolutely know that it is true?” Can you absolutely know that you can’t stay sober? No. You know lots of people who have stayed sober for years! So it is not physically impossible. It’s not like you are asking if you can walk to the moon.
The third question is “How do you react when you believe the thought? ‘I can’t stay sober’? This question, and its answer, allow you to examine all the ways that that one little thought has motivated you to take all sorts of actions. Destructive actions, like binge drinking, self loathing, violence and anger.

The last question is this: “Who would you be without that thought?” Just this question is radical. You may think it’s silly or a psychology student trick, but it is amazing. Think it through: who would you be if you didn’t think you could never stay sober? If you stopped believing that sobriety was unattainable, who would you be? Probably, you’d be sober. And you’d stay sober easily because you have replaced that negative belief with a positive belief.

That’s “The Work” and I can see it having this huge impact on my life. I don’t know if it could cure something like Bipolar Syndrome, but I know for addiction, so much of it is mental. Getting past what we believe are our limitations is most of the battle. Most people, and I’m as guilty as anyone, have this river of negative thoughts running through their minds all day, every day. If you can catch even one of those negative thoughts and put it through the four questions, you can begin to shift your life.

Gay-Friendly Drug Rehab Centers

Are you gay and addicted to drugs?  Do you find that no one understands you, there is no one to talk to and nowhere to go?  Are you desperate?

There is a rehab center that services gays and straights. In fact there is more then one.

Drug rehabilitation centers offer different paths to healing.  Some offer detox services, family recovery week, holistic services, experiential therapy, recreational therapy, art therapy, relapse prevention, individual therapy, specialty groups, dual diagnosis treatment and aftercare services.

Some gay-friendly addiction rehabilitation centers accept reimbursement from major insurance providers.

Treatment centers that specialize in helping the gay, transgender, bisexual and lesbian communities may also serve the straight community.  However, they provide a gay-friendly atmosphere and such services as gay-only support groups where members can share their feelings about discrimination, homophobia, prejudice and judgment which may be difficult for them to express in other settings.  Staff at these facilities are adept and empathic at providing for the needs of the GLBTQ population.  They’ll make sure the pictures they show are cool images and not discriminatory.

Staff at treatment centers do not necessarily need to be certified.  It is highly recommended that you choose a center where the doctors are board-certified and the other staff is certified by an accredited college or university.  If you are going to through the process of getting clean, you want to make sure there are staff who are educated in this area who can help you through the process because you don’t want to have to go through the process again!

Some rehabilitation centers are inpatient at a residential community.  In fact, it is recommended that clients who have an addiction to drugs go to a center away from where they live and away from the things that might be influencing their habit.

If you have a mental illness, many centers can help you work both on your psychiatric disorder and your addition at the same time.

If you are gay and need help with your drug addiction, please seek help.

‘Tis The Season

This time of year, lots of people over indulge in alcohol. As the saying goes, “‘Tis the season!” My answer is Yes, and no. It is certainly culturally acceptable to indulge and over indulge in alcohol at the Christmas and New’s Year’s holidays. Perfectly up standing and sober people suddenly let loose and get falling-down-drunk. I remember my parents’ new Year’s Eve parties and seeing my parents and my friends’ parents get silly and weird (as it seemed to my eyes.) I’m actually really lucky — my parents were of the let loose once a year sort of drinkers, so I did not grow up in a house filled with alcohol abuse. I had to learn that on my own.

I don’t want to come off as a kill-joy. I do think that many people (maybe even most people) can enjoy alcohol without becoming addicted. It’s such an easy drug to obtain and it can open the door to other drugs. So it is worth taking a look inside and asking yourself why you’re having a drink. Is it because you’re out with friends and a beer tastes great after a long day? Or is it because you feel awkward in social situations and the beer (or three) will help you lighten up? it’s not an easy question to ask, much less answer. But I am here to tell you that asking the question now, before you set a pattern of drinking, will save you years of wasted days and nights.

Alcohol is one of the more insidious drugs, at least in my opinion, because it is so easy to obtain and so acceptable to use — and, yes, abuse. It can take years for friends and family to realize that you’ve got a drinking problem. That’s years of you abusing and them not seeing/ignoring/enabling. It’s not their job to keep you from drinking; that’s your job. But if they don’t get what they are seeing, what’s happening in front of their very noses, that just makes the problem persist longer than it should.

So, before you decide to indulge in some holiday cheer, really ask yourself: Why am I drinking? What do I want to achieve from this glass? If you have the will to ask it, the answer might surprise you.
Peace.

The History of Drug Detoxification

Most people know about detoxification as it relates to purging the body of unhealthy chemicals from food or overdoing it with sugar or caffeine. In a case like this, you want a natural detoxification to help you get back in balance. Whether as a result of an illness or simply getting on track to live more healthily, a natural detox is a great beginning. Drug detoxification takes the process a step further.

The History of Detoxification

Body cleansing or detoxification has its roots in Ancient Egypt. The Egyptians, and later the Greeks, believed that foods could cause an imbalance of the body’s natural balance, that the “humors” could be misaligned by eating too much of certain foods. It was the Greek physician Hippocrates (460-370 BC) who developed the mature medical theory.

He believed certain human moods, emotions and behaviors were caused by fluids in the body: blood, yellow bile, black bile, and phlegm. Well into the mid-20^th century the term “autointoxication” was used to describe the theory that eating too much of certain foods would build up toxins in the body. In modern times this theory still persists. Except in the case of purging drugs from the body, the medical establishment has turned away from detoxification as a prescribed method of curing a patient’s ills. Certainly your body encounters toxins every minute of the day. Fortunately the liver, kidneys, lungs, intestines, and blood continuously clean. If we don’t introduce extra chemicals, like drugs, into our bodies then the internal cleansing process keeps us from literally poisoning ourselves.

History has very little to say about drug detox. Alcohol, the drug of choice for most of human history, does have a tried and true detox remedy in Milk Thistle. It has been known since before medieval times as a liver tonic. Modern clinical studies have confirmed the usefulness of Milk Thistle extracts in cases of cirrhosis and other chronic liver aliments associated with alcohol abuse.

History of Detoxification Services

In the late 50’s the American Medical Association made it their official position that alcoholism is a disease. Slowly shifts in society’s understanding of addiction changed how people with a dependency on alcohol and other drugs were treated. 12-step programs certainly helped. Until the mid 1970’s people arrested for “public intoxication” were held in local jails. Depending on the length of the sentence, a person might experience alcohol detox in jail, with little or no medical intervention. This happened regularly even though in 1971, the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws adopted the Uniform Alcoholism and Intoxication Treatment Act which recommended that “alcoholics not be subjected to criminal prosecution because of their consumption of alcoholic beverages but rather should be afforded a continuum of treatment in order that they may lead normal lives as productive members of society” (Keller and Rosenberg 1973, p. 2). It was only a recommendation, not a law, but it helped create a change in the legal implications of addiction. Over the next quarter century understanding of drug detoxification grew and became the medical process we recognize today.

Alcohol Detox

We can thank Hippocrates, the Greek father of modern medicine, for recording an eye witness description of alcohol withdrawal. If the patient, he wrote for future students, is “in the prime of life and if from drinking he has trembling hands,” that patient has probably addicted to alcohol, has not had alcohol recently and is therefore exhibiting withdrawal symptoms. The signs and symptoms of acute alcohol withdrawal generally start 6 to 24 hours after the last drink.

Believe it or not, alcohol withdrawal can begin even if you have significant blood alcohol concentrations. In other words, you can be technically drunk and your body starts to feel withdrawal. The signs and symptoms may include the following: insomnia and/or nightmares, restlessness, irritability, anxiety, and agitation. In addition as the body metabolizes the alcohol you may experience nausea, vomiting, hand tremors, elevated heart rate, and increased blood pressure. As if that wasn’t enough, the poor brain is going through some trauma of its own. Additional symptoms include: poor concentration, impaired memory, increased sensitivity to sound, light, and tactile sensations, and possibly, hallucinations and paranoid delusions.

Something else to be aware of is what is known as “the kindling effect.” Originally coined to describe how epileptic seizures seem to get worse (more often, longer episodes) with each seizure, the term has been co-opted for use in other areas. Since alcohol has a huge impact on the brain and in fact seizures can be one of the worst parts of alcohol withdrawal, it is easy to see how medical folks could make the leap from epilepsy to alcohol withdrawal. Over time the term has expanded to describe the phenomenon of diminishing returns with alcohol detox. In other words, when you try to kick the bottle, every time you fail, it gets harder. Alcohol addiction, in particular, has a high rate of binge behavior so drinking and drying out is the worst behavior to exhibit as the kindling effect brings full force to hamper the recovery process.

The physical addiction to alcohol is devastating. The brain, when deprived of its former levels of alcohol goes into this hyper state and that’s what causes the anxiety and tremors.

It’s the physical symptoms that can trigger the almost obsessive thoughts about drinking. So again, the kindling effect come full circle: the body is without its chemical and so the physical discomfort begins. This in turn triggers the desire to introduce alcohol back into the body and so on. To make matters worse, the brain can be conditioned in a Pavlovian way so that even being at the same clinic for another attempt at detox can trigger the kindling effect even before true symptoms can manifest.

Some people want to try to detox from alcohol on their own. It can be done, but there are some really basic things to consider. First and foremost – is this a first attempt? If so, remember the kindling effect; you want this to be a successful because next time it will be harder. Some basic care helps keep the worst of the withdrawals at bay. Fluids and electrolytes need to be constantly available. Diarrhea, vomiting, and sweats may affect the patient, so fluids are essential. For some people using Xanax or Valium is not uncommon. These drugs actually decrease the likelihood of seizures during withdrawals. Of course they also help with anxiety and tremors. These things will help. But nothing is going to beat getting true medical help for alcohol detox. You want to get sober once and for all and the best way to do that is at a clinic.

Brain image credit: Wellcome Library, London