Addiction
An Interview with Patricia Meyers, Clinical Director of Admissions at Promises
By Meghan O’Dell
Thirteen years ago, Patricia Meyers’ father put his foot down. “We’re done with you,” he said. “You might as well be dead because we don’t even know who you are anymore, and you’re not welcome at our house.” Knowing that he meant it this time, Patricia decided to get clean. After going through 90-day treatment and living in a sober house, she started working for Promises as a driver. Now she’s the Clinical Director of Admissions, and Promises is her life’s work—the thing she was meant to do.
“I was one of those knuckleheads who had a really hard time,” Patricia said. “I’m a product of an intervention myself, but after getting clean I was having a difficult time understanding what my next step was going to be.”
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Marijuana Dependency Linked to Depression, Suicidal Thoughts
A new study found that people who smoke marijuana before age 17 are 3.5 times more likely to attempt suicide as those who started smoking marijuana later in life. In addition, people who are dependent on marijuana have a higher risk of experiencing major depression and suicidal thoughts and behaviors. The large-scale epidemiological study was funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse.
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Is There Really a “Cure” for Addiction?
Medicine.net defines cure this way:
Cure: 1. to heal, to make well, to restore to good health. Cures are easy to claim and, all too often, difficult to confirm. (emphasis added)
Merriam-Webster’s defines it thus:
n. recovery or relief from a disease; something (as a drug or treatment) that cures a disease; a period or course of treatment
Although the word “cure” has a more subtle meaning than many recognize, it is clear that in the case of addiction, the word can be terribly misused. People believe a cure means they are no longer an addict or alcoholic. The truth is, alcoholism and other addictions are more like a chronic disease that can be held in remission indefinitely if the right steps are taken, but it cannot be cured in that you must remain aware of your vulnerabilities as well as environment cues that could set you up for relapse.
The risk of suggesting a cure for addiction is that it misleads people into believing someone has the magic bullet. Although someone might manage their diabetes through diet, exercise, and medication, you don’t really cure diabetes. You have to maintain a certain lifestyle or you risk your health and life.
An Interview with Richard Rogg, Founder of Promises Treatment Centers
By Meghan O’Dell
Prior to opening Promises Treatment Centers in 1989, Richard Rogg worked in real estate. When he realized that his heart was in the addiction field, he made the switch. “I was very passionate about Alcoholics Anonymous and the 12 steps, and I had a vision of providing the best treatment and environment for people recovering from alcoholism and other addictions,” he said.
A friend of Richard’s suggested opening a sober living house for women, and they reached that goal together. They then decided to open a treatment center that was connected with sober living, which became Promises in West Los Angeles. “This was really novel at the time,” Richard explained. “The right people showed up to help out and it just happened in a very organic way.”
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When Dentists Act as Drug Dealers
Kenny Morrison was a top chef at a trendy Los Angeles restaurant, often serving dinner to Hollywood stars. He lived in a beachfront home and generally loved life. But after he became addicted to pain medication after getting dental work in 2003, he lost everything. He began using Vicodin, OxyContin, and codeine to get through the day. At one point, he even had a tooth removed unnecessarily because he needed a prescription for more pain medication.
“At the height, I was taking probably 20, 25 a day,” Morrison told CNN. “It got to the point where I lost the wife, the house, and I was living in a bad part of LA in my truck. And I went from taking a couple of codeine all the way to taking OxyContin.”
Using Nicotine Patch before Quitting Smoking Doubles Success Rate
Duke University Medical Center researchers recently found that using a nicotine patch before quitting smoking can double success rates. They say their findings should be printed on nicotine patch labeling.
Currently, the nicotine patch is only recommended for use after the quit date, explained Jed Rose, director of the Duke Center for Nicotine and Smoking Research and lead author of the study. This resulted from concerns that using a patch while smoking could lead to nicotine overdose. However, the new study found that concurrent use of a nicotine patch and cigarettes appears to be safe.
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Former Drug Addict Finds Solace in Triathlons
Eddie Freas, 33, has found a different way to fight his 20-year addiction to alcohol, marijuana, and cocaine—he started training for and entering triathlons. “I feel better when I’m working out,” Freas told CNN’s Madison Park. “It does wonders for the mind. The reason I started running—it was a switch that went off in my head. I started feeling positive and feeling great about myself.”
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Gender Differences Play a Role in Addiction
Drug abuse and addiction affect women and men differently, according to new studies presented at the annual meeting of the American Psychiatric Association. Some of the speakers asserted that this knowledge of gender-based differences should be used in pharmacological and behavioral treatments for addiction.
Women begin using drugs at lower doses then men, their drug use escalates more rapidly into addiction, and they face a greater risk of relapse after abstinence, according to Jill Becker, PhD, professor of psychology at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. In addition to the direct evidence from humans, laboratory animals show the same kind of gender differences in addiction. Studies by Christine E. Grella, PhD, research psychologist at the University of California, Los Angeles also show that women tend to enter treatment sooner after becoming dependent on substances than men, but they usually have more psychological distress, particularly with mood and anxiety disorders.
Addiction is widely considered a disorder of the memory processes, and over the past several years, studies have shown strong hemispheric gender differences in how the brain responds to memory processing after seeing emotionally arousing material. For example, men show stronger responses in the right amygdala, and women have stronger responses in the left amygdala. This research may help to explain previous evidence for effects of the menstrual cycle on craving in addition to gender differences in the effectiveness of addiction treatments such as the nicotine patch.
Karen Faith Berman, MD, and colleagues at the National Institute of Mental Health in Bethesda, Maryland, had found that fluctuations in steroid hormone levels during the menstruation cycle affect neurological responses to rewards. When anticipating an uncertain reward, men showed more activity in the ventral putamen than women; when receiving a reward, women showed more activity in the anterior medial prefrontal cortex than men.
Becker’s team has also found significant gender differences in the concentration and location of receptors for the neurotransmitter dopamine, which controls anticipation and reward. The female hormone estradiol enhances dopamine release among women, for example. “Since the effect of estradiol is seen only in females,” Becker said, “this mechanism may offer unique pharmacological opportunities for the treatment of drug abuse in women.”
Cocaine also seems to dampen normal gender differences in response to stress, craving, and relaxation, said Marc N. Potenza MD, PhD, associate professor in the department of psychiatry at Yale University.
Larry Cahill, PhD, associate professor of neurobiology and behavior at the School of Biological Sciences, University of California, Irvine, said, “It is dangerous at best, and completely wrong at worst, to assume that any neurological disorder has the same underlying causes in men and women, and thus to assume that treatments for the disorder will be essentially the same…Yet that is precisely the assumption that continues to pervade much of both the clinically applied and basic science worlds.”
Source: Psychiatric Times, May 2009
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