There are few things in life that are more painful than seeing someone you love go off the rails because of substance abuse. Their family life begins to crumble; their career comes to a screeching halt; and they become emotionally distant, angry or depressed.
Casino’s are a place of fun, right? They are if you are a recreational gambler. For gambling addicts they are like the street corner where the heroin user or meth addict meets their dealer. Just like drug dealers, casinos have ways of increasing the desire and dependency of their customers….
Ever feel like you’re a fat slob, a lazy bum, or just a bad person because you abuse opioids, get lost in meth, binge on food or have spent 2 days gaming? I’ve heard many a person say these things about themselves in my counseling office as they struggle to make better choices.
You’ve just spent 4 hours on FB and are feeling depressed, empty, bored or anxious. Or, you’ve binged on a dozen donuts and feel sick and disgusted. Or, you can’t stop going to the porn sites and your spouse is furious.
Put a rat it in a cage and give it two water bottles. One is just water, and one is water laced with either heroin or cocaine. If you do that, the rat will almost always prefer the drugged water and almost always kill itself very quickly, right, within a couple of weeks. So there you go. It’s our theory of addiction.
I know, pot affects people differently so if your experience is that it enhances reality, fine. At the age of 20 I smoked daily for a year and it was the most unproductive, wasted, sleepy year of my life. I was able to take care of my son, clean the house and nap a lot. I remember the realization that sluggishness was not how I wanted to live each day, quit and felt mentally clear. But it took awhile!…
Does smoking pot affect your IQ? Yes, if you start smoking under the age of 18. A study from New Zealand’s University of Otago of 1,000 people IQ tested and followed from 18 to 34 showed that people who smoked and became dependent by 18 had an average drop of 8 points. Unfortunately, quitting didn’t remove the problem researchers reported. (Modesto Bee, Tue. 28, 2012)
Recently, the San Francisco Chronicle had a heartbreaking letter written by Ricci & Vernae Graham’s about the loss of their son Malcolm to an opioid overdose. The Graham’s son is a typical story. He got hooked on prescription opioids after a football injury, over time became addicted, had mood problems, got in trouble with the
We must and can do better to prevent and treat alcohoism and addiction. We have had success with another addiction – smoking. The U.S. reduced smoking rates from nearly 60% in the 1950s to about 20% today. We did it with a collective will to stop that killer and with a focus on prevention and treatment
Americans are addicted to legal drugs and by drugs I mean pharmaceutical drugs. Pharmaceutical companies are the most profitable industry in the world. Marcia Angell, M.D. first woman editor-in-chief of the New England Journal of Medicine reports that in 2002 the $35.9 billion the top drug companies earned were greater than the profits of the other