Drug & Alcohol Intervention Help - We Get Them In to Treatment : NYC Intervention Specialists

“Oh my God! He’s going to die right now!”

That is the line that woke me, Friday morning at 3am. Connected to the voice of a mom, who found her son literally dying for help. Call 911, now, I say. Pause. “He’s not really dying…he’s just overdone it again and is a little bluer this time.”

Oh my God, is right.

The feelings of being all alone in this effort to get someone we love to change, can be overwhelming and over time, becomes normalized. “I feel alone” becomes “I am alone…” and the hope of helping in the face of this terribly lonely problem recedes from view.

But you are not alone. This is truth. And it is the number one tool in reaching out and initiating change in the lives of those we love who are drowning in addiction.

Truth is, that truth is our number one tool. A feather sometimes, a little heavier as needed. 

Call us. Change Begins, I promise.

- Brad

It grates on families. Grates on the skin of your soul. The second guessing. The waiting until the “right” time to act with new direction and focus.

And so this Grate Wait is the painful in-between. The in-between the pause that concern causes, and the action that the dying requires.

Just do it. Try something new today. Ask him or her, if they wanna talk treatment? If they want to talk help. And so this always grating wait, ends when you start with the new, the helpful, the right.

It’s like this - we throw the life preserver to the one drowning. Knowing that there are motivators to grabbing on, other than the fact that their legs are tired. To name a few:
1) it sucks to be tired and wet
2) there are sharks in these waters
3) birthday cake is too good to check out now!

The Grating Wait ends when you say it does.

- Brad

I’m working with two families at present, where a family member is seriously obese. 500+ pounds obese. Like other addictions, food speaks to the brain’s pleasure center. Though in some ways it is unique. Like water, food is a must. We are hardwired for it from birth. Don’t eat, and you’ll die.

But overeat, and the consumption is no longer answering this native call to live, but some other call.

In Overeaters Anonymous (OA) it’s called “being in the food.” The recovery from active food addiction is called “abstinence” as once a food plan is in place, one abstains from the food that is triggering, the food that doesn’t make the food plan cut.

Keeping an accurate food journal is a baseline for OA work. Outside the realm of Twelve Step support groups, food journaling is accepted as a key piece of changing ingrained patterns of behavior. Below you’ll see an article that hit the news wires today, reflecting this truth.

I like Bob Greene’s THE BEST LIFE website’s food journal application (www.TheBestLife.com). It’s more than just a food journal - and at roughly $20 per month, it will cost you something. But what it will give you is worth it I think.

If food is your “thing”, consider making lifestyle changes to get better. To LIVE YOUR BEST LIFE. Forget the diet, the yo-yo, and the defeat, and try a food journal, coupled with focus on quality of food, and quantity of food. And then get moving!

Onward!

Brad

—

Back to Story - Help
Study shows value of food diary in losing weight
By Will Dunham
Tue Jul 8, 3:25 AM ET
Keeping a food diary — a detailed account of what you eat and drink and the calories it packs — is a powerful tool in helping people lose weight, U.S. researchers said on Tuesday.

The study involving 1,685 middle-aged men and women over six months found those who kept such a diary just about every day lost about twice as much weight as those who did not.

The findings buttressed earlier research that endorsed the value of food diaries in helping people lose weight. Companies including Weight Watchers International Inc use food diaries in their weight-loss programs.

“For those who are working on weight loss, just writing down everything you eat is a pretty powerful technique,” Victor Stevens of Kaiser Permanente’s Center for Health Research in Portland said in a telephone interview.

“It helps the participants see where the extra calories are coming from, and then develop more specific plans to deal with those situations,” said Stevens, who helped lead the study published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.

The technique also helps hold dieters accountable for what they are eating, Stevens said.

The study involved people from four U.S. cities: Portland, Oregon; Baltimore, Maryland; Durham, North Carolina; and Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Their average weight loss was about 13 pounds (6 kg). But those keeping food diaries six or seven days a week lost about 18 pounds (8 kg) compared to 9 pounds (4 kg) for those not regularly keeping a food diary.

The average age of people in the study was 55.

They were asked to eat less fat, more vegetables, fruit and whole grains, exercise 180 minutes a week mostly by walking, attend group meetings, and keep a detailed food diary.

Blacks made up 44 percent of the people in the study. The researchers noted that blacks Americans have a higher risk than whites for conditions linked to obesity including type 2 diabetes and heart disease.

“Keeping a food diary doesn’t have to be a formal thing. Just the act of scribbling down what you eat on a Post-It note, sending yourself e-mails tallying each meal or sending yourself a text message will suffice,” Dr. Keith Bachman, another Kaiser Permanente expert, said in a statement.

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Irreplaceable. That’s what the family is in the life of the addicted. Whether ushering in sane solutions and help, or enabling and impotency. The latter come from not owning, that THEY’VE GOT THE POWER. So in spite of headlines like the following (which are true and reflective of the enormity of the issue of addiction and loss) we stand ready and empowered.

We help you make hope happen.

Onward!

Brad

—

Americans on Top in Drugs
Jul 1 12:07 PM US/Eastern

Americans are the world’s top consumers of cannabis and cocaine despite punitive US drug laws, according to an international study published in the online scientific magazine PLoS Medicine.

The study, released Monday, revealed that 16.2 percent of Americans had tried cocaine at least once, and 42.4 percent had used marijuana.

In second-place New Zealand, just 4.3 percent of study participants had used cocaine, and 41.9 percent marijuana. The research was conducted at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, based on World Health Organization data from 54,068 people in 17 countries.

Rates of participation differed from country to country, and researchers noted uncertainty over how honestly people report their own drug use.

“Nevertheless, the findings present comprehensive data on the patterns of drug use from national samples representing all regions of the world,” a PLoS statement said.

A vast majority of survey participants from the United States, Europe, Japan and New Zealand had consumed alcohol, compared to smaller percentages from the Middle East, Africa and China.

The data also revealed socioeconomic patterns in drug use. Single young adult men with high income had the greatest tendency to regularly use drugs.

Drug use “does not appear to be simply related to drug policy,” the researchers wrote, “since countries with more stringent policies toward illegal drug use did not have lower levels of such drug use than countries with more liberal policies.”

In the Netherlands, where drug policy is more liberal than the United States, 1.9 percent of survey participants said they had used cocaine and 19.8 percent marijuana.

Twelve US 12 states including California permit medical use of marijuana, but possession and use remains prohibited under federal law.

And despite the US government’s massive anti-drug efforts, the United States remains the world’s top drug market, one amply supplied by South American cartels.

The US Drug Enforcement Agency has observed ever larger quantities of illegal drugs pouring into the country.

“We are seizing greater quantities of illegal drugs than ever before,” said a DEA statement last week.

In 2007, agents seized 41 metric tons of cocaine in just two raids, and denied drug traffickers record-breaking revenue of 3.5 billion dollars for the year, it said.

from many spiritual traditions, I find inspiration and hope. From my own Quaker tradition, the words of this Buddhist prayer/poem resonate in me, reminding me that service without action is just a thought.

By reaching out my hand to another, change begins.

You’ve Got the Power!

—–

WE PRAY
with the intention to attain
the ultimate supreme goal
that surpasses even the wish granting jewel
may i constantly cherish all living beings

whenever i associate with others
may i view myself as the lowest of all
and with a perfect intention
may i cherish others as supreme

examining my mental continuum
throughout all my actions
as soon as a delusion develops
whereby i or others would act inappropriately
may i firmly face it and avert it

whenever i see unfortunate beings
opressed by evil and violent suffering
may i cherish them as if i had found
a rare and precious treasure

even if someone i have helped
and of whom i had great hopes
nevertheless harms me withot any reason
may i see him as my holy spiritual guide

when others out of jealousy
harm me or insult me
may i take the defeat upon myself
and offer them the victory

in short - may i directly and indirectly
offer help and happiness to all my mothers
and secretly take upon myself
all of their harm and suffering

furthermore, through all these method practices
together with a mind
undefiled by the stains of conceptions
of the eight extremes
and that sees all phenomena as illusory
may i be released from the bondage
of mistaken appearance and conception

Life and death and all the spots in between the two I’ve seen and worked with in intervention. For many women who are addicted, the trauma and loss associated with abortion comes up, as does the regret a mom will feel surrounding neglect of her children as she is gobbled up by addiction.

USA Today’s article on intervention during pregnancy, as a step in regular prenatal care, provides real insight in to how asking the right questions, being open to veiled answers and then offering help works to save lives of mother and unborn child. A terrific study and article.

- Brad

—

By Liz Szabo
USA TODAY

Drug and alcohol users can have healthy pregnancies if they are treated early in the pregnancy, according to a study released today.

The treatment program, which allows women to receive substance abuse counseling with their regular prenatal care, should be the new “gold standard” for pregnant women, says lead author Nancy Goler, an obstetrician/gynecologist with Kaiser Permanente, which funded the study of nearly 50,000 women.

Women in the study who used substances, which included alcohol, tobacco, methamphetamine, marijuana, cocaine or heroin, are normally at much higher risk for serious complications, she says.
But women in the study treated for substance abuse in their first trimesters were no more likely than others to have a pre-term delivery or develop a dangerous condition in which the placenta detaches from the uterus. Their babies were no more likely to be small, stillborn or need ventilator care.

For the mothers, Goler says the key to success was the approach to care at Kaiser Permanente Northern California, where the study was conducted. At Kaiser, all pregnant women are screened for drugs, alcohol and tobacco, Goler says. Social workers and licensed therapists work within the obstetrics and gynecology departments. After women finish their prenatal checkups, doctors walk those with positive drug tests down the hall to appointments with substance abuse counselors.

And the 2,100 women who received substance abuse treatment were a “select” group because they agreed to therapy, she says. About 160 women declined treatment. A study like this would be stronger if researchers randomly assigned some women to receive coordinated care and others to receive usual medical care.

Goler says she hopes her study will help women protect themselves and their babies. While women should stop using drugs before becoming pregnant, she says her study shows “it’s never too late to stop.”

The reasons some get help, often have nothing to do with a desire for change. Try to make sense of the crazy behavior and you’ll spin, because there is none to be made.

This is precisely why the invitation to change we make as a family works. We are thinking clearly and have a plan, while the addicted remains enslaved to the cravings, the addiction.

Remarkably, the reasons one gets to treatment don’t tend to matter.

1) One admits him or herself to treatment
2) One is court-mandated to treatment
3) One enters treatment as a result of intervention

Each will arrive, hear the message and best case, recover. Without fail, change begins. The recovery statistics are best for those entering treatment from intervention and the courts. The added layer of accountability and structure matters.

Dragging the truth from basement, and engaging with love and strength counts.

Everyone deserves to recover. Here’s to today! The perfect day to take action and help.

- Brad

—-

June 23, 2008 11:42am
MOTORISTS had to swerve to avoid a man asleep at the controls of a motorised wheelchair on a north Queensland highway.

Police who breath-tested him allegedly found him to be six times the legal blood alcohol limit.

Police found the 64-year-old man asleep in his wheelchair in a turning lane on the Captain Cook Highway at Stratford north of Cairns on Friday morning.

Passing police noticed him slumped in the wheelchair and stopped to help.

They breathalysed him when they smelt alcohol on him.

He allegedly blew .301, more than six times the legal limit.

He told police he was going 14km to Trinity Beach to visit a friend, most of it on the four-lane highway.

“We’ll allege he placed himself in a very dangerous situation,” police spokesman Bob Waters said.

“People should be aware that drink-driving laws cover these kinds of vehicles, but also others like horses and bicycles.

The man will appear in Cairns Magistrates Court on July 7.

June 14, 2008
OP-ED COLUMNIST / New York Times

By CHARLES M. BLOW
The actress Tatum O’Neal was arrested recently on charges of buying crack cocaine from a man on the street near her New York City home. She is a 44-year-old mother of three. She has spent years in and out of drug abuse treatment (which she chronicled in her 2004 memoir), and according to her publicist she will continue to “attend meetings” for drug and alcohol abuse.

Ms. O’Neal illustrates a disturbing trend among those being admitted to substance abuse treatment services: a growing percentage of older women are being treated for harder drugs.

Data from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration revealed that the total number of admissions to treatment services from 1996 to 2005 (the last year for which detailed data are available) stayed about the same among people under 40, but jumped 52 percent among those 40 and older. Of the 40 and older group, the rise in admissions among men was 44 percent. Among women, it was 82 percent. (During the same span, the population in the United States age 40 and older grew by only 19 percent.)

Of these women, admissions for nonsmoked cocaine have doubled; admissions for crack cocaine have tripled; admissions for opiates other than heroin have nearly quadrupled; and admissions for methamphetamines have increased sevenfold.

These trends could grow stronger. A 2006 report by the National Institute on Drug Abuse focused on drug use among baby boomers, all of whom were 41 to 59 years old in 2005. It concluded that “the large size of this cohort, coupled with greater lifetime rates of drug use than previous generations, might result in unprecedented high numbers of older drug users in the next 15 to 20 years.”

There was a time when we thought that the biggest substance abuse threat to older women was alcoholism and abuse of prescription drugs.

Ten years ago this month, Betty Ford and the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University issued a report called “Under the Rug: Substance Abuse and the Mature Woman.” At the time, Joseph Califano, president of the center said: “Abuse and addiction to alcohol and psychoactive drugs and tobacco by women 60 and older is an inexcusable area of neglect.”

But since boomers can’t seem to shake their street-drug demons, the focus needs to shift.