Recovery Includes Giving Back

Living (Judy Collins album) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

One of the really beautiful parts of recovery is being of service to the community, giving back so that others can learn about recovery from addiction. Giving back might include volunteering with veterans' organization, or working with families who are struggling to get back on their feet. It might mean taking on a weekly or daily task at one's Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) meeting. It could mean writing a book about your own recovery - sharing your story. It could mean performing at a benefit concert. In recovery it is often referred to as sharing your experience, faith and hope.

So it was, this past week when singer/songstress Judy Collins was the keynote speaker at an event at the Father Martin Ashley Center honoring Congresswoman Mary Bono Mack. Judy told her story of recovery, according to the Baltimore Sun article,

"Collins hasn't had a drink since that spring 24 years ago [1988], and now the woman with the voice like a crystal bell uses that voice to talk about her recovery and to urge others to seek treatment...Alcoholism is a family disease, of course. Collins inherited it from her father and passed it on to her son, who took his life in 1992 at the age of 33 when he relapsed after seven years of sobriety. Collins is now an advocate for suicide prevention as well. She had tried to take her own life as a teen, and the booze made her suicidal, too. But she was always too drunk to form a plan."

Here is an ABC News Video featuring Father Beck interviewing Judy Collins. She talks about alcoholism, depression, her spirituality. Judy continues to be of service in the recovery community, her most recent memoir is "Sweet Judy Blue Eyes: My Life in Music"

Related articles

• Sweet Judy Blue Eyes: My Life in Music by Judy Collins (buffalorising.com)

Drug Treatment Can Impact Crime Rates

Seal of the United States Office of National Drug Control Policy, a part of the Executive Office of the President. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Each year the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy issues its drug monitoring report. Three keys items were highlighted in this year's report:

• Illegal drugs play a central role in criminal acts reinforcing the view that drugs are a public health issue and if treated as so, the crime rate could be reduced
• Cocaine use has declined since 2003, which may have resulted from public education campaigns
• Since 1979 the rate of overall drug use in the U.S. has declined by about 30%

While this is all positive news, still there are other startling statistics. For example, according to the Reuters article: "on average 71 percent of men arrested in 10 U.S. metropolitan areas last year tested positive for an illegal substance at the time they were taken into custody." 

Government officials are now working on a strategy to break the cycle of drugs and crime by promoting substance abuse treatment as opposed to jail for nonviolent offenders.  Promoting this strategy would dovetail with the 2600+ drug courts that currently operate in the United States.

Dr. Redonna Chandler of the National Institute on Drug Abuse reminds us "5 million of an estimated 7 million American who line under criminal justice supervision would benefit from drug treatment intervention. But only 7.6 percent actually receive treatment."

Related articles

• White House Drug Policy Shifts Strategy (news.health.com)

Recovery and Relapse - Don't Give Up

                                    (Photo credit: Wikipedia)If you are a regular reader of our blog, you might remember almost two years ago we featured Josh Hamilton. It was 2010 and Josh had just been named the American League's Most Valuable Player. It was an exciting time for Josh. He was in recovery, he was sober and he was happy to talk about his relationship with God. His story was inspirational for many.

But as many people in recovery know, relapse can happen. And it did for Josh. Twice since 2010 Josh has relapsed, but as he says today: "My recovery is an everyday process." This past week, Josh made baseball news again by being the 16th person in major league baseball history to hit four home runs in one game! Simply amazing...

Here's Josh being interviewed on ABC's Good Morning America.

Related articles

• Josh Hamilton's Remarkable Story Continues: Four Home Runs In One Game (npr.org)
• Hamilton 'trying to do the right thing' (mlb.mlb.com)

Breaking the Cycle

Teenagers and young adults across the country are at the greatest risk of being influenced by drugs and alcohol and are even more susceptible to addiction. Those who enter treatment these days are younger and younger than in the past which is indicative of the fact that we need to monitor our children’s influences more than we have in the past.

Please take the time to read the thoughts of Susan Richardson, the National Executive Director for Reclaiming Futures:

”Almost two million American youth need treatment for alcohol and other drug use or abuse. But only 1 in 20 will receive treatment.

Research shows that teens with substance abuse problems are more likely to break the law, behave violently or drop out of school. In fact, 4 out of 5 young people in the juvenile justice system commit crimes while under the influence of alcohol or drugs.

Young people need to be held accountable when they break the law. Unless they receive treatment for a substance abuse problem that helped them get in trouble in the first place, they will often find themselves back in juvenile court again and again.

That’s where Reclaiming Futures comes in. By connecting juvenile courts with treatment providers and community members, we help teens overcome drugs, alcohol and crime.
We accomplish this by creating teams of juvenile court judges, probation officers, substance abuse treatment professionals and community members. Using an evidence-based six-step model, the team works together to ensure that teens get the treatment and services they need, while tracking their progress and identifying service gaps.

So how does the model work?

Step 1: Initial Screening: As soon as possible after being referred to the juvenile justice system, youth are screened for possible substance abuse problems.

Step 2: Initial Assessment: Teens with possible substance abuse problems are assessed using a reputable tool to measure their use of alcohol and other drugs, individual and family risks, needs and strengths. This allows the team to measure the severity of the problem, which informs the treatment plan.

Step 3: Service Coordination: The team designs and coordinates an intervention plan that is family driven, spans agency boundaries and draws upon community-based resources.
Step 4: Initiation: Treatment begins.

Step 5: Engagement: The team engages both the teens and their families and follows up with them during treatment.

Step 6: Transition: Teens transition out of agency-based treatment services. The team makes sure that kids and their families have community resources and support in place, in order to lower the risk of relapse and recidivism.

It’s essential for the family and community to be involved throughout the process because almost every young person who appears in juvenile court eventually returns home. In order to stay drug and crime free, teens need positive mentors and caring adults in their lives. They also need help with completing school and finding a job, which is why Step 6 is so important – troubled young people need help transitioning from the juvenile system to a happy and productive adult life.

We’re not the only ones who understand the importance of connecting teens with quality treatment and care. The Obama Administration’s 2012 National Drug Control Strategy prioritizes treatment and coordinated care to people struggling with addiction. As part of the Strategy, we are working with the Administration to spread our model throughout the United States to improve treatment for youth involved with the juvenile justice system. We believe we are a solution for the entire nation.”

National Prescription Drug Take-Back Day

We are approaching the National Prescription Drug Take-Back Day which is ever so crucial in the fight against prescription drug abuse. More people start using prescription drugs from friends or family, rather than going to a doctor for a prescription. Please take the time to read Michele Leonhart’s, the Administrator of the Drug Enforcement Administration, thoughts:

“Prescription drug abuse is perhaps our nation’s most significant drug problem, and trends over the past decade indicate this problem will only worsen, particularly among young adults and teens. While the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and law enforcement represent an important dimension in this fight, we are not the only ones. It will take our combined efforts to combat this problem, and the more we can do together to both educate our children early and make drugs more difficult to get, the more successful we will be.

Far too often legitimately prescribed drugs sit in our medicine cabinets and junk drawers, unused and forgotten. But to our children and young adults who don’t understand the dangers of these legal, yet powerful prescription drugs, experimentation and abuse have grave consequences.

So how do you rid your home of these medicines? In the past, we’ve simply flushed them down the toilet or thrown them in the trash. However, we’ve learned more about the negative effects these drugs can have on our environment, as well as their potential for theft and abuse.

Recognizing these problems, DEA has taken action. On September 25, 2010, we held our first National Prescription Drug Take-Back Day. The turnout for this event demonstrated that we had identified a pressing need, with an astounding 121 tons of unwanted, unused or expired medication brought in for proper disposal. Since then, we have held a Take-Back event every six months, and so far, we’ve taken nearly 500 tons of pills out of America’s medicine cabinets.

We are also working toward a permanent solution to this problem. DEA continues to prepare the final rules and procedures for the rollout of the Safe and Secure Drug Disposal Act. This will allow people to dispose of their drugs in a safe manner every day, not only during our Take-Back events, and we hope to have these regulations in place by the end of the year. But until then, we remain committed to giving parents, grandparents, caregivers—everyone—a safe way to discard potentially harmful drugs, and will sponsor these events until the final disposal procedures are in place.

Our next Take-Back Day event is April 28th and with your continued assistance, I’m sure it will be another success. Information about the event and drop-off locations are available on www.DEA.gov -simply click on the Got Drugs banner and enter your zip code, and the locations nearest to you will come up.”

University of Colorado Four-Twenty Battle

April 20th has unofficially become the holiday of marijuana use across the country: A day where pot users join together in solidarity to celebrate the use of the drug. Students from the University of Colorado-Boulder have held a 4/20 celebration for many years now on campus, but this year may be a little bit harder for those in favor of celebrating.

Officials at the University of Colorado-Boulder are trying to prevent thousands from gathering today for the annual 4/20 marijuana celebration. One deterrent they came up with was to spread smelly fish-based fertilizer on campus as a deterrent.

“We don’t consider this a protest. We consider this people smoking pot in the sunshine,” university spokesman Bronson Hilliard told the Associated Press. “This is a gathering of people engaging in an illegal activity.”

The holiday is not just about sitting in circles and getting high with one’s peers, those who attend such events are rallying to legalize marijuana across the world which is no easy task considering that in our country alone the drug has been stigmatized for over 70 years.

Last year, more than 10,000 people, both students and non-students, attended a 4/20 celebration on the University of Colorado-Boulder campus, the AP reports. This year is going to be different because officials are closing the campus to all unauthorized visitors which will most likely stir up a protest. Another, surprising countermeasure to the movement was to hold a free campus concert by Wyclef Jean, a respected hip-hop artist to coincide with the most important time 4:20 pm.

Colorado was named the nation’s top party school in 2011 by Playboy magazine.

Drinking During Pregnancy

Drinking alcohol while pregnant continues to be a major problem across the globe. Many women fail to realize how serious consuming alcohol during the pregnancy can be with regard to their fetus. A new study that was just conducted found that there are a good number of women that continue to drink during pregnancy, but at modest levels.

Erika Comasco, Ph.D., from Uppsala University in Sweden, and colleagues collected data on alcohol consumption before and during pregnancy among 2,264 women from a Swedish antenatal clinic, using the Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test (AUDIT).

89 percent of the women reported regularly consuming alcohol and 49 percent reported occasional or frequent binge drinking before pregnancy. Twelve percent of women continued using alcohol and 5 percent admitted binge drinking during pregnancy. Fifteen percent of women reported using nicotine before pregnancy, while 5 percent admitted using nicotine during pregnancy.

"While the AUDIT results suggested that a significant number of women continued using alcohol during pregnancy, implying a risk for fetal disorders, the biomarkers showed negative test values thus indicating only modest drinking levels," the authors write. "The continuation of this study will investigate the development of children exposed to alcohol during fetal life, together with other pre- and postnatal factors, genetic factors, and behavioral characteristics."