The Easiest Way to Quit: Don't Start

[Originally posted on hellowellness.in 29 Sept. 2010]

The placid canal that winds through Paris' Tenth Arrondissement is a social gathering place for the young.  On the warm nights of early September, we saw hundreds of twenty-somethings, or perhaps a bit younger and older, sitting in small groups on the banks, chatting, flirting, and in some cases smoking and drinking. There also we saw uniformed Paris police officers, unarmed and with a relaxed gait, ambling among the groups, chatting, and passing out some literature.  I got a copy. The main item is a 16-page pamphlet titled "Alcohol" (in French, of course), almost small enough to fit into a pocket, and liberally illustrated with cartoons in a popular style showing characters speaking in Parisian argot.  The pamphlet is an easy-to-digest, humorously presented short course in the physiology and psychology of alcohol.  It doesn't try scare tactics, but it asks hard questions, and concludes with information on where to get help.   The pamphlet appears to be the product of a wide collaboration between a number of nonprofit groups together with the French Ministry of Health. There are several French associations concerned with alcoholism:  Alcohol Assistance (http://www.alcoolassistance.net), Croix Bleue (http://www.croixbleue.fr/), and Vie Libre  (http://www.vielibre.org/) are among the best known.  Each of these combines recovery support with prevention work; that is, they provide mutual aid groups for the already addicted and also engage in advocacy and education efforts to prevent addiction in the first place.   We happened to be present in Berlin on the "Day for Alcohol-Damaged Children."  Unprepared, we missed all of the day's events, but the plastic grocery bag from the local supermarket carried, on one side, a big ad for the cause,  "Alcohol for kids -- not in our bag!"    Berlin is a "sobering" city in many ways.  Museums and many other public buildings still show pockmarks and craters of bullet hits on their facades.  Plaques and statues honoring resistance heroes murdered by the Nazis dot the city.  A main attraction is the Holocaust Memorial.  It consists of rectangular blocks of dark gray concrete, a bit larger in surface area than a coffin, hundreds of them, of varying heights, with narrow passageways between.  This stark minimalist simplicity goes on for a full city block. Walking among these endlessly repetitive monoliths conveys the monstrosity of the genocide more powerfully than any baroque monument of the 19th century ever could have done.  Berlin knows how to build monuments! In the United States alone, we lose nearly six million lives to addictive substances every decade.  The holocaust from tobacco alone exceeds the grim toll of the death factories at Auschwitz and Birkenau.  At 50 bodies to a car, it would take a freight train more than 2000 cars long to carry each year's victims of alcohol in the U.S. alone.  The worldwide totals are untallied.  It's important, of course, to provide support to those whose brains have already been hijacked by the addictive substances.  If caught early enough, treated effectively, and given unfailing support, all can recover.  But providing recovery support alone is like rescuing the survivors of the concentration camps.  The larger social task, one that takes the cooperation of a broad range of nonprofits, for-profits, and government, is prevention.   As Jane Brody, health editor of the New York Times, pointed out earlier this summer, the most effective way for an individual to escape addiction is not to commence using the substances in the first place.  A life free of addictive substances brings numerous benefits in terms of wellness, prosperity, and longevity -- and it means never having to quit.

Stiffness of the Mind

[Originally posted Sept. 4 2010 on hellowellness.in]

If the brain is like a muscle, then the onset of addiction is like rheumatism -- a growing stiffness and pain with movement.  That, at least, is the finding of a group of international researchers based in France, and published in a recent issue of Science.  

The scientists studied what happens in the brains of rats when exposed to various addictive substances.  Rats and scores of other species from the great apes down to tiny worms and fruit flies, can be turned into addicts by infusing their bloodstreams with the addictive substance.  Researchers either hook up the animals to intravenous tubes that inject the drug, or they confine the animals in a vapor chamber where the air is infused with the substance.  It doesn't take long before the animals display a set of behaviors and physiological symptoms that we humans know all too well, if we have alcoholics or other drug addicts in our family or friendship circles.

The fact that animals can readily be turned into addicts, by the way, is important evidence that it's the substance, and not some qualities in the person's psychology, that makes addicts of us. Despite the creative work of Walt Disney's animators, rodents don't have human personality profiles, and they probably don't suffer from spiritual maladjustment.  Quite a few theories blame the person's emotional and spiritual deficiencies for the onset of addiction.  The animal experiments teach that there's a neurobiological process at work.  The molecules in the substance are like so many little vandals in the brain, hammering, bending, mutilating and wrecking the intricate circuits of the most complex apparatus on earth -- one that we all carry between our ears.

What long-term use of the addictive substances does, the researchers found, is to decrease synaptic plasticity.  Synapses, of course, are the connections between brain cells.  Connections are the rails on which our thoughts and feelings run.  When we process a new experience, the brain cells rewire themselves to integrate the new elements into our existing web of ideas and emotions.  The power of brain cells to form new connections, their plasticity, is the foundation of all kinds of learning. A brain with high synaptic plasticity is like a body that's flexible, loose, limber, toned -- the kind we love to see jogging in the park or performing acrobatic feats on television.  

So, the next time you hear somebody use slang terms like "let's get hammered" or "stupid" or "stoned," take it as a neurobiological reality.  The chronic use of addictive substances such as alcohol, cocaine, etc. creates stiffness in the brain cells, even while it tends to take away men's stiffness elsewhere in the anatomy (but that's another story). A kind of mental rigidity sets in; the ability to learn and to adapt declines; the person's mind becomes unresponsive to new ideas and feelings.  Does this describe anyone you know?

[For more details, read Kasanetz et al., "Transition to Addiction is Associated with a Persistent Impairment in Synaptic Plasticity," Science 328:5986 pp. 1709-1712.

99 per cent wouldn't use drugs if legal

A recent poll of 1000 U.S. adults asked if they would use "hard" drugs such as cocaine or heroin if they were sold legally. More than 99 per cent said they would not. Source.

The numbers undercut the argument of "war on drugs" supporters that drug prohibition is a necessary dam against widespread drug use.

Quite the contrary, says David Borden, CEO of StopTheDrugWar.org. For example, rates of marijuana use in the Netherlands, where it's sold legally in "coffee shops," are only about half those in nearby France, where marijuana use is an arrestable offense.

France clears air in offices, public buildings

The haze of smoke in France will begin to clear this month as France adopts a nationwide smoking ban in offices and public buildings. By the end of this year, smoking will also be banned in cafes, restaurants, bars, hotels, and casinos.

The clean-air legislation follows the lead of Spain, Italy, and Ireland. More than 65,000 French people die each year from smoking-related illness or effects of second-hand smoke.

The move follows a steep decline in the popularity of smoking in France. In the 1950s, about three quarters of French males smoked. Today, about three quarters do not smoke.

Government policy had a hand in the change. Federal taxes raised the price of cigarettes by more than half in the past three years. They now cost about $6.66 a pack.

Starting in February, the ministry will give would-be quitters $66 coupons redeemable for the purchase of nicotine patches, chewing gum or lozenges. Read more.

Arson fire in Moscow detox clinic kills 45 women

A fire in the women's wing of Drug Treatment Hospital No. 17 in southwest Moscow killed 45 patients and two staff members Dec. 9. The blaze was almost certainly arson, authorities said.

The women's wing on the second floor of the old five-story hospital building was locked and had bars on the windows like a prison. A Moscow prosecutor said that clinic authorities could have prevented the disaster by unlocking doors in a timely manner, but failed to do so. Source.

French President Jacques Chirac, on a visit to Moscow, sent his condolences to relatives of the victims. Source.