Recover and Be Killed

[Originally published 29 Oct 2010 on hellowellness.in]

Trying to get clean and sober is a pathway to a new life in most places, but in some cities of Mexico it’s a ticket for getting killed.  Gunmen believed to be narco gangsters this week stormed into a drug rehab center in Tijuana, found 13 patients watching a movie, lined them up on the floor, and murdered them with machine gun fire.  

A few days later, masked gangsters invaded a car wash in the central Mexican city of Tepic, not far from the tourist destination Puerto Vallarta.  They sprayed employees and customers with automatic weapon fire.  Most of the murdered car wash workers were recovering addicts.

The border town Ciudad Juarez has seen a streak of massacres in drug rehab centers.  Minutes after the mass murder in the rehab center in Tijuana, a narco voice was heard on the police radio saying that this was “a taste of Juarez.”

Public speculation as to the narco gangster’s motives in targeting people in recovery ranged widely.  A New York Times reporter guessed that the rehab centers were used as a refuge by former gang members trying to get away from the criminal syndicates.  A Mexican official speculated that the Tijuana attack was retaliation for the authorities’ seizure and burning of 134 metric tons of marijuana the previous week.  El Blog del Narco, the semi-clandestine online kiosk for narco-related information and disinformation, is silent on the topic of motive.  

A more likely explanation is commercial.  One has to remember that the drug business is a business, and a business depends on customers.  From the narco standpoint, people who seek recovery from drug use are dissatisfied customers who not only step outside the market but stand as living testimony, human Yelps, for the defects of the product.  In the supercharged atmosphere of the Mexican drug war, that’s reason enough to kill them.  

I write this in Oakland, California, a city whose city council this year approved a far-reaching measure to regulate and tax medical marijuana.  City leaders are also on record in support of Proposition 19 on the California state ballot, a measure that would legalize, regulate, and tax marijuana possession and cultivation, medical or not.  The measure has drawn worldwide attention, including notably in neighboring Mexico.  

Both the Mexican government and the U.S. administration under President Obama have come out against Prop. 19.  Obama’s position appears to be part of his general unfortunate slide toward appeasement of the conservatives.  Mexican President Felipe Calderon’s position is an understandable reluctance to make a 180 degree turn from his efforts at military suppression of the wars between his country’s drug cartels.  If one of the major export crops he is trying to stamp out suddenly becomes legal in its primary market across the border, he will look at first like a fool.  

Legalization of marijuana in circumstances like these has never been done before, and nobody can say with assurance what will happen.  Political leaders prefer the devil they know to the devil they don’t.  But many analysts believe that legalization in California will deal a harsh commercial blow to the Mexican cartels.  California already grows its own marijuana, said to be of much higher potency and quality than the Mexican variety. If the local cultivation is legalized, the Mexican product may become practically unsaleable here.  The Mexican president may find that the passage of Prop. 19 puts him for the first time in the driver’s seat.  

For myself, I have long ago made the choice to abstain from alcohol, marijuana, tobacco, and other addictive drugs, and I persist steadfastly in that decision.  In my experience, the vast majority of people who have personal experience with these drugs have gotten free of them, or wish they could (and they can).  Nevertheless, in the upcoming California election, I will cast my vote in favor of Prop. 19.  The prohibition of marijuana has not worked.  Young people can score marijuana more easily than alcohol.  Prosecutors have used the laws not to break the distribution networks, but to persecute minority youth for petty infractions resulting in major prison terms.  The “war on drugs” has been a scandalous waste and abuse of taxpayer resources that would be better devoted to education, prevention, and treatment.

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.

The Drive to Thrive

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

The great majority of young people who experience the death of a parent, divorce, emotional or physical abuse, substance abuse, mental illness, developmental disabilities, and similar ordeals end up OK.  They recover, form healthy relationships, have good marriages, and become productive citizens. That, at least, is the finding of numerous studies in a diversity of cultures, summarized by the researcher Bonnie Benard at the outset of her book on Resiliency.  

I shouldn’t have been surprised.  I lost my father before I was born, I survived bombing raids, childhood malnutrition and diseases, numerous changes of home, several addictions, and I’m OK.  And I’m not alone.  I know lots of people with worse experiences who survived -- we all do.  

How did we manage?  What is the secret of our marvelous ability to spring back from adversity?  

Resiliency, writes the author, is a creature with four legs.  First, the resilient person is able to win approval from others.  Perhaps only from one other, but that is enough.  Second, the resilient person is resourceful, inventive, able to solve problems, to make and execute plans, and adapt to changed circumstances.  Third, the resilient person displays autonomy.  They are goats rather than sheep.  Finally, the resilient person has a sense of purpose.  It may be a spiritual or secular purpose, but it gives them a sense of orientation in space and time, a reason for being alive.

With this in mind, I reflected back on my experience in overcoming my addictions to alcohol and other drugs, and I began to understand more deeply how I succeeded in freeing myself from these shackles.

In my recovery from addiction, I participated in a support group network that systematically provides its members with social approval, the first leg of resiliency.  In these groups, the basic principle is that all participants have a sound and healthy core, which we call the Sober Self, and that our work consists of affirming and empowering that positive quality within ourselves.  In the jargon of social science, our groups are “strength-based.”  

I was surprised, early on, that nobody in these groups wagged a finger at me and told me what I had to do.  On the contrary, I was expected to figure it out for myself.  I was advised to think, to marshal my inner resources, to be inventive, to solve my particular problems, to make a personal recovery plan, and to adapt my personality to clean and sober living.  Motivated in this way, I developed the second leg of resiliency.  

My group work always aimed to enhance my power to survive as a clean and sober person outside the group.  I came to believe that the group was a useful support, and I enjoyed -- and still enjoy -- the fellowship and good humor that prevails within the circle.  But no one ever tried to make me dependent on the group, to substitute group addiction for substance addiction.  On the contrary, my group experience was and is a school for personal autonomy, the third pillar of resiliency.

Finally, my participation in my support group network restored to my mind a sense of purpose, mislaid somewhere during the depths of my addiction.  I began to feel that I was useful in some modest way to others who had been similarly lost.  I developed connections with other people, the key ingredient of a sense that one’s life has meaning.  

Thanks to Benard’s book, the secret of my recovery from addictions -- a journey which I thought impossible before I began it -- is no longer so mysterious. Benard writes that the qualities that make up resiliency are hardwired into the human makeup, and all that is required to foster more recoveries is to remove the barriers and enhance the protective factors for our innate drive to thrive.

Some Progress on Campus

I happened to be visiting Ramapo College in New Jersey the other evening and, in a hallway outside a counseling office, passed this display of literature aimed at reducing college drinking.  Didn't have a chance to meet the counselor or ask questions, but it looked like a big step forward from my college days (eons ago).  The bulletin board display points out that a large majority of students think that college students are heavy drinkers, whereas in fact, most students drink lightly.  The false expectation likely promotes heavy drinking behavior and the accurate survey tends to put on the brakes.  The display also includes handouts on alcohol and related issues. If material of this kind, backed by a proactive counseling staff and supported by the administration, had been available in my day, I might (might) have been spared three decades of alcoholic drinking.  

Don't drink that marshmallow

The marshamallow experiments are famous by now, thanks in large part to Daniel Goleman's Emotional Intelligence books, and their relevance to addiction seems obvious.  In 1968, Stanford psychology prof Walter Mischel presented four-year olds with a marshmallow and the choice: Eat it now, or wait 15 minutes and get two.  The kids who could delay the gratification ended up, a decade and more later, with higher SAT scores, higher graduation rates, better jobs -- in short, twice as many of the marshmallows life had to offer.  

It was often believed that the kids who could delay gratification did so thanks to more "will power."  Mischel -- according to a helpful and informative summary in this week's New Yorker, by Jonah Lehrer -- analyzed what this "will power" really consisted of.  He paid very careful attention to what went through the delaying kids' minds as they resisted the bait.  They succeeded because they had methods of distracting their minds from the lure.  They covered their eyes, or played hide-and-seek under the desk, or sang songs.  "Their desire wasn't defeated -- it was merely forgotten."  The key, Mischel found, was not to resist the marshmallow -- that didn't work --- but to avoid thinking about it.  

In further experiments, Mischel found that children could be taught cognitive tricks that helped them distract themselves.  Even reducing the intensity of the temptation by pretending that the marshmallow was only a picture of a marshmallow or that the marshmallow was really a cloud worked for some children.   

Mischel and other researchers Lehrer quotes are skeptical of finding a genetic basis for the ability to delay gratification.  Too many genes are involved in even the simplest aspects of personality.  The cutting edge of research lies in classroom curricula that teach self-distraction, and in educating parents to cultivate simple cognitive skills in children.  Says Mischel:

"We should give mashmallows to every kindergartner... We should say, 'You see this marshmallow"  You don't have to eat it.  You can wait.  Here's how.'"

No Such Thing as a Bad Person Addicted to Alcohol

Had the pleasure today to hear and meet Charles D. Appelstein, author of No Such Thing as a Bad Kid and other works expounding the strength-based approach to working with at-risk youth.  

Charlie was keynoter  at the 12th annual Northern California Tobacco, Alcohol, Drug Educator and Youth Development Conference at UC Berkeley, where I staffed a LifeRing exhibit table.  He's a fun speaker, gets the audience laughing, chanting, and singing, all the time delivering key points of a message that is in many respects revolutionary.  

When a teacher or counselor begins work with troubled kids -- also "trouble kids" -- the key thing is attitude, Charlie began.  The successful attitude, he said, is "I believe in you.  You are a great kid.  You can do great things."  This attitude transfers to the kid; it makes the kids feel good about themselves, it gives them hope, and it inspires them to change for the better.

Afterward we chatted about addiction treatment, and I told him that LifeRing was one of the strength-based approaches in this field.  He expressed great interest.  We also exchanged books; he gave me his and I gave him mine.  

I also had the opportunity to chat with Tom Herman of the State Department of Education, Dr. Alex Stalcup of the New Leaf Treatment Center, Ralph Cantor of the local County Office of Education, and a number of substance abuse program administrators, teachers, cops, and others in and around K-12 education who are concerned with the drug issue.  The message that there's a secular, strength-based addiction recovery support network out there was welcome news to many ears.  

Girl, 8, asks cops for help with drunken mom

"Help me. My mother is drunk, and she crashed her car," said an 8-year old Tampa FL girl to troopers last week who were checking on a car wreck.

With the girl inside, the mother had sideswiped two other vehicles before hitting a parked car head-on and coming to a stop. The girl got out of the wreck, unhurt, and approached the first officer on the scene.

"Ever time she drinks she gets like this," said the girl. The mother was booked for drunk driving, child abuse, and related charges. Source.

Don't wait till kids are in middle school

A study of underage drinking finds a big jump in alcohol use in children between the fifth and sixth grades, and suggests that waiting to deal with an alcohol issue in the home until the child is in middle school is too late. Source.

The researchers urge parents to "talk to their kids about alcohol" when the kids are ten or eleven, or earlier. But talking alone isn't going to cut it, if the parents themselves are setting bad models of alcohol use in the home. The research really suggests that if one or both of the parents have an alcohol problem, the time to deal with it (at the latest) is when the kid is still in primary school.

Surprising finding about youth drinking (NOT)

A study of 11,000 persons in London found that teens who drank to excess (4 drinks or more per session, once a week or more often) were twice as likely to snag a criminal conviction by age 30. They were also much more likely to become alcoholics, to use hard drugs, and to become homeless. Source.

The study is being used as fodder for an Australian provincial government campaign to crack down on youth drinking. A worthy cause, no doubt, but did the study control for factors such as family income, education, and environment?

College profs modeling alcoholism for students?

College students' drinking excesses continue to make news. A prof at R.Y.S. (wherever that may be) points out in his or her blog that the students may just be copying their profs.

"Can we acknowledge that there is a huge amount of alcoholism in academia? Not the cute Dudley Moore kind, but the kind that makes us less sharp and ends our lives early? I'd imagine every one of us knows a colleague who needs a mid-morning 'refresher' or who always smells slightly of drink. I remember seeing my supervisor trying to be inconspicuous checking all the (empty) wine bottles at a reception, hoping there was a glass left in one of them, and finally making a glass by combining all the remnants red and white wine that were left. I remember drinking with him at a local bar until well past midnight (having started at four). And is there any function in academia that doesn't involve alcohol?"

Read the whole thing. Good point. A college administration trying to cope with its students' alcohol excesses needs also to look in the mirror. It'll be hard to get a handle on student conduct if the faculty's drinking is out of control.

Mile wide and an inch deep

Someone said Baptism in the South is a mile wide and an inch deep. Here's an example:

The cleaned-up version:

JOHNSON CITY – A Bristol Virginia Baptist preacher arrested in Johnson City in July pleaded guilty Thursday to driving under the influence.

Tommy Tester, 58, of 17425 Hobbs Road, Bristol, Va., was sentenced to 11 months and 29 days, suspended to 24 hours in jail, 16 hours of which he has already served. He will also have to spend 24 hours picking up litter.

Tester, the minister of Gospel Baptist Church, also entered a “best interest” plea to a charge of indecent exposure and was sentenced to five months and 29 days, suspended to probation.

Police said Tester, who was wearing a skirt, pulled up in his vehicle to Belmont Carwash, got out and urinated in a wash bay in view of children. Source.

The unexpurgated version here. -- Thanks, Kelly C., for the tip

Take alcoholic parents' kids away, Scot says

ALCOHOLIC parents should have their kids taken from them in the same way as heroin addicts, one of Scotland's top addiction experts has claimed.

Professor Neil McKeganey, a former government adviser, has accused social services of double standards when dealing with heroin and alcohol addiction.

The respected academic has said children of parents who refuse to give up drink are suffering neglect as serious as those of drug addicts.

McKeganey, director of the Centre for Drug Misuse Research at Glasgow University, has warned the Scottish moralistic attitude to drugs means well-meaning social workers are failing thousands of Scots youngsters.

Social workers are often reluctant to remove children from the homes of alcoholics while the use of illegal drugs such as heroin is seen as far more serious. More.

Kids turn tables on parents

Hartford, CT: Every spring, when prom and graduation season arrives, parents and teachers warn teens about the dangers of using drugs or drinking alcohol. This spring, a group of civic-minded teens at Haddam-Killingworth High School is turning the tables on the adults.

The Youth In Action group is creating a 30-second television ad that urges parents to stop allowing children to hold drinking parties in their homes. The "Where do you draw the line?" ad will run on the local cable-access channel this spring.

"House parties are a big thing around here," senior Shalyn Carey said. "Where are the kids getting the alcohol? From their parents. Parents play just as big a role in their kids' partying as the kids do. We're saying, `Be a friend to your kid, but be a parent, as well.'" More.

Epidemic of child alcoholism in Britain

London: Children as young as 12 are being diagnosed as alcoholics amid growing concerns about binge-drinking in Britain, an investigation by The Independent on Sunday reveals today.

Record numbers of pre-teens and teenagers now require hospital treatment for drink-related disorders, the exclusive nationwide survey shows.

The findings prove there is a hidden epidemic of child alcoholism, resulting in thousands of youngsters being treated in hospital each year for alcohol poisoning, liver disease and drink-related psychiatric illnesses.

Doctors warn that conditions such as cirrhosis of the liver are now starting to appear in people who are still in their teens, prompting calls for special detoxification clinics to be set up around the country for teenage drinkers.

Dr Claire Casey, head of a new youth detox unit at the private Priory Group, said: "We have children presenting with all the adult symptoms of alcoholism. Some are so addicted that it is actually dangerous to get them to stop drinking straight away.''

New figures reveal that Britain's teenagers are drinking twice as much as they did a decade ago, with half of all 13-year-olds consuming more than 10 units a week. The amount being consumed by 11- to 13-year-olds has gone up almost threefold in the same period, with doctors citing the cultural shift towards 24-hour drinking.

They are also worried that the drinks industry is deliberately targeting the young, promoting alcopops - heavily sweetened, attractively packaged alcoholic drinks - and offering alcohol at historically low prices. Source.

Drunk dad lets boy, 11, drive car

Florence County, SC: A local man has been arrested on charges he allowed his 11-year-old son to drive the family car while the father was drunk in the passenger seat, sheriff’s Capt. Todd Tucker said.

The boy’s 9- and 4-year-old siblings were also in the car Friday morning, Tucker said. A deputy dropping his child off at Coward Elementary School said he saw the 11-year-old boy driving the car. The boy’s father, Joddy Deam Morris, was drunk in the vehicle, Tucker said. Source.

Girl sets drunk woman on fire

Saskatchewan, Canada: A 12-year old girl, part of a group of kids of similar age, set fire to a woman who had passed out drunk outside a bar. The victim required several weeks of treatment in a burn unit. The girl was found guilty of aggravated assault. At sentencing, she expressed regret. Source

Afghan war and suburban heroin deaths: Putting it all together

At least one blogger has begun to put the pieces together: Young suburban white kids in the Midwest dying of powder heroin overdoses and suburban Midwest Republican politicians -- more or less the parents of these same kids -- rabidly supporting the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq:

It seems almost scary, but is it possible that the wealthy in this country have in effect sold their children to the Afghanistan drug lords through their greed, blind patriotism and hatred?

See more reflections along this line in Crawford's Take.

Great success in war on drugs: Teens turning to Rx drugs instead

The White House Office of National Drug Control Policy issued a report Feb. 15 citing great successes in the war to reduce teen use of illicit drugs ... but an alarming upswing in teen use of prescription drugs such as Oxycontin to get high. Details.

Congratulations Drug Czar John P. Walters on this great achievement in national drug policy.

Annapolis: New rules decimate drinking

Donny Bailey, manager of a bar and restaurant popular with students at the Naval Academy in Annapolis says "Drinking has declined so much, it's scary. They can't drink 20 shots like they used to. Ever since the rape last year, it's gone down. They just get in too much trouble."

Following a series of sexual crimes linked with alcohol last fall, the Academy adopted new rules that prohibit all underage drinking. Students over 21 are limited to one drink per hour and three drinks on any given evening, not to exceed 0.08 blood-alcohol content, the legal standard for drunken driving in Maryland and many other states.

Those who fail random breath tests are counseled the first time, but those caught twice, or with higher than a 0.15 blood-alcohol content, can be disciplined with restriction to the dorm, 5 a.m. marches and even expulsion. Academy authorities said that enforcement has been strict and effective.

In a recent memo, the student drug and alcohol coordinator warned of infractions and urged students to take the policy to heart. Source.

Parental ATOD use leads to behavior problems in children

Children whose parents used alcohol, tobacco or other drugs including cocaine while pregnant or in their infancy exhibit greater behavior problems through age 7 than other children, a study published in the February issue of Pediatrics has found.

"Our findings highlight not only a need for continued prevention and treatment programs that are directed toward illegal drug use but also a call for increased effort toward prevention of tobacco and alcohol use, which is a more prevalent problem and has as great an impact on childhood behavior problems as prenatal cocaine exposure," the study's authors write.

Source.