punkdom
Posts: 16
Joined: 5/4/2005
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First addiction...
I just went through a long protracted issue with helping a friend through their addiction issues, in this case heroin.
That said, get a sponsor. Work the program. Work the steps. I noticed one thing about AA, NA, etc. - that the days my friend went, were the days she didn't use. But (and here comes my controversial statement) that's the upside and the downside of NA / AA. More often than not it substitutes a more positive dependency (meetings) for a negative dependency (drugs, alcohol, etc.) You become dependent on going in order to stay sober.
For most addicts, that's the best case scenario. Better meetings for life than using for life.
But let me say right now, meetings are awesome. Nice people. Great wisdom about life often shared. For anyone who hasn't gone to at least one meeting, even if you're not an addict, you should just to get the experience and learn what is out there. (I also highly recommend parents taking their kids to a meeting when they are young so they can be exposed to stories of how bad drugs and alcohol can get. Far better than telling them "Drugs are bad")
I digress though...
Even with the program, the number of people who relapse is still sadly very high. This occurs for two reasons 1) someone stops going 2) the underlying issues were never treated properly.
That second part is the most frustrating thing about treatment of addiction...
And addiction is so deeply ingrained in people's psyche's, its almost impossible to treat the true root causes of addiction - particularly coming to peace with one's past and conscious triggers (which working the steps and therapy can help) and the subconscious triggers of addiction (that therapy and steps don't work as well on)
That said - there are very few reliable methods discovered for treating the ingrained human subconscious, and most are feared (sometimes rightly so) by society because the subconscious is the least understood aspect of modern psychology. Its almost mystical.
The therapy that best treats the subconscious is hypno-therapy. Usually a hypno-therapist does trade school and receives some form of certification. It is a powerful alternative treatment for addiction I highly recommend because it can alleviate symptoms that meetings and traditional therapy do not handle (and has been shown scientifically to provide a high degree of efficacy.) But find a hypno-therapist you can feel at ease with, as they will be altering your behavior on the subconscious level.
Other more extreme treatments for addiction - Ibogaine. Its an African root bark that induces hallucinations and resets the human brain to ending addiction. I haven't done it, but researched it extensively. Its been shown that treatment with Ibogaine is multiple times more effective than AA in cessation of addiction. The American pharmaceutical industry, particularly the makers of drugs like subaxone and other heroin substitutes, have lobbied hard to keep it a class III drug because its herbal and therefore no one can maintain a patent on it. But there are ibogaine treatment centers in Mexico, France, and several other countries.
(I'll also say, as much as I hate their politics, think they are organizational robbery, and don't have their members interests in mind, Narcanon by Scientology is very effective in treating addiction, primarily because it involves what Scientologist do best, brainwashing a person with self help messages that eliminate the need for addiction. You can level a lot of criticisms against Scientology, but you can't take away from them their mastery of indoctrination)
In summary on addiction... It takes diligent moment by moment work to stay sober - and something the addict has the most difficulty with - willpower. Do everything and I mean everything you can to set yourself up for a sober life. Get a sponsor, get the number of other people's sponsors. Work steps. Make a schedule. Exercise. Do literally all you can to set yourself up for long term success and when you feel you've reached your goal, recommit yourself, because people still relapse ten years later. But know this, if some of the people I know could get sober, anyone can.
Next...
Child rearing....
Isn't there a manual on this? We've only been rearing children for thousands of years and its still a mystifying process and ever changing.
I am substantially less knowledgeable since I don't have children.
I personally am opposed to polygamous households and children. But that's not to say that children in poly households can not be brought up as well as traditional households (especially given the relative lack of good parenting that exists), its just presents a substantially greater challenge.
But one thing agreed upon in most literature and that I've observed in seeing how my well adjusted as opposed to maladjusted freinds were brought up: measured consistency is the key to good parenting. (and by key I mean the variable that most often explains why kids turned out well or screwd up - loving your kid is huge, I'm sure not being clumsy and dropping them on their head is huge too, but these are less the determinant variable)
When you add extra individuals into the raising of children, it has a way of diluting parenting consistency. When kids get conflicting messages, well there are tons of theories about what happens, but all of them are bad.
You add another "parental figure," the chance of dissonance among the messages children are receiving increases exponentially - but this can be fixed by assigning roles and responsibilities in child rearing amongst those in the household to restore consistency.
I argue that poly households tend to exhibit greater moral and social ambiguity than single parent or two parent households. There is a rigidity to the concept of monogamy - hetero or homosexual - in that it says one marries one. In the paradigm that consistency is key to good child rearing, polygamy scrambles that as relationships can consist of 3, 4, 5, basically an undefined set of partners. Furthermore, the complexity of these relationships and the standings of each party within them makes them substantially more confusing to children, and this confusion is generally bad for the minds of developing children.
But all this said, you can make the case that whose to say there is an objective definition of the "well brought up child" and is a child who grows up to graduate Harvard law necessarily better raised than the child who became a stripper?
I've gone on forever. Been on a forum writing binge I suppose.
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