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RE: ADDICTS - 12/3/2013 8:51:19 AM   
Kirata


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quote:

ORIGINAL: truckinslave

Thanks Kirata.

The Science of Mindfulness

The above is a link to a presentation on consciousness and mindfulness in the form of a panel discussion among experts in the field. It covers the correct approach to the practice and some of the current research. While it's long, running an hour and a quarter, I think you might find it interesting and worthwhile.

K.


< Message edited by Kirata -- 12/3/2013 8:57:00 AM >

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RE: ADDICTS - 12/3/2013 11:57:05 AM   
vincentML


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quote:

ORIGINAL: TheHeretic


quote:

ORIGINAL: vincentML

A music video. Fuck, Rich, even for you a new low for inconsequential posting.



Concert footage, to be accurate, Vince. You're not even at the Dick and Jane level, in understanding who an addict is, so you get baby food. (of course, for those who know the players and the story, the tragic irony is inescapable in that bit of music).



*SNORT! That's the best you can do? Seeking attention by slandering me? Pathetic. My ninth graders use to do that to each other.

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RE: ADDICTS - 12/3/2013 12:10:13 PM   
vincentML


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In summary, the ancient philosophies of yoga and mindfulness as applied to addiction are supported by recent scientific evidence from well-designed clinical trials and experimental laboratory paradigms. Exemplary research across multiple research programs now demonstrates that mindfulness-based interventions can target clinically relevant measures of psychological, biological, and behavioral functioning, all of which are implicated in the pathophysiology of addiction. ~Complementary Therapies in Medicine

It may surprise you to know that Gabor Mate' who I first linked would agree with you. Here is a link to Mate's spiritual teacher. I have no knowledge or opinion of the man. Perhaps you do:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJixbi1QrKo

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RE: ADDICTS - 12/3/2013 12:13:53 PM   
vincentML


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Compassion is a wonderful thing as well, until/unless it enables the drunk to keep drinking. To me, it's usually counterproductive to shield a drunk from the natural consequences of his actions unless one of those consequences is immediate death or GBI.

I don't think anyone suggested that was the definition of compassion.

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RE: ADDICTS - 12/3/2013 12:19:34 PM   
truckinslave


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Status: offline 		Well, I don't either. Not the definition.
But far too often, in my experience, compassion includes protection. And enabling.

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1. Islam and sharia are indivisible.
2. Sharia is barbaric, homophobic, violent, and inimical to the most basic Western values (including free speech and freedom of religion). (Yeah, I know: SEE: Irony 101).
ERGO: Islam has no place in America.

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RE: ADDICTS - 12/3/2013 12:49:48 PM   
vincentML


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Yet, at the end of it, the good doctor says that it's too soon to conclude whether epigenetic inheritance is real. I'm sort of an Occam's Razor guy.... And doesn't the whole thing becomes moot if they discover a combination of genes relegating acetylation and methylation independently of external stimuli?

A couple of things, Truck. Epigenetics is a new wrinkle in the science of human development so I would not wish to raise the hype too high at this early stage. What excites me is that it is a possible bridge between our environment and our genome. Here is a video which introduces a pair of identical twins one of whom is stricken with cancer, the other not, even though they shared all there lives together. There is also the study of the Dutch Hunger Winter to consider. In the late winter of 1944 as the Allies approached Holland, the Germans rationed the Dutch in the West to 700 calories a day. Sixty years later a study found significant methylation of certain genes among survivors who were in utero that winter. Some research with lab rats has shown a carry over of epi-changes to grandchildren. As I say, it is a young avenue of inquiry.

Perhaps you are from the First People and know their history of alcoholism but I find in researching the topic alcohol was introduced to the Indians by the first European traders. The Puritans left their lands voluntarily. It is probably more accurate to say they left lands in which they were strangers. The Hebrews had migrated around the Mediterranean long before the Roman destruction of the second Temple. If anything Israel was already a Hellenistic culture during the Roman occupation. The Jews in the Diaspora had strong support systems. Although there were instances of ghetto confinement many Jews assimilated into various European cultures. That was not true of the Indians in either North or South America. When I say they lost their homes I mean they were not just homeless but the victims of ethnic cleansing.

Regards.

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RE: ADDICTS - 12/3/2013 12:55:33 PM   
vincentML


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quote:

ORIGINAL: GotSteel


quote:

ORIGINAL: truckinslave
I'd sorta like to see a copy of that contract. Sounds like he thinks Karl Marx wrote it.


Yeah, I'm not convinced that primitive societies worked the way he thinks.

You don't think they formed kinship relationships? Really?

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Profile   Post #: 167
RE: ADDICTS - 12/3/2013 1:44:10 PM   
truckinslave


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Status: offline 		Yes, alcohol was introduced to the American Indian bu Europeans. Before they were dispossessed. And it decimated them. Far before any "ethnic cleansing" or homelessness.

The Puritans were despised in their own countries and left voluntarily much as does a man who voluntarily quits a job when offered a "choice" between resignation and termination. Yet they are not reputed to have had high rates of alcoholism.

Homelessness is far more often caused by alcoholism than vice versa- as any troll through the streets of our cities, or conversations with AAs will attest.

As for the Hebrews, I was thinking more along the lines of enslavement in Egypt. No spike of alcoholism known then or later (hungry Dutchmen or no).

The video was interesting but... I am not surprised by "drift" between aging twins. One gets a cold and the other does not. Epigenetics or exposure? And I am more unimpressed by the experiment with the mice. I must have a different understanding of "genetically identical" than the doctor therein. I came away with the understanding that the fat mice and the skinny mice came from different litters.... And nowhere was it explained how all the fat mice were identical twins to each other, much less identical twins to skinny mice from a different litter. Much research is done to produce a desired result (usually, more federal money. See: climate research).

Interesting, but in a very amorphous way.

_____________________________

1. Islam and sharia are indivisible.
2. Sharia is barbaric, homophobic, violent, and inimical to the most basic Western values (including free speech and freedom of religion). (Yeah, I know: SEE: Irony 101).
ERGO: Islam has no place in America.

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RE: ADDICTS - 12/3/2013 9:26:51 PM   
TheHeretic


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quote:

ORIGINAL: truckinslave

I hope none of my posts gave you that idea. Certainly it was effective for me, over time (rehab twice, in and out of AA for four years before I made it sober for a full year).
I think AA has worked the best for the most; but I have never met an AA who will tell you that there is a wrong way to get sober. If it works, it works. If not, try AA. If it helps (church, hard physical exercise, yoga, whatever), it helps... but keep going to meetings.



I believe the very worst thing you can give an addict is an excuse, and hot on the heels of that, is giving them someone else to blame. I'm sure Dr. Mate's theory is very popular among those who want both.

I have had AA types tell me I was doing it wrong. I've never been to rehab, never did the meetings. According to the AA model, I can't exist, yet I'll spend three days of a four day trip to Vegas maintaining a low grade drunken buzz, then come home and resume the daily routine. The liquor cabinet is well stocked and dusty, and there is an ice cold 5-pack in the fridge. I have a medicine cabinet full of pills, a desk drawer full of medical mj, and there is probably a little coke in an Altoids tin, if I felt like rummaging in the closet.

Now, just typing that short inventory has been enough to stir that little voice in my ear. I may have set myself up for a rough evening, or it may pass. Either way, because it seems like such a good idea right now, I'll be sticking to ice water tonight. It's been 16 years since I finally crawled away from the day, and I still can't scrape a sticker off glass with a razor blade, without my nose starting to run. I've walked into a bar, and turned around and walked right back out again because the vibe of the place was too close to how I used to love it.

I'm an addict, and I always will be. Whether that feature was installed by my DNA, by Mom leaving me in the crib too much, the chaos and trauma of my early life, or is something I downloaded myself when I started using drugs in grade school, is irrelevant. I'm the one who has to deal with it every day. I've stayed completely straight for years at a time, and frankly, sobriety is overrated.

In the AA program, people talk about the day they stopped drinking/using as the "birthday." For me, it was the day I came out of denial. April 8, 1994. The same day they found Curt Cobain's body, so I got to keep seeing 1967-1994 on TV the whole weekend. Not helpful, really. Taking control back from the demons took another 3 years, and finally putting 1000 miles between myself and people who weren't helping.

My experience is that you can ultimately find detente with the urges. The tendencies can be redirected. Currently, I'm hooked on those stupid little Angry Birds games, and I give that part of my personality free rein there. New update? I won't be going to sleep until every level has been opened up. Then I need to get those 3 stars, and after that, I have to fixate on those levels where I know a higher score is there to be earned. It costs me a few bucks a year, and the odd dirty look at work when I stay in the restroom too long. I can live with that, and so can everyone around me.

It all comes down to the person with the problem, and what they really want to do about it.



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RE: ADDICTS - 12/3/2013 9:53:36 PM   
tweakabelle


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quote:

ORIGINAL: truckinslave

Hope.
Hope is the difference between life and suicide to the addict/alcoholic.
Hope is the first thing we receive walking into our first AA/NA meeting. We meet people- happy, clean, successful people- who have overcome our circumstances and worse. We both hear and think: "If they can do it, so can I". Hope is, I think, the bedrock underpinning of AA.
Anything that keeps hope alive in a drunk is a good thing.

Compassion is a wonderful thing as well, until/unless it enables the drunk to keep drinking. To me, it's usually counterproductive to shield a drunk from the natural consequences of his actions unless one of those consequences is immediate death or GBI.

Yes I agree that hope is essential. Once hope is lost, then possibly all is lost.

There are all kinds of methods that can be adopted to keep the flame of hope flickering as people negotiate that dark place called addiction. In my experience and observation, tough love is one of the least effective ways of doing this. Again in my experience and observation sometimes 'tough love' may be more about rationalising the choices made by the person dispensing it than the best interests of the recipient.

Keeping addicts alive, ensuring they have access to clean safe using equipment, minimising health risks and exposure to disease, having appropriate services accessible and staffed ideally by who have been through the wringer themselves, ensuring they have shelter and good food all contribute to keeping hope alive. It seems senseless to me to withhold all this until the addicts reach the point where they are going to commit to change. For some this will amount to extinguishing hope when the opposite is required.

< Message edited by tweakabelle -- 12/3/2013 10:34:15 PM >

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RE: ADDICTS - 12/3/2013 10:52:03 PM   
tweakabelle


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quote:

ORIGINAL: TheHeretic

My experience is that you can ultimately find detente with the urges. The tendencies can be redirected. Currently, I'm hooked on those stupid little Angry Birds games, and I give that part of my personality free rein there. New update? I won't be going to sleep until every level has been opened up. Then I need to get those 3 stars, and after that, I have to fixate on those levels where I know a higher score is there to be earned. It costs me a few bucks a year, and the odd dirty look at work when I stay in the restroom too long. I can live with that, and so can everyone around me.


FWIW I really like this way of looking at things.

We live in an obsessive culture and none of us is obsession-free. There are simply healthy obsessions and not-so-healthy ones. Some rare individuals seem to be able to function well while maintaining a habit and then where's the problem?

Seen through this filter, recovery the process of replacing unhealthy obsessions with healthier ones. For some it's fairly straightforward, for others it's fiendishly difficult. There's no reason to get hung up on the 'whys' (or rather, the 'whys' are a completely different discussion), the 'whys' don't matter as long as you do it. The 'how' is the bit each person has to negotiate and that's where the focus should be.

Ultimately all anyone has to achieve is a level that they can live with and that the people around them can live with too. How any individual arrives at that point is up to that individual - and that doesn't matter as much as arriving there does matter.

< Message edited by tweakabelle -- 12/3/2013 10:53:33 PM >

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RE: ADDICTS - 12/3/2013 10:54:57 PM   
TheHeretic


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quote:

ORIGINAL: tweakabelle

Keeping addicts alive, ensuring they have access to clean safe using equipment, minimising health risks and exposure to disease, having appropriate services accessible and staffed ideally by who have been through the wringer themselves, ensuring they have shelter and good food all contribute to keeping hope alive. It seems senseless to me to withhold all this until the addicts reach the point where they are going to commit to change. For some this will amount to extinguishing hope when the opposite is required.



There is a line between keeping hope alive, and enabling, Tweak. I think you cross it, by the time you get to the end of your suggestions.

Tough love can be as simple as saying "no," to a favor, or calling "bullshit," on a rationalization, or taking them to get some fish and chips and a milkshake, instead of giving them money for "food."

_____________________________

If you lose one sense, your other senses are enhanced.
That's why people with no sense of humor have such an inflated sense of self-importance.


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RE: ADDICTS - 12/3/2013 11:47:59 PM   
tweakabelle


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quote:

ORIGINAL: TheHeretic


quote:

ORIGINAL: tweakabelle

Keeping addicts alive, ensuring they have access to clean safe using equipment, minimising health risks and exposure to disease, having appropriate services accessible and staffed ideally by who have been through the wringer themselves, ensuring they have shelter and good food all contribute to keeping hope alive. It seems senseless to me to withhold all this until the addicts reach the point where they are going to commit to change. For some this will amount to extinguishing hope when the opposite is required.


There is a line between keeping hope alive, and enabling, Tweak. I think you cross it, by the time you get to the end of your suggestions.

Tough love can be as simple as saying "no," to a favor, or calling "bullshit," on a rationalization, or taking them to get some fish and chips and a milkshake, instead of giving them money for "food."

None of the things you have listed seem like "tough love" to me. For that matter, I wouldn't feel as though any or all of the things I've listed sound like "enabling". But the good thing is that we are talking about degrees rather than having a more fundamental disagreement.

For some people, "tough love" is a euphemism to justify denial of all and any services to those struggling with addictions of varying kinds until they reach and commit to a turnaround . Clearly you aren't using it in that sense. However this is why I might seem a little over-sensitive about the term.

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RE: ADDICTS - 12/4/2013 5:57:46 AM   
thishereboi


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quote:

ORIGINAL: TheHeretic


quote:

ORIGINAL: tweakabelle

Keeping addicts alive, ensuring they have access to clean safe using equipment, minimising health risks and exposure to disease, having appropriate services accessible and staffed ideally by who have been through the wringer themselves, ensuring they have shelter and good food all contribute to keeping hope alive. It seems senseless to me to withhold all this until the addicts reach the point where they are going to commit to change. For some this will amount to extinguishing hope when the opposite is required.



There is a line between keeping hope alive, and enabling, Tweak. I think you cross it, by the time you get to the end of your suggestions.

Tough love can be as simple as saying "no," to a favor, or calling "bullshit," on a rationalization, or taking them to get some fish and chips and a milkshake, instead of giving them money for "food."


I have heard this theory before even to the point of giving them drugs also. I am not sure how making it safer and easier to get high is going to encourage anyone to stop using.

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RE: ADDICTS - 12/4/2013 6:07:05 AM   
Wendel27


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Status: offline 		 This is a very difficult topic to break down into message sized chunks but in my experience there are reasonable points to be made on both sides of the debate. Though I'm not certain about drugs such as opiates alcohol dependency, like certain mental illnesses can be traced through certain genetic lineages. As far as I'm aware that simply gives one a predisposition to these afflictions just as having certain genes will make you predisposed to easily gaining weight. They are not causative factors.

It's very difficult to apply any sort of blanket judgement's as each individual's reasons, or lack thereof, for using drugs are their own though there are usually similarities between tales. However I think when  discussing choice it's important to not try and minimise the part it has to play. To do otherwise skirts on a maze of moral relativity which in the end effectively leaves no room for argument or progress. One could argue that all addicts are scum and simply sat that the experiences you have had has affected the plasticity of your brain in such a way that you are incapable of holding another thought. You are no more responsible for voicing such opinions as the addict is for injecting heroin into their veins. Hitler is no more culpable than an army ant.

Personally I think it's an argument to stray away from as choice, in my opinion, is largely what makes us human. There have already been a myriad of options posited for dealing with addiction. The two main parties being tough love and a gentler version. From what I've seen the only difference in how effective either is is the choice of the addict. I think to remove or erode that element comes perilously close, albeit I accept in good faith, to dehumanising addicts.

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RE: ADDICTS - 12/4/2013 6:09:22 AM   
vincentML


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quote:

ORIGINAL: thishereboi


quote:

ORIGINAL: TheHeretic


quote:

ORIGINAL: tweakabelle

Keeping addicts alive, ensuring they have access to clean safe using equipment, minimising health risks and exposure to disease, having appropriate services accessible and staffed ideally by who have been through the wringer themselves, ensuring they have shelter and good food all contribute to keeping hope alive. It seems senseless to me to withhold all this until the addicts reach the point where they are going to commit to change. For some this will amount to extinguishing hope when the opposite is required.



There is a line between keeping hope alive, and enabling, Tweak. I think you cross it, by the time you get to the end of your suggestions.

Tough love can be as simple as saying "no," to a favor, or calling "bullshit," on a rationalization, or taking them to get some fish and chips and a milkshake, instead of giving them money for "food."


I have heard this theory before even to the point of giving them drugs also. I am not sure how making it safer and easier to get high is going to encourage anyone to stop using.

Making it safer and easier for them to live might be helpful, however.

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RE: ADDICTS - 12/4/2013 6:16:00 AM   
Wendel27


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Status: offline 		 ''Making it safer and easier for them to live might be helpful, however.''

A difficult line to tread Vincent. Personally I think access to clean needles, citrus packs e.t.c. are a good idea. With or without these a heroin addict will still use they'll just do so in a way almost guarranteed to kill or damage themselves. Beyond that certainly can be enablement. Whether or not it is tends to be down to the individual which is why it's so difficult to have effective blanket policies. Nothing works uniformly. Or at least nothing I know of or has seen does.

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RE: ADDICTS - 12/4/2013 6:17:48 AM   
LafayetteLady


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Status: offline 		Yes when hope is lost, all is lost. This isn't something to be applied simply to addicts but to much of life in general.

Your "experiences" with peopl using a tough love approach seem appalling. The reality is that "tough love" is basically a term coined in the late 60s/early 70s and means not much more than learning natural consequences.

Steal from people and you are going to find doors locked. Drive under the influence and flip the vehicle and the police will arrest you. Exhibit atrocious behavior and find yourself unwelcome.

And yes, whether you are an addict or just a boor, you will be told not to return until you can behave in an acceptable manner.

For the record, I don't think you understand the application of tough love at all and what you believe you saw of it was nonsense. Had yoy tried your "hippie love, approach on my brother within a week, you would have been evicted from your home, had all your belongs stolen and be lucky if he hadn't killed you.

Knowing which approach to use on an individual is very important. I'm talking serious hardcore addiction while what you have described sounds like "addiction lite." I'm sure in your mind you believe that your approach would have had my brother clean, sober and playing with his grandchildren now. I'm also sure that your single mindedness can be be extremely dangerous.

Everyone needs hope and love, even those that deny they need it. Also everyone deserves hope and love regardless of whether their actions make them undeserving.

Your hapy ending stories of those you claim to have cured of addiction (and to be sure ther is no cure),negates completely the destruction an addict leaves in their wake.

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RE: ADDICTS - 12/4/2013 6:24:19 AM   
vincentML


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quote:

ORIGINAL: Wendel27

 ''Making it safer and easier for them to live might be helpful, however.''

A difficult line to tread Vincent. Personally I think access to clean needles, citrus packs e.t.c. are a good idea. With or without these a heroin addict will still use they'll just do so in a way almost guarranteed to kill or damage themselves. Beyond that certainly can be enablement. Whether or not it is tends to be down to the individual which is why it's so difficult to have effective blanket policies. Nothing works uniformly. Or at least nothing I know of or has seen does.

True, Wendel. Nothing works uniformly. The point of the OP and every cite I provided was that the current uniform condemnation of addicts for character weakness or moral failure was not working.

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RE: ADDICTS - 12/4/2013 6:37:36 AM   
Wendel27


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Status: offline 		 Which is a fair point Vincent. I think the problem lies in that a great many addicts could, in their current state, twist such science to enable them to continue as they are.  I think that predisposition and choice is a vast, but overlapping, spectrum. There is little doubt that the brain changes to fit it's enviroment. I personally believe [though I know of no studies condoning the idea] that this is the reason it can be so murderously difficult to get long term victims of domestic violence to leave their partners [though please note I'm not suggesting for a second it's the only obstacle] however that doesn't preclude the ability to change those pathways or even simply deny them. i couldn't give a cite but I'm sure that current research suggests willpower is, like muscle, capable of being exercised and strengthened.

I think it's reasonable to point out that some addcits are where they are becasue it was far easier for them to get there than perhaps you or I. However I think it's important that that doesn't make it any more acceptable. In my experience the best example to illustrate this is paedophilia. From interviews and a great deal of close experience with child sex offenders I firmly believe that this is  a sexuality on par with heterosexuality and homosexuality e.t.c.. However it's an incredibly dangerous and damaging one. A few, very few, are able to control their implulses and remain abstinent and seek help....not that there is much help to be had beyond forms of chemical castration in relieving those urges. 

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