Answer Addiction

Tag: alcoholism

  • Man Says Addiction Was Harder Than 200-Foot Fall

    Man Says Addiction Was Harder Than 200-Foot Fall

    “I’m determined to stay sober and to help someone. Every bad experience in your life can turn into an opportunity, and this is, like, a golden opportunity,” the man said.

    Twenty-one-year-old Daniel Henderson was out enjoying a spring hike in Utah last March when he took an ill-fated step. 

    “The trail just happened to be on the side of a cliff,” Henderson told KSL.com. “I wasn’t doing anything stupid. I just stepped on a rock and the ground gave out because it was thawing.”

    Henderson went careening more than 200 feet down the cliff before landing unconscious in a stream. A helicopter rescue crew took him to the hospital where he was in critical condition. He spent the next two months in the hospital, including more than three weeks  in a medically-induced coma. He broke seven ribs, his wrist and his shoulder, fractured his spine, and had a traumatic brain injury. 

    Still, he said that the nine-month recovery from the fall has not been as difficult as getting sober. 

    “Addiction was honestly harder than falling 200 feet off a cliff,” Henderson said. “I’m determined to stay sober and to help someone. Every bad experience in your life can turn into an opportunity, and this is, like, a golden opportunity.”

    This March, nearly a year after his accident, Henderson will celebrate four years of sobriety. Despite his challenges during this year, he has not had any relapse issues, he said. 

    Henderson said that he was an alcoholic at 16 after taking his first drink at 13. 

    “I had a really bad alcohol problem and I was homeless, sleeping under a bridge in Covington, which is across the Ohio River from Cincinnati,” he said. “I was in and out of psych units, jail. I was miserable. Nobody wanted anything to do with me, and I didn’t think there was a way to get out of it.”

    However, a rehab in California helped him realize that recovery was possible. 

    “That finally helped me get my life together,” he said. “They said that if you just put action into this and do what your therapist is saying and take our advice, things will get better.”

    After treatment he began working in Utah at Wasatch Crest treatment center. He said that his employer supported him through mental health challenges that arose during his recovery. 

    “They set me up for success by sending me out to Utah to treatment and, not only that, they stayed with me through it,” he said. “I could come down there and volunteer and run book studies or shovel snow and earn like $20 — stuff like that, and they were nothing but nice to me.”

    Now, Henderson is learning from his sobriety to help inform his recovery from the fall. 

    “I couldn’t change what happened, but I could change the outcome,” he said. “So I decided to change the outcome.”

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Does James Bond Have A Drinking Problem?

    Does James Bond Have A Drinking Problem?

    A new study did a breakdown of James Bond’s drinking behavior to determine if the secret agent has a “severe” and “chronic” relationship with alcohol.

    Over the course of two-dozen films over the past 60 years, James Bond was seen drinking alcohol 109 times—and often engaging in risky behavior when doing so—The Washington Post reports. 

    These numbers come from a recent study conducted by public health experts from the University of Otago in New Zealand, which concluded that Bond had a  “severe” and “chronic” relationship with alcohol and met more than half the criteria for alcohol use disorder. Bond also, according to the researchers, engaged in risky behavior during or after drinking.

    “Chronic risks include frequently drinking prior to fights, driving vehicles (including in chases), high-stakes gambling, operating complex machinery or devices, contact with dangerous animals, extreme athletic performance and sex with enemies, sometimes with guns or knives in the bed,” lead author Nick Wilson said in a statement.

    In Quantum of Solace, researchers noted that Bond drank six Vespers (gin, vodka and a mix of wines), which would have put his blood alcohol level at about .36 grams per deciliter. This, according to researchers, is nearly enough to lead to come, heart failure and death. 

    But Bond topped that in one of the Bond books, in which he had 50 units of alcohol in just one day. According to Wilson, that’s “a level of consumption which would kill nearly everyone.”

    In an email to The Post, Wilson wrote that the films are “very good for studying trends in behaviors such as smoking and drinking” and that “it was also a fun study to do— and the ridiculousness of some of Bond’s actions after drinking helped give the work some scope for a laugh.”

    A 2013 study also examined Bond’s relationship with alcohol in the books, stating that it had him “at high risk of multiple alcohol-related diseases and an early death.’” Researchers also added that his level of funtion “is inconsistent with the physical, mental, and indeed sexual functioning expected from someone drinking this much alcohol.”

    According to authors of the most recent study, Bond’s place of employment should have stepped in.

    “Bond’s workplace (MI6) should be a more responsible employer by referring him to work-funded counseling or psychiatric support services for managing his alcohol use disorder,” authors wrote. “These services should also determine whether he has any post-traumatic stress after killing so many people and having been tortured so often.”

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Dennis Rodman Pushing To Get Sober Again After Recent Relapse

    Dennis Rodman Pushing To Get Sober Again After Recent Relapse

    Despite relapsing, Dennis Rodman said he’s still focused on his recovery and doesn’t think he’s undone the progress he’s made over the past year. 

    Dennis Rodman says he’s in contact with his sponsor and attending AA meetings again after letting his sobriety slip two weeks ago. 

    According to TMZ, the star was out in the Newport Beach bar scene and had stopped going to 12-step meetings because they got boring. However, Rodman said he realized drinking again was a mistake and he reached out to his sponsor and his agent, Darren Prince, who has been sober himself for 10 years, for help. 

    “Dennis is the king of rebounds and he’ll rebound from this too,” said Prince. 

    Rodman entered rehab in January after getting a DUI. At the time, Prince said that was the culmination of years of substance abuse for the former NBA star. 

    “It’s no secret Dennis has been struggling on and off with alcoholism the past 17 years,” Prince said. “He’s been dealing with some very personal issues the past month and we’re going to get him the help he needs now.”

    More recently, Rodman told TMZ that the DUI got his attention. 

    “It was a wake-up call. . . . I’ve been doing pretty good man, considering the fact that before that it was up and down up and down being Dennis Rodman the party guy,” he said. 

    Despite his relapse, he said he’s still focused on his recovery and he doesn’t think he’s undone the progress he’s made over the past year. 

    “Now I got a clear view of what’s going on in life so that’s a good process,” he said. “It’s a long process and it’s gonna take time to get over the hump.”. 

    Early this year, when he was just 30 days sober, Rodman acknowledged that keeping clean was going to be tough.

    “I feel great, man. It’s kinda weird not to have a cocktail on a beautiful day in California but like I said, it’s just one day at a time,” he said in February. “I’m hoping that I can continue on my journey to be sober. That’s a long road.”

    Rodman has been in treatment before, including in 2014 after he returned from a much-publicized trip to North Korea. During that trip he appeared drunk and insinuated that an American in a North Korean prison deserved his treatment. 

    “What was potentially a historical and monumental event turned into a nightmare for everyone concerned. Dennis Rodman came back from North Korea in rough shape emotionally,” Prince said at the time. “The pressure that was put on him to be a combination ‘super human’ political figure and ‘fixer’ got the better of him. He is embarrassed, saddened and remorseful for the anger and hurt his words have caused.”

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Does Climate Affect Alcohol Intake?

    Does Climate Affect Alcohol Intake?

    Researchers investigated whether there was a connection between alcohol intake and climate for a new study.

    Could the climate where you live be leading you to drink more?

    Recent research says yes. 

    According to The Independent, a new study determined that across the country and the world, alcohol intake and related diseases increased as temperatures and hours of sunlight decreased. The study, conducted by researchers at the University of Pittsburgh and published in the journal Hepatology, looked at data from 193 countries. 

    Ramon Bataller, the senior author and chief of hepatology at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, says the study is the first to make the connection between climate and alcohol intake and disease. 

    “It’s something that everyone has assumed for decades,” Bataller told The Independent. “Why do people in Russia drink so much? Why in Wisconsin? Everybody assumes that’s because it’s cold. But we could not find a single paper linking climate to alcoholic intake or alcoholic cirrhosis. This is the first study that systematically demonstrates that worldwide and in America, in colder areas and areas with less sun, you have more drinking and more alcoholic cirrhosis.”

    More specifically, the study found that as the hours of sunlight and the average temperature fell, the intake of alcohol per individual, the percentage of the population drinking alcohol, and binge-drinking levels each increased. 

    According to study author Meritxell Ventura-Cots, people living in Ukraine consumed 13.9 liters of alcohol per capita each year in comparison to 6.7 liters in Italy, which has a warmer climate. The same was true in the US, where in Montana the average was 11.7 liters, compared to 7.8 liters in North Carolina.

    Bataller said the results of the study could help officials focus on colder climates and add resources there accordingly. He also, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer, said the results could help an individual with a history of family alcohol use disorder to keep the climate in mind when thinking about moving.

    There are a variety of possible explanations for the link, Bataller stated. One is that people who live in colder areas may drink more because it could lead to feeling warmer. In contrast, those who live in warm areas may be more likely to feel light-headed or unwell if they drink.

    Additionally, Bataller said, cold and dark climates can make depression worse for some people, which may lead to alcohol use. 

    Peter McCann, a medical adviser to Castle Craig Hospital in Scotland, told The Independent that these findings mean stricter laws on winter alcohol prices and advertising are justified. 

    “This weather-related alcohol consumption is directly linked to our chances of developing the most dangerous form of liver disease – cirrhosis – which can ultimately end in liver failure and death,” he said. “Stricter laws on alcohol pricing are surely justified when we consider the devastating combined effect of low sunlight and cheaper alcohol on consumption.”

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Eric Clapton Committed To Sobriety After Son’s Death

    Eric Clapton Committed To Sobriety After Son’s Death

    Rather than returning to drugs and alcohol to cope with his son’s accidental death, Eric Clapton turned to songwriting. 

    Legendary singer and songwriter Eric Clapton was just three years sober when his son Conor fell from a window and died at the age of four. Despite that immense loss, Clapton was more committed to his sobriety than ever following Conor’s death, according to a new biography. 

    “He was trying to beat the alcoholism when his son was just a baby,” biographer Philip Norman recently wrote Slowhand: The Life and Music of Eric Clapton, told Fox News. “He was fighting against it. But it was really the death of Conor that made him determined that he would never drink again.”

    Conor died in 1991 when he fell from the window of his mother’s 53rd-floor apartment in New York. Conor would regularly look out the window, pressing his face against the glass, but that day a cleaner had left the window open. Conor reportedly darted past the cleaner and fell out.

    At the time of Conor’s death, Clapton was on his way to pick up his son for a day at the zoo. 

    “He was enchanted by Conor,” Norman told Fox News. “He had become a companion. Not quite a baby, but more of a boy. Eric was waiting to take him out that day… Conor would normally run into the room and press his nose against the glass of the window. But it wasn’t there that day. He just went out. It was the most dreadful, horrible, unimaginable tragedy.”

    After Conor’s death, Clapton struggled with his loss, but maintained his focus on his sobriety, Norman said. Rather than returning to drugs and alcohol to cope, Clapton turned to songwriting. His ballad “Tears In Heaven” was written in the aftermath of Conor’s death. 

    “Eric first coped, strangely enough, by playing a song he had written when he was married to Pattie called ‘Wonderful Tonight,’” Norman said. “Which is very soft, almost like a lullaby… That was the initial thing that comforted him. Then he wrote a song about [his grief]. By a really cruel twist of fate, it became the most successful record he has ever released, ‘Tears in Heaven.’ That’s really how he got through it.”

    In 1992, the track won Grammys for “Record of the Year,” “Song of the Year” and “Best Pop Vocal Performance.” Despite its success, Clapton told the Associated Press in 2004 that he could no longer perform the song because it was too emotional for him. 

    Clapton’s daughter Ruth also helped him cope with his son’s death. 

    “Looking back on those years, I realize what a profound effect she had on my well-being,” Clapton wrote in his memoir. “Her presence in my life was absolutely vital to my recovery. In her, I had again found something real to be concerned about, and that was very instrumental in my becoming an active human being again.”

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Alcohol-Related Deaths Surge Among Women

    Alcohol-Related Deaths Surge Among Women

    A new study revealed that alcohol-related deaths among women have increased substantially from 2007 to 2017.

    Despite being overshadowed by the current opioid epidemic, alcohol kills more people each year than opioids—and it’s hitting women especially hard, with the death rate rising 67% between 2007 and 2017. 

    Lawyer Erika Byrd was 42 when she died in 2011. A few months before her death, after leaving a treatment center, Byrd had lunch with her father and admitted that alcohol had made her into a different person. Though doctors never said alcohol killed her, her father Ron says he knows it did.

    “The death certificate never says alcoholism,” he says. “It said heart arrhythmia and heart valve disease. But nobody in our family had heart problems.”

    According to USA Today, the new statistics come from a recent analysis from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington. The analysis examined alcohol deaths in the 10 years between 2007 and 2017 and found that overall, the death rate increased by 24%.

    However, the numbers when it came to women were especially concerning with the increase of 67%. In contrast, the rate for men increased 29%. According to USA Today, alcohol-related deaths include those caused by cancer, liver cirrhosis, pancreatitis and suicide. 

    Another study published last year in the journal Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research supports the idea that alcohol is becoming more problematic among women in particular.

    In the study, researchers examined data from emergency room visits from 2006 to 2014 and found that there was a significant increase among middle-aged women when it came to visits related to acute and chronic alcohol use. 

    According to New York City attorney and author Lisa Smith, who has been in recovery for 10 years, alcohol is a growing issue but isn’t being treated as such.

    “It is poison, and we’re treating it like it’s something other than that because there‘s big corporate money behind it,” she told USA Today. “A lot of people are getting really rich on something that is toxic to us.”

    Ali Mokdad, a professor at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, tells USA Today that there are often differences in problem drinking for men and women. In particular, he points out that women often begin drinking casually as a way to de-stress after the workday and the problem builds from there. 

    Stefanie Wilder-Taylor, an author and podcast host, agrees. “Moms just aren’t going to call home and say they’re stopping for a couple drinks after work with friends or going to the gym to unwind,” she tells USA Today. Instead, she says, they will drink at home while preparing dinner or relaxing.

    This was the case for Amy Durham, who nearly died from her drinking six years ago, at the age of 40. Durham was taken to the hospital with triple organ failure and ended up in a coma for more than a week. Afterward, she was on dialysis and placed on a liver transplant list. 

    Now, she has been in recovery for six years and works in the field, using her own story to reduce the stigma for women.

    “I want to show the world what recovery looks like, especially for women where stigma is still the way it is,” Durham says. “I want people to know there is hope.”

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Herbert Fingarette, Controversial Author Of "Heavy Drinking," Dies At 97

    Herbert Fingarette, Controversial Author Of "Heavy Drinking," Dies At 97

    Fingarette argued that heavy drinking was willful and that moderation is an option in his book Heavy Drinking: The Myth of Alcoholism as a Disease.

    Herbert Fingarette, the well-known, controversial philosopher who wrote that alcoholism was an issue of willfulness and not a disease, died at age 97 in Berkeley, California on Nov. 2, according to the New York Times.

    Fingarette was a prolific author of philosophy and law, well-known for his book Heavy Drinking: The Myth of Alcoholism as a Disease, which argued that despite cultural belief, there is no hard science proving that alcoholism is a disease. Fingarette believed that many people labeled “alcoholics” were actually not.

    Despite this argument, Fingarette was hardly cold-blooded when it came to the suffering of people with alcoholism and those who loved them.

    In Heavy Drinking, he wrote, “There is no reason to see heavy drinking as a symptom of illness, a sign of persistent evil, or the mark of a conscienceless will. Rarely do people choose a destructive or self-destructive way of life. On the contrary, we shape our lives day to day, crisis by crisis… We each share the propensity to choose opportunistically when under stress. So, on a series of occasions, a drinker chooses what seems the lesser evil, the temporarily easier compromise, without a clear appreciation of the long-run implications. 

    “If our righteous condemnation is not in order, neither is our cooperation in excusing heavy drinkers or helping them evade responsibility for change. Compassion, constructive aid, and the respect manifest in expecting a person to act responsibly—these are usually the reasonable basic attitudes to take when confronting a particular heavy drinker who is in trouble…”

    Fingarette was born in Brooklyn in 1921 and wed his wife Leslie in 1945. Leslie predeceased him in 2011. They had one daughter (and eventually two grandsons). Fingarette taught philosophy at the University of California, Santa Barbara for 40 years. Some of his coworkers were angered when his book on alcoholism was published; one coworker went so far as to write an entire rebuttal which was distributed as a pamphlet.

    Fingarette wrote in his book that moderate drinking was ignored as an option in the recovery community, when in fact it could be a viable option for those struggling with heavy drinking.

    At the end of his life, Fingarette was writing an essay on how the dead continue to shape the lives of the living. In his book Death: Philosophical Soundings, he had written, “People hope never to know the end of consciousness. But why hope! They never will.”

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Aaron Neville's Son Details Getting Sober, Helping Others

    Aaron Neville's Son Details Getting Sober, Helping Others

    “Keith [Richards] hated that I was smoking crack,” Neville recalled. “He’d look at me like, ‘What’s wrong with you? Get it together.’”

    Ivan Neville, the son of singer Aaron Neville, grew up with music in his blood in New Orleans. A prolific musician, Neville has played in Keith Richards’ band the X-Pensive Winos and The Spin Doctors. Sober for over 20 years, Neville is speaking out about his recovery as well as helping other musicians.

    According to the Miami Herald, Neville recently shared his journey to sobriety at Imagine Recovery, a treatment center in New Orleans. The event was sponsored by Send Me a Friend, an organization launched by guitarist Anders Obsorne to help other musicians in recovery.

    Neville said he first smoked a joint was when he was 11 and by the time he turned 18, he was regularly drinking and using drugs. Neville ended up playing on the Rolling Stones album Voodoo Lounge and even had a shot at joining the band. The Winos opened for the Stones at Giants Stadium, and if Neville played well, he could have landed a lucrative gig playing with Mick and Keith.

    Instead, he passed out backstage from drinking and abusing cocaine, and missed the gig.

    “It was a big blunder,” he confessed. “I blew it.” At the Imagine Recovery event, Neville shared a photograph that was taken backstage before he passed out. “I look green. So out of it.”

    Neville’s drug use even worried Keith Richards.

    “Keith hated that I was smoking crack,” Neville recalled. “He’d look at me like, ‘What’s wrong with you? Get it together.’”

    It took several rehab stints before Neville finally got clean at a program in Pasadena, CA. He checked in on August 14, 1998, did 28 days, and has been sober ever since.

    “I’ve never had nothing stronger than a Tylenol or Advil,” he says today. “It was what they call the Big Surrender.”

    Neville was afraid to re-enter the music business when he got sober, and it’s an issue that Send Me a Friend helps other artists with as well. (Send Me a Friend is a network of sober people that watch over musicians to keep them away from temptation when they play gigs.) Initially, Neville was scared he wouldn’t be creative without drugs and alcohol, a common fear for musicians in recovery.

    “After first getting sober, I was like, ‘How am I going to play? How am I going to be able to write songs?’ Then I got a clear mind and I’m like, ‘Oh, that’s how you do it. I can think and feel (stuff). It’s all there. It’s always been there.’”

    And when Neville went on the road with The Spin Doctors, he mapped out where the 12-step meetings were on the tour itinerary.

    “I was prepared,” he says. “I knew the kind of situations I might be walking into.”

    Neville was helped in his sobriety by Harold Owens, the senior director of MusiCares. Owens and Neville then helped guide Anders Osborne when he was ready to get sober himself.

    As Osborne confessed, “In the last year or so of my use, I kept reaching out to people. When you’re coming down or you’re feeling really depressed, you isolate a lot, but you also throw out these little calls for help. Ivan was one of my calls pretty regularly….He took a couple of my calls while he was standing onstage. That shows you the dedication to helping each other that the program has.”

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • "Sex And The City" Star Kristin Davis Credits Acting For Sobriety

    "Sex And The City" Star Kristin Davis Credits Acting For Sobriety

    “I don’t think I would be alive. I’m an addict. I’m a recovering alcoholic. If I hadn’t found acting…acting is the only thing that made me want to ever get sober.”

    Kristin Davis, best known for her role as Charlotte York on the hit HBO series Sex and the City, revealed in a recent interview that she credits her acting career with helping her beat alcoholism.

    Davis discussed her sober journey on the Origins With James Andrew Miller podcast, Entertainment Weekly reports.

    “I don’t think I would be alive,” without her career. “I’m an addict. I’m a recovering alcoholic. If I hadn’t found acting…acting is the only thing that made me want to ever get sober. I didn’t have anything that was that important to me other than trying to dull my senses.”

    Davis said she started drinking when she was young.

    “I didn’t think I would live to be 30,” she said. “Luckily I quit very young, before any success happened, thank goodness.”

    With her acting career, Davis realized she had “something that was more important to me than just drinking.”

    As a teen growing up in Southern California, Davis drank to help calm her insecurities.

    “I’m kind of shy normally, so I felt like I needed help,” she explained. “One thing led to another, and I was drinking.”

    Davis then turned to acting, but then she started showing up to her classes hung over, and she knew she had to make a choice. She told The Week, “I thought, It’s going to be one or the other. I can’t really have both.”

    After attending rehab, Davis confessed she would miss drinking on occasion. “Every once in a while, I’ll be with friends and they’ll be drinking red wine, and I’ll think, in a really innocent way, ‘Oh wow, that’s such a wonderful glass of red wine. Wouldn’t it be fun to drink it?’ Maybe it would be fine, but it’s really not worth the risk.”

    At the same time, Sex and the City made the Cosmo a very popular drink, and as Davis told Health in 2011, “It’s caused a lot of confusion out in the world. I get sent many a Cosmo! I never drink them. I believe [alcoholism] is a disease. I don’t think you can mess with it. There was a time when people who didn’t know me well would say, ‘Couldn’t you just have one glass of champagne?’ And I would say, ‘No.’ I’m doing well. I still have occasional bad days. Why risk it?”

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • AJ McLean Talks Recent Relapse, Recovery & Self-Care

    AJ McLean Talks Recent Relapse, Recovery & Self-Care

    “I have no shame in saying, I’ve relapsed over the past year. It’s no secret that this is a disease, and that it’s a daily struggle.”

    The Backstreet Boys are wrapping up their Las Vegas residency and are gearing up for their world tour in 2019, which will hit 27 countries—the boy band’s largest arena tour in 18 years.

    AJ McLean, who is in recovery, is up for the challenge. The Backstreet Boy has been to rehab in 2001, 2002 and 2011 for depression and alcohol use, according to People.

    Over the years, he’s learned a few hard lessons about recovery.

    “Sometimes, you’re just going to have the worst days possible,” he said. It’s a daily struggle. “You have to make it a lifestyle, you truly do. It doesn’t mean that you can’t have fun, and can’t be yourself.”

    Seeing recovery as a journey and not a destination also helps McLean stay grounded. “It’s not like, okay, I’m sober, it’s done. I’ll never drink again. No. You have to work at it daily.”

    By maintaining this mindset, McLean is not ashamed to acknowledge his mistakes as a person in recovery. “Look, I have no shame in saying, I’ve relapsed over the past year. It’s no secret that this is a disease, and that it’s a daily struggle.”

    As a father of two young daughters, McLean says it’s easy to forget about his own needs. “You know, it’s interesting about sobriety with family and with kids—you still have to put yourself first, and that’s been a real big struggle for me.”

    But it’s important to balance his family’s needs with his own, McLean says. “It will win if you don’t take care of yourself.”

    “Because I’m still very codependent, I’m Mr. People Pleaser… I want to make sure everyone’s cool,” he said. “[But] if you do that too often, then you forget about taking care of yourself, and you do tend to get lost in the sauce. And that’s happened to me numerous times.”

    After the death of Mac Miller in September, McLean mourned the loss of the young rapper. “I met him a couple of times at radio shows and he was a stand-up guy,” he told Entertainment Tonight in a previous interview. “You would never know that he had a problem—but a lot of people had no idea that I had a problem. Addicts can hide it pretty well, so all my condolences go to his family and friends. He’s another one gone too soon.”

    The Backstreet Boys’ upcoming 10th album is due on January 25, 2019. Then in May, they will embark on their DNA World Tour.

    View the original article at thefix.com