Answer Addiction

Tag: substance use disorders

  • Recovery Month: A Time of Celebration and Hope

    Recovery Month: A Time of Celebration and Hope

    September is National Recovery Month. We celebrate the millions of Americans who are living their lives in recovery from mental and substance use disorders and honor those who work to make recovery possible. We also take time to remember the people who have lost their lives and those who still need help.

    We are in the midst of a public health emergency. An average of 115 people die each day from an overdose of heroin or opioid-based pain medication, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Mental illness, particularly serious mental illness, also presents an urgent need for treatment. People with serious mental illness constitute approximately 20 percent of people incarcerated every year, one-third experience homelessness, and have a suicide rate 25 times that of the general public. Tragically, these and other factors result in people with serious mental illness dying anywhere from 10 to 25 years earlier than the general population.

    Even those who don’t face the worst outcomes from having a mental illness or an addiction still feel significant effects. Mental and substance use disorders affect people in every community in the U.S. so we must provide effective treatment and recovery services to all those in need. The National Survey on Drug Use and Health reported that in 2016, approximately 20 million people aged 12 or older had a substance use disorder and about 44.7 million Americans aged 18 and older experienced a mental disorder. In addition, an estimated 2.6 million adults aged 18 or older had co-occurring serious mental illness and substance use disorder.

    To help the millions of people with a mental and substance use disorders, Recovery Month serves to educate Americans about the benefits of treatment and recovery services. It also promotes three key messages:

    • Prevention works.
    • Treatment is effective.
    • People can and do recover.

    Communities across the country celebrate Recovery Month by hosting events that provide understanding, hope and help to people living their lives in recovery.

    The 2018 Recovery Month theme is “Join the Voices for Recovery: Invest in Health, Home, Purpose, and Community”. It highlights how a full range of treatment and support services are important to supporting recovery for people with mental and substance use disorders. Examples of such services include healthcare, housing, employment, education, and social supports. This theme represents the efforts of people working toward recovery, their families and friends, peers in long-term recovery and those who provide care to make recovery possible.

    SAMHSA will host the 29th Annual National Recovery Month Kick-off on September 6, 2018. The event will highlight SAMHSA’s treatment and recovery activities as well as share perspectives from the field and people living in recovery. I invite you to watch this special observance via webcast at https://www.hhs.gov/live/live-2/index.html#9156.

    Finally, I encourage everyone to get involved. Visit the Recovery Month website to see the available material and products, such as the Recovery Month Toolkit, public service announcements, logos, banners, flyers, posters and more. You can also find out what is happening in your state or local community through the Recovery Month event listing.

    View the original article at samhsa.gov

  • New Year’s Resolution 2019: Tobacco-Free Recovery

    New Year’s Resolution 2019: Tobacco-Free Recovery

    Quitting smoking is a resolution many smokers set for themselves.  It’s widely known that quitting has significant health benefits, but did you know it also can improve a person’s mental health?  And for those with substance use disorders, smoking cessation is associated with increased odds of long-term recovery.

    Smoking cessation is linked to decreased depression, anxiety, and stress.  It’s a factor in experiencing improved positive mood and quality of life, and is also related to improved substance use disorder recovery outcomes.  Research shows that quitting increases the odds of long-term recovery, whereas continued smoking increases the likelihood of relapse.

    As a result of this evidence, SAMHSA developed the recently released toolkit, “Implementing Tobacco Cessation Programs in Substance Use Disorder Treatment Settings” to aid in the integration of tobacco treatment in behavioral healthcare treatment.  The toolkit contains a quick guide providing an overview of the challenges associated with tobacco cessation and the benefits of being tobacco-free for those with substance use disorders.  It also includes tips that can be used in substance use disorder treatment programs to implement tobacco cessation programs of their own.

    In addition, SAMHSA awarded a five-year grant to the University of California at San Francisco to establish the National Center of Excellence for Tobacco-Free Recovery.  The Center provides technical assistance, training, and educational resources to promote the adoption of tobacco-free facility/grounds policies and the integration of tobacco treatment into behavioral healthcare.

    Research has consistently found that smokers with behavioral health conditions—like other smokers—want to quit, can quit, and benefit from evidence-based smoking cessation treatments.  Cessation counseling and medication significantly increase the chances of quitting.  The combination of counseling and medication is more effective than either is alone.  There are evidence-based resources to help smokers quit at www.smokefree.gov.

    View the original article at samhsa.gov

  • What Is Drunkorexia?

    What Is Drunkorexia?

    Experts discuss the relatively new disorder and the way it affects the body and mind.

    Eating disorders and substance use disorders are overlapping more often, according to registered dietitian and author Cara Rosenbloom. 

    What Rosenbloom is referring to is “drunkorexia”—when an individual, often female, does not eat all day or eats very little leading up to an evening of consuming alcohol. They may also exercise aggressively or purge before drinking alcohol. 

    “Drunkorexia addresses the need to be the life of the party while staying extremely thin, pointing to a flawed mindset about body image and alcoholism among college students, mostly women,” Rosenbloom writes in the Washington Post. 

    Drinking in this manner is dangerous, particularly because the lack of food in the stomach means a faster absorption of alcohol. According to Tavis Glassman, professor of health education and public health at the University of Toledo in Ohio, this can lead to more issues. 

    “With nothing in her system, alcohol hits quickly, and that brings up the same issues as with any high-risk drinking: getting home safely, sexual assault, unintentional injury, fights, blackouts, hangovers that affect class attendance and grades, and possibly ending up in emergency because the alcohol hits so hard,” he tells Rosenbloom.

    Drunkorexia may also lead to nutrient deficiencies such as calcium, B-vitamins, magnesium, fiber and protein, registered dietitian Ginger Hultin says. 

    “Alcohol can negatively affect the liver or gastrointestinal system, it can interfere with sleep, lower the immune system and is linked to several types of cancers,” Hultin tells Rosenbloom.

    Because drunkorexia is a fairly new disorder, our knowledge of the disorder is limited, while the existing research varies widely. 

    Glassman, along with others in the field, is hoping to have drunkorexia added as a legitimate diagnosis in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. They hope that doing so could establish some guidelines for professionals to identify the disorder, Rosenbloom writes.

    The addition to the DSM would also increase likelihood of insurance coverage for those who may need treatment.  

    Glassman and colleagues are working to combat the issue at the University of Toledo by bringing more awareness to healthy body image and decreasing body shaming.

    “We try to emphasize that the human body comes in different shapes and sizes, and remind students that when they look at the media, with computer enhancement and airbrushing, even the model may not really look like a model,” Glassman tells Rosenbloom. “We remind students to value people based on things besides their appearance.”

    Hultin adds, “If students see friends engaging in this type of behavior, they can intervene and encourage different choices or offer support or resources to address a potential problematic relationship with alcohol and/or food.” 

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Hospitality Industry Makes Efforts To Address Mental Health Issues, Addiction

    Hospitality Industry Makes Efforts To Address Mental Health Issues, Addiction

    Leaders in the industry are working to create national resources for those dealing with addiction and mental health issues. 

    The culinary world was shaken last year when celebrity chef and television host Anthony Bourdain died by suicide. Bourdain, well-loved by fans and peers, had been open about his battles with depression and history of substance use disorder. 

    But for Patrick Mulvaney, owner of the exalted Mulvaney’s B&L in Sacramento, California, Bourdain’s death was a part of something larger, Civil Eats reports. In 2018 alone, at least 12 people in the Sacramento hospitality and restaurant community lost their lives to “mental health complications.” 

    “It was brutal,” Mulvaney told Civil Eats. “Just in between middle of December and middle of January, four people died in Sacramento, hospitality people. Three of them were either working or had worked for us before, and one was a long-time Sacramentan. So, this is about as ‘home’ as home can get.” 

    According to Civil Eats, the 10 million Americans who work in the hospitality and restaurant industry are more likely than others to struggle with mental illness and substance use disorder. 

    This is something that the industry is beginning to take into consideration. Wolete “Sunny” Atherley is the owner of two restaurants in the Sacramento area and tells Civil Eats she tends to hire young adults from the area. 

    “They feel like they can be themselves [here]” she said. “Over time, though, I realized a lot of my young employees were dealing with depression.”

    According to Mulvaney, working in an industry built on caring about the needs of others is part of the reason why some people disregard their own needs.  

    “We have an industry with a problem that we don’t always talk about,” says Mulvaney. “We’re in hospitality, so we want to know how your soup is, whether your drink is right, or if your steak is cooked right, and we don’t necessarily think about ourselves that much.”

    As a response to the numerous deaths in 2018, Mulvaney has partnered with Kaiser Permanente, VSP Global, WellSpace Health, the Steinberg Institute and the James Beard Foundation to build a pilot program called “I Got Your Back.” 

    The program is meant to break the stigma about mental health in the industry and works through peer-to-peer or near-peer counseling. Certain employees are trained to identify warning signs of mental distress and are made available as support. 

    Mulvaney has also been hosting mental health workshops and seminars for others in the industry. Next, he tells Civil Eats, he plans to create online resources for industry workers to reach out for help. 

    “If we can affect even one person, then we’re good at my restaurant,” Mulvaney said.

    “If we can affect the city by having more of us in the restaurant world adopting I Got Your Back—and we want to do this across spectrums, not just James Beard restaurants. We want all restaurants from fast food to high-end eateries to adopt it—that would be cool. And, if this works [we’ll have] California, [then hopefully] Illinois, Oregon, Nevada, and other states bringing the conversation out and expanding the coalition of the willing.”

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Connection Between Addiction, Excess Social Media Use Explored

    Connection Between Addiction, Excess Social Media Use Explored

    A new study’s results could potentially change the way excessive social media use is treated.

    There’s been a lot of debate over whether technology and social media can be addictive, and a study has strengthened the connection between the behaviors of people with substance use disorders and those who use social media excessively. 

    “This result further supports a parallel between individuals with problematic, excessive [social media] use, and individuals with substance use and behavioral addictive disorders,” the authors of the study wrote in the Journal of Behavioral Addictions. 

    As part of the study, researchers asked individuals about their social media use and its effects on their lives and had them complete the Iowa Gambling Task, a measure used by psychologists to determine decision-making abilities. They found that people who performed poorly on the task were more likely to have excessive social media use. People who abuse drugs also generally performed poorly on the task. 

    “With so many people around the world using social media, it’s critical for us to understand its use,” lead study author Dar Meshi, an assistant professor at Michigan State University, said in a press release. “I believe that social media has tremendous benefits for individuals, but there’s also a dark side when people can’t pull themselves away. We need to better understand this drive so we can determine if excessive social media use should be considered an addiction.”

    Meshi added that with one-third of people on the planet using social media, researchers and health care providers need to better understand the ways this can affect health and social functioning. 

    “Our findings will hopefully motivate the field to take social media overuse seriously,” Meshi said. 

    People with substance use disorders are known for not making the best decisions, something that was also found in people who used social media heavily. 

    Meshi explained, “Decision-making is oftentimes compromised in individuals with substance use disorders. They sometimes fail to learn from their mistakes and continue down a path of negative outcomes. But no one previously looked at this behavior as it relates to excessive social media users, so we investigated this possible parallel between excessive social media users and substance abusers. While we didn’t test for the cause of poor decision-making, we tested for its correlation with problematic social media use.”

    In the study, authors concluded that the results could change how we as a society perceive and potentially treat excessive social media use. 

    “Our results have important societal implications,” they wrote. “Taking this into consideration, our current finding, which demonstrates a behavioral similarity between excessive [social media] use and substance use and behavioral addictive disorders, can influence the beliefs and practices of policy makers, therapists, and tech industry leaders.”

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Kevin Hart Details Forgiving His Father For Being Absent Due To Addiction

    Kevin Hart Details Forgiving His Father For Being Absent Due To Addiction

    With the help of his older brother, Hart eventually put aside his feelings and helped his father find help in rehabilitation.

    Comic actor Kevin Hart spoke at length about the process of forgiving his father, Henry Witherspoon, for being absent during his childhood due to drug and alcohol dependency.

    The Night School star wrote about his father, Henry Witherspoon, in his 2017 memoir I Can’t Make This Up, and said that while his father’s presence while he was growing up was both sporadic and prone to tumult, he has learned to look beyond those memories and focus on their relationship today.

    “Regardless of my upbringing and the way I was raised and how often he was in my life, he’s my dad,” said Hart. “I have a positive outlook on life regardless, and I’m going to love [him] because [he’s] my father.”

    Hart also detailed the difficulties in his relationship with his father in a 2016 interview with Howard Stern, where he explained that while he was growing up in Philadelphia, Witherspoon was dependent on “heroin, coke, crack, you name it, he did it.”

    According to Hart, Witherspoon even stole $20 that his son had received as a gift.

    Thankfully, Hart had a grounding force in his mother, who worked as a computer analyst at the University of Pennsylvania while raising him and his brother.

    “The reason I am the way I am is because my mom was so strong,” he said. “[She] was such a strong woman, she said, ‘Look, regardless of whatever your father’s doing and where he is, I have a job to do raising you. You’re going to do what you’re supposed to do and you’re going to grow up to be two intelligent men, me and my brother.”

    With the help of his older brother, Hart eventually put aside his feelings about his father’s absence and helped him find help in rehabilitation.

    There, according to Hart, “he met an amazing woman who turned his life around and helped him stay clean, and right now, he’s all about clean living.”

    Hart added that he saw no value in holding on to the pain of the past. “I don’t understand people who hold grudges,” he said. “Do you know how much time and energy it takes to hold a grudge?”

    Today, Witherspoon has a presence in his sons’ lives, for which Hart is grateful.

    “I’m in a position where I’m blessed and I can provide,” he explained. “I can say, ‘Here, dad, here’s a home, here’s a car, here’s some money. Go spend time with your grandkids. Be the best grandpop. The days you missed with me are the days we missed. It’s fine. I’m okay with that.”

    View the original article at thefix.com