Alcohol Addiction Information

Opiate Treatment

December 29, 2009 By Psychiatric Disorders Help Leave a Comment

Opiate drugs are narcotic sedatives that depress activity of the central nervous system, reduce pain, and induce sleep. These, like other prescription drugs, could be beneficial to the body. However, the drug has the capacity to allow the body to become too dependent on it, leading to addiction.

Getting dependent to opiate is a disorder in the body’s central nervous system. Continuous and extended opiate use can cause the nerve cells in the brain to stop functioning as they normally and stop giving off natural endorphins. Opiate substitutes endorphins in the body. In return, the nerve cells start to degenerate and the body becomes physically dependent on opiates. Studies show that the brain has its own opiate and opiate receptors, which are concentrated in the parts of the brain that manages pain and emotions. Drugs that bind to opiate receptors in the reward centers of the limbic system that enhances the release of the brain chemical dopamine in another brain area called the nucleus accumbens. Flooding of dopamine in the brain produces a “high” of pleasure and relaxation which in turn could lead to addiction.

Normally, a substance dependent would take actions to conceal the addiction. But eventually it will start to show, both in their behavior and in their attitudes. Symptoms of opiate dependency includes obsessing over medications, obsessing over doctor appointments and the need to get more medicine, being restless, irritable, and angry when not getting enough opiates, being preoccupied with getting more drugs, lying about how much they have used or when they got the medicine, and lying to doctors or faking injuries or illnesses in order to get more medicine. Opiate addicts can go out of their way to the point of inflicting injury to one’s own body to get medication.

Treating opiate addiction is similar to treating any other drug addiction. And, the common denominator is that the patient should be willing to stop the addiction. Professional help is also needed for a high possibility of recovery from the addiction. First step of the treatment is the process of detoxification. In the procedure of the treatment, withdrawal symptoms could occur. Opiate detox and withdrawal can occur when one suddenly reduces the amount of opiates after heavy and extended use. Opiates could be an illegal drug or prescription drugs. Actually, it is the occurrence of withdrawal syndrome that pushes an individual to continue using the drug. Furthermore, people using opiates often experience drowsiness, vomiting, nausea, muscle soreness, constipation and dry mouth.

Opiate dependency was once viewed as a condition with no solution. Patients with opiate physical dependency were considered to have acquired an addictive personality or psychological disorder or to have suffered with a dysfunctional family life. However, studies have been made on how to heal this kind of addiction. After more than a decade of NIH-supported animal and human research, buprenorphine became one of the daily-administered medications most recently approved to treat opiate addiction. The discovery of the opiate receptor determined that buprenorphine worked like a treatment already available, termed methadone, by activating opiate receptors and mimicking opiate drugs of abuse. Receptor-activating medications can help relieve drug cravings and control a person’s addiction. Medications should also be paired with behavioral therapy such that the patient is encouraged to consider and be hopeful that the addiction would later on subside. To help deal with the addiction, behavior should be modified.

Opiate is a drug usually used to alleviate severe and chronic pain. Prescription drugs may be safe to take but exploiting it could always lead to danger. Small things can always lead to dependency where treatment is the only way out.

Overeaters Anonymous

December 28, 2009 By Psychiatric Disorders Help Leave a Comment

Even felt like eating another slice of that chocolate cake you had fifteen minutes ago? Sometimes, we eat more than what we need. We eat not only to be full and to satisfy our physical needs. Most of the time, we eat because it makes us feel good for a moment. We eat because it is our way of running away from the negative emotions we feel. When we feel depressed, we eat. We use food as ourrefuge, a sort of security blanket amidst our insecurities towards the world.

Our life’s physical, emotional, and social condition can be affected by the simple habits of eating and eating. Overeating can sooner or later lead to food addiction. Yes, there is such a thing as food addiction and for sure, one would not be happy with the effects.

Obviously, with too much intake of food or overeating, one becomes overweight. Being overweight does not only mean being oversize and having undesirable physical figure. It also would mean a possible health risk such as heart problems.

With overeating or compulsive overeating, people tend to use eating as a way to hide from their emotions, to fill a void they feel inside, and to cope with daily stresses and problems in their lives. Men and Women who are compulsive overeaters will at times conceal behind their physical appearance, using it as a blockade against society common in survivors of sexual abuse. They feel blameworthy for not being “good enough,” shame for being overweight, and generally have a very low self-esteem. They use food and eating to cope with these feelings, which only leads into the cycle of feeling them ten-fold and trying to find a way to cope again. With a low self esteem and often constant need for love and validation he/she will turn to obsessive episodes of binging and eating as a way to forget the pain and the desire for affection.

Consequently, because of this sad reality that many people are facing, the Overeaters Anonymous have come to being. Overeaters Anonymous is a twelve-step program for people with problems related to food including, but not limited to, compulsive overeaters, those with binge eating disorder, bulimics and anorexics. The requirement for one to be able to join Overeaters Anonymous is as simple as an individual’s desire to stop eating compulsively.

The sharing of experiences and the giving of hope are what the members of Overeaters Anonymous gets. The members give aid to each other in facing their individual battles with overeating. This cannot be done without the help of the very famous 12 Steps of Overeaters Anonymous which includes the following:

1. We admitted we were powerless over food – that our lives had become unmanageable.

2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.

3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.

4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.

5. Admitted to God, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.

6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.

7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.

8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.

9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.

10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.

11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.

12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to compulsive overeaters and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

There is also a custom which is being lived by Overeaters Anonymous Members. They are:

1. Our common welfare should come first; personal recovery depends upon O.A. unity.

2. For our group purpose there is but one ultimate authority – a loving God as He may express Himself in our group conscience. Our leaders are but trusted servants; they do not govern.

3. The only requirement for O.A. membership is a desire to stop eating compulsively.

4. Each group should be autonomous except in matters affecting other groups or O.A. as a whole.

5. Each group has but one primary purpose-to carry its message to the compulsive overeater who still suffers.

6. An O.A. group ought never endorse, finance or lend the O.A. name to any related facility or outside enterprise, lest problems of money, property and prestige divert us from our primary purpose.

7. Every O.A. group ought to be fully self-supporting, declining outside contributions.

8. Overeaters Anonymous should remain forever nonprofessional, but our service centers may employ special workers.

9. O.A., as such, ought never be organized; but we may create service boards or committees directly responsible to those they serve.

10. Overeaters Anonymous has no opinion on outside issues; hence the O.A. name ought never be drawn into public controversy.

11. Our public relations policy is based on attraction rather than promotion; we need always maintain personal anonymity at the level of press, radio and films.

12. Anonymity is the spiritual foundation of all our traditions, ever reminding us to place principles before personalities.

Overeaters Anonymous promotes the action of refraining from eating compulsively. With the adequate group support and the recovery tools used, the individual may not only achieve the desire to be able to control eating habits but also the will power to be in control in one’s life and improve self-esteem.

Cocaine Drug Addiction

June 3, 2011 By Psychiatric Disorders Help Leave a Comment

One of the most highly addictive substances known is cocaine. This substance turns on the ventral tegmental area and the nucleus accumbens. These are the areas of the brain that chronicles reward and pleasure. A pleasurable event happens when dopamine is let loosed on the brain and connects to a receptor. The use of cocaine impedes the reuptake of dopamine. This causes the dopamine to mount up in an area in the brain. This maintains the feeling of pleasure.

Drug addiction using cocaine generates an intense euphoria very quickly. This results to a personl with very high self-esteem, great energy, and the feeling of greatly accepted socially. Cocaine users claimed that they do not feel being drugged but rather they feel that they have become the person they always wanted. With high doses, cocaine use directs to negative behaviors such as impulsivity, compulsivity, and a high level of anxiety. After the effect of the substance wears off, a sensation of tiredness and melancholy sets in. This is then followed by a great amount of sleep. As a psychological and physiological effect, there is a powerful desire for the substance. It has been found out by numerous studies that cocaine addiction has been fueled by alcohol use and marijuana use.

The effect of cocaine wears off very fast. The cocaine user would then take cocaine regularly in sustaining the effect. A tolerance would sooner or later follow this set-up. Tolerance is defined as the drug user would yearn for larger dosage of cocaine to reach the usual effects he experiences.

Before the 1970s, cocaine was very expensive. Only rich individuals were able to get hold of this drug. A time came that the cost of cocaine was reduced that one’s socio-economic status did not matter anymore for this kind of drug addiction. Currently, in the United States of America, about 11 percent of people have tried cocaine at least one time in their lives. This fast reduction of cocaine’s cost lead to its widespread use. Rich and poor have now access in using cocaine. However, despite cocaine’s price reduction, the problem of rising dosage is still money to pay. Most cocaine addicts are teenagers who don’t have a stable job. These teenagers resort theft or prostitution to obtain money use to purchase cocaine. This is a kind of desperation that makes an individual take on extremely dangerous behaviors. Studies show a high percentage of cocaine users getting HIV.

There are two set of symptoms in cocaine addiction. The first set is the so-called intoxication symptoms. Part of intoxication symptoms are your heart beating rapidly, dilation of your pupils, nausea, your blood pressure increasing or decreasing, perspiration or chills, psychomotor agitation, vomiting, weight loss, chest pain, slowed breathing, muscular weakness, seizures, and changes in your behavior such as affective blunting, changes in sociability, anxiety, hypervigilance, impaired judgment, anger and interpersonal sensitivity. The second set is called withdrawal symptoms. dysphoric mood, fatigue, vivid an unpleasant dreams, oversleeping or problems sleeping, increased in appetite, and psychomotor retardation or agitation.

Cocaine addiction is quite dangerous. It doesn’t just have an effect on the user but also the people around him or her. It is best to get in touch with the nearest treatment centers in your country to make sure the available options for recovery. Fast and intensive treatment is the ingredients needed for faster recovery from this kind of addiction. Who knows? The life you saved might be your own.

Cocaine drug addiction is one of the fast way of getting dependent to a substance since the euphoric feeling wears off very quickly that you want more.