Tag: addiction

Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy Posted on

Traumatic Brain Injury and Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy…

Hyperbaric chambers come in all sizes Hyperbaric oxygen therapy (HBOT) saturates the body’s tissues with oxygen using a pressure vessel. HBOT is most often recognized as the treatment for Decompression Sickness (DCS) or “the bends.” DCS causes significant neurological injury and post initial injury. The dysfunctional changes are virtually identical to those caused by trauma. Thus oxygen under pressure has been used to treat neurological injuries since 1937, almost eighty years. No one has found a replacement or substitute treatment for the bends that works as well as oxygen. HBOT results in a 95 percent acute treatment cure rate for DCS in all of the navies of the world. Combining HBOT with other therapies that help brain-injured patients enhances the effect of those treatments and […] Read More

Depression Posted on

What We Are Not Being Told About Suicide And Depression

Shouldn’t researchers examine societal and cultural variables that are making us depressed and suicidal? For nearly two decades, Big Pharma commercials have falsely told Americans that mental illness is associated with a chemical brain imbalance, but the truth is that mental illness and suicidality are associated with poverty, unemployment, and mass incarceration. And the truth is that American society has now become so especially oppressive for young people that an embarrassingly large number of American teenagers and young adults are suicidal and depressed. In November of 2014, the U.S. government’s Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) issued a press release titled “Nearly One in Five Adult Americans Experienced Mental Illness in 2013.” This brief press release provides a snapshot of the number of Americans […] Read More

Psychedelic Posted on

Ayahuasca and its Effect on the Brain

The Jungle Prescription: Ayahuasca: —————————————-­————- The Jungle Prescription is the tale of two doctors treating their addicted patients with a mysterious Amazonian medicine rumored to reveal one’s deepest self. Dr. Gabor Maté has a revolutionary idea: to treat addicts with compassion. His work as the resident doctor in Vancouver’s Portland Hotel – a last-chance destination for lifelong drug abusers – has been courageous, but incredibly frustrating. Maté hears of an ancient medicine beyond his imaginings: one that could provide his patients with a solution. Related articles 2014: Unknown lights over Vancouver, Washington 1963: The Chessmen 1962: Terry Jacks 2004: Flying triangle over Vancouver 2002: 25 witnesses observed a black object Something Is Killing Life All Over The Pacific Ocean – Could It Be Fukushima? 1974: […] Read More

Medical, Smoking Posted on

Tell Young People the Truth: E-Cigarettes and Vaping Flavors Help People Quit Smoking

It’s ironic that anti-smoking advocates are attacking a practice that helps people not to smoke. Elected officials and anti-smoking advocates need to re-think their knee-jerk reaction and hostility to e-cigarettes and vaping. It seems like every day we hear a new attack – yet these products are actually helping some people quit or cut back on the much more dangerous alternative of smoking tobacco. In May, a large study out of England that was published in the journal Addiction made worldwide news when they announced that smokers trying to quit were 60 percent more likely to succeed if they used electronic cigarettes than over-the-counter therapies such as nicotine patches or gum. Despite these promising results, politicians are grilling e-cigarette companies. In a major New York Times piece last week, Senator Jay Rockefeller of West […] Read More

Drug's Posted on

Drug Treatment Court Fatally Misunderstands Addict Psychology

My son’s experience of drug treatment court highlights a failed system of catch and release courts. The following article first appeared in The Fix. Also on TheFix.com: The New Recovery; No Drugs, No Drink, No Problem—Straight Edge, Then and Now; CNN Reporter Clearly High While Talking to Anderson Cooper At least if he’s in jail, I know he is safe, I thought, desperately, as I accepted the collect charges from my son. I’m not sure if it was his fourth or fifth incarceration since he’d entered the drug treatment court program—I’ve lost count of the seven to 14 day sentences he has “served” for his disease in the last four months (not to mention the associated fees). Four months ago (six years into his addiction) my son […] Read More

Marijuana Posted on

You Can Have Your Kids Taken Away for Smoking Legal Pot

Marijuana may be legal in Colorado, yet harsh drug war laws still penalize society’s most marginalized women. The following story first appeared on RH Reality Check.  It is no secret that marijuana legalization in Colorado and Washington ushered in internationally unprecedented progressive drug policy in the United States. What is lesser understood, however, is that these new “experimental” reforms do not necessarily peel back all of the many, punitive layers of drug war enforcement. Despite the prevailing notion that the consequences of marijuana prohibition are determined in criminal courts for crimes like possession and sale, some of the harshest punishments are steeped in ever-complicated family law and Child Protective Services (CPS). Well-intentioned marijuana policy reform thus often leaves women, who are more likely to be […] Read More

Medical Posted on

Who Is Behind the Pain Killer Epidemic? Big Pharma, Of Course

The FDA approved Zohydro, with five to 10 times the abuse potential as its predecessor, OxyContin. There is good news and bad news when it comes to the nation’s decade-long opioid/heroin addiction epidemic. The good news is the government has cracked down on pill mills, strengthened warnings on pill labels and approved an injectable form of naloxone which reverses heroin overdoses and will reduce deaths in the hands of caregivers and police. The bad news is on the same day the FDA announced plans to tighten restrictions on hydrocodone combination products like Vicodin, it approved the long-acting drug Zohydro made from hydrocodone bitartrate which has five to 10 times the abuse potential of the infamous OxyContin. The FDA did so over the objections of many medical and public […] Read More

Marijuana Posted on

Frequent Cannabis Consumers Are Less Likely To Engage In Problematic Alcohol Use

Investigators analyzed data from a nationwide survey on alcohol and drug use. Those who report consuming cannabis two or three times per week are less likely to engage in at risk drinking behavior, according to data published online in The American Journal of Addictions. Investigators from Sweden’s Lund University, Department of Clinical Sciences, analyzed data from a nationwide survey on alcohol and drug use conducted by the National Institute of Public Health. Over 22,000 respondents between the ages of 15 and 64 participated in the survey. Researchers reported that frequent cannabis consumers (defined as having used cannabis two or three times per week) were less likely to engage in hazardous drinking practices compared to infrequent users (those who reported having consumed cannabis fewer than four times per month). […] Read More

Marijuana Posted on

2014: Study Shows Americans Are Ready to End the War on Drugs

A new national Pew poll on drug policy shows most Americans want a change. A new national survey released today by the Pew Research Center reveals that a broad majority of Americans are ready to significantly reduce the role of the criminal justice system in dealing with people who use drugs. Among the key findings of the report: More than six in ten Americans (63%) say that state governments moving away from mandatory prison terms for drug law violations is a good thing, while just 32% say these policy changes are a bad thing. This is a substantial shift from 2001 when the public was evenly divided (47% good thing vs. 45% bad thing).  The majority of all demographic groups, including Republicans and Americans over 65 years […] Read More

Drug's Posted on

2014: Intelligent People Are More Likely to Use Drugs. Why?

There’s a correlation between high childhood IQ and adult drug use. What does it mean? The following article first appeared on TheFix.com. Also on TheFix.com: Brain Restoration: Too Good to be True for Addiction and Disease?; Howard Dean and the Politics of Recovery; Tap Tap Tap: A Path to Healing and Recovery.  Two major papers have found a positive correlation between high childhood IQ and adult drug use. The first was published in 2011 (Intelligence across childhood in relation to illegal drug use in adulthood: 1970 British Cohort Study). The second was published in 2012(Intelligence quotient in childhood and the risk of illegal drug use in middle-age: the 1958 National Child Development Survey). Both were co-authored by James W. White PhD and all of the data for both research papers comes from The Centre for Longitudinal […] Read More