Psyched

You always hear about people with addictions. But, what about their loved ones? For several years, I've been writing and speaking about the roller-coaster chaos they often experience while desperately trying to ‘help’ the addicts in their lives. While there is now a lot of help out there for the addicts themselves—in the form of treatment centres, detoxes and outpatient counselling—there is still, to date, little assistance offered to those who suffer right along with them.

Loved ones of addicts struggle too

Has anyone else noticed how early the Christmas chaos began this year?

Here in Vancouver, a number of people became so disgruntled by the early onset of Christmas music in some of the stores—in the middle of October—that they took to Facebook en masse and complained. One store in particular, Shoppers Drug Mart, appeased the naysayers by stopping that music, but only after they drew their line in the sand, assuring us that the carols would resume again at the end of October. And they did.

ANXIETY FOR ADDICTS

Even before Halloween came and went, I noticed that several of my clients were already becoming quite antsy about the upcoming holiday season—for a variety of reasons. People who struggle with addictive behaviors—anything from drugs and alcohol to eating disorders, gambling, sex addiction, or relationship addiction—wondered if they would be able to maintain their sobriety when they began to actually feel the loneliness, fear, and isolation that they had used these behaviors and substances to avoid experiencing.

“Rape is rape.”

That’s what Barack Obama said on the Jay Leno show.

Unfortunately, he was compelled to comment on this issue because the male Republican misogynists are at it again.

It wasn’t enough for Todd Akin to oh-so-stupidly announce that women who are “legitimately raped” have a biological mechanism that will enable them to spontaneously end their resulting pregnancies. Now Richard Mourdock has outed himself as a bona fide idiot by stating that when women find themselves pregnant as a result of rape, “It is what God intended.”

Excuse me?

As a dual citizen of the US and Canada, I have the right to vote. I’m especially glad about that in light of the fact that the US government wants me to pay several years’ worth of income tax when I have neither lived nor worked in America since 1974—and I know that millions of other people all over the world are in this same unfair and ridiculous predicament. If I have to pay taxes that I should not have to pay, then at the very least I should have the right to vote in the US federal election.  And I will.

I became addicted to drugs in 1973, when I was diagnosed with Crohn’s Disease.

When I first consulted doctors with my symptoms, they didn’t know what to do with me.

My disease was in its early stages and because Crohn’s was not yet a well-known condition at that time, there seemed to be no real protocol around how to deal with it.

Also, addiction was not on the radar then the way it is now.

I can forgive the doctors who continually gave me prescriptions for addictive substances—possibly just to get me out of their offices—for I believe they really didn't understand the severity of the damage they were doing to me.

But that was nearly 40 years ago—the times have drastically changed and the information we have about the links between prescription medications and addiction has been out there for a very long time now. It's easily accessible to anyone with an Internet connection—and yet the same practice of over-prescribing these drugs continues to run rampant.