Freedom and treatments for drug addicts

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Supine
Posts: 1017
Joined: November 27th, 2012, 2:11 am

Re: Freedom and treatments for drug addicts

Post by Supine »

Sanchez,

You simply do not grasp AA or its 12 Step spin-offs like NA (Narcotics Anonymous) or CA (Cocaine Anonymous). You can cherry-pick selective things (while misinterpreting what you select to quote) like a Protestant can cherry-pick the Hail Mary, crucifix, and veneration of the saints in the composite of the Catholic faith to argue Catholics (though rarely do they bring up the Eastern and Oriental Orthodox) are pagans deny the role of grace in salvation, the intercession of Christ, and worship the Virgin Mary as God.

If in fact I were a hardcore AA advocate I'd keep quiet about AA and would not recount somethings spoken about in AA meetings. You evidently fail to grasp this which indicates just how little about AA and its culture you understand. AA members (serious members) are never to bring AA, its name, into public controversy like I have in this thread. Anathema is recounting what is spoken in a meeting, outside a meeting.

I don't subscribe 100% to AA beliefs. In fact, I think its members should arise from out of the shadows and advocate for substance addicts the way the LGBTQ population advocates for its population.

But I know of nothing as Old School and Medieval in the Western World as AA, CA, and NA. Not one thing. Certainly not the "Q" ("Queer") in LGBTQ or the "T" ("transsexual") in LGBTQ or the heterosexual that thinks restraining from premarital sex is too much to ask and nearly impossible.

I learned of the drug Baclofen (sp?) from reading this book written by a medical doctor. He is a man of science and regards AA as Medieval and not scientifically sound. And I get his point as my own college education in the natural sciences has led me to believe in the sciences you seek a chemical resolution to a chemical problem. goodreads.com/book/show/5749299-the-end ... -addiction

AA regards itself as First and Foremost a Spiritual Program. Albeit, AA says that not taking the spiritual, mental, and physical aspects of the addict into account is an incomplete resolution to the addicts problem.

You seem to simply assume alcoholism and drug addiction are merely and only a moral, psychological problem. And then you take issue with my analogy drawn to heterosexual urges, homosexual attractions, or the objective fact that no human will drop dead in seizure or cardiac arrest if they forgo to "T" sex change in LGBTQ or the cross-dressing and demand to be called "them" instead of "he" or "she" in the "Q" of the LGBTQ. This is grounded in your formal education in Anatomy and Physiology? For these people are absent of "will" you deduce but the alcoholic and drug addict has no compromise in their "will" but simply "wants" to be the way they are.

Most people in AA--or so I've found them--prefer to think of substance addiction and homosexuality and transsexualism or queerism as having little to do with morality in and of itself. Albeit, they view the effects of one of those things,substance addiction, as having moral implications.

Very few of them think an addict will be eternally damned to hell.

But the Bible says that the drunkard, sodomite, and adulterer (the Bible lumps them into the same pool of damned) will not inherit the kingdom of heaven. I'm sure few anti-Christians have read the Bible enough, in their holy jihad against drug addicts and false claims of being "scientifically thinking," to even know crack cocaine addicts (drunkards) and homosexuals (sodomites) and people that commit adultery, are insinuated as being among those that will be eternally damned to hell. In the minds of this lot it is only the homosexual given this unfavorable and unjust distinction.

I do think in earthly terms it is far worse to be a drug addict than a homosexual or frequent, repeat adulterer. I'd rather have my son turn out to be a homosexual male that routinely has sex with some woman's husband without her knowledge or approval than a drug addict. Being a drug addict may not be the worst hell on earth (I don't know but imagine the disappearance of a child through abduction is far worse) but I tend to think it is way up there. And drug addiction, as with alcoholism, often comes with an increasing reduction/compromise in one's personal morals. One sinks to further and newer lows they thought they never would. But make no mistake a man's heterosexuality or homosexuality is pathetically weak in power relative to something like crack cocaine addiction. My lesbian friend had sex with MEN for crack cocaine. That's how weak her super-power, unbreakable lesbianism (in your liberal, anti-Christian minds) was relative to crack cocaine addiction.

So, if a person wants their daughter to keep her holy lesbianism intact and uncompromised by a male penis, then I'd advise that their lesbian daughter never get hooked on crack cocaine. As much as a mere "mind thing" you liberals and conservatives think crack cocaine addiction is relative to the genetically deterministic, not environmentally influenced, unbreakable lesbianism is.




From book link above:
by Olivier Ameisen

3.92 · Rating Details · 102 Ratings · 18 Reviews

"After years of battling uncontrollable addiction, I have achieved the supposedly impossible: complete freedom from craving." Dr. Olivier Ameisen was a brilliant cardiologist on the staff at one of America’s top teaching hospitals and running his own successful practice when he developed a profound addiction to alcohol. He broke bones with no memory of falling; he nearly lost his kidneys; he almost died from massive seizures during acute withdrawal. He gave up his flourishing practice and, fearing for his life, immersed himself in Alcoholics Anonymous, rehab, therapy, and a variety of medications. Nothing worked. So he did the only thing he could: he took his treatment into his own hands. Searching for a cure for his deadly disease, he happened upon baclofen, a muscle relaxant that had been used safely for years as a treatment for various types of muscle spasticity, but had more recently shown promising results in studies with laboratory animals addicted to a wide variety of substances. Dr. Ameisen prescribed himself the drug and experimented with increasingly higher dosages until he finally reached a level high enough to leave him free of "any "craving for alcohol. That was more than five years ago. Alcoholism claims three hundred lives per day in the United States alone; one in four U.S. deaths is attributable to alcohol, tobacco, or illegal drugs. Baclofen, as prescribed under a doctor’s care, could possibly free many addicts from tragic and debilitating illness. But as long as the medical and research establishments continue to ignore a cure for one of the most deadly diseases in the world, we won’t be able to understand baclofen’s full addiction-treatment potential
Image

-- Updated July 3rd, 2016, 10:41 am to add the following --

Excerpts from a science blog.

scienceblogs.com/bookclub/2009/03/03/th ... on-by-oli/
The End of My Addiction, by Olivier Ameisen: Could Baclofen Be the Cure We’re Looking For?

Posted by Book Club on March 3, 2009
(78)
More »

Originally posted by Scicurious
On February 26, 2009, at 1:06 AM
About a week ago, a prof in my MRU loaned me a book he’d just read, saying it would be right up my alley. He was very right. I couldn’t put it down. It’s already changed a great deal about the way that I think about addiction, as well as the way I think about finding a cure.

The book was “The End of My Addiction” by Olivier Ameisen. Half case report, half memoir, Olivier Ameisen was a well-known cardiologist doing some crazy good work in New York. Unfortunately, he was also an alcoholic. After more than a decade of broken friendships, joblessness, and near-death experiences, he managed to end his dependence on alcohol using a drug known as baclofen.

Addiction people will never say that someone is cured. Anyone is, at best, “recovering.” People are alcoholics or crack heads even if it’s been years or decades since they had their last dose. This is because they are merely abstinent. A single dose of that drug, or even a visit to places where they previously let the good times roll can spark off a huge craving that can trigger the entire cycle again, something a recovering addict must always be on the watch for.

But what if you could cure it? What if you could just take a pill and make it all go away?

Olivier Ameisen was a good person to write this book. Coming from a well-respected doctor, the spiral downward into addiction is even more striking.
So what happened? After many years of drinking, the closing of his practice, the death of his parents, and many other things, Ameisen ran across a study done by Dr. Childress, a well-known addiction researcher. She had a patient that had been given baclofen, a muscle relaxant, for his muscle spasms. The guy was also a crack addict, and after starting baclofen, he had a problem: he couldn’t get high. Not only that, he didn’t even really WANT to get high. Since her finding with this case study, Dr. Childress had performed a clinical study on drug addicts using baclofen, but the doses used didn’t have much of an effect on craving or drug use. Other studies had been done with rats and cocaine addiction, and some findings were promising, but levels of the drug seemed too high to put into humans. It seemed like a dead end.

But Ameisen didn’t know about the clinical studies. He had only seen the case study and the animal studies, and decided to try baclofen for himself. He called a friend of his who was a neurologist and asked how high he could go.

(An Aside: Baclofen. Beclofen is what is known as a GABA-B agonist. GABA, or gamma-hydroxy-amino-butyric acid, is the major inhibitory neurotransmitters in the brain, and GABA-B is one of its receptors. Alcohol is known to be a GABA agonist, increasing GABA in the brain, which may be cause of its anxiolytic effects. Some research has been done on GABA-A agonists as a possible treatment for alcoholism, but less has been done on GABA-B.)

It wasn’t known by researchers at the time, but baclofen was given in much higher doses than those used in the clinical trial. They had been using 40 mg. But it turns out that, for patients with muscle spasms, the dose can go up into the hundreds of mg with very few side effects. It’s about as safe as a drug can get, apparently. So Ameisen got a prescription and starting bringing his dose up.
Sanchez
Posts: 98
Joined: March 30th, 2016, 8:03 am

Re: Freedom and treatments for drug addicts

Post by Sanchez »

Supine wrote:Sanchez,

You simply do not grasp AA or its 12 Step spin-offs like NA (Narcotics Anonymous) or CA (Cocaine Anonymous). You can cherry-pick selective things (while misinterpreting what you select to quote) like a Protestant can cherry-pick the Hail Mary, crucifix, and veneration of the saints in the composite of the Catholic faith to argue Catholics (though rarely do they bring up the Eastern and Oriental Orthodox) are pagans deny the role of grace in salvation, the intercession of Christ, and worship the Virgin Mary as God.
First of all, the analogy to religion is right on in the sense that Twelve Steps is a religion. I'm glad you're not claiming otherwise, which many Steppers do. The difference between Catholicism and the Steps is the fact that there is no deception in Catholicism. It openly is what it is. With AA, there are two doctrines: the one that is presented to the outside world and the one they actually believe in. The outside doctrine for example claims that AA is compatible with all beliefs and that all they expect from members is the desire to quit drinking. The Big Book itself contains advice on how to recruit deceptively and how to tell non-believers that they don't have to convert to work the program.
Supine wrote: If in fact I were a hardcore AA advocate I'd keep quiet about AA and would not recount somethings spoken about in AA meetings. You evidently fail to grasp this which indicates just how little about AA and its culture you understand. AA members (serious members) are never to bring AA, its name, into public controversy like I have in this thread. Anathema is recounting what is spoken in a meeting, outside a meeting.
If you start a topic on addiction on any board, you will discover someone who's a Stepper. Go to any addiction-related board and they are full of people who are open about their Steppism. While the official doctrine teaches anonymity, Bill W. himself certainly didn't practice it. He regularly appeared on magazine covers and was called the most famous anonymous person in America. Because I understand the cult nature of AA, I don't take their traditions seriously. One of the other traditions says that AA is a program of attraction, not promotion. This has been circumvented by front organizations like Hazelden, which do the promotion. The traditions are just a front for cult activity.
Supine wrote: I don't subscribe 100% to AA beliefs. In fact, I think its members should arise from out of the shadows and advocate for substance addicts the way the LGBTQ population advocates for its population.
Advocate for what exactly? I'm curious to hear what your ideal approach to addiction would be like. Certainly it would be something that would prevent a lot of people from sobering up.
Supine wrote: I learned of the drug Baclofen (sp?) from reading this book written by a medical doctor. He is a man of science and regards AA as Medieval and not scientifically sound. And I get his point as my own college education in the natural sciences has led me to believe in the sciences you seek a chemical resolution to a chemical problem. goodreads.com/book/show/5749299-the-end ... -addiction
If that were the case, if addiction really was a chemical problem, we'd expect very few to quit independently. As it turned out, most have quit without help.
Supine wrote: AA regards itself as First and Foremost a Spiritual Program. Albeit, AA says that not taking the spiritual, mental, and physical aspects of the addict into account is an incomplete resolution to the addicts problem.
Another one of those deceptive tactics. To the initiated, the program is firstly spiritual. To the outside world, it is presented as a program for combating addiction, a program that's compatible with all beliefs.
Supine wrote: You seem to simply assume alcoholism and drug addiction are merely and only a moral, psychological problem.
I don't simply assume. My view is drawn from personal experience, observations, and most importantly mountains of research, which I linked to. If you refuse to read it, there's not much I can do.
Supine wrote: Most people in AA--or so I've found them--prefer to think of substance addiction and homosexuality and transsexualism or queerism as having little to do with morality in and of itself. Albeit, they view the effects of one of those things,substance addiction, as having moral implications.
I've been saying the same thing throughout this thread. People "in recovery" might blame themselves for the effects of their substance use, but they won't do the most sensible thing: quitting. Why? Because they see their use as outside their control. Not that long ago you said that your drug use has been a choice every single time and now you imply that you are absent of will. Which one is it? The idea that drug use is outside the moral realm is not simply immoral itself, it's also one of the main reasons addicts struggle.
Supine wrote: Very few of them think an addict will be eternally damned to hell.
You're implying that I think this way. Very clever. You're welcome to present a coherent argument instead of this dirt campaign. If I really wanted addicts to suffer endlessly, I'd support court-mandated AA-attendance.
Supine wrote: I do think in earthly terms it is far worse to be a drug addict than a homosexual or frequent, repeat adulterer. I'd rather have my son turn out to be a homosexual male that routinely has sex with some woman's husband without her knowledge or approval than a drug addict. Being a drug addict may not be the worst hell on earth (I don't know but imagine the disappearance of a child through abduction is far worse) but I tend to think it is way up there. And drug addiction, as with alcoholism, often comes with an increasing reduction/compromise in one's personal morals. One sinks to further and newer lows they thought they never would.


Agreed. Why then are you so mad at people who try to present a quick way out?
Supine wrote: But make no mistake a man's heterosexuality or homosexuality is pathetically weak in power relative to something like crack cocaine addiction. My lesbian friend had sex with MEN for crack cocaine. That's how weak her super-power, unbreakable lesbianism (in your liberal, anti-Christian minds) was relative to crack cocaine addiction.



I hope you do realize that about 95 % of what you say is not actually addressed to me, but rather to "Sanchez", a fictional character of your own creation. This fictional person is among other things opposed to Christianity, a liberal, a LGBTQ advocate, supporter of Obama, an American and who knows what else.
Supine wrote: So, if a person wants their daughter to keep her holy lesbianism intact and uncompromised by a male penis, then I'd advise that their lesbian daughter never get hooked on crack cocaine. As much as a mere "mind thing" you liberals and conservatives think crack cocaine addiction is relative to the genetically deterministic, not environmentally influenced, unbreakable lesbianism is.
I'll take your bait. Yes, homosexuality is genetically determined and unbreakable. What does this tell us about addiction? Does it negate the mountains of research on independent recovery? Does it present evidence of this supposed addictive disease?

I'll present that vital question one more time, this time as a multiple choice:

What is your future plan for the use of intoxicating substances?

A) I will never use again and never change my mind.
B) I will reduce my use to a level that is not harmful to myself or others.
C) I will use as much as I want to.
D) I don't have a plan. I will try to stay sober one-day-at-a-time, but I might go back to using.

Which is your answer and which is the most responsible answer?

Not having a plan is Twelve Steps-recovery in a nutshell. In fact, having a plan of not using is considered denial, one of the symptoms of the disease of addiction. Being "in recovery" is just a respectable way of sitting on the fence. On one hand, addiction has taken it's toll and quitting seems appealing. On the other, it's simply too much fun to give up. So people just stay sober on a tentative, one-day-at-a-time basis. The door to further use is kept open, as long as it is covered under clinical nonsense terms like "relapse" or "slip" to imply that the addict is not responsible for using. Families of addicts and society at large is expected to accept these ideas and in fact people who suggest quitting as a solution to substance abuse are considered bigots.

The real tragedy here is that while it may seem like the above reduces the stigma, it actually pushes the idea that there is something inherently wrong with addicts, that other people can't expect much from them and that addicts are not reliable people. If I were to interview you for a job, Supine, I would ask why I should trust you at all if you think some of your behaviour is outside your control. If you don't trust yourself, why should anyone else?
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Ackerleyacton
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Joined: November 28th, 2017, 7:27 am

Re: Freedom and treatments for drug addicts

Post by Ackerleyacton »

I agree, Unfortunately, society at large has a completely distorted image of alcoholic or addicted people. I think they trap in drugs or alcohol due to Depression and anxiety.

fresnoaddictiontreatment
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adamarisaddison
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Joined: December 9th, 2017, 1:52 am

Re: Freedom and treatments for drug addicts

Post by adamarisaddison »

Really informative thread for me, which shares lots of information about drug treatment.

Addiction Treatment Centers
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