Category Archives: Addiction

Posted
May 16, 2012
Categories
Comments
No Comments
12-steps

Step it up

Steps 1 to 3: Give it up.

Steps 4 to 7: Clean it up.

Steps 8 to 9: Make it up.

Steps 10 to 12: Keep it up.

* borrowed from my friend JB

>> Read 12 Steps with Bible verses

Find a program:

Alcoholics Anonymous: “Alcoholics Anonymous® is a fellowship of men and women who share their experience, strength and hope with each other that they may solve their common problem and help others to recover from alcoholism. The only requirement for membership is a desire to stop drinking.”

Al-Anon: “Strength and hope for friends and families of problem drinkers.”

Narcotics Anonymous: “NA is a nonprofit fellowship or society of men and women for whom drugs had become a major problem. We… meet regularly to help each other stay clean. … We are not interested
in what or how much you used… but only in what you want to do about your problem and how we can help.”

Nar-Anon: “The Nar-Anon Family Groups are a worldwide fellowship for those affected by someone else’s addiction. As a Twelve-Step Program, we offer our help by sharing our experience, strength, and hope. The only requirement for membership is that there be a problem of addiction in a relative or friend.”

 

 

 

 

Posted
July 21, 2011
Categories
Comments
No Comments

Drug court: Budget cuts will cost taxpayers more $$

“A new study says that drug treatment courts, which state legislators cut funding for in the recent budget, are effective at reducing crime and drug use.

Drug courts also saved an average of nearly $5,700 per participant, resulting in a net benefit of $2 for every $1 spent, according to the study released Tuesday by the Urban Institute, a nonpartisan research organization in Washington, D.C. The Center for Court Innovation in New York and RTI International in the Research Triangle Park assisted with the study.

This year, North Carolina legislators cut $2 million in funding for drug treatment courts across the state…”

>> Continue reading “Study: Drug courts effective in reducing” at News-Record.com.

I’ve seen first-hand the effectiveness of Guilford County’s drug court. It doesn’t make a lot of sense to cut programs that save taxpayer dollars and change lives.

Posted
May 31, 2011
Categories
Comments
No Comments

“I know what saved me and it wasn’t rehab.”

Previously posted on 4/29/2006 with the title “Andrea, formerly homeless”

Notes taken at NightWatch benefit concert, 04/08/06, during a talk by Andrea, formerly homeless:

“I know what saved me and it wasn’t rehab.”

Andrea was living on the street, smoking crack, prostituting herself, she was raped, and she experienced the death of her daughter. She eventually came to a homeless shelter. About this time began to understand…

“I [once] lived on the other side of town [and] this kind of stuff didn’t happen… I didn’t know [before] that people lived like that.”

With the help of God, Andrea began to get clean.

“God is no respecter of persons. If He did it for me, He’ll do it for you. But He’s a Holy God and He calls us to obedience and to do His will, not ours.”

Posted
October 22, 2010
Categories
Comments
No Comments
from

Can crack cocaine come through breast milk?

Image adapted from Sean Dreilinger’s original

A frequently asked question from visitors to this site:

Can crack cocaine come through breast milk?

And the answer? YES.

When a breast-feeding mom uses crack cocaine, she may pass the drug on to her baby through her breast milk, with serious effects:

“Convulsions have been seen both in infants of breast-feeding mothers using cocaine and in infants exposed to passive crack smoke inhalation. Because cocaine and its metabolites can be found in breast milk for up to 60 hours after use, breast-feeding is not recommended.”

~ p. 225, “Drug abuse and withdrawal”, S Schechner, Manual of Neonatal Care, Philadelphia, 2004

Drinking crack-cocaine-tainted breast milk can severely damage a baby, and in some cases, may lead to death. (More here.)

Addicted moms? Get help: Find a treatment program or find an NA meeting.

Posted
October 3, 2010
Categories
Comments
No Comments

“He relapsed and it killed him. He was my best friend.”

image source: DEA

“…He had a massive heart attack from the first time he relapsed. He had been clean for so long he couldn’t get enough when he relapsed and it killed him. He was my best friend. I loved him so much…”

This is the nightmare you most fear when you love an addict. It became real for Vickie, who lost her boyfriend Richard on September 20, 2010 to crack cocaine addiction. Vickie calls crack “the devil.” I do, too.

Vickie writes about her boyfriend Richard’s death in a comment on the post, “The 7 Stages of Crack Cocaine Use“. Her comment is heartbreaking to read, but I admire her courage in sharing her experience, and I believe that her words may help others. They’ve definitely had an impact on me.

» Read Vickie’s comment here
» Read “The 7 Stages of Crack Cocaine Use”
» Related: “What You Need To Hear About Crack Cocaine”