Photographer Chris Arnade and I work in tandem to document the Faces of Recovery series, penning journeys of addicts in Bronx, NY who have become clean. This coincides with the Faces of Addiction photos and writing series in the Bronx. Remarkably, most recovering addicts, teeming with harrowing accounts, are among the most positive, openly optimistic subset of people I’ve met.

Here are a few folks we’ve met in the past few weeks. Click on the photo or name for more of the story on Chris’s flickr page.

Gilbert — “I’m a good person. I feel with my heart. I feel good.”

Neylan — “Everything looks so different clean. I am starting to act like a child again, being silly, acting crazy when we go bowling. This is the most beautiful thing in my life. There’s something in my mind and my heart to make me love again.”

Manny — “I feel good and motivated now. I got a little freedom, and I am learning how to live life.”

Marie — “I feel wonderful now. I had no hope last year. I don’t have to turn a trick to get a bagel and a coffee.”

Subject: Marijuana Addict
Hi. My name is Jake and I am a recovering addict. I have been clean for about ten and a half months. Throughout that time I have spent many hours of spare time searching the web for articles about addiction. I have definitely hit a gold mine with your blog “the white noise”. However, I was (selfishly) disappointed to find very little regarding my drug of choice, marijuana.

Before I ever used, I was aware of the potential consequences. I heard what they told me in school about the drugs like cocaine and meth and heroin, but I don’t really remember anything about marijuana other than that I would be arrested if I was caught with it. I heard that some people who smoke marijuana get addicted to the “hard” drugs. The most ominous thing I heard about marijuana was that people who smoked it might get psychologically addicted. I was under the impression that one could defeat psychological addiction with a simple decision not to use.

I was pretty straight edge until my junior year when I saw a lot of my class mates beginning to smoke weed. I got curious, did a little research online and through my “peer experts”, and upon concluding that weed posed minimal if any risk, I got high. The high was nothing like I expected. It was intense. It seemed as though parts of my self had been blasted away and had been replaced by adrenaline, euphoria. It would take hours to describe the high thoroughly and accurately. The next time I got high was a few months later, in spring. I was alone and I found the same overwhelming adrenaline pumping, epiphany stimulating, euphoric high. I knew I had found the best toy I had ever had in my life. It beat cake, sex, tv, video games, etc. etc. etc.

By mid summer I was dumping out trash cans with ashes at the bottom so I could pick through and make a pile of charred green that I could smoke. For the next two years my life fluctuated between weeks of being high and weeks of being clean, trying to make up for late homework and ignored relationships. Over time, the proportion of high time to clean time became steadily more heavy on the high side. I went through several periods of suicidally. During my last six months of use the possible necessity to kill myself always seemed just a week or two away. My plan while I was at school was to jump off of a nearby parking garage. At home I would use my dad’s shotgun to shoot myself in the head. I didn’t want to feel what I felt when I wasn’t high. Luckily, I always got high before I was ready to actually kill myself.

Anyway, in the last three months of my use, I had been stealing whatever amount of money I thought I could get away with to buy my weed. Eventually my mom caught onto the fact that I was not only stealing from my family, but my girlfriend too (I stole from whoever gave me the opportunity). Fearing for my legal status she gave me an ultimatum, treatment or cops. I chose treatment and have been clean since (with the aid of AA).

Had I known of the devastating effects weed would have on me I would have never taken that first hit. I had no idea of the destructive potential of weed. I don’t know what effect just one site with legitimate information on marijuana would have but it might start to change the perception that marijuana is not really addictive. Throughout my experience, I had doubts as to whether or not I was addicted. The more valid information out there, the better an individual’s chances are of coming to an understanding that they need help. An addict who stops using saves themselves and everyone around them pain. The lack of info about the addictive potential of marijuana only feeds the vacuum of ignorance that sucks people deeper and deeper into addiction.

Concerns range, but strokes of consensus tint the voices. All communities are alike in this way.

West Deptford, NJ:

“I wasn’t aware of prescription pill abuse,” Connie Tighe said during a presentation at West Deptford High School Tuesday night. “It really wasn’t on our radar screen.”

As photos of Kevin—from his youth soccer team, or hanging out with family, or as a stony-faced football player in his No. 55 jersey—played out behind her, Connie Tighe unfolded her son’s story of addiction, which eventually escalated to him to the deadly combination of OxyContin and Xanax.

The painkiller abuse likely started after Kevin, a 1999 West Deptford High School graduate, battled through multiple knee and hand injuries as a teenager, Connie Tighe said, when he was prescribed powerful drugs like Percocet or Vicodin after surgeries.

Prescription drugs are particularly insidious, McKenna said, given their easy availability. While a teenager might have to hop in a car and drive 15 minutes to Camden to score street drugs, prescription painkillers could be sitting in a medicine cabinet a few rooms away.

Laguna Niguel, CA:

I still believe that educating parents and getting to the child at an early age is a good line of defense. Not the only one –but a start. The sweet spot for experimentation and addiction is age 12-15. Just say “No” doesn’t work.

We need many things in this state. One is a real-time prescription monitoring system that works and that physicians must use. We need to track who is writing the prescription, what they are for, and where they are being dispensed. We have real-time reporting on Facebook, why not for prescription monitoring.

Chelmsford, MA:

Opiates unfortunately are the leading cause of death for young adults in this area, and the number of kids addicted has been skyrocketing,” said Rosa. “So it’s two fold, it’s about educating the children on what drugs do what, and how you can go from dabbling to abusing to then addiction.

Los Gatos, CA:

Back in the day, marijuana was illegal and that was that. If teens smoked, they knew it was illegal. Today, however, youth face a different decision, a decision that can be blurry as result of the debate around medical marijuana.

Considering that this is an ongoing and growing concern, I am curious to know “How do you address and support your teen to make healthy decisions regarding marijuana use?” Or, if you are not yet a parent of a teen, “How will you offer prevention to your child regarding marijuana use?”

We punish drug users and criminals alike, tossing them in prison with only cursory and behaviorally-earned addiction treatment if any. Most attempts at ‘help’ lie in cold turkey cut-off approaches.

I posed a question in a sex addiction post last year:

Where do we as a society stand? Do we sympathize with addicts and want them to get specialized, tailored psychological help for the problem, avoiding lengthy prison time, or do we treat them as criminals who have made, perhaps, brutal, corrupt decisions? Here, I’m reminded of those with schizophrenia and mental disorders. Mainly, do we jail and judge people for violent or horrifying actions of bad brain chemistry? So far, the answer seems to be ‘yes.’

Of course, serious matters of lawbreaking need to be handled accordingly — but we should look for the potential causality, and at the least, a correlation among those criminally incarcerated.

The Daily Beast says it well:

Of the 2.3 million inmates in the U.S., more than half have a history of substance abuse and addiction. Not all those inmates are imprisoned on drug-related charges (although drug arrests have been rising steadily since the early 1990s; there were 195,700 arrests in 2007). But in many cases, their crimes, such as burglary, have been committed in the service of feeding their addictions. Rich, a professor of medicine and community health at Brown University, is worried that, by refusing or neglecting to provide treatment to these addicts, many U.S. prisons are missing the best chance to cure them—and in the process to cut down on future crime. Treatment can reduce recidivism rates from 50 percent to something more like 20 percent, according to the DEA. Yet it is not widely provided. “Our system has taken the highest-risk and most ill people and put them in a place where they have constitutionally mandated health care,“ Rich says. “What a great opportunity to make a difference. Are we just trying to punish people? Or are we trying to rehabilitate people? What do we want out of this?”

Which brings me to actor and comedian Russell Brand– Brand, a reformed heroin user himself, advocates treating addiction as a health issue and said as much to members of British Parliament. I agree. The needs of addiction coalesce into criminal acts. If we aim to find a solution to many types of street crime, we must think beyond the retributive to treat a source problem of lawbreaking: addiction.

++ Click to Enlarge Image ++

Image Source: SpinaBifidaInfo.com

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Via Recovery Connection
View More Addiction Related Infographics

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Source:LiveScience

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Via: Medical Billing and Coding Guide

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By: HomeHealthTesting.com

Hangover Heaven’s site says the basic service yields a hydration IV, while a premium package injects “intravenous hydration, anti-nausea and anti-inflammatory medications” as well as a “vitamin supplementation.” What’s in that mixture? The website doesn’t say, though it assures that pre-existing customer medical issues are taken into account. Uh-huh.

Along with resolving a hangover the company also touts improved skin appearance and general state of health. So you come out of a hangover better than before?

Other companies proffer hangover “recovery pills.” Here, advertising depicts someone drunk with jarring accompanying text such as, “in 5 hours he’ll be clearing flight 87 for takeoff.”

Both the ad and the bus send messaging to drink as much as you want, whenever you want, then cure yourself quickly and easily.

As a refresher, what is a hangover?

Alcohol causes the brain to block creation of the antidiuretic hormone vasopressin, which is responsible for sending water to our kidneys. Without it, the brain sends water to the bladder, bypassing body reabsorption and use. For every alcoholic beverage we drink, our bodies expel about four times that amount of water, known as the diuretic effect. As we expel water, we also expel essential salts and potassium necessary for good muscle and nerve function. Loss of sodium and potassium causes headaches.

Bottom line, we’re losing electrolytes and water, causing our cellular processes to struggle, leaving us with dry mouth, queasiness and headaches. Our bodies, through an array of unpleasant aftereffects, are screaming for all kinds of things, and biologically, teaching us a lesson for depriving our cells of nutrients.

Hangovers are a flashing warning of overload: Too much!

So what?

Not only are downing relatively unknown and non-medically supervised treatments potentially dangerous, they also makes binge drinking seem all the more acceptable, commonplace and non-severe. With college-age student alcohol overdose rates on the rise (29,000 alcohol-only ODs estimated in 2008), among other demographics around the country, what message are we sending?

I first went to Hunts Point in the Bronx as an interest lark, contacted by Chris who invited me to go along. I saw the photos on his blog, read the stories on addiction but still gave little thought (to my retroactive shame) on what I was actually getting myself into. Now I’m involved in the long-term project and series, parts of which I’ll post here.

Why post stories of addiction and personal travails on Scientific American? It’s cursory to scientifically recognize heroin as a depressant and crack as a stimulant, far deeper to see the sensitivity and empathy in heroin addicts, the edginess in crack addicts. When talking to crack addicts, you can feel the chord of volatility, the twinge of paranoia and distrust on the edges — can you conceive this in a scientific journal? (Yes, the drugs of choice in Hunts Point are crack and heroin.)

Science is obsessed with mechanism, so much so that the human element is often shoved aside, missed along the track of neurochemicals and frontal lobes, even though that’s what they themselves describe– the forest for the trees. In my last post, I received a hefty mix of feedback, some outlandishly negative, including an array of bitter emails: “Science belongs in Scientific American.” It’s the people who matter, which is why we talk about science. Context, in this case social context, gives rise to the need for science — the context is the people who are affected by the devastation of addiction. I care about science for its humanity, and I think those who equally care about the field should glance back and remember the reason for their study.

I’ve restarted this post at least 10 times. Write a paragraph, erase. Write again, erase. When Chris asked what I gleaned from my first few visits to Hunts Point, I gave something I presume to be the dim-witted or easy transmission of my mental fog. I had no idea what I had learned. I had learned too much, perhaps, a writer who can’t write through the swirling storm of emotion and experience.

After reflection, I can say this: positive spirits shine through and exist everywhere, beyond what I ever thought possible; some portions of the population aren’t given the chance to escape turmoiled confines; we give credibility and platforms to some types of addicts (the prescription drug abusers and alcoholics of the world) far more than others.

I’ve been to Hunts Point five times now and have spent a good portion of nights there. I briefly jotted this personal catalog after my first night in the Bronx, when I was reflecting in the moment on what I had just experienced of street prostitution and drug use, which was a marked departure from my usual mellow keel:

I know I smoked more cigarettes than I have in my life, both during and after. I know I lied down in my shower after returning and remained there, curled immobile, for some time. It [Hunts Point] felt akin to having my insides turned upside down — and I know how selfish it is to say how I was affected by a few hours in the neighborhood when this is a daily reality for many.

Shaken, helpless: me, not them.

The point: the lab knows but a modicum of addiction, in the end. People live the rest of it.

Since then, I’ve returned to Hunts Point, seeking the stories of unique, colorful people who have a straightforward, in-your-face addiction. No, they don’t have Oxycontin dispensed from their general practitioner or a taste for expensive wines, but they do self-medicate like the rest of America.

Science in all its empiricism should see the world and what it studies for what it is — beautiful, pained, troubled and triumphant.

We have enough people covering scientific papers and enough covering science factoids. What we need, and I won’t pretend to say I have the perfect answer, is how science is relevant in our daily lives, struggles and triumphs.

Addiction is a case study in struggles. This is a slap of a reminder of WHY we do science and WHAT we are helping. I will still report upon science news, but I’ll also tear through stereotypes and lend a light to communities and stories, which I think in many ways we need far more than mere news.

These are the human faces to your synapse, neurotransmitter and amygdala coordination, or lack thereof.

I’m proud to be on Scientific American, but I stand true to the people first, the people for whom I write in the first place.

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Here are few of the people I’ve been lucky to meet so far, photos courtesy of Chris Arnade (click on a name or photo to get more of a story on Chris’s flickr site):

Takeesha shared some of her heartbreaking story with me involving abuse as a young child by family members. She’s involved with crack now and “hooks” at times. She has a trusting, free way of speaking and openly adores Chris, running up to hug him on sight.

Craig I met outside a bodega my first trip to the Bronx. We smoked together and talked for nearly an hour. He had an easy way with words and ended many a train of thought with “y’know what I’m sayin’?” I did know — he made good points about the community, and about crack, his drug.

We ran into Cynthia on a quiet, side street, right when we were about to leave Hunts Point around 1 a.m. The mother of 15 was excited to parade this as the best photo she’s ever taken — she has it hung on a wall at home. She began hooking at 13 and began using heroin and crack shortly thereafter.

When I met Michael, he was dressed as Shelley, shaking, clearly undergoing withdrawal (from heroin and crack) and said he needed help finding a detox facility. He was afraid to check himself into a treatment center because he had open prostitution cases and wanted to avoid methadone because, he said, he had gotten badly addicted to it before. The police came and questioned Chris and I as we spoke to Michael. His sweetness, pain and the harshness of his situation shone through, and my heart hurt after. We haven’t seen him again, though I look and hope on every trip.

A special thanks to Chris for his quiet observation, and for putting up with my presence again and again. See a recent NY Times writeup and follow him on Twitter.

Tatiana is 24, from “a good family” that raised her in Brooklyn and the Bronx, and she began using opiates in 2009. At her low point, she began selling herself to get heroin, on “Craigs List Avenue,” as noted in her poem below. She’s had thoughts of suicide, fantasizing about throwing herself in front of the subway train, and cut herself when she was younger. For drugs, she renounced her full college scholarship.

Now, she’s been clean for 100 days and wants to go back to school, into international nursing, perhaps working in refugee camps. The poem she shares below is semi-autobiographical, the rest collected from other addicts in recovery. When asked what she would say to other addicts, she explains, “There’s a better way.” To non-addicts she would say, “Addicts are sensitive people who don’t know how to deal with their emotions.”

Take a look at Tatiana’s portrait, and see more of her story on Chris’s flickr page, the beginning of his “Faces of Recovery” photo series.

What’s the disease of addiction mean to you?
The inability to stop
jamming a needle into your veins
though you don’t have any good ones left?
What about sleeping in cardboard
boxes, park benches, in stairwells
because you needed the next one.
Fuck rent, light, food –
just use.

What was your hustle?
Sell drugs you didn’t even do?
Sell anything & everything –
TVs, food stamps, refrigerators, household products
Hell,
your body will do.
Finding yourself behind dumpsters,
alleyways, cars you didn’t even know
Or did you stroll on Craigs List Avenue?
starting with “strictly massages”.
But that’s not enough for the Beast within.
It needs you to hate yourself more.
Lower prices for higher (risks
of) bundles, rocks, bags,
that didn’t even get you high anymore.

It’s what makes you steal from your family
manipulate your mentally ill grandmother
into giving you money
what makes you lie to anyone you’ve
ever
cared about.

It goes much deeper than that.
Not a moral deficiency
but a sickness that kills
with proficiency
that starts when you’re little –
the people pleasin’ & actin’ out
wanting to be fitted for a new set of skin
because the one you had itched
and there was a hole in the seam
(where your soul seeped out)
and it was never good enough
for anybody –
not realizing you didn’t have to be good
enough for anyone but yourself.

It’s what makes you believe you’ll be right back
this time
Because this time,
it will be different.
It has to be — because I’M in control.
I can stop whenever I want
before the money runs out
before I lose my job,
my home, my kids
Before I lose my LIFE.

That’ll never be me.

It’s what told you robbing that bank
was a good idea,
that you’d leave one of your kids
at a gas station in Jersey
before you’d leave a single box of Symilac
out of the ten you had.
What denied you the necessities of life.
It’s what broke you down,
had you fixated,
STUCK
in a primitive, animalistic state.
What numbed you when you ate out of the park
What told you
THIS, is normal.

It’s normal to not bathe for days
Sleep on trains,
lie to everyone you know, including yourself.
It’s normal to want to die
to stand in the subway HOPING
someone bumps you into the tracks
as the 5 train paushes into the station.
What told you you won’t ever be any other way.
Once an addict, always an addict.
So keep doing you, &
keep feeding ME.

It’s what had you scraping spoons
and bags and stems –
praying for the slightest feeling outside
“normal”.
What had you looking for anything & everything
to get you outside yourself.

It’s what had me
throw away a full scholarship to a private college
at the end, too busy shooting pills
to take responsibility for my life.

It has us stealing time
like drunk drivers
stealing lives.

What does the disease of addiction mean to you?
It means we’re strong to still be standing after
all we’ve been through.
It means we’re wise, if we learn from our past.
It means we’re innovative — we will find
the means & ways to get what we want.
It means we’re persistent.
It means we can trust ourselves, trust in this
process
if we trusted our schemes would work.
It means we can have FAITH in a Higher Power
if we had faith in the drug man.

It means we can do anything
ANYTHING
we want
in this life.

Robin and Zoe

My name is Robin Kellner.
I live in New York City.
My daughter Zoe — my only child — died of an accidental drug overdose on April 9, 2007.
She was just 22.
She was bright, beautiful and talented. She had wonderful friends who loved her and whom she loved.
But, sadly and tragically, she got involved with drugs and made a terrible mistake one night.
Since her death, I’ve been talking to kids and parents about the dangers of drugs and drug abuse.
I can’t bring back Zoe. But maybe I can help prevent what happened to my daughter, from happening to someone else’s son or daughter.
This short video shows a portion of what I tell parents.
For a fuller version of Zoe’s story, I hope you’ll take a look at a website we created.
You may click on this link: www.zoe-story.com

Alcohol

The world drank the equivalent of 1.6 gallons of alcohol per person in 2005, according to the World Health Organization, averaging 2-2.65 gallons per person, per year, in the U.S. and Canada. The heaviest drinkers? Russia and European countries down 3.3 gallons per person and up. Take a look at this Economist map to see a visual breakdown.

Painkillers

Though we may not be on the heavy-handed alcohol spectrum, Americans take 80 percent of the world’s opioid painkillers (and 99 percent of the world’s hydrocodone), though we comprise only 4.6% of the globe’s population.

Cocaine

According to a 2010 World Drug Report, the world’s opiate and cocaine supply continues to decline. Cocaine use is down in America but up in Europe: from 2 million users in 1998 to 4.1 million in 2008. Global cocaine production declined by 12-18 percent between 2007 and 2009 and is down 28 percent this decade.

Heroin

Heroin manufacturing fell by 13 percent in 2009, in large part due to lower production and an opium poppy blight in Afghanistan and Myanmar. Overall, we’re cultivating less opium worldwide.

The Growing Trend?

Worldwide, painkiller and methamphetamine-like stimulant use is escalating. These stimulants are particularly problematic for monitoring drug trafficking, as they’re commonly manufactured close to distribution points. From a drug control vantage point, it’s more worrisome to have widespread homemade labs than pinpoint-able large-scale crops.

As the Executive Director of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime notes,

“We will not solve the world drugs problem if we simply push addiction from cocaine and heroin to other addictive substances – and there are unlimited amounts of them, produced in mafia labs at trivial costs.”

But how do we exact a block on homemade labs? We’re at the dawn of a new global drug enforcement problem — the guerrilla warfare of substances, not only with illegal stimulant creations, but with widespread, pervasive prescribed painkillers.

Rehab facilities, originally called “sober houses” and founded to create an isolated area removed from the temptations of substance abuse, are visited by a very small subset of the addicted population. In 2009, 23.5 million Americans were said to have needed specialized treatment for substance abuse, according to a Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration national survey. Of these 23.5 million, only 2.6 million received treatment — 11.2%.

Demographically speaking, 20-59 year-old white alcoholics go to residential rehab. And we’re not talking about celebrities who taut spa-like vacation experiences or prohibitively expensive options. Elite rehab facilities aside, publicly funded residential rehab facilities show eye-opening data, from the National Institute on Drug Abuse:

People who opt for rehab are alcoholics, predominately white and range across all ages. Marijuana users, too, represent a large portion of rehab pursuers, unsurprising considering the legalization battle and rise of medical marijuana prescriptions.

The alarming stat to me was that on opiates, or prescription painkillers. Only 5.9% of drug-related admissions in 2009 were opiate based, staggering considering the upswing in prescription drug abuse. Crack, stimulant (methamphetamine) and heroin all appeared in higher check-in percentages. Have we not yet realized that prescription drug abuse is a problem, or are those under the influence of opiates unlikely to elect for treatment? Perhaps, psychologically, it’s easy to use chronic pain (real or imagined) as a crutch, whereas alcohol abuse is increasingly more difficult to forgive.

Addiction, like most major diseases, has a way of taking over life and usurping identity. We see it as thus across platforms, TV to novels, and treat it accordingly in real life, i.e. “Suzanne is an alcoholic.” Well, actually, Suzanne is a single mother of three and jazz saxophonist, who, yes, also has a substance abuse problem with alcohol. The same can be said for those with medical hardships from schizophrenia to cancer. You are not your illness, yet you’re sometimes treated as such.

I carry an Alcoholics Anonymous 12 Step card in my wallet. It’s laminated, dirty from rubbing against bills and contains a typed set of the 12 Step Spirituality Principles. On the reverse side is a list of Character Defects and Character Assets. A man gave it to me after chatting with him, to impress upon me the vital nature of the AA Program and the fact that he is an addict.

I have mixed feelings on AA. I believe in camaraderie and community in times of strain and crisis. I believe in cultivating the knowledge that addiction is not character weakness. However, I’m not so sure as to the continual efficacy of defining oneself as an addict day in and day out. As much as it’s all-consuming, it’s a facet of life, not a definition of being. Does it take this definition to cope?

That theory of Alcoholism as Identity is perpetuated throughout our culture, an example being Chelsea Handler, widely known for mocking herself as an alcoholic without adding life substance or background to the description:

Somehow, many of the stories in her routines lead back to her self-awarded identity as an Alcoholic — take this clip on romantic comedies:

“I fall all the time. You know who comes and gets me? The bouncer.”

While funny, this clip, and countless other instances on her show, present Alcoholism reigning before her interests, life and personality. Somehow, cancer and heart disease aren’t joked about in the same light, nor by speaking on those do you become solely a Victim of Heart Disease or Cancer. I have narcolepsy, but it’s a small fragment of who I am. If we continue to treat addiction as a root characteristic of self, we’ll continue to have “personality flaws” instead of health issues, problematic people instead of those fighting a disease.

This technology, dubbed iHeal, contains an algorithm that aims to understand and predict when addicts will have cravings based on user input and data collected from a sensor band, including body motion, skin temperature, skin conductivity. And after detecting a craving, it will offer personalized multimedia support. Over time, and data collected, the platform will come to anticipate the user’s craving periods and preferred methods of support.

The drawback? You have to wear a wrist sensor. Researchers are working through kinks and fine-tuning feedback mechanism and innate biosensor hurdles: for instance, opiate abusers have higher physical responses to cravings compared to cocaine abusers, and the sensor will need to accommodate and recognize the differences. If successful, the platform could potentially offer something most of its real-life behaviorist counterparts can’t: guaranteed in-the-moment help.

And guess what? I have “substantially higher odds” of being a heroin addict. — Yes, that is based on preliminary data. But in this case, I’m not so interested in accuracy as I am about our reaction to the data and its implications. Here’s a look at my results:

Along with the array of data, genotypes, markers and studies, comes a forum to discuss it. Reactions ranged:

“So that’s why I like vicodin.” Genetically speaking, my body gets more out of opiates. Rock on! Ps I do not do Heroin, lol.

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I am an AG of Substantially higher odds of heroin addiction. I know this had to have come from my dad’s side because my father was an addict, my grandmother died in her 30s from a painkiller addiction and my uncle (his brother) slowly threw his life away on heroin (he is currently living in a drug house last I heard).

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I never tried heroin so I wouldn’t know that affect but as far as the painkillers I sometimes had to take due to my spine issues my body often wanted more and more which I fought, its kind of scary to see that this is why I had those cravings all these years.

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I have an increased risk of heroin addiction, which makes me worry because after the major surgery I had 2 months ago I was put on heavy amounts of Dilaudid (hydro-morphine). Now I find myself craving it and unable to feel comfortable w/ out it. I’m really worried about how hard it will be to completely stop using it and how long it will take for me to feel like I did pre-surgery…Scary.

What does this tell us? If we knew we were more susceptible, would we be less likely to try heroin, or would we want to test the theory?

Heroin along with morphine, oxycodone, codeine and other pain medications are derivatives of the opium poppy. Should high heroin susceptibility results make us wary of taking opiate-based medication, or do these results simply play into our psychology, eliciting something of a placebo effect if we take opiate prescriptions?

A commenter above notes that he worries over his Dilaudid medication, hydromorphone, a drug in the opiate family, after surgery. The way he phrased the thought, “I have an increased risk of heroin addiction…Now I find myself craving,” suggests that his heroin susceptibility results made him worry over his surgery prescription. Is this a good thing, heightening awareness of potential prescription drug abuse, or a negative one, increasing worry and medication paranoia?

Should, I, a person with higher heroin addiction potential, be concerned over drip morphine after surgery along with other opiates, like oxycodone and Tylenol with codeine for pain treatment? Is this data making us rightly aware or fearful and prone to hypochondria?

Avoiding a trigger like the beer aisle in the grocery store may seem like an easy feat, but many more reminders lie in the form of social gatherings and conversations. And the truth is, addicts likely begin thinking about alcohol long before they actually see it at a dinner party. In PET image scans, addicts’ brains show a circuitry frenzy and a chemical compulsion to use after being shown a ‘trigger’ image, such as a beer bottle, for even a third of a second. This timetable isn’t even long enough for the conscious brain to realize what it’s seen. In day-to-day life, even a flicker of a thought can cue a brain-mandated relapse, though a person may not realize what set their neural wirings off.

Addicts have a very sensitive ‘Go’ portion of the brain; the older primitive system responsible for survival instincts like getting food and finding a mate also pushes them to use their substance. This is part of the reason why relapse can occur after years of avoiding a drug: should an unconscious brain reflex be cued, addicts’ brains go into a primal “use to survive” mode. And actually, relapse rates for addiction are similar to those of other chronic diseases, like Type 1 Diabetes, hypertension and asthma.

Though it’s important to understand the quick and insidious effect of triggers, over time the brain can return to “normal” — regain healthy levels of neurotransmitters and their transporter bindings — which makes addicts less likely to relapse. However, even with renewed neurotransmitter function, addicts have to constantly manage their disease.

To this I wonder if we minimize relapse and alcohol abuse potential as a society. Of course, the liquor industry will always promote its products and Hollywood will continue to make them look glamorous, but what lifestyles and choices do we inadvertently choose to promote? Do we unknowingly make life difficult for recovering addicts, many of whom — neighbors, friends and colleagues — we may not know have a substance problem? Or perhaps worse, do we encourage an abuse problem?

As a writer, indulging in alcohol (and overindulging) seems a nearly mandatory hobby, a coping exercise and creativity jump-start, accordingly to jokes and industry stereotypes. Verbal and non-verbal lifestyle cues across business sects rarely come with alternatives; there’s no adopted group exercise or meditation, nor other healthy mood-influencing activities, acceptable or cool in office culture to ease the frazzled mind. Substances are the chosen cure-all for tonight, until tomorrow, next Friday or the next time creative process needs to hit again.

Here I look to a few fields I’ve been immersed in — journalism for one, business for another, science for a third. I’ve seen an editor too hungover to move in her office (and her accepting, disconnected colleagues), business executives ritually “pounding shots” after 5 p.m. COB on Fridays, vodka-soaked watermelon in a -30 degree science lab freezer. It’s not the fault of the business but the culture surrounding it. This type of wide-spread “relaxation” is somehow justified, perfectly permissible and a representation of camaraderie, however much it slyly encourages reliance on substance use.

This isn’t sustained relaxation, but it’s the socially understood and dominant unwinding medium. As a fellow writer once said to me, “drinking’s just what we do.” That sort of frightening logic suggests why substance abuse problems are almost too easy to slip into. Is complying to society’s norm worth the long-term consequences of triggering potential substance use, abuse or relapse in those around us, and in ourselves?

For years I’ve known a woman we’ll call Elaine. Elaine at the time was in her mid-40s, fun-loving and attractive. “Let’s do a drive-by,” she whispered. “We’ll go by Richard’s house. I want to see what he’s doing,” Richard her long-time ex-boyfriend. At this point, I slunk low in the car, envisioning an arrest or otherwise embarrassing debacle. I thought I was in the clear when Richard proved to be out for the evening. Alas, no, instead, Elaine went through Richard’s garbage. A woman, who, two hours earlier had swapped fashion tips on a routine shopping trip with me was now reduced to sifting out two bottles of wine in a trash can — to her, an obvious indication that he’s seeing someone, and a debilitating blow to her psyche.

My mind was racing — where had sense gone? Who would go to such lengths, risking further alienating the object of her affection?

And, of course, it isn’t just women. I once briefly dated a magazine executive, who, after I asked to part ways, proceeded to call my office and email me for months (even years) after the fact, begging for any sort of connection, a man who many would call the epitome of New York success with prestige, charm and influence. From where do these acts of desperation arise?

We hear stories like this again and again, taken to the extreme in stories and popularized in shows like Stalked on Investigation Discovery. (Disclosure: I work for a branch of Discovery.) Stalking, a frightening form of obsession, may, in some cases, be love addiction gone wild.

The “compulsive need” for a partner can be as psychologically dangerous as any drug, perhaps more so because we’re all seeking love in our lifetime, where as alcohol or vicodin could be weened from our lifestyle.

Reading anthropologist Helen Fisher’s “Why We Love,” I was staggered by just how much we actually need one another — we rise and fall with our lover’s heartstrings, exhibit emotional dependence, have moods that wane and wax with our lover’s. And who’s to say this is negative?

Fisher conducted a simple survey in the vicinity of an American university and a university in Japan (839 participants), which showcases our level of attachment to one another. Age, gender, ethnic group and responses through other key demographics remained consistent.

A snapshot of the findings:

- 73% of men and 85% of women remembered trivial things that their beloved said and did
- 79% of men and 78% of women said their mind continually drifted to their beloved when they were at school or work, and furthermore, 47% of men and 50% of women agreed that “no matter where it starts, my mind always seems to end up thinking about _________”
- 68% of men and 56% of women showed support of “My emotional state depends on how ________ feels about me”

We commit a high volume of mental real estate to whom we romantically love.

fMRI results support the notion that romantic love is a form of addictive drug (PDF), stimulating the same pathways as opioids and cocaine, the mesolimbic reward system. This, as Fisher points out, allows for tolerance, withdrawal and relapse. Sound familiar?

Like substance addicts, love addicts trying to break cycles with toxic partners need to avoid triggers, situations that stimulate their amygdala or reptilian brain and raise their cravings to “use.” These include old meeting places, songs, and shared pastimes.

Relapses look a lot like obsession, crazed, nearly unconscious actions, described by Derek Walcott’s “The Fist”:

The fist clenched round my heart
loosens a little, and I gasp
brightness; but it tightens
again. When have I ever not loved
the pain of love? But this has moved

past love to mania. This has the strong
clench of the madman, this is
gripping the ledge of unreason, before
plunging howling into the abyss.

Hold hard then, heart. This way at least you live.

It’s understandable why even the most “normal” among us seem to lose our minds when spurned or losing in love — we’re undergoing withdrawal. We seek neurochemical hits of this drug and would live and die for a fix, like many under the pull of a drug addiction. It’s our brain chemistry’s nature.

But ultimately, we’re all looking for a long-term relapse, a stable maintenance of this neurochemical flow, attachment, as Fisher notes in her TED talk below. The lesson here is to treat ourselves gently, to understand that this primordial drive for love and affection is present in us all, and to be kind with ourselves in recovering and feeling the need for it.

2. Champagne bubbles follow a science! Listen to the SciAm podcast and check out an explainer video:

3. A frightening portrait — what you think you look like drinking vs. what you actually look like drinking:

4. The biology of a hangover: your body needs its water supply!

5. Why mixing drinks gives you a worse hangover:

April 19 — Over 5,300 sites join the DEA’s second “Take-Back Prescription Drugs” mission, a community effort to collect unwanted, unused or expired prescription medication

June 30 — Operation “Pill Mill” arrests made for distribution of hundreds of thousands of illegal oxycodone pills

July 14 — Nevada police make a record 208-pound seizure of methamphetamine

July 20 — Over 13,000 marijuana plants seized in Southern Utah

July 23 — Amy Winehouse dies from alcohol overdose

October 21 — MDPV and mephedrone (common components of ‘bath salts’ stimulant) classified as a Schedule 1 Drug

November 30 — Officials discover a major U.S.-Mexico smuggling tunnel in San Diego and seize a record 32 tons of marijuana

December 14 — Alcohol and tobacco use cited at a historic low among teens but levels of marijuana, prescription drug and alternate tobacco products use remain high

December 23 — ‘No refusal’ DUI programs now cover 30 states, where police can obtain warrants to take suspected drunk drivers’ blood samples if suspects refuse breathalyzer tests

For a more extensive write-up as well as statistics, see Neurobonkers’ “2011: The Year in Drugs.”

Ironically, it’s reporters’ recounts, “factual” writings on courtroom trials, drug abuse and outcomes, wherein drugs’ effects become the most skewed, blurring vague qualitative notions with bare-bones science knowledge. It’s the news, more than the addicts, that gets it wrong, a problem I’ve seen again and again. This morning, I saw a recent addiction story touted on Twitter as ‘excellent,’ so I clicked the link. In the Tampa Bay Times story, “A young woman struggles with oxy addiction and recovery,” oxycodone is earmarked as the ‘deadliest drug of all’:

PRESCRIPTION DRUG abuse kills 40 Americans every day. That’s more than a threefold increase in the last decade, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Oxycodone is the deadliest drug of all. An opiate found in such painkillers as OxyContin and Percocet, it’s prescribed after surgeries and car wrecks, and to people in chronic pain.

Others take it just for the high. The drug works by blocking the spinal cord’s pain receptors. It doesn’t make the pain go away, but prevents people from feeling it, creating a sense of euphoria. Soon, they need to take more to get the same pleasurable escape.

Oxy makes junkies out of people who would never buy from a street dealer. It is everyman’s high, heroin in a pill.

Let me repeat it: ‘Oxycodone is the deadliest drug of all.’ Period. To be so deadly, it’s a wonder they let the likes of it out of the lab, let alone prescribe it for pain relief!

When I talk to high schoolers about drugs, a project I’ve been involved with for several months now, each group almost always inquires after the identity of the ‘worst drug.’ They, and we, are eager to know which is the be all and end all of drugs — the line which they can toe, or one they can fear. We can’t answer a qualitative drug inquiry any more than we can answer, “which color is the most pleasant?” We can show studies indicating the color by which people feel most calmed, or statistics on which drug aligns with the most hospital admissions, but we can’t choose a worst effect.

The problem lies largely in the validity vested in offhand media and journalism claims, such as the one above, especially when a story or briefing comes neatly packaged and ribboned with statistics. And with such a misunderstood and taboo concept as addiction, every attribution and claim counts. I’ve never heard an addict say, “my drug is the worst drug.” They know there isn’t such a thing. Such throwaway language stirs fear among those who may be medically prescribed oxycodone and creates a never-ending dark tunnel for those who may already be abusing the stuff. Assigning this attribution to anything is a terribly misleading form of poor reporting. Why is this drug so deadly? Under what instances and context? Here, apparently, ‘deadly’ is oxycodone’s mere existence.

According to dictionary.com:

dead·ly
   /ˈdɛdli/ Show Spelled [ded-lee] Show IPA adjective, -li·er, -li·est, adverb
adjective
1. causing or tending to cause death; fatal; lethal: a deadly poison.
2. aiming to kill or destroy; implacable: a deadly enemy.
3. like death: a deadly pallor.
4. excruciatingly boring: The dinner party was absolutely deadly.
5. excessive; inordinate: deadly haste.

And from that, I form my definition of oxycodone:

An excruciatingly boring drug, which aims to kill and tends to cause death.

So what do you think? Is it time to update the DEA description?

Though I’d never claim to know everything about drugs, I’d like to think I’m at least ahead of the curve – and these street terms were almost completely unknown to me. The middle-schooler hinted that while he didn’t know for certain what each of the foreign drug names like Hurricane Charlie meant, he thought they dealt with Ecstasy and bath salts.

A growing fascination of the media, ‘bath salts’ is a street name for a class of recreational drugs containing the active compound Methylenedioxypyrovalerone (PDF link), or MDPV. This compound was classified as a schedule 1 drug in October by the DEA, meaning that it has high abuse potential, no current medical use and no established safety protocol. Though scant pharmacology research has been done on MDPV, ‘bath salts’ are a known central nervous system stimulant and often induce hallucinogenic effects in users. The medical effects and consequences from chest pains to stroke are immense, and hospitals often struggle to sedate those facing psychosis from these chemical stimulants swallowed, snorted or injected. (For thorough explainers on the science and legalities surrounding MDPV, see David Kroll’s “Take as Directed” post lineup.)

In fact, though the 12-year-old didn’t know Hurricane Charlie’s actual identity (MDPV), he mock-crawled a spider up his arm, a pantomime the kids were enacting on one another after the assembly in fits of laughter. Clearly, psychosis was more cool and funny than it was a frightening prospect.

When kids hear the term ‘bath salts,’ they, using basic logic, may think of mom’s Bath & Body Works collection. Sure, MDPV or Methylenedioxypyrovalerone may not have the same ring as colloquial street slang, but it’s important to teach kids that we’re not talking about aromatherapy and exfoliation beads. What if, confused after hearing the idea of ‘bath salts,’ Junior decides to inhale mom’s scented relaxation collection? The medical implications of failed at-home highs and experimentation could be catastrophic.

Furthermore, street slangs morph and cool terminology changes often, leaving drug education based on such terms woefully bereft. This, for instance, is a short list of MDPV pseudonyms, courtesy of the National Institute of Drug Abuse (NIDA):

“Ivory Wave,” “Purple Wave,” “Red Dove,” “Blue Silk,” “Zoom,” “Bloom,” “Cloud Nine,” “Ocean Snow,” “Lunar Wave,” “Vanilla Sky,” “White Lightning,” “Scarface,” and “Hurricane Charlie”

We need to return to the science of what drugs actually do to our brains and bodies. This extreme brevity and methodology of glossing over key concepts inflicts more damage than it helps — kids enter the assembly knowing perhaps nothing and leave thinking the bath salts under mom’s sink make you act silly and see invisible spiders?

Worse, too, are news reports explaining the effects of ‘bath salts,’ revealing where you can buy the legal high in stores and displaying the products on the show, a horrifying form of well-intentioned press. As one YouTube viewer responded (and received thumbs’ up for), “woah! i gotta try that…thanks CBS”

What’s the lesson here? There’s a better way of providing lessons from these compounds: less discussion of slang and product names and more explanation of the science and detrimental effects. Are we stifling these drugs or offering them multimedia and curriculum-based platforms?

So I’m sitting in this school assembly and I’m like “Why do I have to be here?” Well the answer most of my seventh grade teachers would give is “ because its educational and beneficial to our society. The reason I say “why do I have to be here” is because I’m obviously an angel (hehe…) who would never do drugs. I mean, what the heck is “ White Lightning?” “Trail Mix?” “Hurricane Charlie?!?!?!” I admit, some of the kids at my school might do drugs, but I don’t think anybody does “Hurricane Charlie”! Sometimes I wonder about my school and what they teach us there. Now Cassie is going to ask me some questions.

Question: From what you know and what you’ve been taught, what seems to be the scariest drug?

Answer: Definitely “Hurricane Charlie.” ( I don’t know for sure what that is, but they talked about it and I think it’s ecstasy.) That sounds absolutely TERRIFYING!

Question: Is alcohol a drug?

Answer: Yes, it is. At the assembly, they said even though it’s not illegal, alcohol is a drug. They didn’t talk about it much, but they said too much can disorient your brain for short or long periods of time. (depending on how much you drink.)

Question: Do you think kids in middle school do drugs? Is it important to teach about it?

Answer: Probably so. Although I doubt a lot of kids do drugs, I do think it’s important to teach about it because it may teach kids how to act in the future or even in the present. (Although it might be less annoying to not have the assembly EVERY YEAR!)

Question: Do you think they teach the right stuff at the assemblies? Should it be in front of the whole school?

Answer: Yeah, I think they teach the right stuff at the assemblies. (Partly because the school can’t afford to teach the wrong information.) And yes, I think it should be in front of the whole school once. Then to the sixth grade every year for the new kids. Being in seventh grade, I’ve seen it twice, and will see it AGAIN next year. But I know the school has good intentions. (And the assembly is required.)

Question: What do you think about adults drinking and/or doing drugs?

Answer: Probably the same as I think about a kid doing it. I also think that drinking might be okay, as long as you do it i moderation. I think drugs alter your brain a bit more than alcohol, but you should still do it in moderation. Drugs, that different. If it’s illegal, don’t do it. And just because the manufacturers put on the “bath salts” containers that it’s “not for human consumption” doesn’t mean it’s not a drug. Just because that small loophole makes it legal, that doesn’t mean it’s okay.

Question: What do people do with bath salts?

Answer: At the assembly, they told us that you can mix it in a drink, (it’s a powder.) smoke it and other unnecessary and revolting things.

Question: Do you think you’ll try drinking and/or drugs when you’re older?

Answer: Drinking, probably. Drugs? I don’t think so. I don’t want to start having illusions and start feeling things that aren’t actually there.

Question: What is addiction?

Answer: Something that you’re drawn to by a chemical in a drug or other product. I’m not sure what causes addiction, but I know that it’s in cigarettes and different drug products and stuff like that. I guess if you put your mind to it, you can stop. If you smoke, if you don’t smoke for seven straight years, your lungs are completely healed. I learned that from my mom.

Question: Anything else you’d like to say?

Answer: Drugs are dumb, stupid and completely irresponsible of a person to do. Going out to all the people in the world: Don’t do drugs.

Bio: I’m Sam, I’m 12 years old, I live in SC, I hate drugs and I’m an angel. (Hehe…)

But every time I’m sick, a tiny little space deep inside my psyche is smiling — I can have Nyquil again.

For me, Nyquil elicits pleasantly heavy, hallucinogenic dreams and pre-sleep experiences, which I, because I fervently enjoy dreaming, relish. It’s nearly magical.

However, I’ve known a friend who so much enjoys the quality of Nyquil sleep that he struggles and has headaches when finally trying to get off of the stuff post-sickness. This got me thinking, how many of us have a favorite feel-better trick or dependence? Or worse, one that slips into our post-sickness lives?

Wired does a nice explainer on what Nyquil actually contains. One of its components dextromethorphan, or DXM, is found in many over-the-counter cold medications and is a recreational drug of small infamy. According to the DEA website, DXM abuse increased over 15% between 1999 and 2004.

DXM can cause hallucinations, dissociation and psychedelic trips, among other things, when taken to an excessive degree (12 times the recommended amount) or less for those with drug sensitivity. And it’s not just the adolescent demographic, most known for intentionally “Robotripping.”

Though it sounds likely an unlikely choice of habit for the rest of the population, some rely upon it as a crutch after giving up another addiction, like alcohol, trading one substance problem for another. Jane Lynch, Sue Sylvester in the popular TV show Glee, is one such example. Lynch gave up alcohol 20 years before finding cold medicine as an accidental substitute.

After a quick internet search, I found many a help request from those unsure what to do when they find themselves reliant on Nyquil or another cold medication, an example can be found in this “Nyquil Unite” LiveJournal blog from 2005:

It all started when I was in Japan. I was active duty in the Marines. Well we used to get terrible typhoons and when the power went out, we wild out. I say a Navy corpman doped up like never before, like he was on percoset or something. Well with random drug testing, we weren’t allowed to share drugs of that sort so we turned to the best over the counter solution to all problems….NyQuil. It was almost every day after work, I indulged in the pills. Then the liquid, then the the pills and the liquid, I WAS LOVIN IT. I got pregnant soon after, I had to quit. 9 months later, I was back in action and so was my NyQuil. You can turn to it for anything. When you day totally sucks, just drink a bottle and wake up tomorrow. Depressed, drink up, you forget it all. It is the best!!!! I am sooooo obsessed.

More troubling are those who research and claim to understand the implications for what they do:

I take it nightly for sleep problems [Otherwise, I do not sleep at all.], and have slowly become addicted, it would seem. It’s my little legal drug-buddy, and everyone knows it; I educate myself in the field of narcotics as much as I can, so I know what to trust. While Diphenhydramine [Sominex] used to do it for me, NyQuil has become my favourite sedative, aside from hospital anesthesia. I walk around while the effect lasts, laughing silently at the numbness in my legs and arms; not a good idea, I know, but walking down a stairwell in such a state is simply wondrous.

In the end, how many of us strive for mind-altering from time to time? It’s legal, right? Where’s the line between a pleasant night’s sleep and drug dependency or abuse, and more importantly, will we know when we cross it?

Acetaminophen and other components of common cold and fever-reducing OTC medication have health risks and side effects. Check out safe use and risks outlined here.

Facets of the film resonated on multiple levels, as I think they will across scores of addicts and for those familiar with substance abuse and addiction. Though slow-paced, it gives a snapshot into an addict’s life and an ending which offers little answers — a perfect film for pondering. For me, parts produced goosebumps and seemed well-timed for the holidays.

For many of us with addiction in our lives, holidays are painful — wracked with memories of loved ones under the influence, horrific arguments or absent family members. I war with traveling back to my hometown, tension mounting towards the time of my supposed “vacation,” fearing the seemingly mandatory wince-worthy conversations and the drama. Over the course of the film line after line became real, surely phrases which have circulated, bird-like, in my household:

“We’re not bad people. We just come from a bad place.”

“We’re family, we’re meant to look out for each other.”

“I make you angry all of the time, and I don’t know why.”

“I find you disgusting. I find you inconsolable. I find you invasive.”

The irony here is the indistinguishable nature of the character reading the line — is the addict speaking or the family member? The exhaustion woven throughout is palpable, frustrating barricade after barricade obstructing communication.

The film widely misses the trite addiction genres common of on-screen performances, and if anything, puts the viewer in a place to sympathize and transcend feelings of annoyance surrounding the holidays. Though this isn’t your typical Christmas movie, it might act as a much-needed spoonful of tolerance, and couldn’t we all use a bit more of that?

Grade: A. Go watch in theatres!

Seen it? Have a different take? Let’s talk in the comments below.

As seen in the online version, this story about a serious, detrimental issue contained stock photos of sexy images, such as women in fishnet stockings, as did many an offshoot and put-down of the story. Though the ‘sexy’ stereotype is hard to overcome for such a red-hot topic, I expected something slightly more befitting the alarming nature of a compulsive, obsessive, often embarrassing and life-harming problem, the likes of which are seldom glamorous. Here, at least in photos, sex addiction seems, well, sexy.

True, Newsweek hits a couple of softer key points, though most of us likely gathered these while navigating the waters of 1999 (or have since gleaned more valuable insight from a dusty 2004 Dateline write-up):

1. Sex addiction exists.
2. It’s not just middle-aged men.
3. It can cause substantial problems in multiple realms of life.

However, once past the lace veneer comes the force and sadness of such debauchery and the real problems it poses in society, especially in terms of men and women arrested and/or incarcerated for sexual crimes.

I recently spoke to a sex therapist who posed the issue of those in prison for sex-related indictments, such as sexual assault and child pornography. Now, this is a subject that brings fire to even the most mild-mannered, but bear with me for a minute: how do we separate those with malicious intent from those with a sex addiction, who should presumably be treated as any other with a neurotransmitter imbalance? And then comes the moral dilemma: if a sex crime has been committed, should we even bother trying to separate the addicts from the non-addicts?

Perhaps the responsibility lies with the addict herself to recognize symptoms of a problem and to get help. But since when are we adept at properly identifying our own medical or mental disorders? I’m certainly no good at it. At best, we guess. And since sex is so highly popularized, it’s hard to know where the limits are. Is looking at porn daily normal? Hourly? More? Cosmo, mass-market advertising and blockbuster hits have us thinking all sex, all the time. I’ve had free condoms handed to me in a shoe store and been asked, in a professional office building, if I would star as Madonna in a porn film. Who’s to know what the ‘normal’ gauge is for sex? …We don’t claim to know, except, of course, when the line is so far crossed that it becomes dangerous.

From the Washington State Department of Corrections, here’s how prisons view sex offenses:

“Sex offending usually is a learned behavior, therefore a key pillar of the treatment is that offenders can learn to avoid sexual aggression as well as the skills they need to live responsibility in the community.”

A learned behavior, perhaps.. and upon reading on, we see that sex offenders are allowed to volunteer for treatment. So, we’re psychologically treating those with good behavior, offering it as a reward? If these people will rejoin society, isn’t it in our best interest to treat all of them, especially those that appear more deviant? Are prisons equipped with medical professionals trained to treat addiction, the likely root cause of a number of sexual depraved acts?

For some, it’s a slippery slope from general Playboy-type magazines to more vulgar online pornography to sex meet-ups to assault. The problem with sex addiction is that it, like food, is all around us and is a normal, healthy component of life. The difference from a food addiction, however, is that a sex addiction can end in causing harm to bystanders.

So, where do we as a society stand? Do we sympathize with addicts and want them to get specialized, tailored psychological help for the problem, avoiding lengthy prison time, or do we treat them as criminals who have made, perhaps, brutal, corrupt decisions? Here, I’m reminded of those with schizophrenia and mental disorders. Mainly, do we jail and judge people for violent or horrifying actions of bad brain chemistry? So far, the answer seems to be ‘yes.’

Here’s how Dracula could have happened:

1. Nasty combination of porphyria, pellagra, and pica

Porphyria

Applicable symptoms: light sensitivity, blistering and rashes when exposed to sunlight, mental disturbances, personality changes

This realm of disorders occur when heme in the blood’s hemoglobin isn’t properly produced. Porphyria is largely hereditary, though drugs, alcohol and infection can trigger onset.

Pellagra

Applicable symptoms: sensitivity to sunlight, insomnia, aggression, psycho-motor and emotional disturbances, eventual dementia

This systemic nutritional wasting disease stems from a chronic vitamin B3 deficiency, sufferers often afflicted with thickened, rough skin. Earliest reports began in the 1730s and are commonly found among poor populations with an excess of corn in their diet. This can develop after alcoholism.

Pica

Applicable symptoms: non-food substance craving

This compulsive eating of such things as dirt, metal, chalk, cigarette butts, hair (and everything else under the sun that isn’t food), is called pica, categorized as a mental disorder and eating disorder. This strange-sounding affliction has been noted across cultural groups, age and time periods in history. Some reports sway pica to be rooted as a nutrient (such as iron) deficiency problem, while other researchers believe it has psychological roots, like that of obsessive-compulsive disorder.

2. Rabies

Applicable symptoms: restlessness, hypersensitivity to stimuli, insomnia, retracted lips, mental disturbance

This one’s a bit difficult for me, as the idea of a foaming-at-the-mouth vampire is more than a little off-putting. Still, a viral disease causing brain inflammation and central nervous system infection from animal bites would explain the vampiric crazed tendencies, nocturnal habits and bared teeth.

So, our creepy vampires of yesteryear and sexy ones of today likely have psychiatric problems, alcoholism and genetic disorders in common. Does this induce grimaces or sympathy for the strange, odd and misunderstood creatures — bad boy/girl addicts — that they are? Or, could some different affliction entirely be at play?