For those with
addiction and other
substance abuse
problems ...

ALL OF US AT ONE TIME OR ANOTHER HAVE BEEN ADDICTED TO SOMETHING , YOU MAY BE ADDICTED TO " ICE CREAM " , SOMEONE ELSE IS ADDICTED TO "CHOCOLATE " , SOME ARE ADDICTED TO "SHOPPING " , OR COFFEE , CHANGING CLOTHES SEVERAL TIMES A DAY , OR HAVING SEX ...........

DRINKING SODA , SHOPLIFTING , CLEANING , GARDENING , DRIVING AIMLESSLY, SO ON AND SO FORTH ......

A CHILD THAT IS BEING NURSED BY HIS OR HER MOTHER , OR A COUPLE WHOM IS MAKING LOVE TO ONE ANOTHER , A MOTHER OR FATHER WHOM IS HOLDING THEIR CHILD IN THEIR ARM , THEY ARE ALL EXPERIENCING THE SAME NATURAL HIGH , GUESS WHAT , THEIR ENDORPHANE ARE BEING PRODUCED HIGHER AND HIGHER , THEY ARE FEELING THE FEELING OF FLIGHT , NO PAIN , HAPPY MOMENTS ........

WHY ARE SOME PEOPLE MORE PRONE TO BECOME AND ADDICTED TO DRUGS OF CHOICE ( OPIUM , HEROIN , HASEESH , ECSTASY , SHIBA , MARIJUANA , COCAINE , CRACK, METHADONE , ICE , METHAMPHETAMINS , BUPRENORPHINE, MORPHINE ?

THE REALITY IS , SOME OF US BY CONSUMING CERTAIN FOODS AND ELEMENTS WE CAN PRODUCE A HEALTHIER NERVOUS SYSTEM , THAT WILL PRODUCE ENOUGH ENDORPHINES , TO CONTROL OUR EMOTIONAL AND PHYSICAL PAIN ....

INFANTS WHOM ARE BORN FROM PARENTS THAT ARE SUFFERING FROM DEPRESSION , BIPOLAR , OCD , DISEASES CONNECTED WITH NEUROPATHY , LOW ENZYMATIC ACTION , DIABETICS , RECREATIONAL DRUG USERS AS WELL AS PRESCRIPTION DRUG ABUSERS ARE MORE PRONE TO BECOME ADDICTED , AS WELL AS CHILDREN OF MOTHERS WITH HISTORY OF PHYSICAL AND MENTAL ABUSE DURING PREGNANCY , WHICH ALL THESE CONDITIONS RESULTS IN LOW ENDORPHANE , GABA AND OCCASIONALLY SERATONINE LEVELS .

ALCOHOLICS AND TOBACCO USERS ALSO SUFFER FROM LOW FLOW OF OXYGEN TO THE BRAIN , WITH POSSIBLE LOW PRODUCTION OF NEURONS AND ENDORPHINS.

IF YOU HAVE OBSERVED MOST ADDICTS DESIRE MORE SWEETS THAN OTHERS , FOR THE SIMPLE REASON , THAT MORE SUGAR TO THE BRAIN FASTER RUSH FEELINGS , AND UNFORTUNATELY THE DOW SIDE OF FALL , AS WELL AS FATIGUE WHICH GIVES THEM THE FASTER REASON TO GO TO THE DRUG OF CHOICE FOR THE PLEASURE OF HIGHER ENDORPHINS TO GET TO THE POINT THAT NOTHING ELSE MATTERS , UP, DOWN, UP DOWN , UP , DOWN & CRASH. THIS CRASH RESULTS IN THE BRAKE DOWN RESULTS IN THE LOSS OF:

ALL B VITAMINS ( B COMPLEX ) WHICH WE NEED FOR A HEALTHY NERVOUS FUNCTION , AS WELL AS MIND , MUSCLES .....

PROBIOTICS HEALTHY IMMUNE FUNCTION , ABSORPTION OF ALL MINERALS.

ANTIOXIDANTS A, C, E, U, WHICH PREVENTS OUR CELLS FROM OXIDATION.

Researchers have found that turning to spirituality can be a powerful tool for treating and conquering addiction.

Conquering Addiction with Spirituality

The topic of spirituality is becoming increasingly interesting to clinicians, psychiatrists, and researchers seeking more ways for people to deal with the temptations of addiction. There are all kinds of addictions, from drugs to cigarettes, to alcohol, to overeating, and even sex. Although modern counseling, support groups, and psychiatry have made great strides in the treatment of addiction and dependency, the patient must want to change before the treatment can be successful, because addiction is tied to a person’s inner self. And that inner self is where spirituality resides.

When a person’s inner self becomes damaged or distorted, their spirituality can become damaged or distorted, resulting in addictive and self-destructive behavior. Some people believe that the key to overcoming addiction lies in organized religion. But although there is a spiritual component to religion, there are vast differences between the two. Many people are very religious and yet have little or no spirituality. On the other hand, many very spiritual people do not hold any particular religious beliefs. The following of certain religious practices may help in overcoming addiction, but the success lies not in the religious nature of the practices, but in the fact that following them helps to heal an addict’s inner self, where spirituality resides.

The ancient spiritual discipline of fasting, the mirror opposite of indulgence, is of particular interest in relation to addition. Many people practice fasting for religious reasons, but its inherent nature is a spiritual one, because it helps to strengthen one’s self-control—a personal resource that is undeniably depletable. Just as muscles strengthen from repeated exercise, practicing regular self-control is necessary to have such control available whenever it is needed. So purposely fasting, even though food is available, helps give a person the strength to say no to any influences that may contribute to an addictive personality. If one can refuse food, the most basic of human needs, then one can learn to refuse destructive substances or influences that are not vital to survival.

The practices of prayer and meditation are also considered important in maintaining sobriety. Alcoholics Anonymous has 12 essential steps for members to follow, one of which says that addicts have "sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out." But although many people think of Alcoholics Anonymous as a religious approach to beating addiction to alcohol, it is actually a spiritual approach to living. Spiritual discipline and character development are emphasized, including humility, confession and amends, forgiveness, acceptance, submission to a Higher Power, ongoing personal moral inventory, and service to others. Recent research also points to the mental health benefits of practices such as forgiveness and acceptance.

Many religious and meditative practices have their roots in establishing and strengthening self-control: focusing attention, maintaining forced silence, repetitive chanting, abstaining from food, often interspersed with silence, meditation, prayer, and contemplation. Such spiritual practices may promote incremental change over time, but they may also result in dramatic epiphanies, or "spiritual awakenings." Such awakenings can cause profound emotional release as a person feels freed from addiction and craving, and stories of such epiphanies are common in Alcoholics Anonymous. In fact, the last of the 12 Steps begins with the words, "Having had a spiritual awakening as a result of these steps."

Psychologist Jim Orford once noted that the reversal of a pervasive and persistent problem such as addiction may require a comprehensive "spiritual change" in attitude, character, and values. Noted psychiatrist Carl Jung described such spiritual awakenings in a similar fashion, as huge rearrangements of personality where "ideas, emotions, and attitudes which were once the guiding forces … are suddenly cast to one side, and a completely new set of conceptions and motives begin to dominate." Clearly, when the faltering of one’s inner self manifests itself through addictive behavior, the path to healing must begin by healing that inner self—the spiritual self.

ADDICTION: THE SPIRITUAL DIMENSION

A new clinical emphasis on religious solutions to addiction is being dovetailed with a standard therapeutic model of drug dependency. "There is evidence that spirituality is an element in recovery from addiction," says William Miller, research director for the Center on Alcoholism, Substance Abuse and Addiction at the University of New Mexico. Yet religion is ignored as a therapeutic tool because conventional researchers "don't have a clue how to measure spiritual constructs.... Simply to ignore such a major source of potential healing is to violate scientific curiosity."

Miller spoke at an April conference in Lansdowne, Va. The three-day meeting, "Spiritual Dimensions in Clinical Research," was described by many of the 70 participants as a major step toward moving research on the R-word - religion - into mainstream medical science. Summarizing research findings, several speakers characterized the substance-addicted life as lacking meaning, purpose and joy. "Drug abuse is not a problem with drugs, it's a problem with pleasure," said Roy Matthews, head of Duke University Medical Center's alcoholism and addiction program. He described pleasure as a chemically triggered, "insatiable" drive. "Pleasure is the basis of addiction, and it would seem pleasure is a solution to addiction. The most pleasurable part of religion is the experience of God."

Dopamine, a chemical produced in the brain, acts on neurons to create feelings of well-being and euphoria. Extrapolating from research of the brain's blood flow and alpha waves, Matthews believes that spiritual activity by the mind may have a similar chemical effect.

Frank Gawin, senior psychiatrist for drug-abuse research at the University of California at Los Angeles, points out that cocaine withdrawal is clinically recognized as "anhedonial" or "the absence of joy and the intensification of boredom." According to Gawin, "Addiction is a kind of craving. It may be in [the medical study of] craving that we have a door between science and the spiritual."

Research on addicts indeed may become the first area in which spiritual elements - which are associated with particular psychological effects - can be part of controlled scientific studies. Alcoholics Anonymous, or AA, with its 12-step program that stresses the healing influence of a higher power, has long been a nonscientific testing ground of spiritual therapy for addiction. Miller cites data on AA members who make strong commitments to the spiritual basis of the program and gain sufficient "meaning in life" to displace the need for alcohol. AA founder Bill Wilson, an alcoholic himself, started the movement in the 1930s after being freed from alcohol craving by a sudden religious experience.

Though such euphoria would be the most difficult to subject to controlled study, research is at least trying to identify the traits of "the quantum-change experience, in which a personality is turned upside down," Miller says. Often called the "Ebenezer Scrooge" effect, it traditionally is associated with religious conversion. But Miller believes that people seem to have it in a variety of ways. "There is nothing you can do to bring it on," he says. "It just happens to people."

Pay as You Play

If you smoke, eat only cheese-burgers or bungee jump, except to pay more for health insurance than your coworkers.

Employers increasingly are tailoring benefits plans to penalize workers with poor health habits or risky propensities and to encourage behavior bills.

"Employers are communicating ... that employees need to take some personal responsibility for their health choices," says Camille Haltom of Hewitt Associates, a benefits consulting firm in Northbrook, Ill.

Companies that once offered rudimentary health-education classes and fitness centers are adding more sophisticated "managed-health programs" aimed at changing the lifestyles of the 20 percent of their workers who rack up 80 percent of the health bills. Typical incentives include monetary rewards or gifts for scoring well on a health-risk appraisal, Haltom says. Disincentives include higher premiums for smokers and higher deductibles for injuries resulting from reckless behavior.

What's driving the stepped-up interest in health-management strategies? Growing evidence that bad habits lead to higher medical costs, experts say.

A new survey by the actuarial health care consulting company Milliman & Robertson Inc. estimates that smokers submit 31 percent more in medical claims than nonsmokers. People with poor eating habits submit 41 percent more in claims than those with good habits. An aggressive health-management program can trim 25 percent of a company's health care costs, says Kenneth Pelletier of Stanford University's School of Medicine.

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