R.I.P. Harvey, was our resident and first pet at Sobriety Home and a “cuddly member” of our Clinical Team for four years.

It has been long believed that animals have a healing effect upon humans. In recent years, this theory has been proven true as witnessed by those that receive comfort, calmness and sense of purpose from their pets. Several facilities across the country incorporate animals into their therapeutic regimens. This is the story of one place the Gentle Barn, located in Santa Clarita, California. The facility is successful in rescuing abused animals and letting them interact with young people with emotional or physical challenges. The effect is a simultaneous start of the healing process for the both young person and the animal.

One young lady felt life was not worth living before coming to the facility. She suffered from depression as well as eating disorders; which eventually led to an attempt on her own life. Today, at 21, she is a volunteer at Gentle Barn who loves to tell her story. She is especially fond of Sophie, a goat that the facility rescued from a petting zoo. The young lady reads books to Sophie a few days each week. She says Sophie prefers to hear best sellers such as The Hunger Games. Sophie indicates her preferences by trying to eat books she doesn’t like, such as Animal Liberation.  Sophie is credited with providing the hope that led to her recovery and the desire to live. She is quoted as saying that the love exchanged between she and the animal was the emotion that she felt had was missing in her life. In fact, she says that Sophie’s companionship is what has kept her alive.

The Gentle Barn is the realization of a childhood dream for the founder, Ellie Weiner. It was from her own abusive childhood that she learned firsthand the healing power animals can bring. Throughout this troubled time she would bring home animals that had no home or were injured. She credits the animals for saving and healing her. Soon she realized that animals could do the same for others. She opened the Gentle Barn in 1999 and began several programs for youth at risk that were referred by family and children’s services in the area. The pastoral setting is a place where troubled gang members and abused or drug addicted young people can participate in peaceful activities such as feeding or simply touching animals. Ms. Warner and her husband share the animals’ history of abuse and recovery with the youth before they meet the animals.

According to one Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services administrator, this part of the process is crucial in order to effectively reach troubled children. Hearing the stories about the recovery of animals that suffered horrific abuse teaches them to trust and love again. It provides hope for their own futures that people will love them. The administrator, Jamie Lynn Cantor, has brought foster children to the Gentle Barn for the past several years. She has seen firsthand how young people relate to the experiences of the animals and the lessons they learn. One miniature pony at the facility was rescued from brutal beatings by an alcoholic former owner. The pony, named Bonsai, shows a particular fondness for special needs children. Ms. Cantor has witnessed several children identify with the pony because of their own abusive experiences. However, they also get the message that the pony learned to trust again after a few years.

As opposed to traditional therapy, the facility does not employ rules or probing as a course of treatment. Ms. Cantor recalls an experience with a sexually abused boy who was very withdrawn. The boy became friends with Biscuit, an enormous pig at the facility. When he first saw the pig he began to open up and then lay next to Biscuit for two hours. During this time he hugged and talked to the pig. By the time he left he was smiling and had received a measure of healing. Ms. Cantor is in the processing of compiling a survey entitled “Healing Youth Through Animals”. The results of the survey thus far reflect that there is a significant improvement in the self esteem and happiness of youth that have one visit to the facility. Further, the visit results in a decrease in anger, hopelessness, anxiety, loneliness and depression after one visit.

Another example of the effect of animals on young people is provided by Don McCollister, a director at a facility in Woodland Hills, California that treats teenage males on probation. Most of the residents of the facility are gang members who are facing choices that have major consequences on their lives. Depending on their decisions, it is possible they can end up in prison for the rest of their lives. Mr. McCollister recognizes that the boys have faced many years of negative conditioning because they join gangs when they are very young. He brings the groups to the Gentle Barn to attempt to use the months they visit to reinforce positive behaviour.

Mr. McCollister relates the experience of a hardened gang member who silently listened to the story of a horse that had been repeatedly beaten. Later, it was revealed that the boy had suffered repeated broken arms as a result of beatings from his father. The boy was found later on in the stable crying and petting the horse on the head while reassuring it that that no one would hurt it. Mr. McCollister is convinced that a visit to the Gentle Barn demonstrates compassion and empathy. It also serves to reinforce to the child that their own life story is not fully written and that time and change can bring meaning and happiness.

Operating the Gentle Barn takes about $50,000 a month. Financing comes from individual and family donations through the website as well as corporate grants and foundations. Major donations have been received from Princess Cruises, Toyota, CBS, William Morris Endeavor and Ellen DeGeneres. The future of the Gentle Barn includes a reality television show with Ellen DeGeneres.

The goal of the founder is to open the doors to a Gentle Barn in every major city in the world. She says that she witnesses a miracle every day by watching young people touching, loving and interacting with animals and is convinced that all people are the same.

At Sobriety Home we also believe that pet therapy works and that it does promote emotional healing. We respect that it helps and incorporate it into a small part of our program. Activities include gardening therapy in which we grow our own vegetables. Our facility is in farming country and we do attempt to buy local farm fresh sustainable food. While not a major part of our program, we do have a pet pot bellied pig, dogs, cats and had rabbits and baby goats.

Vegetable MicroRNA Actually Changes Our Genes! Can This Possibly Mean that it Can Help Ward off Drug and Alcohol Addiction?

Professor Chenyu Zhang, Nanjing University’s Chair of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, set out with his team to find out whether it is our cells or it is plants that make up some of the microRNA in our bodies.

What he discovered was revolutionary, and points to the possibility that scientists may be able to make us even healthier—thanks to the micro-genetics of some plants to alter human gene expression.

Comprised of limited number (19 to 24) nucleotides, microRNA is genetic material, which as a kind of orchestral director controls the body’s genes’ “expression”—muffling or amplifying the activity of a gene.

First, Zhang and colleagues performed an experiment with 31 healthy men and women as well as a select number of cows, using a sodium periodate process of oxidizing/modifying microRNA strands, making them un-sequenced (so their target microRNA was left untouched and isolated enough to study) and finding 30 known plant RNAs in the bloodstream of their subjects.

Second, they found in the bloodstreams at least 2 plant RNAs—those of rice and those of cabbage family plants (Brussels sprouts, broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage) which were of particularly high concentrations, or amounts, in the bloodstreams of the men, women, and cows.

This means these plant genes were “surviving” the digestive process, going past digestion and into the bloodstream.  Professor Zhang and colleagues cannot yet say for sure how the plant genes are making it through and escaping the digestive acids and enzymes, for instance.  But they are intent on pursuing the ways these plant microRNAs can further benefit us because of this phenomenon!

For example, Professor Zhang’s group found plant microRNAs which turn up or turn down the expression of about 50 different genes, including a liver protein gene (IDLRAP1) responsible for flushing out “bad” cholesterol.  So Zhang and team intend to seek ways the microRNAs of a certain Chinese herb (name of which is undisclosed for now) can survive digestion, make their way into the bloodstream, mute and amplify their way through these 50 odd genes, and muffle, mute, destroy the human influenza virus.

The scientists of the world have been working in the fields of genetic mutation for decades: they have gotten far with plants such as herbicide-resistant soya beans and insect larva toxin-resistant corn.  They have made an impact with such genetically altered plant foods by also disarming their toxicity so that the poisons are not passed on to consumers.  If Professor Zhang can pull off this latest feat, the genetic power of those plants like broccoli and rice which are found lingering in the bloodstream long after ingestion will do much for changing our health for the better.

For now, suffice it to say that good nutrition is proven to be vital to us and especially to those of us in addiction recovery.  Granted, there is no “diet cure” for alcohol or drug addiction—yet—but as science continues to suggest, good nutrition can impact with beneficial physical as well as psychological effects.  That is, plant foods that can survive genetically certainly will have an effect on our mood, behaviour, and even cravings.

Ian Brown of the Globe and Mail calls it a “…picture of addiction as an unavoidable urge of human nature.” Dr. Gaber Maté, author of In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction, notes the book is “…illuminating to experts, accessible to all.” And Dr. Evan Thompson, professor of philosophy at the University of Toronto, claims that “Great writers create new genres, and that’s exactly what Lewis has done.”

Lay audiences and recovering addicts alike agree. Lewis, now a developmental neuroscientist, has presented an autobiographical odyssey that first off, details the “what” and expresses the “how” of the life of an addict who started with booze as a kid and made his way through LSD and opium and heroin. Two, explains the “why” of the addicted brain on alcohol, on psychedelics and psychotropics, and on opiates.

Memoirs of an Addicted Brain is written in four parts with fifteen chapters that tail the major movements and many milestone moments that created the addict:

Part I, The Tabor Chronicles, includes a fifteen-year-old Lewis’ adventures and misadventures (which are not all that aberrant) at a private para-naval academy for boys in New England, hundreds of miles from his home turf in Toronto, Canada. The section outlines the human influences (rich and righteous adolescent bullies, a concerned mother, a proud father, and so on.) and details the personal experiences and emotions (including Lewis’s being “gutted” by depression) that the author implicitly explains contributed in some way to his developing an addiction that lasted most of his life to date.

Part II, Life and Death in California, follows the author’s studies at UC Berkeley and his experiences in the city that in 1968, the year Lewis arrived in San Francisco/Berkeley, were part of the larger movement to make love, drop out, and drop acid—which Lewis did with a frequency and a frenzy that rivaled only his drug-seeking and drug-getting behavior: he played with LSD and mescaline, but tousled with heroin, explaining in his memoirs that by then it had gone beyond depression as a reason for doing drugs and had become a part of his brain’s neurochemical make-up that drove this otherwise hard-working psychology major to want, then, need, then be neurochemically programmed to crave chemicals so badly the solution would become (as he would illustrate in Part IV) to steal them to feed the “cycle of craving” of the addicted brain.

In Part III, Going Places, the opiate family continues to plague the craven, with the great grand-daddy of the family, opium. The first time he had felt the effects of alcohol, as he explains in Part I, he had finally “felt cheerful.”  The first time he had done heroin, Lewis describes in Part II, he had felt the unique feeling that many addicts in recovery now describe as that which is better than sex (as that, which one addict once told me, if God made anything better than He had kept for Himself): as bringing about “a nexus of bodily comfort and emotional well-being. A warm syrup…,” whereby, “There is no sleepiness, no drowsiness…,” a place whereby, “Outside of [him] nothing exist[ed].”  And with opium, as he experienced it throughout his travels with medical teams in Malaysia, Calcutta, and elsewhere throughout Asia, the pleasure as an escape from pain (his depression), it was relief and it was reward that, he narrates, kept him returning for more.

And as he does in most of the chapters of the book, Lewis moves beyond the addict-in-him experiences to the addicted person’s feelings to the addicted brain’s needs. With the opiates, or opioids, for instance, Dr. Lewis differentiates between the natural opioids of the human brain and the synthetic opioids that reproduce the sought-after highs, the highs that are pursued with such tendentiousness, he says, one is “willing to do anything” to get them.

As he writes, natural opioids of the brain’s hypothalamus function in three ways, “to provide relief from pain or stress, to produce a sense of pleasure or well-being that can energize any goal, and to use either or both of these feelings-relief and/or reward-as the emotional currency of human attachment.” What happened for him, and what happens, at the brain level, with opium, then, is a provision of two kinds of feelings, or two ways opium (and opioids) could exorcise his demons of depression and loneliness: by “inhibiting the firing of neurons [found everywhere in the brain, the spinal cord, brain stem, insula, amygdala, etc.] that are activated by pain or stress;” and by “trigger[ing] opioids in the ventral striatum…trigger[ing] dopamine release, enhancing the appeal of whatever’s showing up on the screen of perception….”

As his misadventures by Part IV of the book, In Sickness and in Health, illustrate, such as getting work as a graduate student in a mental institution where in the labs he steals the chemicals/drugs, the feel-good/rewarded/pain relieved feelings neuroscientifically justify the Lewis who went from liking his highs to wanting and even needing these highs to continue and repeat. As he explains in the memoirs, “Natural goodies like food and sex certainly follow the progression from liking to wanting. Feels good—want more. But with goodies both natural and acquired, it is dopamine’s flame of desire, unleashed by the ahhhhh of opioids, that causes animals to repeat behaviours that lead to satisfaction.

The components responsible, the opioid receptors, are so potent in assigning to the human the propensity for drug addiction because, Lewis explains, they are found in a multitude of places, addressing, like his many personal malaises, multileveled forms of suffering with manifold aspects that are psychologically susceptible to opioid relief.

As Dr. Lewis writes in his intro, drugs can teach us a lot about the brain, and what we know about the brain can teach us a lot about addiction.” And as the Psychology Department, University of Oregon’s Professor Don Tucker acclaims, what Dr. Lewis’ book does is “teach…us how normal yearning can be short-circuited by addiction.” Thus, in many ways does Memoirs of an Addicted Brain function as a human-interest chronicling of drug-addicted behavior, as a neuroscientific and biophysical as well as biopsychological guidebook, as an all around good, informative read.

Memoirs of an Addicted Brain: A Neuroscientist Examines his Former Life on Drugs. By Marc Lewis, Ph.D,  320 pp. Doubleday Canada, $21.75
Website: http://www.memoirsofanaddictedbrain.com/
Available at Amazon, among other retailers.

Data on ADHD prevalence in EU countries are scarce. A systematic prevalence study has not yet been executed. Until recently, the majority of ADHD patients would remain undiagnosed due to a lack of recognition of the disorder and lack of treatment expertise. Controlled long term studies of the effect of ADHD treatment on the prognosis of addiction are also still lacking. ICASA increases knowledge and awareness on the subject of ADHD and SUD.
With the launch of the website the International Collaboration on ADHD and Substance Abuse (ICASA) is now an official Foundation. “An important step forward for research on ADHD and Substance Abuse”, says ICASA-director Geurt van de Glind of the Trimbos Institute in the Netherlands. “When Substance Use Disorders develop in people with ADHD, both disorders are complicated even further. Working for ICASA provides the opportunity to conduct important and innovative research with a team of international experts and to contribute to a better understanding of the relationship between these disorders”, states Sharlene Kaye from the National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre, Australia, and board member of ICASA.

ICASA is a collaborative network of over 40 researchers from 11 EU-countries, the USA and Australia. They all share one ambition: to contribute to a substantial decrease in the proportion of ADHD patients developing a Substance Use Disorder (SUD) and to substantially improve the detection, diagnosis and treatment of patients having both ADHD and SUD.

Currently ICASA is conducting three studies: the IASP (International ADHD in Substance use disorders Prevalence) prevalence study; the DNA sampling within the IASP study and the CASP study – Continuous performance test for ADHD in SUD patients. Two further studies are currently being developed: one international study on the genetics of ADHD and Drug Dependence (ISGADD) and another on the effects of physical exercise for patients with ADHD and SUD. This is just the beginning, with many studies to follow in the future. (Courtesy of ICASA)

Adult ADD

It was some 40 years ago that ADHD researchers tracking children over the years began to recognize that the symptoms of ADHD frequently persisted and followed a child into his teen and adult years. Family studies also often demonstrated that parents of children with ADHD frequently had similar problems. Adult ADHD was thus officially accepted in the DSM in 1978, and understood to occur in both children and adults. To differentiate the adult version it was referred to as Adult ADD; as hyperactivity did not play a major role in the adult version, the H (designating hyperactivity) was omitted.

It is estimated that there are close to one million adults in Canada that have Adult ADD. Some healthcare experts feel the problem is far more widespread, and that Adult ADD problems actually afflict twice that many people. Since Adult ADD is a spectrum type affliction there are various degrees of impairment. This can range from suffering from moderate disorganization, to a totally chaotic inability to focus and accomplish even the basics of managing one’s own life. This makes an accurate estimate of the prevelence of Adult ADD difficult to determine.

The Video below is an introduction to a series of videos about Adult ADD. To access the series please watch the introduction and then click onto the next video in the sequence. Videos courtesy of Experts Village.

A list of some of the more common ADHD medications

Video Information on ADHD

Dr. Matthew H. Erdelyi Ph.D, Professor of Psychology at Brooklyn College, on HD, ADD and ADHD. Video courtesy of illumistream Health.

Report from UBC’s Urban Health Research Initiative finds that Canada’s so-called war on drugs has not stopped the supply of drugs in the streets.

According to the new report released in Ottawa last week, our war on drugs has only served to increase drug-related violence.

Authors reviewed international research and concluded that 87% of studies linked strict law enforcement with an increased “drug-market violence”.

Dr. Evan Wood, the reports co-author, said that the “gun violence that we’ve seen in B.C., as in Mexico and the U.S., appears to be directly attributable to drug prohibition.”

He explains that prohibition simply drives up the value of drugs, thus creating an extremely lucrative market.

The report, thus, concludes that drug issues should be addressed as public health issues, and not as law and order, advocating that money should be spent on health measures that have better results than costly law-enforcement that don’t actually address drug addiction.

According to the report, we should be addressed the demand, not the supply.

This is a perspective echoed by the Obama administration and his new drug czar Gil Kerlikowske.

Download the full report here.

Source: The Province

According to an official news release from the Health Living, Youth and Seniors Minister Jim Rondeau additional safeguards for the use of OxyContin will soon be placed in Manitoba.

The province is planning “aggressive action on OxyContin misuse”.

This includes moving the prescription drug to part three of the Provincial Drug Program Formulary, which includes an education campaign and funding for training to facilitate an increase in the number of physicians with a methadone license.

The Provincial Drug Program Formulary consists of three parts, each with an increasing number of controls. Moving OxyContin to the third part means the highest level of controls on the prescribing of the drug in addition to the existing controls.

Existing controls include the Manitoba Prescribing Practices Program, which is used to monitor and control the prescription and dispensation of certain restricted drugs.

The education campaign, aimed at patients with OxyContin prescriptions as well as the general public, is currently being developed. Manitoba is looking to increase understanding of the dangers of misuse of the painkiller and will include posters and pamphlets to be distributed to medical clinics and pharmacies around the province.

Furthermore, as part of the Minister’s overall strategy is the increased capacity to provide methadone treatment for OxyContin addiction. This is to include funding for training of physicians in methadone treatment to facilitate the overall increase in the number of physicians who are licensed and trained to administer methadone as part of drug addiction treatment.

Read the official press release here.

According to a new study from the US Department of Health and Human Services, inhalants have become the drug of choice.

According to the study, using data collected from 2006-08 surveys on drug use and health, more 12-year olds admit to using inhalants to get high than prescription medications, marijuana, cocaine and hallucinogens. Alcohol, on other hand, is the only other substance used more among the age group.

Huffing is the act of inhaling vapours to get high. Children huff such common household products as gasoline, nail polish, bleach, paint solvents, and cleaning sprays making it a difficult problem to combat.

Huffing can cause cardiac arrest, lead to brain, heart, liver kidney damage, and addiction.

The recent survey revealed that about 7 percent of 12-year olds used inhalants to get high, compared to 5 percent who used prescription medications, 1.4 percent who used marijuana, and less than 1 percent who used cocaine and hallucinogens.

The percentage of youth using inhalants has remained steady over recent years.

There is also a perception, experts say, that they are not dangerous to use. According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, from 2001 to 2009 the number of 8th graders who believed inhalants were risky dropped from 75 percent to 58 percent.

A dangerous trend, they say, as where there is a lower perception of risk, there is increased use.

Consequently, inhalants will be the target of a new public education campaign, aimed at youth and their parents.

Source: The National Post

According to a recent study, an astounding one in ten entering drug addiction treatment in England are entering for cocaine addiction, a four-percent increase in the last four years.

Of these, more than one-third are 18-24 year olds from a broad spectrum of social backgrounds. They are also more likely to have jobs and are less likely to have housing problems.

According to Paul Hayes, NTA chief executive, although there has been an increase in the number of people using cocaine, they are also seeing more people seeking addiction treatment. Very good news indeed.

About 70% of the cocaine addicts in treatment stay in treatment, and either stop using cocaine completely or substantially reduce their use within six months of entering treatment—that is, 61% stop cocaine altogether and 11% substantially reduce their use.

Furthermore, those who are newly entering drug rehab for cocaine addiction also reduce their use of other drugs, including cannabis, alcohol, and amphetamines.

The study, which monitored over 3,000 study participants, represents the largest ever study into the effectiveness of cocaine addiction treatment in England.

Source: The NTA

Explaining our Methadone Treatments–from Methadone Therapy and Methadone Maintenance, to our Methadone Reduction Program–our new microsite is packed with information.

Are you or your loved one considering methadone as part of their drug addiction treatment? If so, make sure to peruse the site and call us to discuss any of your questions or concerns.

New research explains how addiction to prescription anxiety medication works, and may lead to development non-addictive versions of the drugs.

Scientists from the US and Switzerland have discovered how anxiety medications, such benzodiazepine drugs as Ativan, Xanax, and Valium, work in the brain. As it turns out, the drugs use the same reward pathways as heroin and cannabis—pathways that may lead to addiction.

The calming effects of benzos are due to an increased activity of the neurotransmitter GABA (gamma-aminobutyric acid). This in turn activates dopamine, the ‘gratification hormone’, resulting in a reward pathway in the brain.

Reward pathways are both naturally occurring and already exist in the brain. They are an evolutionary mechanism that was essential to our survival. Their main function is to make us feel pleasure when we engage in behaviours central to survival—such as eating or sex.

Opioids, such as heroin, and cannabis work in the same fashion. And dopamine, as we know from new research earlier this month, is directly linked to a propensity for addiction.

Researchers behind the study, published in the journal Nature, say these findings may lead to non-addictive alternative benzodiazepines. Benzos work by binding to a specific part of the GABA, the alpha 1 sub-unit of GABA type A receptor according to scientists. Developing similar drugs that bind to a different part of the GABA may offer the same benefits and calming-effects without the addictive side effects.

Drug companies for quite some time have been trying to develop a new generation of benzos with very little success. This, however, could be the breakthrough needed.

Source: Reuters