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Monday, March 29, 2010

'The Path of Life' by Katie Watkins Furman

Thursday, March 25, 2010

Music Through Addiction

K's Choice - Not An Addict

Nickleback - Figured You Out

Keith Urban - Not My God

Pink Floyd - Comfortably Numb

Jefferson Airplane - Go Ask Alice

Whiskey Man-molly - Hatchet

That Smell - Lynyrd Skynryd

Sunday Morning Comin Down - Johnny Cash

Sister Morphine, Coming Down Again - Rolling Stones

Instant Karma & Cold Turkey - John Lennon

Tuesday, March 23, 2010

Opiate Detox

"Cliffside Malibu, an exclusive addiction treatment center overlooking the Pacific Ocean, does indeed offer an opiates detox program proven to work. Our staff of highly trained counselors, therapists and doctors have extensive experience in treating patients who have become addicted to prescription opiates such as Vicodin, Oxycontin, as well as recreational opiates like Heroin. We understand the difficulty and discomfort associated with the initial detox period when treating opiate addictions and have designed the residence at Cliffside Malibu to be as welcoming and comfortable for patients as possible..."(Cliffside Malibu)

"All facts conclude that there is no easy cure nor guarantee that relapse will not occur. The determination of the patient and support through family, friends, physicians or other sources must accompany the detoxification process...the best-documented drug-free treatments are the therapeutic community residential programs" (Addiction Research) and not rapid detox programs which have no proven track record of working as well as having a higher mortality rate its a wonder why these programs have gained so much popularity.

While "with an emphasis on personal attention, Cliffside Malibu’s opiates detox program offers close monitoring of patient progress and individualized treatment. Each patient is assigned to a primary therapist on checking in and that therapist works closely with the patient for the duration of his or her stay. Our supportive clinical staff oversees the opiates detox program, treating each patient to relieve any physical withdrawal symptoms. In addiction to clinical treatment, the opiates detox program includes group and individual therapies –both traditional and alternative- tailored to address any underlying causes for the drug addiction." (Cliffside Malibu)

Monday, March 15, 2010

Drug Abuse, Drug Addiction, and the “Blind Addict”


Drug abuse and drug addiction make intervention necessary because they keep addicts from seeing themselves as they actually are. Addiction recovery necessarily entails an engagement with the facts, and hinges upon an addict’s ability to overcome the “blindness” associated with the disease.

Drug addiction, we should note at the outset, is a clinical disease: a chronic condition with discrete and identifiable causes that trumps anything we might understand as individual will or personal agency. Drug addicts, in other words, don’t choose to be drug addicts, same as diabetics don’t choose to be diabetics. Drug addiction is so hard to overcome precisely because it infects the entire scope of an addicts being, and strips him of volitional control over himself and his actions.

It’s that sort of comprehensive or holistic affliction that engenders a sort of addiction “blindness”: a self-centric myopia that prevents addicts from honestly and rationally assessing their behavior. A drug addict is “blind” in the sense that he can’t see anything but his own sense of need, and the drug that might sate it; substance abuse shuts out all but the light of a chemical high, leaving addicts to grope about in a darkness from which only drug use and abuse offer any hope of escape.

What all that means, in practical terms, is that addicts rarely understand the trouble they’re in until it’s already to late. Put another way, addicts often don’t even know they’re addicts…not until someone tells them, that is. The role of an intervention, in this sense, is to make addicts see their sickness, and to make addicts want to get better. In the end, it’s only that desire which can ensure the ultimate effectiveness of any drug rehab program.
(Article courtesy of Cliffside Malibu)

Monday, March 8, 2010

Unitl It Sleeps By: Metallica


Where do I take this pain of mine
I run but it stays right by my side

So tear me open and pour me out
There's things inside that scream and shout
And the pain still hates me
So hold me until it sleeps

Just like the curse, just like the stray
You feed it once and now it stays
Now it stays

So tear me open but beware
There's things inside without a care
And the dirt still stains me
So wash me until I'm clean

It grips you so hold me
It stains you so hold me
It hates you so hold me
It holds you so hold me
Until it sleeps

So tell me why you've chosen me
Don't want your grip, don't want your greed
Don't want it

I'll tear me open make you gone
No more can you hurt anyone
And the fear still shakes me
So hold me, until it sleeps

It grips you so hold me
It stains you so hold me
It hates you so hold me
It holds you, holds you, holds you
until it sleeps (x4)

I don't want it, I don't want it, want it, want it, want it, want it, noo..

So tear me open but beware
There's things inside without a care
And the dirt still stains me
So wash me 'till I'm clean

I'll tear me open make you gone
No longer will you hurt anyone
And the hate still shames me
So hold me
until it sleeps (x5)

(**EDITORS NOTE: When I sat and listened to this song, the realization of the depths of pain that they had suffered due to their drug addiction becomes very clear. I suggest you listen to this song and let the lyrics flow over you.)

Monday, March 1, 2010

Patchwork


These needles picked me apart at the seams,
I was distilled in depths of alcohol,
bleaching my rainbow skin sallow,
and leaving patchwork pieces on stained carpet.
My knocking knees were tied with strands of daisychains,
weak in walking,
and shaking in stuttered footsteps.
A ragbag of chemicals,
they wheeled into the clinic,
that smelt of wet paint and exposed thighs.
My spine felt curved in horseshoe patterns
and there were twisted anchors
hooked onto my ankles,
as they tried to make me walk the straight line to the Office of Errors.

Purple Chairs line the tiled pavement,
And the lampshades swing,
like elastic pedals,
creaking along the paper ceiling,
burning filaments to my sockets,
plugged into the first feelings of withdrawal.

I dreamt there was hidden acid in her wallpaper.
My cotton hands rub against it,
picking at the echoes of previous maydays.
The watermelons on the walls were warning signs,
for 'May induce Loss of Sanity.'

That is all I remember from meeting Miss.Twelve Steps.
It passed in a foreign eclipse of wet bedsheets,
vomit sticking to the back of my throat,
as automatic scientists attempted to sew me up,
with plastic thread,
knotted in ill-fitting patterns,
buttoned in with shrill voices,
and crackling microphones.

My wooden freckles greeted patients,
with downsized wrists,
and plague stapled to their skin,
clapped onto cheekbones underneath lifeless baggage,
chipping off into black white and red,
like a gothic holocaust,
sitting, picking at muffins in the canteen.

I used to be the same pill pilgrim,
caressing saints of cyanide with saliva,
and leaving trails on my wrists like a timeline,
of each bad trip.
Near the very cellar of my elbow,
was the time I dreamt I was choking on my own placenta.


Three months of my throat twisting with blood,
peeling noses,
raw skin,
couch talks,
clean water,
Hero stories,
I was free to go.


They'd handled my fragile fragments of bargain basement skin,
Hinged me together like,
A doll tapestry.
'I was fixed' they told me.
But my patchwork skin was all mismatched and uncoordinated,
And They had deconstructed me

like reverse eggshells
--to leave me cracking on the inside--

By: Anonymous

(Author notes: Hi, this is about someones time in rehab.)