It’s no secret that alcohol consumption can cause major health problems, including cirrhosis of the liver and injuries sustained in automobile accidents. But if you think liver disease and car crashes are the only health risks posed by drinking, think again: Researchers have linked alcohol consumption to more than 60 diseases.

"Alcohol does all kinds of things in the body, and we’re not fully aware of all its effects," says James C. Garbutt, MD, "It’s a pretty complicated little molecule."

Here are 12 conditions linked to chronic heavy drinking.

Anemia

This can trigger a host of symptoms, including fatigue, shortness of breath, and light-headedness.

Cancer

Cancer sites linked to alcohol use include the mouth, throat, voice box, esophagus, liver, breast, and colorectal region.

Heart disease

Heavy drinking can cause cardiomyopathy, a potentially deadly condition in which the heart muscle weakens and eventually fails, as well as the heart rhythm abnormalities.

Cirrhosis

Alcohol is toxic to liver cells, and many heavy drinkers develop cirrhosis, a sometimes-lethal condition in which the liver is so heavily scarred that it is unable to function. But it’s hard to predict which drinkers will develop cirrhosis. "Some people who drink huge amounts never get cirrhosis, and some who don’t drink very much do get it," Saitz says. For some unknown reason, women seem to be especially vulnerable.

Dementia

As people age, their brains shrink, on average, at a rate of about 1.9% per decade. That’s considered normal. But heavy drinking speeds the shrinkage of certain key regions in the brain, resulting in memory loss and other symptoms of dementia.

Heavy drinking can also lead to subtle but potentially debilitating deficits in the ability to plain, make judgments and solve problems.

Depression

It’s long been known that heavy drinking often goes hand in hand with depression.

Research has also shown that depression goes away when many heavy drinkers go on the wagon.

Seizures

Heavy drinking can cause epilepsy and can trigger seizures even in people who don’t have epilepsy.

Gout

Although some cases are largely hereditary, alcohol and other dietary factors seem to play a role. Alcohol also seems to aggravate existing cases of gout.

High blood pressure

Heavy drinking can cause blood pressure to rise. Over time, this effect can become chronic. High blood pressure can lead to many other health problems, including kidney disease, heart disease, and stroke.

Infectious diseases

Heavy drinking suppresses the immune system, providing a toehold for infections, including tuberculosis, pneumonia, HIV/AIDS, and other sexually transmitted diseases. People who drink heavily also are more likely to engage in risky sex.

Nerve damage

Heavy drinking can cause a form of nerve damage known as alcoholic neuropathy, which can produce muscle weakness, incontinence, constipation, erectile dysfunction, and other problems.

Pancreatitis

In addition to causing stomach irritation (gastritis), drinking can inflame the pancreas. Chronic pancreatitis interferes with the digestive process, causing abdominal pain and persistent diarrhea –and it’s not fixable,

Full story at; Web MD

• See also;
• Alcohol-related Brain Damage
• Double Trouble in Recovery
• Drunkorexia
• Effects of alcohol on women
• Harmful Effects of Alcohol on Sexual Behaviour

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Many publications and even some commercials have made statements that nicotine is a poison that kills, but is it true?

Nicotine is said to be both a bad habit that people can just lay down, but others claim that it is as addictive as heroin or cocaine.

The claims that nicotine is used in insecticides have been circulating for years, so is it?

All of these informational tidbits sound unreasonable and unbelievable.

Which is the truth and which is fiction? Is nicotine deadly, or just someone’s mission to put the tobacco industry under?

Here we will expose some of the most common myths and shed light on the truth about nicotine addiction.

Myth: Those addicted to nicotine products are weak, or else they would just quit the habit!

Fact: Any type of addiction is not centered on strength, because even the strongest people fall victim to something. Since everyone has their vice, we cannot make the general statement that smokers or chewers are simply weak. Nicotine addiction, just like all other addictions, has some habits associated; however the actual addiction is far more than just a habit. In order to quit it takes much dedication, education, withdrawals and a strong support network.

Myth: Nicotine is not addictive and if it is it is not as bad as illegal drugs.

Fact: Nicotine is highly addictive, regardless of what the cigarette manufacturers have said in years past. While in treatment most nicotine addicts have claimed that their cessation of illegal drugs was easier to quit than cigarettes. Nicotine if often compared to the addiction of heroin and cocaine. Addiction is addiction, it simply doesn’t matter to what!

Myth: Nicotine could not be a poison or they couldn’t sell it.

Fact: Nicotine is derived from the leaves of the tobacco plant, which is meant as a deterrent to insects chewing on it. It is used in pesticides and said to be deadly in even a small drop. It is true that nicotine is used in pesticides and is more deadly than arsenic or strychnine. It can be sold because it is administered in such minute quantities that it doesn’t kill immediately, just slowly through years of consumption.

Myth: Gums, patches and other cessation products are the only way to quit.

Fact: The latest research has shown that nicotine gum or patches used for 6 months or more results in relatively high abstinence. Education about how nicotine affects the body and changing the mind altering effects is the most effective manner by which to stop all nicotine usage.

Myth: Nicotine is not an addiction.

Fact: Nicotine addiction is as real as any other addiction on the books. In fact, some professionals believe that it is one of the most addictive because it is somewhat accepted. It is not illegal, leading some to believe that it must be ok, since it isn’t forbidden.

Those suffering from nicotine addiction should be taken very seriously. They must have help to stop the cravings, withdrawals and negative effects of this drug on their body. It is true that nicotine is out of the bloodstream within 72 hours from last ingestion, however that doesn’t mean that the cravings stop for another several weeks or months. Cessation is not easy, but it can be done with commitment, education and the help of others.

Research has shown that the 12 Step process results in high quit rates. Nicotine Anonymous can help.

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Always more work to be done

1. It is very difficult to relax. We often, if not always, feel the need to get just a few more tasks done before we can feel good about ourselves and allow ourselves to relax. When we do complete these tasks we find just a few more that we need to complete, and then a few more…. These uncontrollable desires often result in frantic, compulsive working. We are powerless to control this pattern.
2. We are so used to doing what we are expected to do that we are often unable to know what it is that we really want to do and need to do for ourselves.
3. We often feel that we must complete certain tasks, even though we do not want to, yet we are too scared to stop.
4. We often feel resentment about having to complete tasks when we would rather relax or play. At these times we procrastinate, usually wallowing in self-pity and self-judgment. We become absorbed by our “stinking thinking,” cannot concentrate on the task at hand, and yet are too scared to give up the task for a moment and allow ourselves the space we need.
5. Our sense of self-esteem is based largely on our perceptions of how others judge our performance at work and in other areas of our lives.
6. We often think of ourselves as either the most intelligent, capable people we know or the most incapable and worthless people we know.
7. It is hard for us to see ourselves honestly and accept who we really are.
8. We often betray ourselves by giving in to the demands of people whom we perceive as being in “authority.”
9. We operate out of the mini-crisis mode, using this as an escape from experiencing our true emotions.
10. We do not often experience true serenity.
11. We have an obsessive desire to understand everything in our lives, including our every emotion. We cannot allow ourselves to experience emotions that we do not understand, fearing our loss of control.
12. We have an underlying fear that if we give up control and allow our emotions to surface, we will become raving lunatics for the rest of our lives.
13. We judge ourselves by our accomplishments and hence have the illusion that we must always be in the process of accomplishing something worthwhile in order to feel good about ourselves.
14. We cannot sit down and just be.
15. We often go on intense work binges with the illusion that we need to get the praise of our fellow workers and bosses in order to feel OK.
16. We have the illusion that people will like us more if we appear more competent than we actually are.
17. Often when we are praised by others we tend to discount ourselves as not worthy of their praise.
18. We tend to schedule ourselves for more than we can handle, believing people will like us more if we can do more and do it faster.
19. We are often dishonest about our past experiences and our present capabilities, tending to not mention our failures and to exaggerate our successes. We believe that people will not respect us or like us just as we are.
20. We hurt inside.

Originally appears as pages 5-7 in the W.A. Book of Recovery. This literature is also available as a downloadable PDF file

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• Workaholic
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The Agnostics 12 Steps

For agnostics who would like to work the steps, this version of the Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous provides slightly different wording of the six steps that make reference to God or a Higher Power. This version of the Twelve Steps seems to have originated in agnostic A.A. groups in California.

1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol-that our lives had become unmanageable.
2. Came to believe and to accept that we needed strengths beyond our awareness and resources to restore us to sanity. [Original: Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.]
3. Made a decision to entrust our will and our lives to the care of the collective wisdom and resources of those who have searched before us. [Original: Made a decision to turn our wills and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.]
4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
5. Admitted to ourselves without reservation, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs. [Original: Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.]
6. Were ready to accept help in letting go of all our defects of character. [Original: Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.]
7. With humility and openness sought to eliminate our shortcomings. [Original: Humbly asked him to remove our shortcomings.]
8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong, promptly admitted it.
11. Sought through meditation to improve our spiritual awareness and our understanding of the AA way of life and to discover the power to carry out that way of life. [Original: 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.]
12. Having had a spiritual awakening as a result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

• I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For: God for Agnostics
• Agnostics In New York
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• Agnostics
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Have you cheated the guy in the glass

When you get what you want in your struggle for self,
And the world makes you King for a day,
Then go to the mirror and look at yourself,
And see what that guy has to say.

For it isn’t your Father, or Mother, or Wife,
Who judgement upon you must pass.
The feller whose verdict counts most in your life

Is the guy staring back from the glass.
He’s the feller to please, never mind all the rest,
For he’s with you clear up to the end,
And you’ve passed your most dangerous, difficult test
If the guy in the glass is your friend.

You may be like Jack Horner and “chisel” a plum,
And think you’re a wonderful guy,
But the man in the glass says you’re only a bum
If you can’t look him straight in the eye.

You can fool the whole world down the pathway of years,
And get pats on the back as you pass,
But your final reward will be heartaches and tears
If you’ve cheated the guy in the glass.

Dale Wimbrow 1895-1954.

Remember this was written in an era of culturally dominant masculinity. It applies equally to men and women.

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• 5 Finger Prayer
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Alcoholism is a primary, chronic, progressive disorder that has a predictable course; with inherited, physical, psychological and environmental risk factors; and is fatal if not treated and its progress arrested.

A Disease of the Brain

Alcoholism is also a brain disease because alcohol changes the brain—it changes its structure, how it works and how it thinks. These brain changes can be long lasting, and lead to the harmful behaviors seen in people who are alcoholic.

Primary

Alcoholism is not the result of another disorder but it is a causative factor in other disorders.

Chronic

Alcoholism is a chronic condition that continues over a long time, progresses consistently or intermittently, and can be managed.

Progressive and Predictable

As an addictive drug, alcohol use over time can lead to craving and impaired control. Even if the decision to drink is voluntary at first, what happens after someone takes a drink depends to a large extent on an individual’s genetic vulnerability to alcoholism, and how one’s body and mind react to alcohol.

A patient may not experience many symptoms until alcoholism has advanced. Some patients may relapse more frequently than others.

Each person processes alcohol in a unique way

Women’s bodies don’t tolerate alcohol as well as men’s. However, because of their physiology, they develop alcohol-related medical problems more rapidly than men. Women also develop brain atrophy, cognitive deficits, a higher depression index, alcoholic heart problems, myopathy of skeletal muscle, and alcoholic liver disease faster than men.

Although a single gene or set of genes has not been found that causes alcoholism, the risk for developing alcoholism is estimated to be between 50 to 60 percent inherited.

Many Chinese and Japanese people have a genetic predisposition to alcohol that causes physically unpleasant reactions so strong that they prefer not to drink. They experience early and acute headache, nausea, flushing & rapid heartbeat.

Research has shown that sons of alcoholic fathers very often have a much greater tolerance for alcohol. Their brain chemistry actually encourages heavier drinking.

People use alcohol to feel good, at least initially, and many believe modern society encourages drinking.

Fatal if not Arrested

Alcoholics die, on average, about 12 years sooner than non-alcoholics. This figure does not include suicide, car wrecks, homicide and other accidental death. Nor does it take into account the mixing of drugs that often have a multiplier and/or additive effect.

Treatment

Treatment for alcoholism includes elements of medicine, psychology and sometimes medications. The primary aim is restoration and maintenance of physical and psychological health and wellbeing through abstinence from alcohol. In this context treatment is both harm reduction and harm prevention.

• See also; www.BriefTSF.com
• 5 Alcoholism Myths
• Alcoholic or Not?
• Are Families Affected by Alcoholism?
• Keep It Simple
• Treating Alcoholism

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Relapse - One drop in not a flood

Relapse is defined as returning to drinking or drugging after a period of not drinking – abstinence.

Relapse to drinking does not come on suddenly and without warning, it is a process over time.

Staying clean/sober is not recovery, working a program and finding some serenity and peace is sobriety.

Relapse cannot be avoided by shear willpower of self-discipline.

SELF-TEST FOR RELAPSE WARNING SIGNALS

Here is a simple list of relapse symptoms.

• Lack of personal confidence to remain clean/sober or abstinent.
• Denial
• Convincing yourself that you will never ever drink or use again.
• You start imposing recovery on other people.
• You become defensive when talking about your problem is recovery.
• Compulsive behavior appears, you adopt a non-structured lifestyle.
• You start over-reacting, impulsive behavior begins to appear.
• You experience periods of loneliness.
• You begin to focus on one certain area in your life and you become unwilling to defocus, (tunnel vision)
• Periods of minor depressions.
• Loss of constructive planning, attention to details lessens, wishful thinking begins.
• Plans begin to fail.
• Daydreaming and the “if only” syndrome enter your daily routine.
• Feeling that nothing can be solved.
• Immature wish to be happy, while not knowing what happiness is.
• Periods of confusion.
• Irritation with friends and family
• Easily angered
• Irregular eating habits.
• Inability to concentrate, full of anxiety, feeling of being trapped.
• Progressive loss of daily structure.
• Periods of deep depression.
• Irregular attendance at recovery meetings.
• Developing an “I don’t care” attitude.
• Open rejection of help.
• Becoming dissatisfied with life.
• Feelings of powerlessness and helplessness.
• Self pity.
• Thoughts of social drinking/ using.
• Conscious lying.
• Complete loss of self-confidence.
• Unreasonable resentments.
• Discontinuing attendance at Recovery Meetings, (“I don’t need them.”)
• Overwhelming loneliness, frustration, anger and tension.
• Start controlled drinking and using.
• Loss of Control

Relapse Prevention;

• go to a meeting,
• talk to your sponsor,
• get a new sponsor,
• call someone,
• get counselling or
• go to rehab.
• but, above all, don’t drink/drug.

A Hole in the Sidewalk: The Recovering Person’s Guide to Relapse Prevention by Claudia Black

• See also;
• Screening for Alcohol Problems
• Double Trouble in Recovery
• Stinking Thinking
• A Woman’s Spirit
• The Horse Whisperer; One Now at a Time

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“People suggested that I find a Higher Power. I was not fooled. I knew when they said Higher Power they meant God. And I knew that God waited for me to step out of line just once so that he could take his revenge. I wanted no part of God.

“With this resistance I plodded along for a few months. Whenever people asked me how I was going, I would say, ‘Fine, just fine,’ no matter how hard I was crying inside. …

“When I had finished talking, he told me something simple: ‘You don’t have to drink over it.’ What an idea! I had thought that situations made me drink. If I was angry, I drank. If I was happy, I drank. Bored or excited, elated or depressed, I drank. Here was a man telling me that, independent of my life situation, I did not have to drink. If I stuck with A.A., I could stay sober under any and all conditions. He gave me hope, and in many ways, he symbolized the door through which I finally walked into Alcoholics Anonymous.”

Alcoholics Anonymous, 4^th ed, pg. 427-29

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• Women & the 12 Steps
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Action will untabgle the heart to recovery

A.A.’s 12-Steps – A Program of Action

A.A.’s Twelve Steps, which constitute its program of recovery, are in no way a statement of belief; they simply describe what the founding members did to get sober and stay sober.

They contain no new ideas: surrender, self-inventory, confession to someone outside ourselves, and some form of prayer and meditation are concepts found in spiritual movements throughout the world for thousands of years.

What the Steps do is frame these principles for the suffering alcoholic – sick, frightened, defiant, and grimly determined not to be told what to do or think or believe.

The Steps offer a detailed plan of action:

• admit that alcohol has you beaten,
• clean up your own life,
• admit your faults
• do whatever it takes to change them,
• maintain a relationship with whatever or whoever outside of yourself can help keep you sober, and
• work with other alcoholics.

The same applies in a similar way to all 12-Step groups such as Al-anon, Alateen, ACOA, Gamblers Anonymous, Narcotics Anonymous and Cocaine Anonymous.

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I have seen and heard of this process in many of my clients (men and women) who were partners of alcoholics, addicts, compulsive gamblers or sex addicts.

Additionally, I have seen these stages of leaving in recovering people who have codependent partners who will not change their behaviours. In other words, the codependent behaviour is itself abusive.

Nothing could be easier than walking out the door, right? According to a new University of Illinois journal article, an abused woman actually goes through a five-step process of leaving that can be complicated at every stage by boundary ambiguity.

“When a woman is disengaging from a relationship, she is often unclear about her family’s boundaries. Is her partner in or out of her life? A woman’s spouse may be physically in the home but psychologically unavailable. He’s not caring for the kids or being a loving partner.

“Or she may have physically left him but still be psychologically connected. She misses him, and for the sake of her children, she’d like for her family to be together again,” said Jennifer Hardesty.

“We could see this struggle clearly in the pictures women drew of their families at different points in the process of leaving. It’s a confusing time. The boundaries are ambiguous,”" she said.

“It’s not unlike the experience of having a child leave for college,” she noted. “Your child isn’t living at home, but you’re still very connected to them emotionally. Yet, when they come home for visits, they may pay little attention to you while they make the rounds of their friends. It’s always hard to figure out what the new boundaries are as you move into a new stage of life.”

Khaw has applied the model to 25 abused women from varied backgrounds, identifying boundary ambiguity within the five stages of the process of leaving.

“In the first two stages, women begin to disconnect emotionally from their relationships. You hear them say things like, I started not to care for him anymore,” Khaw said

Stage 3 is often marked by a pileup of abusive episodes and noticeable effects of the violence on their children. “Women make preparations to leave, such as finding a place to stay or secretly saving up money. This stage is important for women as they switch from thinking about leaving to actually doing something about it,” she said.

“Then, at Stage 4, when women take action, we see a lot of what we call back and forthing because when women leave, the emotions often come back. They need clarity. They want to be physically and emotionally connected again,” said Hardesty.

The last stage, maintenance, is achieved when women have been gone for six months or more. “But even then they may have boundary ambiguity if their ex-spouse won’t let them go. With continued contact through court-ordered child visitation, the potential for ongoing abuse remains as well as continued confusion over the abuser’s role in the woman’s life,” she said.

In the past, Khaw and Hardesty have used the model to focus on what individual women are going through. But applying boundary ambiguity to the model gives a more complete picture of the process.

“Leaving a relationship is much more complex than just deciding to change, and it involves more than a woman’s prioritizing her safety. Other actors are involved. The abuser makes decisions that affect a woman’s movement through the stages. And children can be a powerful influence in motivating a woman to get out of a relationship and in pulling her back in,” Hardesty said.

It’s important for social work professionals and frustrated family and friends to understand the process of leaving, Hardesty said.

“Often shelter workers focus on safety and tangible needs such as a job and housing. They don’t help women disentangle themselves emotionally. But it’s hard for women to get out of the situation if they haven’t resolved these relationship issues.

“Discouraged friends and family members have to learn to view leaving as a process and realize that there’s little they can say to speed it along. It’s important for them to reinforce the risks the woman is facing by asking such questions as ‘Has he become more abusive? Does he have a gun?’

“When talking to an abused friend or family member, one should always emphasize safety, but for your own sanity, you should realize that leaving is a process and she has to work her way through it herself,” she said.

When women do finally achieve both physical and emotional separation, research shows that they experience fewer health problems and less depression, Hardesty said.

From a press release by; Lyndal Bee Lian Khaw, a University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign doctoral student, and Jennifer Hardesty are co-authors of the paper, which was published in the Journal of Family Theory & Review.

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