“Choose [your memories] carefully. Memories are all we end up with … You’ll have a thousand pasts and no future.” –The Secret Behind Their Eyes (film) Robert Emmons summarizes research on gratitude and reviews the impact of it at a social level. He closes with thoughts on cultivating it at an individual level. Gratitude, at least … Continue reading Want to be grateful? Remember to remember.
Month: November 2013
Make a Gratitude Adjustment
A good article on the relationship between gratitude and happiness. A psychology professor at the University of Michigan, Peterson regularly gave his students an unusual homework assignment. He asked them to write a "gratitude letter," a kind of belated thank-you note to someone in their lives. Studies show such letters provide long-lasting mood boosts to … Continue reading Make a Gratitude Adjustment
Gratitude
Happy Thanksgiving! Here are a few things I'm grateful for: Recovery - 23 years ago I was 4 weeks abstinent (not in recovery) and 1 week away from being coerced into a psych unit because my therapist was convinced I was going to kill myself in the coming weeks. He was right. The patients (not … Continue reading Gratitude
Two more defenses of Suboxone
In the Washington Post, Harold Pollack interviewed Peter Friedmann about buprenorphine and the NY Times series on buprenorphine. We're fortunate that that they share their premises. HP: Buprenorphine provides a “substitution therapy” for people with opiate disorders. PF: Correct. For many years, opiate addiction was considered an incurable illness. It was Dole and Nyswander in New York who proposed … Continue reading Two more defenses of Suboxone
Sentences to ponder
"Many overdose deaths involved people who somehow compromise their tolerance..." (Source) ugh. "Somehow compromise their tolerance"? Really? I'm hearing more and more statements that frame abstinence as dangerous. Tolerance is no being discussed as though it's your immune system. Grrr. Related articles This drug could make a huge dent in heroin addiction. So why isn't … Continue reading Sentences to ponder
NY Times / Suboxone redux
I thought I was done, but here are a couple more smart takes. Both support maintenance but appreciate the article raising awareness of important problems. From The Institute Blog: And as the articles (and the comment section) demonstrate, the use of buprenorphine to treat addiction and prevent substance use-related harms is messy. Interlacing text and video, … Continue reading NY Times / Suboxone redux
Tribes of the Recovering Community
This week's tribe is International Doctors In Alcoholics Anonymous: IDAA is a group of approximately 6000 recovering health care professionals of doctorate level who help one another achieve and maintain sobriety from addictions. IDAA strongly supports mainstream AA as the basis for everyone's recovery program and that needs to be first and foremost. We are not … Continue reading Tribes of the Recovering Community
Knowing laughter
In The Gifts of Imperfection, Brene Brown describes "knowing laughter" In I Thought It Was Just Me, I refer to the kind of laughter that helps us heal as knowing laughter. Laughter is a spiritual form of communing; without words we can say to one another, “I’m with you. I get it.” True laughter is … Continue reading Knowing laughter
What makes treatment effective?
This will be my post in response to the NY Times' series on Suboxone. This post originally ran on 7/19/13 and addressed a lot of our concerns. * * * I've been catching a lot of heat recently for posts about Suboxone and methadone. (For the sake of this post, lets refer to … Continue reading What makes treatment effective?
no hint of opinion here
To me, the most important line in the NY Times Suboxone series was this one, "[Dr. Sullivan] considered opioid addiction "a hopeless disease'". We believe that maintenance approaches are rooted in the belief that most opiate addicts are not capable of recovering in the same manner that doctors recover. Most of the arguments for maintenance treatments … Continue reading no hint of opinion here
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