Jane Brody looks at smoking.
[O]ver the course of a day, as the brain continues to be exposed to nicotine, partial tolerance develops and each subsequent cigarette produces less of an effect. But during sleep, nicotine comes off the receptors and smokers awaken with an intense craving for a cigarette.
One in eight ER visits due to mental health and/or substance abuse.
New government statistics show that nearly 12 million visits made to U.S. hospital emergency departments in 2007 involved people with a mental disorder, substance abuse problem, or both.
PsychCentral: Relationship Breakup Similar to Addiction Withdrawal
Rejection by a romantic partner is a bitter pill. New research suggests the trauma is severe because love rejection affects primitive areas of the brain associated with motivation, reward and addiction cravings…
A.A., then and now: After 75 Years, We Don’t Know How It Works. David Brooks weighs in here.
In a culture that thinks of itself as individualistic, A.A. relies on fellowship. The general idea is that people aren’t really captains of their own ship. Successful members become deeply intertwined with one another — learning, sharing, suffering and mentoring one another. Individual repair is a social effort.
Also on this site, a list of 12-step programs in L.A. Whether you’re aiming at recovery or not, if you’ve never been to a 12-step meeting, they’re well worth checking out. (Make sure it’s an open meeting–outsiders welcome.)
The L.A. Times looks at the “Twilight” obsession, opening with:
Chrystal Johnson didn’t think there was anything unhealthy about her all-consuming fixation with “The Twilight Saga” — until she discovered it was sucking the life out of her marriage…
Ignored stress brings cravings, then relapse, says study.
Researchers supplied Palm Pilots to 55 college students who were in recovery from substance abuse ranging from alcohol to cocaine and club drugs. The students were asked to record the their daily cravings for alcohol and other drugs, as well as the intensity of negative social experiences — hostility, insensitivity, interference, and ridicule — and their general strategies for coping with stress…
Is there anything running around the block won’t do? Exercise may be an effective and nonpharmacologic treatment option for alcohol dependence.
A new study of the relationship between alcohol intake and wheel-running in hamsters has found that exercise may provide an effective alternative for reducing alcohol intake in humans…
Another behavior in the addiction spotlight: UV abuse.
As with alcohol, not everyone who is exposed becomes dependent on the sun. But there are enough UV abusers — one in five college students, perhaps half of beach habitués and 70 percent of indoor tanners, according to various studies — to warrant a new medical diagnostic category: tanning addiction.
To the Point joins the chatter re The Internet and the Human Brain–sparked in part by the publication of an apparently doom-heavy new book, The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains.
Want to keep yourself thinking “long thoughts”? Take weekends away from the web, suggests one panelist…if you can.
A profile of an upscale, gay sober living house in the NYT: Avoiding the Undertow of Temptation.
“A critically important component of recovery for people is a sense of community, not isolation,” said Robert J. Lindsey, president and chief executive of the National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence. In sober share houses, the people “are creating for themselves their own environment, and have the opportunity to be out in one of the most beautiful places in the country.”
Find a directory of sober livings in Los Angeles at soberhousing.net. Caution: Not all sober livings have sober residents. Look for houses that do random testing, require 12-step attendance, and otherwise seem serious about recovery.
