The last thing that I remember is feeling dizzy. When I came to I was surrounded by family and friends and I was in a hospital bed. I was drifting in and out of consciousness, I don't know if I was conscious for five minutes or for five hours. From all of the drugs and the alcohol I had been using, a vein in my esophagus had burst, I had almost bled to death and the doctors told my family that I wouldn't make it through the night. I did survive and here is my story and what I believe led me to the point of death.
All across the United States, individuals, families, communities, and health care systems are struggling to cope with substance use, misuse, and substance use disorders. Substance misuse and substance use disorders have devastating effects, disrupt the future plans of too many young people, and all too often, end lives prematurely and tragically. Substance misuse is a major public health challenge and a priority for our nation to address. The effects of substance use are cumulative and costly for our society, placing burdens on workplaces, the health care system, families, states, and communities. The Report discusses opportunities to bring substance use disorder treatment and mainstream health care systems into alignment so that they can address a person's overall health, rather than a substance misuse or a physical health condition alone or in isolation. It also provides suggestions and recommendations for action that everyone-individuals, families, community leaders, law enforcement, health care professionals, policymakers, and researchers-can take to prevent substance misuse and reduce its consequences.
Through the vivid, true stories of five people who journeyed into and out of addiction, a renowned neuroscientist explains why the "disease model" of addiction is wrong and illuminates the path to recovery. The psychiatric establishment and rehab industry in the Western world have branded addiction a brain disease. But in The Biology of Desire, cognitive neuroscientist and former addict Marc Lewis makes a convincing case that addiction is not a disease, and shows why the disease model has become an obstacle to healing. Lewis reveals addiction as an unintended consequence of the brain doing what it's supposed to do-seek pleasure and relief-in a world that's not cooperating. As a result, most treatment based on the disease model fails. Lewis shows how treatment can be retooled to achieve lasting recovery. This is enlightening and optimistic reading for anyone who has wrestled with addiction either personally or professionally.
Named a Best Book of the Year by The New Yorker and The Boston Globe An authoritative, illuminating, and deeply humane history of addiction—a phenomenon that remains baffling and deeply misunderstood despite having touched countless lives—by an addiction psychiatrist striving to understand his own family and himself “Carl Erik Fisher’s The Urge is the best-written and most incisive book I’ve read on the history of addiction. In the midst of an overdose crisis that grows worse by the hour and has vexed America for centuries, Fisher has given us the best prescription of all: understanding. He seamlessly blends a gripping historical narrative with memoir that doesn’t self-aggrandize; the result is a full-throated argument against blaming people with substance use disorder. The Urge is a propulsive tour de force that is as healing as it is enjoyable to read.” —Beth Macy, author of Dopesick Even after a decades-long opioid overdose crisis, intense controversy still rages over the fundamental nature of addiction and the best way to treat it. With uncommon empathy and erudition, Carl Erik Fisher draws on his own experience as a clinician, researcher, and alcoholic in recovery as he traces the history of a phenomenon that, centuries on, we hardly appear closer to understanding—let alone addressing effectively. As a psychiatrist-in-training fresh from medical school, Fisher was soon face-to-face with his own addiction crisis, one that nearly cost him everything. Desperate to make sense of the condition that had plagued his family for generations, he turned to the history of addiction, learning that the current quagmire is only the latest iteration of a centuries-old story: humans have struggled to define, treat, and control addictive behavior for most of recorded history, including well before the advent of modern science and medicine. A rich, sweeping account that probes not only medicine and science but also literature, religion, philosophy, and public policy, The Urge illuminates the extent to which the story of addiction has persistently reflected broader questions of what it means to be human and care for one another. Fisher introduces us to the people who have endeavored to address this complex condition through the ages: physicians and politicians, activists and artists, researchers and writers, and of course the legions of people who have struggled with their own addictions. He also examines the treatments and strategies that have produced hope and relief for many people with addiction, himself included. Only by reckoning with our history of addiction, he argues—our successes and our failures—can we light the way forward for those whose lives remain threatened by its hold. The Urge is at once an eye-opening history of ideas, a riveting personal story of addiction and recovery, and a clinician’s urgent call for a more expansive, nuanced, and compassionate view of one of society’s most intractable challenges.
The brain is the most complex organ in our body. Indeed, it is perhaps the most complex structure we have ever encountered in nature. Both structurally and functionally, there are many peculiarities that differentiate the brain from all other organs. The brain is our connection to the world around us and by governing nervous system and higher function, any disturbance induces severe neurological and psychiatric disorders that can have a devastating effect on quality of life. Our understanding of the physiology and biochemistry of the brain has improved dramatically in the last two decades. In particular, the critical role of cations, including magnesium, has become evident, even if incompletely understood at a mechanistic level. The exact role and regulation of magnesium, in particular, remains elusive, largely because intracellular levels are so difficult to routinely quantify. Nonetheless, the importance of magnesium to normal central nervous system activity is self-evident given the complicated homeostatic mechanisms that maintain the concentration of this cation within strict limits essential for normal physiology and metabolism. There is also considerable accumulating evidence to suggest alterations to some brain functions in both normal and pathological conditions may be linked to alterations in local magnesium concentration. This book, containing chapters written by some of the foremost experts in the field of magnesium research, brings together the latest in experimental and clinical magnesium research as it relates to the central nervous system. It offers a complete and updated view of magnesiums involvement in central nervous system function and in so doing, brings together two main pillars of contemporary neuroscience research, namely providing an explanation for the molecular mechanisms involved in brain function, and emphasizing the connections between the molecular changes and behavior. It is the untiring efforts of those magnesium researchers who have dedicated their lives to unraveling the mysteries of magnesiums role in biological systems that has inspired the collation of this volume of work.
INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES and LOS ANGELES TIMES BESTSELLER “Brilliant . . . riveting, scary, cogent, and cleverly argued.”—Beth Macy, author of Dopesick, as heard on Fresh Air This book is about pleasure. It’s also about pain. Most important, it’s about how to find the delicate balance between the two, and why now more than ever finding balance is essential. We’re living in a time of unprecedented access to high-reward, high-dopamine stimuli: drugs, food, news, gambling, shopping, gaming, texting, sexting, Facebooking, Instagramming, YouTubing, tweeting . . . The increased numbers, variety, and potency is staggering. The smartphone is the modern-day hypodermic needle, delivering digital dopamine 24/7 for a wired generation. As such we’ve all become vulnerable to compulsive overconsumption. In Dopamine Nation, Dr. Anna Lembke, psychiatrist and author, explores the exciting new scientific discoveries that explain why the relentless pursuit of pleasure leads to pain . . . and what to do about it. Condensing complex neuroscience into easy-to-understand metaphors, Lembke illustrates how finding contentment and connectedness means keeping dopamine in check. The lived experiences of her patients are the gripping fabric of her narrative. Their riveting stories of suffering and redemption give us all hope for managing our consumption and transforming our lives. In essence, Dopamine Nation shows that the secret to finding balance is combining the science of desire with the wisdom of recovery.
"The purpose of this book is to explain addiction and to help families and friends to deal with it successfully. People who are struggling with addiction can also use this book to understand their situation and the resources that are available to help them. And people who are wondering if they might have an addiction can use it to get a better sense of the nature and depth of their potential problem. Part I explains the science behind addiction. Part II looks at the emotional side of the problem and how families are affected. Part III discusses many of the real-world legal and practical issues that addicts often face, and ways to keep them out of trouble. Part IV provides a detailed overview of treatment options. And Part V describes the recovery process and the most effective strategies to keep it going for the long term"--
Your Struggle With Food, Weight, or Substances Is Not Your Fault, It's A Normal Response To Surviving An Abnormal Childhood. Even though Mary was in long-term recovery with food, severe obesity, drugs, and alcohol and had what most people would consider a successful life— behind closed doors, she still struggled and wondered… * Why she had so few close friends and had difficulty finding a fulfilling, romantic relationship. * Why she still struggled with food, sleep, and caffeine. * Why she couldn't find the flow and passion she longed for in her career. * Why, even though she was in long-term recovery with food and substances and had maintained a 160lb weight loss for several decades, she felt the need to hide these parts of her past from others. Finally, in mid-life, she discovered the root cause driving these, and her past struggles with food, obesity, and substances was a condition known as Complex PTSD (CPTSD), a more severe form of PTSD that developed from her being raised in a chaotic alcoholic home. This discovery sent Mary on a five-year journey where she researched leading experts in the trauma and recovery fields who authored books about complex PTSD and the adverse childhood experiences study (ACE Study.) In order to find the most effective treatments for healing trauma, she studied the work of thought leaders in the fields of CPTSD, neuroscience, and developmental psychology and through books about addiction, childhood trauma in adults, emotional trauma, addiction to food, and addiction recovery. Join Mary as she experiences one mind-blowing revelation after another as she learns that CPTSD was operating behind the scenes sabotaging her weight, recovery, relationships, career, and health—and learn what she did to heal. Witness Mary go from believing she was weak, a failure, hopeless, and unworthy due to her struggle with food, weight, substances, and relationships to finally ending these battles by healing the trauma driving them. Discover how she found compassion for what happened to her, released the shame over how she coped, and learned to accept herself just as she is. Learn how healing trauma opened the door for her to forge healthy relationships and finally find her purpose in helping fellow survivors heal and thrive. In This Blending of Memoir, Science-Based Research & Compassionate CPTSD Workbook, You'll Learn: You're not alone; you're not bad or defective; it's not your fault, your symptoms are normal, and you can heal. Access the step-by-step CPTSD workbook & Recovery Guide that Mary used to end her struggle with alcohol, drugs, and food, including what she's done to maintain a 160lb weight loss for over two decades. * Stay on track with your recovery with the included CPTSD workbook. * Gain clarity and heal through worksheets, quizzes & questionnaires. * Gain access to a 36-item menu of evidence-based trauma healing therapies and addiction recovery resources proven to facilitate optimal trauma healing and recovery from difficulty with relationships, alcohol, drugs, food, weight, or other behavioral addictions. To Get Started Ending Your Struggle With Food, Weight, Substances or Relationships Buy Now!
Provides information on drug and alcohol use, shares the stories of families who have lived through addiction, and teaches readers how to navigate peer pressure and stress.
