Addiction Recovery

Blackouts

Do not remove his bottles from their hiding place, because when he goes to hide more, it will indicate to him the extent of his drinking, if his head is sufficiently clear to identify such sickness.

Alcoholics suffer from blackouts and do not always remember where they have hidden their bottles, often concealed when drunk and he cannot remember where. Always there is the need to have yet another hidey-hole and we forget. Sometimes it is even better to bring one out of deep hiding, because you will most probably know where most of them are anyway, and put something for him into one of his more obvious and easily accessible hiding places, before he wrecks the house looking for it. He will, you know!

Blackouts need an explanation. In a blackout does not mean that they are lying down unconscious on the floor. Alcoholics can be walking about or sitting quietly, apparently having a reasonably normal conversation with you, whatever a normal conversation is with a drunk, drinking, and then later, when they are not drinking, remember nothing about it.

This is a blackout.

They can promise in all sincerity so that you will believe them to take you all to the beach in the morning and then in the morning, when you are all kitted up, ready to go, he arrives downstairs looking like something out of a horror movie and nobody is going anywhere. He knows nothing at all about it.

And, you are not going anywhere. For sure.

Also, it is often during these blackouts that the most violent scenes take place, and you wonder desperately why they do not believe you when you confront them with what they have said or done the next day, or in the morning, and you start to wonder if you are going out of your mind.

One handy thing to remember is not to put alcoholics to bed when they are in a stat Read the rest of this entry »

Opiates are often referred to as narcotics and have been used medically to relieve pain for centuries. In the early 19th century, pure morphine extract was suitable for solution, and with the advent of the hypodermic needle in the mid-19th century, injection of morphine became a common method of pain relief. In 1898, heroin was introduced into the medical community as a remedy for addiction to morphine. However, it was soon revealed that heroin was even more likely to produce addiction than morphine. While opiates began their start in the medical community, they have quickly become one of the most commonly abused drug groups. Today, only codeine and morphine are still used in the clinical setting for pain management. The opiates drug group includes opium, morphine, codeine and heroin, among other synthetic opiates such as Demerol.

Short-term and Long-term Effects of Opiates

Opiates can cause serious health complications, such as fatal overdose, spontaneous abortion, and infectious diseases such as HIV/AIDS and hepatitis, particularly in users who inject opiates.

Opiates have short-term effects that appear quite soon after a dose and last a few hours. After injection of opiates, the user typically reports feeling a rush of euphoria, an increase in body temperature, dry mouth, and a heavy feeling in their limbs. The user then spends the next few hours alternating from a wakeful to a drowsy state until the drug wears off.

Regular use of opiates leads to a buildup of a user’s tolerance. This means that the user must increase their subsequent dose of opiates to achieve the same effect as before. As the user increase their dose and its frequency over time, they develop physical dependency and addiction. Their body has acclimated to the drug use, and has grown to depend on the presence of drugs in order to function properly. I Read the rest of this entry »

Anyone who has got into the bad habit of abusing alcohol or any other substance has fallen into the category of substance abuse. It is a common event and an expensive pastime and will lead to serious health problems as well has ruining family and other relationships. It is estimated that in the US and Canada alone that 100,000 deaths are caused by the result of alcohol abuse every year.

Alcohol is on top of the list of drugs most abused by kids between the ages of 12 and 17, in other words minors. The most common cause of death in teenagers are motor accidents due to excessive alcohol, although other resulting behavior patterns include high-risk sexual habits, getting poor grades or low job performance, the use of tobacco products and experimenting with illegal drugs.

The problem is that our kids tend to suffer from depression, so alcohol and drugs are just a bi product in the attempt to get over feeling depressed. You know if you have a problem related to alcohol abuse when it effects your health or your natural abilities in your daily life. Alcoholism is just a term used for anyone who is physically or emotionally dependent on alcohol in order to get through the day.

There is no defined mode of alcohol abuse as drinking habits vary from getting drunk on a daily basis to just drinking way to much at the weekend. You quite often find that sufferers will tend to be sick or ill on Mondays and Fridays as their mind focuses on their drinking habits.

They will probably use having a cold or flu as an excuse. There are others though who might stay dry for weeks or months even, but then will fall by the wayside and start to binge drink to make up for lost time. Once you come off the alcohol you will automatically suffer from withdrawal symptoms such as trembling, delusions, hallucinations, and sweating and if you just stop overnight.. Read the rest of this entry »