It’s easy for those close to a person struggling with addiction to find themselves in a codependent relationship. In codependent relationships, people take responsibility for the extreme needs of another person to the detriment of themselves. In relationships involving people struggling with substance abuse issues, this codependency can often become enabling behavior, with people taking responsibility for the actions of another, attempting to solve their problems, and turning a blind eye to harm their loved one may cause in their struggle with addiction. Stopping codependency can be a complicated process, but it’s essential to addiction recovery. Here are three tips to help you start untangling codependent relationships.
1. Set Healthy Boundaries Boundaries establish what you are and aren’t comfortable with. Setting and honoring boundaries takes time and practice, but begin by taking some time to meditate on what makes you anxious and uncomfortable and what you can tolerate. Codependent people tend to struggle with saying no, so practice being direct and staying firm in refusals. It will take time, but this is key in shedding your people-pleasing behaviors. 2. Offer Support Without Sacrificing Your Needs People in codependent relationships often attempt to “fix” their loved ones, but in recovery, the desire to change needs to come from the person struggling: forced stints in rehabilitation rarely stick. Practice offering support and compassion without taking responsibility for your loved one’s issues or covering for problems caused by addiction. Discuss solutions and treatment plans with your loved one, but allow them to ultimately to make their own decisions. Consider attending family therapy to prepare for the changes that occur during the recovery and commiserate others in the same situation. 3. Take Care of Yourself It’s easy to lose yourself in a codependent relationship as you become wrapped up in caring for your loved one. Spend time caring for yourself by focusing on your emotional, physical, and mental health. Eating well, exercising regularly, and getting enough sleep are more important than ever considering the disruptions to our lives due to Covid-19. You can’t take care of others if you aren’t taking care of yourself. If you or a loved one are seeking help with recovery in Connecticut, contact us today at www.newerarehabilitation.com to take the first step in transforming your life.
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As the coronavirus pandemic has become part of the backdrop of our lives, substance abuse recovery, like so many other things, is looking a lot different. With increased isolation, changes in employment, and a general feeling of uncertainty plaguing more and more Americans, research shows that the risk of relapse is higher than ever for those in recovery. But there is still hope and there are steps you can take to fortify yourself and stay the course. Here are three ways to keep your recovery on track in the midst of a pandemic.
1. Stay Connected The most radical change we’re all dealing with in this time is feeling isolated and detached from our social networks. With many of us working from home, unable to freely spend time with loved ones, and with social gatherings put on pause, it’s easy to feel disconnected and alone. Take time to reconnect with your community, whether that’s with a standing call with close friends and family, or a Zoom party that gets a group together. Get creative with group movie night options like Netflix Watch Party or Hulu Watch Party, or consider a virtual game night with apps like JackBox or Quizup. While these online options aren’t a perfect replacement, they do the job of reminding us we’re all in this together and building us up with social support. 2. Make Healthy Habits a Priority We’ve all heard how key a healthy way of eating and regular physical activity are for our health, but these habits are even more important during the recovery process. A diet full of healthful foods and nutrients will help your body heal if you’ve struggled with substance abuse, increase energy, and even support more stable mental health. In changing your diet, it’s important to make small, sustainable changes like slowly increasing fruit and vegetable intake, consuming more protein, and gradually limiting processed foods and sugars. With physical activity, the same is true: small, gradual changes that fit into your life. With gyms no longer an option, try walking more (make it a socially-distanced walk with a friend to get in some social time!) or online workouts on Youtube. Start slow, and build up as your endurance and energy increase. And, of course, wash your hands frequently and wear a mask! 3. Build a Routine Even the positive changes that come with recovery can feel overwhelming at times. Coupled with the dramatic adjustments hat have come about due to the pandemic, this can feel very challenging. A good way to combat this is to build structure and routine into your life as much as you can, to free up mental space with some peaceful predictability in the wake of so much other upheaval. Like always, the focus is incremental, sustainable changes: can you set certain times to wake up and go to bed? To eat your meals? What about some personal time for self-reflection or meditation? Seeking treatment can help with this, as meetings with counselors or group therapy encourage personal growth and build time for self-reflection into your day. If you or a loved one are seeking help with recovery in Connecticut, contact us today at www.newerarehabilitation.com to take the first step in transforming your life. Here are 6 tips that can help you overcome anxiety and phobias:
1. Allow yourself to sit with your fear for 2 to 3 minutes. Say “it’s OK”, and know that you are allowing yourself to feel it but that you also wish to move on. #mindset 2. Write down the things you are grateful for. Doing this allows you to take your mind to a more positive place. 3. Remind yourself that your anxiety is a storehouse of wisdom. Sometimes we’re anxious and fearful because we are unsure of what will happen. But if we switch the mindset into seeing what the lesson may be then we teach ourselves to view it differently. 4. Exercise. I know it’s always annoying to see that word when you’re not an active person. However, doing exercises allows your mind to release endorphins. If you’re not in an area to exercise, then go take a walk or massage your temples to stay grounded. 5. Use humor to deflate your worst fears. I truly believe laughter cures the soul. Ask yourself what’s the worst thing that could happen? And then laugh about it or think of something funny. 6. Appreciate your courage. Tell yourself and believe that you are stronger than you think... and if all else fails, pray for strength to get through it. If you’re having trouble coping with your mental health, please give us a call or visit us online at newerarehab.com to learn how we can assist you. We also offer online counseling for out-of-town clients. (Source: https://www.psycom.net/facing-your-fear) In need of counseling or mental health services? Mentally exhausted due to COVID-19? Out of town and need someone to talk to?
New Era Rehab Center is now offering Telemedicine (online video counseling) services for those that are unable to come into our facilities. Telehealth / telemedicine is the distribution of health related services and information via telecommunication technologies. ⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ If you’re having trouble coping with your mental health or addiction, please give us a call to learn how we can assist you. For inquiries and appointments please call us at 203-344-0025 and dial 3 to speak to an admissions counselor. For faster responses, send us a message via the messenger icon on our Google Business Page. We have two in-person centers that services the Bridgeport, CT and New Haven, CT areas; however you can use our online counseling services from anywhere in the US. We look forward to serving you. The year 2020 began with a realistic sense of excitement and eagerness, plans for the new decade and declarations of hope echoed from around the globe. No one could have imagined that the entire world would be faced with a deadly health crisis, economic recession and social unrest unlike anything the human race has seen in the last 100 years. Now, as our planet is paralyzed by the fear of a ravaging virus, mental health is emerging as a key concern.
As governments hurried to launch an attack on an unusual enemy, the media’s meticulous coverage of the events surrounding COVID-19 served to fuel an anxiety epidemic bubbling beneath the surface. Terrifying news of the virus death toll rising in our cities became commonplace, and despite the efforts made by healthcare experts to guide our government through this tragedy, it seemed as though any initiative to diminish the disease was futile. As individuals became increasingly overwhelmed with news of death, loss and hardship, a flurry of questions swarmed across the global community. We found ourselves asking: What information is real and what is fake? What will a post-COVID world look like? Is there a second wave coming anytime soon? Will this virus ever be contained? All these questions were bolstered by news of the mortality rate rising and hospitalizations constantly being reported throughout the day. As expected, reports of anxiety, fearfulness, depression, sleep problems, irritability, and feelings of hopelessness have become widespread. If you have felt any of these feelings in the last few months, we are here to tell you: You Are Not Alone. These responses, although uncomfortable, are very normal during a pandemic. As our minds adjust to the new realities of a post-COVID world, I urge everyone reading this to take their personal mental health as an active project. Mental health exists on a continuum very similar to physical health. The mind fluctuates between periods of strong mental health to periods of weak mental health, just as our bodies fluctuates from periods of strong physical health to weak physical health. It is widely understood that to better our physical health we must take an active approach to achieve results; for instance, diet (what we consume) and exercise (how we expend energy to train our bodies) has a strong correlation to the health of our bodies. The same holds true with mental health: what we allow our minds to consume (our “mental diet”) and how we expend our mental energy (our thoughts), has a strong correlation to the health of our minds. Although we understand mental health can be much more complex than this, we urge people to take the first step and consider their mental health in this framework. Regardless of how you may feel, please remember you are in control of your mental health. By deciding what you consume and how you use your mental energy, you can help “train” your mental health in the same way you can train your physical health. If this feeling of control seems inaccessible, that is where we come in. New Era Rehabilitation Center is a mental health and drug abuse rehabilitation center in Connecticut that treats those who are in need of support and guidance through their mental health journey. We offer individual, family, and marriage counseling, as well as mental health therapy. We do not change people, instead we spend the time arming our clients with the necessary coping skills and tools needed, so they can change their state of mind. If this sounds like something you may be interested in, contact us today at www.newerarehab.com so we can help you or your loved one transform their lives. - New Era Rehab Staff #rehabcentersinCT #newera #rehabcenter The statistics are staggering: Fatalities nationwide due to opioid overdoses numbered 42,000 in 2016 and 71,568 in 2017, according to a 2018 Centers for Disease Control report. That’s between 115 and 196 a day, with estimates suggesting the death rate is likely to rise.
One local addiction specialist who deals with the opioid crisis on a daily basis—she is director of the emergency department at Dignity Health Chandler Regional Medical Center—says the issue has only become more complicated with the entry of international players into the supply side of the American drug market. “Today we’re seeing newer, more dangerous synthetic forms of opioids on the illicit market, such as Fentanyl,” says Dr. Sandra Indermuhle, a prominent expert in the field of addiction. The synthetic became even more hazardous domestically with the current involvement of criminal drug interests in countries outside the U.S. “Now, these ever-more-dangerous drugs are being manufactured in China, and the Mexican drug cartels are adding them to their products,” Indermuhle says, noting that an analog of Fentanyl, called Carfentanyl, poses extreme dangers to humans in any amount. “Carfentanyl is intended for use with very large animals, strictly for veterinary purposes,” Indermuhle warns, “and as such is 100 times more potent than anything we’ve seen so far.” With the federal government preparing to spend $4.6 billion this year to address the problem, the Chandler Regional ER head says the opioid epidemic has changed its approach to the treatment of pain. “Even though most opioid overdose deaths have been due to their illicit use in combination with other drugs, the growing epidemic has changed the rules about how doctors routinely treat patients with chronic pain,” she says. “The state has now put limits on the number and quantity of tablets doctors can prescribe. After that, they must refer the patient to pain management specialists for different treatment modalities.” The National Institute of Drug Abuse reports the physician prescribing rate decreased annually by 4.9 percent from 2012 to 2016 for high-dose opioids and by 9.3 percent from 2009 to 2016 for lesser dosages. Indermuhle notes aspects of the brain’s chemistry help to fuel the tendency toward addiction for those susceptible to it. “We know there is a genetic aspect to addiction,” she says, “and for some, all it takes is a life stressor such as divorce, perhaps, or the loss of a job, to activate this genetic predisposition.” She reports it is the enhanced production of dopamine (a neurohormone released by the hypothalamus) which makes addiction to opioids so possible with overuse. “Dopamine is involved with the pleasure and reward systems of the brain,” she says, “those ‘feel- good’ responses that the drug gives.” Indermuhle’s other specialty, emergency medicine, she says came naturally to her as an emergency room technician while she was a pre-med and psychology major at the University of Colorado- Boulder. “Some people are just better able to cope with the fast-paced and emergent situations in the ER,” she declares. “I think I was just hard-wired for it from the beginning. I like excitement, and I run on adrenaline often—it’s my energy.” She says an ability to deal successfully in an emergency room scenario depends on repeated exposure to it through training. “You’ve seen it before, so when faced with an emergency, you don’t put your emotions aside and just forget them—you kind of suspend them and focus intensely on the present circumstance and deal with it—your brain and your training take over.” A leader in a field heretofore dominated by male physicians, Indermuhle says women working in emergency rooms have a unique contribution to make to the scene. “I believe women’s natural empathy will help us to connect with patients at a deeply human level. It’s an exciting time to work in this arena.” Indermuhle earned a bachelor of science degree in psychology at Boulder, graduated from the University of Arizona College of Medicine in 2004, and completed a residency in emergency medicine at the University of Indiana School of Medicine in Indianapolis in 2007. “My husband and I met in the ER,” she says, “while he was starting to suffer from burnout there,” adding jokingly, “Now, we do great with him taking care of me and our two dogs, while I handle the ER.” [As soon on Wrangler News] If you think that someone you love is addicted to drugs, it’s important to handle the situation carefully.
What to Understand Before Talking to a Loved One Before you talk to your loved one about treatment options, you need to approach them about the problem. It’s important that you don’t confront your loved one in a way that will cause an argument. It’s common for those abusing drugs to get angry and defensive easily, so you need to approach the situation with care.1 It’s natural to be afraid to approach your loved one about drug use, because of the uncertainty of how they will react. However, it could be a life-changing effort for you to overcome your apprehensions and have the conversation. You can approach your loved one with compassion and empathy and ask if they will consider getting the help they need.1 A variety of addiction treatment centers and therapeutic approaches exist to best match the specific needs of each individual. Whether you’re looking for inpatient or outpatient treatment, there are many options out there for anyone looking to take their life back from addiction. What Do Parents Need to Know? When you have a child struggling with substance abuse, attempting to handle it on your own can be extremely overwhelming and can eventually become your first and only priority. It may also be difficult to take the first step because addressing the problem is disruptive of school and extracurricular activities.2 However, addiction is far more disruptive to your child’s life in the end, and treatment can work. Taking the time now to get help can save your child’s life. Signs and Symptoms People who are addicted to drugs tend to show signs of the disease in every aspect of their lives. The symptoms of addiction are varied, but common signs of a problem with substance abuse include:3,4
[As seen on DrugAbuse.com] In my new novel “Collusion,” which I co-wrote with Pete Earley, our main character is Brett Garrett, a Navy SEAL who is injured in a helicopter crash.
Due to his injuries and pain, Garrett becomes addicted to opioids. We wrote the story this way because many brave men and women who serve in our armed forces have similar stories. The latest episode of the “Newt’s World” podcast is “the War at Home.” It takes a closer look at opioid addiction and pain management in the military community. AS DOCTORS TAPER OR END OPIOID PRESCRIPTIONS, MANY PATIENTS DRIVEN TO DESPAIR, SUICIDE It is an important episode because most Americans don’t realize the struggle that some of our veterans face once they return from combat. For many, addiction proves just as dangerous – and as deadly – as warfighting. In the episode, Earley and I are joined by retired Lt. Gen. Eric B. Schoonmaker, a medical doctor, Ph.D., and Army veteran. Schoonmaker spent four decades as a commissioned officer, and four years as the 42nd Army surgeon general and commanding general of the Army Medical Command. Schoonmaker shares the challenges of pain management, and about how the military is starting to approach pain treatment differently. We also speak with retired Army Col. Dr. Chester “Trip” Buckenmaier III, who is the director for the Uniformed Services University’s Defense & Veterans Center for Integrative Pain Management under the department of Military Emergency Medicine. CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP This is an important conversation about pain management, opioids, and how we as a society can help combat the tide of addiction that has been tearing lives and families apart in America. I hope you will listen to “Newt’s World – the War and Home” and join us in trying to understand and solve some of the critical challenges our returning military veterans face. CLICK HERE TO READ MORE BY NEWT GINGRICH Tens of thousands of Americans are dying from opioid overdoses, but others need them to treat chronic pain. How do we reconcile both sides?
More than 20 years after the first uptick in opioid overdose deaths in the United States, two groups are pitted in a bitter tug of war around the causes of, and solutions to, the opioid epidemic. On one side are people pointing to over-prescribing as the reason tens of thousands of Americans die each year from opioid overdose. On the other side are people concerned that efforts to constrain over-prescribing are hurting Americans living with chronic pain. The tension raises a key question: Are efforts to address addiction and pain fundamentally at odds? The answer is no. The dueling perspectives on the opioid epidemic and its response both have validity, and there is plenty of room for common ground. A starting point is the recognition that millions of Americans with chronic pain are at risk for opioid addiction, and millions with substance use disorders suffer from chronic pain. It is essential for the nation to advance efforts that address addiction and chronic pain at the same time. There is no doubt that opioids have been oversupplied in the United States, with enough prescriptions dispensed in 2010 to provide every adult in the U.S. a one-month, round-the-clock supply of pills. While prescribing hasdeclined modestly since then, levels remain far above the pre-epidemic baseline, as well as above levels in every other region of the globe. The risks of opioid use for pain are well established. Studies indicate that about one in four patients on opioids for extended periods will at some point use them in ways other than as intended, with as many as 10% developing opioid use disorder, or addiction. For many patients, these risks outweigh the benefits that opioids might provide, as there is limited evidence of their long-term effectiveness for chronic pain. At the same time, chronic pain is a serious public health challenge, affecting millions of Americans and costing the economy hundreds of billions of dollars a year. Disparities in the prevalence and treatment of pain translate into a disproportionate burden on already vulnerable populations, such as the elderly and racial and ethnic minorities. When patients who have been stably maintained on opioids are denied further treatment, the result can be severe pain, increasing desperation, a turn to illicit sources of drugs, or even suicide. There are three major ways to address opioid addiction and pain at the same time. ►First, the health care system should provide people living with pain access to more than just opioids. Opioids, like all prescription medicines, are just one set of tools in a large toolbox. But there is insufficient access to, or reimbursement for, alternatives to opioids. These include physical therapy, counseling, different classes of medications, and consultation with a diverse team of clinicians who may diagnose other treatable conditions and provide specialized care. It is imperative that insurers and policymakers assure access to a broad range of needed services to as many patients as possible. ►Second, health care practitioners should learn how to diagnose and treat opioid addiction. No group of patients is immune from the risks of addiction, which is a chronic illness, not a moral failure. Yet many clinicians have received little to no training in diagnosing addiction, and fewer than 7% of physicians have the authority to prescribe buprenorphine, a safe and effective treatment. Medical authorities including the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education, which oversees medical training, should close this training gap at once, or Congress should take action. ►Third, insurers and regulators should recognize that the best clinical care is both guided by evidence and tailored to the needs of patients. The recent CDC Guideline on opioid use for chronic pain in primary care embodies this concept; it generally advises limiting dosages for patients but at the same time notes that clinicians must consider the individualized needs of specific patients in their application. The agency should both reinforce its recommendations and caution against one-size-fits-all implementation. It would be irresponsible to turn the clock back to the peak period of opioid prescribing or to overlook the overwhelming evidence that opioids have been used far beyond the evidence base, at great human and economic cost. It would also be inappropriate to embrace forced tapers of stable patients using opioids for pain, or other policies that prevent access to opioid therapy across the board. The opioid epidemic challenges the health care system to be adept enough to develop effective approaches that maximize the benefits and minimize the risks of opioid medications. A good first step is to end the tug of war between addiction and pain — and focus on ways to make progress against these twin challenges together. Dr. Caleb Alexander is a professor of epidemiology and medicine at the Bloomberg School of Public Health, where he co-directs the Johns Hopkins Center for Drug Safety and Effectiveness. Dr. Joshua Sharfstein is vice dean for public health practice and community engagement at the Bloomberg School of Public Health, and the co-author of The Opioid Epidemic: What Everyone Needs to Know from Oxford University Press. |
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