Watch Now! Russell Brand: From Addiction to Recovery

Russell Brand is one celebrity who is pretty cool. This isn't the first time I've written about him. I can respect him because he uses his fame to bring attention to the problem of addiction and benefits of meditation and yoga.

So I was happy to discover that after Amy Winehouse’s death from alcohol withdrawal, Brand made a short documentary with BBC about addiction and recovery. And The Guardian published a moving eulogy he wrote for her.

Discovering this short doc (about an hour long) several years late does not diminish its significance. Brand discusses with experts about opiate replacement therapy. At times, he can be overbearing and appears fixated on his recovery process. However, Brand’s narcissism is tolerable, because he argues that for addicts like himself it's abstinence or death.

He argues against methadone saying it’s an opiate replacing heroin, which means that the addict is not drug free, and an addict wiI am certain he would criticize Suboxone since it too is a synthetic opiate prescribed to curb cravings and withdrawal symptoms, just like methadone. The difference is that Suboxone is prescribed by a psychiatrist, as opposed to daily pick ups at a methadone clinic, so it no longer carries the stigma of having to drop in every morning at your local MMTP (Methadone Maintenance Treatment Program).

An addict, Brand stresses, must be free of all drugs, although whether he includes psychotropic medications, it’s unclear. Both AA and NA agree with Brand; and they consider prescription medications as drugs. Therefore, an AA member who is prescribed medication, for say depression and anxiety, is not drug free or abstinent. I find problem with this, because so many people struggling with substance abuse suffer from underlying mental illness. 

What are your thoughts?

Peaches Update: Death from Heroin OD

This is a follow up post to an earlier post on the tragic death of Peaches Geldof at age 25 with her young child next to her. I had played celebrity death sleuth but was incorrect in my assessment.

Legacy of addiction gets handed down like family estates and jewelry. Her mother overdosed at age 41 with a child at her side, and our Peaches recreates the scene 14 years later, except she was only 25.

Do we all become our parents? I think not.
Are we helpless to go on repeating the past, whether it is an addiction or a pattern of thinking and behaving?

This is why therapy needs to be part of every recovery process. Addiction isn't just the physical and psychological dependence. There exists a core conflict, our defining wound which originates in childhood. The resulting pain, whether psychological or spiritual or both, is what we attempt to dull with our substance(s) of choice.

Through therapy and/or spiritual reflection, we can become more aware, more in tune with our subconscious, so that we are less likely to act out, or behave unconsciously, and repeat what we know or become the parents whom we feel let us down.

http://www.thefix.com/content/peaches-geldof-reportedly-died-heroin-overdose

Addiction Is a Chronically Relapsing Disease: Philip Seymour Hoffman Part 2

There isn't much I can add to the very sad story. As more details emerge, the more depressing it becomes.

Addiction kills. Relapse is a boogeyman who stalks his prey, always looking for a crack in the armor. PSH's long-term partner left him and took their three children with her. It's not clear if she left because he relapsed or the separation caused the relapse. It's easy to get drawn into this sensational story, but I will leave those details for others.

But I do like this piece from the Slate.com about relapses and why they are to be feared.

Philip Seymour Hoffman's Overdose

It's the latest story of a very successful artist dying from addiction. I didn't say celebrity because he didn't strike me as such. A celebrity is someone famous who is compelled by fame to continue his or her work. I once saw him in Othello that had been readapted by a living playwright and staged at NYU. I found it unbearably pretentious and long, but then again everyone hated it including all the critics. Still, even as an unsophisticated theater viewer I felt his amazing stage presence; it was clear he was an artist, a very serious artist. 

Studies have linked creativity to susceptibility to mental illness. And the connection between mental illness and addiction is undeniable. “Mental illnesses can lead to drug abuse. Individuals with overt, mild, or even subclinical mental disorders may abuse drugs as a form of self-medication,” according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse — addiction is a mental illness. The problem is that drugs, especially opiates are extremely addictive (psychologically and physically) and the possibility of overdose increases as tolerance builds — the longer you use you need a bigger dose of the drug to for the same level of euphoria. 

What's more troubling is that when a recovering opiate addict relapses, they face a greater risk for overdose. It's because physical tolerance decreases during recovery, but the psychological craving for the drug persists. 

Sadly, the often-quoted AA/NA mantras "one day at a time" and "once an addict, always an addict" ring too true.

There are tons of interviews and articles about PSH talking about acting and his struggle with addiction. After attending NYU as an undergraduate, he went to rehab and was sober for 23 years. This past year he publicly admitted to relapsing on painkillers that led to sniffing heroin. He then went into a drug treatment program for ten days, which really means he detoxed from opiates for ten days. 

Why did PSH only spend ten days in "treatment"? If he did get treated in a proper rehab program (28 days or longer), would I be writing about him along with so many others?

Relapsing after 23 years of sobriety, he does "rehab" for ten days. And less than a year later he is found dead in a luxurious bathroom with a needle his arm, in his underwear, next to baggies of heroin. 

Of all the great movies he's been in, I remembered Before the Devil Knows You're Dead, a dark comedy (the internet says a thriller) about a very anxious man, his dysfunctional family and the desperate measures he takes to escape his life. PSH plays the man who plans to "rob" his parent's jewelry store with the help of his useless brother. Things go wrong, and his situation worsens. And behind all his trouble is his addiction to heroin. Near the end of the movie, we find him in a luxury apartment, no ordinary shooting gallery. He makes his purchase, shoots up and is left alone to nod off on very expensive furniture.