Tag: drugs

Self-reflection: Be your own therapist

Posted on by kathleenmc1953@sbcglobal.net

Photo: Kathleen McCormick

How is your life going? Do you keep running into the same problems over and over again? Would you like to:

  • not second guess yourself so much
  • be good enough as you are without comparing yourself to someone else
  • stop taking things so personally
  • be able to handle situations that are difficult without thinking the worst will happen
  • refrain from blaming yourself for everything that goes wrong
  • stop feeling that you have to do things perfectly

Do you see a way out?

Getting help or helping yourself

For many years now I have subscribed to a way of dealing with problems. It is called cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT). It is very simple and elegant in how it can provide you with insight into how you think and how this interacts with feelings and behaviors. CBT is problem-focused and action oriented. It can be done with the help of a therapist and there are also many excellent workbooks and interactive computer programs that people can use on their own. What I find to be really great about CBT is that it provides you with a framework that ultimately teaches you to be your own therapist. Basically it helps you to become critical of your own negative thinking and to think more realistically and constructively. It also helps you to figure out which behaviors are serving you well and which are not. It has been found to be effective in treating almost every mental health issue from depression to addiction use disorders to schizophrenia.

The basics

Albert Ellis and Aaron Beck are considered to be the fathers of cognitive behavioral models of treatment. They came up with their models independently. Albert Ellis’ model is referred to as Rational Emotive Behavioral Therapy while Aaron Beck’s model is called Cognitive Behavioral Therapy . In these blog posts I will concentrate on Aaron Beck’s model since this is the model I was trained in and use. It explains how thinking affects mood and behavior and how this cycles back again to affect thinking. We learn to challenge our negative thinking and, through practice, become able to trace our negative thoughts back to our basic beliefs about ourselves, the world and the future. We can also challenge negative beliefs by addressing the behavioral part of the problem. For example, if we believe we are too anxious to attend social events we might test this out by arranging to meet a friend at a party. We essentially set up an experiment to prove ourselves wrong and gradually this belief begins to change.

Where do you start?

Once the basic model is understood you can start to work on your thinking and behavior in order to improve how you feel. You can learn more about this process at the following websites which I highly recommend:

Beck Institute for Cognitive Behavioral Therapy:

http://www.beckinstitute.org/what-is-cognitive-behavioral-therapy/

Dr. David Burns’ website, Feeling Good:
http://feelinggood.com/

Some random thoughts regarding Phillip Seymour Hoffman

Posted on by kathleenmc1953@sbcglobal.net
Untimely exit
Untimely exit

Since PSH’s death I’ve been thinking about all the people I have known that followed a similar path. People who had years of abstinence from drugs and alcohol and returned to using. People who then sometimes accidentally died from an overdose.

Some of these random thoughts led me to write here about what I know from my experience and to look into some more recent findings that may or may not be relevant to PSH but are relevant to the drug culture in the United States as it stands today. Add the following factors up and you have our present predicament.

1. A path from pain killers to heroin?

In the media there are reports that Hoffman had been using pain medications prior to his use of heroin. A recent report from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMSHA) notes that prior non medical use of prescription pain killers increased the likelihood of people initiating heroin use 19 times in the age group from 12-49.*

2. The new heroin: too much of a bad thing

In case you haven’t been up on the news regarding heroin, it is more potent and in greater supply than ever before. According to the US Drug Enforcement Administration’s System to Retrieve Information from Drug Evidence (STRIDE) between 1992 and 2007 (the last year that data was publicly available) the purity of heroin increased by 60% and the price decreased by 81%. (Similar trends can also be found for cannabis and cocaine.) Essentially you can get better heroin for less money. Word on the street is that a bag of heroin that was once $20 is now $10. For PSH cost was not an issue but purity may well have been.

3. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts

Several prescription drugs were also found in PSH’s apartment. Several drugs in combination with heroin might have contributed to his death. Polydrug intoxication can become lethal when two or more drugs in combination have a greater effect than each would have had if used alone.

4. Alone and using again

And then there is the prospect of the person using alone, isolated from those he or she loves. Where does the impulse to use take over in the face of losing all that one has in life- home, children, partner, successful career, friends? Heroin is not a drug that is recreational. It is a drug of annihilation; the pleasure is in a total escape from the pain of existence. It is fueled by shame. It feels better to be alone when you are ashamed of what you are doing. It also makes it harder to find you in time if you get in trouble with more potent heroin.

As a result

Being at home alone and using a drug of unknown potency possibly with other drugs and alcohol can be a lethal combination. Unfortunately this was the result for Phillip Seymour Hoffman and for all the other not-so-famous people who are dying in similar ways every day.

It doesn’t have to be this way…..

*Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, Center for Behavioral Statistics and Quality Data Review. (2013, August). Associations of Non-Medical Pain Reliever Use and Initiation of Heroin Use in the United States. Retrieved from http://www.samhsa.gov/data/2k13/DataReview/DR006/nonmedical-pain-reliever-use-2013.pdf