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scriptmedic · 8 years ago

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Can you explain any additional side effects/effects of ketamine?

kicks down the door, dual-wielding syringes

Did somebody say KETAMINE?L!!?!?#$$@@!!!!!!?

…Shut it, Stethy.

Okay. Ketamine. My #1 all-time favorite pharmacological agent. (I have a feeling someone sent me this ask to cheer me up, which I’ve really needed this week, but I’m not sure so I’m going to answer it.)

There’s a phenomenal article about the “Ketamine Brain Continuum” from an amazing ER doc, which I’m going to summarize here, but if you’re as fascinated as I am, is worth reading in its entirety.

In low doses, ketamine can relieve pain. It can also make people feel very “stoned”.

In medium doses, it can cause hallucinations. This is what the drug using community refers to as “falling down the K-hole,” and ketamine is indeed known for its illicit uses. For example:

Then I entered an orange-brown-black space occupied by a giant inflated kiwi-bird with ruffled, long tassel-like feathers and a long curved slim black beak, and the beak curved off into infinity. The space was like a corridor, with undulating grasses at the top and bottom, and the kiwi somehow inside it, but the sides were open and the corridor stretched off into infinity and I moved toward the kiwi and it felt beautiful, amazing, with loud buzzing, ringing sounds accompanying the journey....

There are some fascinating first-hand accounts here: https://www.erowid.org/experiences/subs/exp_Ketamine.shtml

Note: I am in no way encouraging illicit uses of pharmacological agents. Any agent can be dangerous. But if you want to know what ketamine feels like, don’t ask the medical providers, ask the people who use it for fun, right?

This is actually where medical people want patients not to be. The hallucinations can be distressful. To quote Dr. Reuben Strayer (above article):

If the patient develops distress shortly after an initial dose, the patient is not fully dissociated and the best maneuver is usually to give more ketamine.

Personally I think that’s the best maneuver for almost any situation.

In high doses, ketamine works as an anesthetic, specifically a dissociative anesthetic. It shuts the brain off from outside stimulus completely. Basically what ketamine does is it shuts the brain off from outside stimuli. That means that even though someone’s eyes are open (and possibly twitching, medically referred to as nystagmus) their brain isn’t processing information from them. As a doc whose lectures I love likes to say, “Think of a beach. Or think of a mountaintop. Or think of a beach on a mountaintop. Anything is possible with ketamine.”

Think of it like this: with most anesthetics, the brain is temporarily turned off. With ketamine, the brain isn’t turned off -- it’s just disconnected from the outside world.

However, if someone is unprepared for it, those hallucinations can seem like a nightmare. And there is a portion of patients who get ketamine and, as it starts to wear off, they start screaming uncontrollably. This is called an “emergence reaction,” as they emerge from anesthesia and slip into the K-hole.

Someone who has been sedated/anosthetized with ketamine, especially if it’s against their will (used as a “knockout drug”), will likely have very negative hallucinations. To an outsider they’ll be lying on the floor, eyes open and blinking, unable to move or react to anything. It’s a great moment for a horror scene, or a horrific element to an action plot, especially if they have an emergence reaction and come back to reality screaming.

(Ketamine is also routinely used during veterinary euthanasia, at least where I live, and eyes stay open even after death, and that’s something a good vet warns their clients about. Ketamine isn’t the lethal agent, that’s a barbiturate, I think usually just a massive overdose of phenobarbital.)

Other uses:

ketamine helps open up constricted airways (acts as a broncholytic or bronchodilator). This means that it’s the optimal anesthetic for intubating -- putting a breathing tube in -- severe asthmatics who need to go on ventilators.

Ketamine, in high doses, can be used to subdue patient who are physically violent and psychotic.

Because ketamine acts on different receptors than typical sedatives, it can be used to stop seizures when benzodiazepines (Valium, Ativan, Versed...) have failed.

Low-dose, slow infusions of ketamine have seen great promise in depression that’s not responding to other approaches. There are ketamine clinics around for exactly this purpose.

Low-dose / analgesic ketamine is often used by EMS personnel during rescue scenarios where someone is trapped or pinned in a vehicle because ketamine, unlike most pain medications, doesn’t reduce blood pressure.

Ketamine is typically not used as an anesthetic in head injury patients because there is some (conflicting) data on whether or not it can increase intracranial pressure.

So that’s ketamine. Thanks for the ask and thanks for listening to my madness!

xoxo, Aunt Scripty

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avesathanas-blog · 8 years ago

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The life of a schizophrenic.

Today I’ve decided to revive my blog by talking about my schizophrenia, what it is, what it made me go through and how I deal with it to this day, be prepared, this is a loooooong story.

First off, to clear up some confusion: No, schizophrenia does not imply a multiple personality, that disorder is aptly called multiple personality disorder, a whole other different mental disorder which has zero to do with schizophrenia.

I was first diagnosed with schizophrenia when I was around 20/21 after taking magic mushrooms, 300 mg (1/3 of a gram) if I remember correctly, this is actually considered a low dose in the scene. These mushrooms made me go through hell, I cannot imagine anything more painful, agonizing or torturous. It is impossible to describe what I felt for the 5-6 hours the trip lasted, it wasn’t one of those “horror-trips” people talk about. This was a whole other beast, a beast that will tear you apart, from the inside out.

I couldn’t do anything, I couldn’t think straight, I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t wake up my mom to take me to the hospital, I couldn’t do ANYTHING.

I was hovering over a bucket for what felt like 2 hours trying to get rid of most of the undigested mushrooms, this did literally nothing to help the situation, I was in need of extreme tranquilizers like Xanax or Klonopin, but I had access to neither, unfortunately. The tripping itself became secondary, I didn’t care about the hallucinations, I didn’t care about the vivid colors, all I thought was “Please let this end.” if I had the opportunity and the thought pattern I would’ve killed myself. I’m glad I didn’t, while also being disappointed I didn’t which will become more clear later.

Now that we have the backstory of how I acquired this terrible illness we can move on to how I began to deal with it.

After the trip the first thing I did was sleep, as much as I could. After waking up most of the symptoms were gone but I still had these feelings of falling from a great height, from being ripped apart atom by atom. I talked to my mother and we decided to go to the hospital, this began my love for benzodiazepines. I was prescribed a neuroleptic (an antipsychotic called Zyprexa (Generically called Olanzapine) which helped for a while and a ton of Xanax. After that I got an appointment at a psychologists office a week or two later. This doctor was the worst I’ve ever dealt with, she prescribed another anti-psychotic to get me off the Xanax which was an incredibly terrible idea, the medication I got made me feel like I was literally dying, I had a rest heart-rate of 160, I was shaking so hard I could brush my teeth without moving my hand, thankfully my GP figured out it was that medication that caused it and I discontinued the usage of that poison.

After all of this my mother and I moved back to our hometown in the western part of Germany. I got access to so many benzos it’s not even funny. I loved them, they killed my symptoms, they killed my anxiety, they opened me up to talk to people, they’re miracle drugs to me. I was however never addicted to them, thankfully.

Keep in mind that you can’t really die of an overdose of benzodiazepines, in conjunction with other pharmaceuticals and illegal drugs it certainly makes it more possible. I still to this day take Valium, but not every day and not in the amounts I used to. After moving I developed extreme panic attacks and my anxiety went through the roof, I was paralyzed by it. No one could figure out why, all they could do is yet again give me benzos.

Due to over-usage of benzos I ended up in hospital multiple time, even though telling them that I took too many because I blacked out and didn’t know what I was doing I was forced into a mental health unit (5 times in total) and I will never go back, I’d rather die. They treat you like a child, no, even worse than a child. You can’t do anything with or without their permission, and getting that permission could take days.

As soon as I was out I was probably the happiest I had been since the shroom incident, I missed my mom, my cat, my dad (which all three have passed by now, I hope you 3 rest in peace, I love and still care for you and will never ever stop <3, you’re the only reasons I’m still alive and I wish I could tell you that and I wish you could know that.). I will ignore the next 4 times I got institutionalized, since they were basically the same.

In some ways I am lucky, even though I have developed schizophrenia, to be more specific a mix of paranoid schizophrenia and schizoaffective disorder. Most (Not all, including myself) develop voices they hear, like my sister who has multiple mental disorders herself. I’m glad I don’t have to go through that, but that for me is replaced by every form of anxiety you could imagine. I can’t go outside unless I’m high, whether it be opioids, alcohol, benzos, any tranqs really. I have some people helping me deal with this but I stopped contact with them since that’s part of what my schizophrenia does to me, it makes me destroy any relationships I develop, no matter how much I want those relationships to stay. I want a person with friends, with a girlfriend, with people I can party with, sadly, right now, that seems way too far away to even talk about.

Now to the life I live right now, my mom died in last September of lung-cancer, the most aggressive kind she could’ve developed, it spread throughout her body within a matter of weeks and killed her in 6 months despite every effort to avert that possibility. I have 6 siblings, but at the moment, only two of them even deem it worth enough to keep contact with me. Therefore I am almost completely alone in this world, which is why I’m writing this. If you end up in a bad spot, remember my story, remember that it can get far, far worse.

Today I was yet again close to killing myself, good thing I had a friend who had some morphine, otherwise I’d be hanging in my living room right now (not joking here).

My life is hard, it’ll get harder, it will never be easy, but I won’t let it win, I will prevail.

”Life’s a bitch, and then you die.”

If you’ve read all of this, I thank you from the bottom of my heart, I opened up my heart by writing all of this, this wasn’t easy and I was close to tears a couple of times. If you have anyone who cares for you, tell them, spend as much time as you can with them, you will never know how long they’ll last. I hope you appreciate this post.

R.I.P. Mom, Dad and Gini, love y’all.

#mental #mentalillness #schizophrenia #My Story #Schizoaffective Disorder #Life Story

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cryptaesthetics · 5 years ago

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sorry i haven’t been on in awhile. i will be posting updates soon i promise 💕 here is an overview of what has been going on.

this post is very personal && extremely long so please keep scrolling if you don’t want to read it.

five years ago i fell into a spiraling downfall of substance abuse and trying to find ways to cope with the fact that i knew i had mental disorders, but they remained untreated because i was too scared to ask for help. i felt like everyone would look at me differently if they knew of the issues i had been trying so hard to hide from the outside world. i began self harming and developed anorexia and forced myself to believe that it was normal human behavior, but in the back of my mind i knew that it was not. i drove myself insane day after day and acted like i had everything perfectly pieced together. i began drinking heavily because i wanted to finally feel just genuinely content. i thought that it was the only way out of the shadows that have come from the darkness, swallowing me whole and sending me into Alice’s wonderland. for once, i felt nothing... nothing at all.

four years ago i first attempted to end my life for the first time. i had attempted before but they were more or less just subtle cries for help. i mixed benzodiazepines with alcohol knowing how horrible this was for the body, but it only made me sick. there i was— wondering how the fuck it was possible that i couldn't even kill myself right. i was laying down, making a bed on the floor of rock bottom.

three years ago i dabbled with different drugs with a couple friends just for shits and giggles. it was a sensation of euphoria i had yet to experience even once in all my years of life and wondering why i never knew it was THIS easy to numb your pain with one bag, one pill, one drink. i never thought in a million years that i would be the one to dive headfirst into active addiction and denied it to myself and everyone else (until i was completely unable to hide it any longer.) it was all fun and games, until it wasn’t anymore.

two years ago i got clean without fully expelling each and every demon hiding in the corners of my brain. i ended up back at square one and beat myself up, mentally and physically over it. i attempted to end my life for the second time, ultimately failing and landing me in a psychiatric facility. at this time, i was then diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder, multiple personality disorder, schizoaffective disorder, PTSD, and manic bipolar. that’s a heavy slew of diagnoses—. i agree, but for once it felt like i had an answer as to why i never felt “normal,” and that i wasn’t just imagining things/ going insane. unfortunately over time the medical bills became too high plus medication after medication just didn’t cut it. finally i stopped going to my therapist altogether; and that is where i ultimately made the worst decision of my life.

one year ago, i was abusing substances, self harming, and suffering from mental disease more than i ever had before. each day, i would give up on life less and less and began not caring about my appearance, my attitude, && even coming to the point where i accepted the fact that i might not wake up in the morning. i was so disappointed in myself for sliding down the slope of mental torment but still cannonballed into the depths anyway. i had this “i am never going to change because i can’t” attitude and wore it loud and proud.

this year... though only halfway completed, has been a year full of change and self awareness. i learned that i need to clean my shit up or i may not see the break of tomorrow. i am 6 months completely clean to this day && i am back in therapy and could NOT be more grateful for where i am in life. i have learned a lot of lessons and have grown out of the shell of a human that had concealed a STRONG, INDEPENDENT, and BEAUTIFUL woman beneath the surface.

finally, that woman had broken free.

i wrote this, not because i am begging for attention nor repentance bc this may be considered some sort of “sob story,” but to show people that no matter how hard life gets, it can ALWAYS get better if you put your soul and spirit into being your level best. i am far from perfect but compared to where i was even a year ago today, i am so fortunate.

i fought tooth and nail to defeat my demons... and for the most part— i won.

remember, if you feel you have hit the lowest part of your existence.. things can only go up.

#MentalHealthAwareness

#youAREenough

💖👑🥀✨🌞

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martin9395 · 5 years ago

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What Is A Safe Medical Detox?

Naturally, if you are searching for a detox you'll need and need to realize what your options are. There are numerous one-of-a-kind methodologies in relation to detox and I will no longer go into those right here. What I will do is come up with the bottom line facts as it relates to a Medical Detox.

So, what is a Medical Detox?

Essentially, it is an aided withdraw technique. It is a system that mandates using proven drug treatments to ease the withdraw symptoms. These drugs are issued under the care and supervision of qualified clinical specialists Los Angeles drug detox.

A medical detox generally constitutes a live in a clinical facility so that your crucial signs can constantly be monitored. It is likewise crucial to live in a medical facility because of the truth that your dosage of medicine ought to continuously be monitored and supervised to insure the smoothest detox possible california.

What is the advantage of a clinical detox over a non scientific?

This is a usually disputed query round which a great deal debate arises. The gain to a scientific detox is that it takes the pain away. It is also offers a safety internet for the drug detox alcoholic or addict.

However, in case you were to talk with an extremist on the topic, they could tell you that the first-class manner for an alcoholic or an addict to detox is with no medical assistance. Why? They consider that the character could be more apt to stay sober in a while in the event that they consider the ache of their detox california.

What is my non-public opinion?

It is my personal opinion that this have to be determined on a case by means of case basis. Though it is able to advantage a few people to revel in the pain of a drug detox I think we have to remember the fact that there are times in which people might also die. This is especially genuine of hardcore alcoholics.

When is Medical Detox Necessary?

Not each drug addiction requires a medically supervised drug detox. While many drug withdrawals can be uncomfortable, not all drug withdrawals are existence threatening Los Angeles.

Most humans are ignorant of the excessive and lifestyles threatening results of abrupt withdrawal from certain medications. Pharmaceuticals include commands and warning labels that can be mentioned. Your pharmacist and doctor have to also provide you with information approximately withdrawal methods.

Alcohol detox is a superb instance of 1 that need to be medically supervised in certain cases. Sudden cessation of heavy alcohol use can motive seizures or even be deadly Los Angeles drug detox.

Xanax detox and detox rehab from other benzodiazepines is some other instance of a probably dangerous withdrawal, particularly if different medications are being taken in conjunction. This might require professional, scientific assist.

While it's miles uncommon for human beings to die of heroin withdrawal, it also includes extraordinarily uncomfortable. Chronic customers can enjoy restlessness, muscle and bone ache, insomnia, diarrhea and vomiting and bloodless flashes with goose bumps. For this motive a person would possibly favor to do a medically supervised detox to keep away from those signs and symptoms Los Angeles drug detox.

Marijuana smokers are surprised that they experience withdrawals from stopping marijuana use, however it's miles quite common. The mentally addictive traits of marijuana are its largest barrier to withdrawal. More regularly humans relapse due to the intellectual troubles than bodily discomforts.

There are herbal and do-it-yourself drug detox strategies available for positive drug withdrawals which ease the symptoms. But once more, you must ask and analyze what the liabilities are so that you can be organized for any emergency Los Angeles.

How a Medical Detox Program Works

In a medical detox application, the first stage is to bring the patient thru the withdrawal technique at the same time as treating the painful signs associated with withdrawal as a lot as feasible. The character is analyzed to peer whether she or he should be transferred inside the intensive medical detox program unit.

It is commonly no longer advisable that a patient suddenly stop taking the drugs or alcohol without a medically supervised clinical detox application. Withdrawal from sure capsules, together with alcohol, may be risky and require a special treatment program.

The kind of treatment program advocated relies upon upon the substances abused, the length of the addiction and the amount taken. In a medical detox software, 24 hour supervision is furnished via qualified withdrawal professionals and nurses. There are some compulsory criteria for the affected person present process detox, together with:

• The affected person must be not underneath the affect of any shape of mood altering substance

• No instantaneous clinical risk because of their utilization of drug and withdrawal

• The affected person is not suffering from any type of primary withdrawal signs and symptoms

In the treatment program, proper exercise with a bodily instructor, right food regimen, dietary and diet therapy, nutrition, acupuncture and massage all are made part of the affected person's recurring. These matters are made available to make the patient comfy and secure.

Types of Drug Detox

There are 4 number one kinds of drug detox to be had for addicts and alcoholics to reap the initial degrees of sobriety. This includes the bloodless turkey method, specialized detox facilities, clinical detox centers and rapid detox facilities. Each sort of drug detox has its personal advantages and pitfalls that humans in search of to get over dependancy ought to apprehend before they determine which remedy choice is right for them.

Cold Turkey Drug Detox

This sort of detox is likewise referred to as "natural detox" and essentially consists of an addict or alcohol undergoing the ranges of acute withdrawal in a non-public setting with little or no assistance or care. Unfortunately, the possibilities of correctly breaking the preliminary stages of acute withdrawal syndrome are small with this method, and maximum addicts will go back to their drug of choice before they've reached a essential mass in their recovery efforts.

Despite its propensity for failure, quitting cold turkey isn't always dangerous if the substance in question is fairly benign including marijuana or slight opiate dependancy. However, some substance addictions can lead to existence-threatening symptoms of AWS within the event of unexpected cessation. The 3 most risky of these materials are alcohol, barbiturates and benzodiazepines; all of that could lead to seizures, respiratory and/or cardiac arrest, coma and in uncommon cases, demise.

Regardless of the substance of abuse, maximum professionals do now not suggest herbal detox because the chances for success are appreciably impaired.

Specialized Drug Detox Centers

Specialized detox facilities provide inpatient fashion remedy for up to two weeks. Patients acquire an initial evaluation as a way to be used to expand an individualized treatment plan for the duration of their stay. Because of the character nature of these plans, a few detox sufferers will go through remedy in just a few days, whilst others will require every week or . In many instances these kinds of detox centers paintings in conjunction with longer-term treatment facilities that sufferers can automatically transfer to once they are beyond the intense ranges of withdrawal.

Specialized detox facilities work due to the treatment plans employed - which includes individual and group counseling - and because they efficaciously isolate the addict or alcohol from humans, locations and things that might be triggers for them to relapse.

Medical Detox

Medical detox is just like a specialized detox middle however with a fairly medical issue. This can consist of an on-website online nurse or medical doctor, 24 hour tracking and different styles of medically-orientated benefits. A scientific detox middle can also help addicts to step-down their drug usage with a view to keep medical safety and reduce or dispose of signs of acute withdrawal.

Medical detox is frequently required by addicts that have relapsed repeatedly, as next attempts to get smooth result in greater excessive withdrawal signs and symptoms that closing for an extended time frame. This is known as the Kindling Effect and is a totally actual phenomenon that can make it extremely tough for people to get easy and live easy. A clinical detox middle can deal with these problems expertly in a secure, relaxed and non-judgmental environment.

Rapid Detox

Rapid detox refers to a form of medical-detox process wherein the affected person undergoes most of the signs and symptoms of withdrawal even as subconscious. This is performed by means of putting the affected person into a medically-prompted coma, then administering a sequence of drugs that allows and hastens the method of acute withdrawal. This spares most sufferers the worst of the signs and symptoms and permits them to begin their treatment without the ache and soreness of a protracted duration of withdrawal.

Unfortunately, fast detox is a especially new exercise and it is now not properly understood but how successful it's miles from a protracted-term treatment viewpoint. Addicts thinking about this technique need to talk over with their number one health practitioner prior to talking with a detox professional.

Going thru detox in a specialized or scientific facility is the quality alternative for maximum addicts and alcoholics; not handiest from a safety viewpoint, however additionally due to the fact sequestering an addict far from ability publicity to capsules or drug- abuse triggers offers the first-class risk for lasting recovery.

For More Information web

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alexdmorgan30 · 6 years ago

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Chris Cornell’s Widow To The Opioid Task Force: No More Shame

Vicky Cornell, widow of Soundgarden and Audioslave singer Chris Cornell, went before the Bipartisan Heroin And Opioid Task Force on Monday to make a case for better training and education on addiction for doctors.Chris Cornell died by suicide in 2017 after struggling with depression and addiction for many years. Multiple medications were found in his system by the autopsy, including a barbiturate sedative and the benzodiazepine anti-anxiety medication Ativan. The drugs had been prescribed to him, leading Vicky to file a malpractice suit against the doctor.Although it was determined that the drugs did not directly contribute to Chris’ death, Vicky released a statement to the press soon after her husband’s death, blaming the substances for causing a lapse in judgment that led to his death.“We have learned from this report that several substances were found in his system,” the statement read. “After so many years of sobriety, this moment of terrible judgment seems to have completely impaired and altered his state of mind. Something clearly went terribly wrong and my children and I are heartbroken and are devastated that this moment can never be taken back.”Since losing her husband, Vicky Cornell has been an advocate for improving addiction treatment and promoting the proper education in medical fields and for the general public.“The part that hurts most is Chris’ death was not inevitable, there were no demons that took over,” she said to the task force. “Chris had a brain disease and a doctor who unfortunately, like many, was not properly trained or educated on addiction.”Chris Cornell often spoke about his experience with mental illness, drug use, and addiction. In 2006, he told Spin that he was diagnosed with panic disorder and believes it was a direct result of a bad experience with PCP at 14 that left him “more or less agoraphobic.”After that, he avoided drugs until his 20s, but became a heavy drinker at a young age. After Soundgarden broke up and his first marriage began to fall apart, Chris began experimenting with OxyContin. He entered rehab in 2002 and was able to quit using alcohol and tobacco by 2005.Years later, according to Vicky Cornell’s suit, her husband’s doctor prescribed him Ativan, a drug widely considered to be addictive, for 20 months without seeing the patient for a checkup. Chris told Vicky on the night of his death that he had taken an extra Ativan and was acting strangely. Now, she wants to make sure it never happens again.“We must integrate addiction treatment into our health care system,” she said on Capitol Hill. “No more false narratives about the need to hit rock bottom, no more secret societies, no more shame—we must educate health care providers on how to treat addiction and best support recovery.”

from RSSMix.com Mix ID 8241841 https://ift.tt/2GWvJjA

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emlydunstan · 6 years ago

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Chris Cornell’s Widow To The Opioid Task Force: No More Shame

from RSSMix.com Mix ID 8241841 https://www.thefix.com/chris-cornell-s-widow-opioid-task-force-no-more-shame

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pitz182 · 6 years ago

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Chris Cornell’s Widow To The Opioid Task Force: No More Shame

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morrisbrokaw · 6 years ago

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Surviving Addiction—and Coming Through Stronger

By the time Dan Maurer hit rock bottom, he was pastoring his third different congregation as an ordained Lutheran minister, he’d already done two stints in treatment, and he was pretty sure he had things under control. That was before he was arrested for breaking into homes in the rural North Dakota countryside he called home.

“I was totally dysfunctional at that point,” says Dan. “I don’t remember a lot of it. I had lost all sense of ethics or morality. I was just doing things to survive. I couldn’t see my life without drugs and alcohol.”

IT HADN’T ALWAYS BEEN THAT WAY, OF COURSE.

As a teen growing up in Anoka, Minnesota, he had what many would consider some normal encounters with alcohol—sneaking a few drinks from his parents’ liquor supply, doing some binge drinking in college. (“Not much though,” says Dan.) His home life was good. There were no obvious signs that addiction would derail his life.

Things took off though when he was diagnosed with ulcerative colitis. After a painful attack, his wife Carol drove him to the emergency room in Dubuque, Iowa, where he was a grad student in seminary. The year was 1996.

“I don’t know if the doctor on duty made a mistake or actually thought I needed that much pain control,” says Dan, “but I’ll never forget: He prescribed three refills of 30 Demarol. I maybe needed it for that one day (if at all). But there’s no way I needed it for three months. I think I went through that entire prescription in about three weeks. I was like, ‘This stuff is great!’”

He has likened the sensation to the comforting feeling of being a little boy watching Sesame Street, as his mother tucked a freshly laundered blanket around him.

“I was totally dysfunctional at that point. I don’t remember a lot of it. I had lost all sense of ethics or morality. I was just doing things to survive. I couldn’t see my life without drugs and alcohol.”

AFTER THAT, THINGS CHANGED.

Although alcohol hadn’t interested Dan much before, it now became a steady crutch. “Painkillers were my drug of choice,” says Dan, “but I couldn’t get them all the time—and I wasn’t going on the street or anything—so I started drinking more and more.”

He hid bottles in the basement ceiling. He drank in the morning before sermon prep, or in the afternoon before his wife came home from work. He found ways to hide the smell of alcohol on his breath. (“I’d eat pickles,” Dan laughs.)

One day Dan wondered how many bottles he’d stashed above the ceiling tiles. He shined a flashlight around. Holy sh**, he thought. I’m an alcoholic. His next thought was, Oh, well. I can handle this. Everybody else is a loser who lets this mess up their life. I will make it work.

AND, FOR A WHILE, HE DID.

Dan was a master at hiding things, as most addicts are. Carol had no idea. Dan is articulate. He was a great preacher. He’s friendly and likable. He could carry on without too many things falling through the cracks. And he’s smart—so smart that he could research new ways to get high and self-diagnose the side effects. Those side effects included, at one point, having seven tonic-clonic “grand mal” seizures that he mostly hid from everyone.

Meanwhile, Carol and he were raising two young boys and Dan was pastoring congregations throughout central North Dakota.

Not everything was bad. “Even though our life was a lot of crazy,” says Carol, “there were times that were still functional. Decent. It wasn’t 100% insanity. I sometimes think back to that. What if I would have known how much he was boozing and drugging and not doing what was expected of him?”

“The ironic thing,” says Dan, “is I still cared about being a husband, about being a father—but I didn’t see the disconnect that you can’t really have all these things with addiction because addiction is always on top.”

FROM BAD TO WORSE

As Dan’s addiction progressed, so did his desperation for a high, and his willingness to do anything to get it.

By 2008, a physician prescribed Benzodiazepines for his worsening anxiety. When combined with alcohol, these “benzos” caused blackouts—the kind of blackouts where Dan would be talking and functioning, with no awareness or recollection of it. Dan spent an entire family vacation in Florida, blacked out for most of it.

“I just thought he was really, super, super depressed,” says Carol, who suspected Dan might just be longing for a career change. “I knew something was wrong but I didn’t really know what it was.”

It was during this period, Dan says, that he started getting crazy ideas. “One of the ideas I had is that it would be a good idea to walk into other people’s homes to see if they had painkillers.” So he did. Several times.

Eventually, the sheriff’s department caught on.

When Carol was told that her husband was being arrested for a felony trespass, she was confused. “I said, ‘Oh! Well, I think he’s trying to connect with those people for church.’”, believing what Dan had told her. “In hindsight,” she laughs, “that was so not true. But there’s probably a part of you that wants to believe it.”

ROCK BOTTOM

“At that point, I had lost all hope,” says Dan.

He checked into Hazelden (now the Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation). This time, after he completed the 30-day program, the staff recommended he stay for their long-term in-patient program. He did. After 60 days in that program, they recommended he move to a sober house. He did. “I was willing to do whatever it took to save my marriage,” he says. “To save my life.”

And so, after twelve years of addiction and his third stint in treatment, Dan got sober. It was 2011, and he has been sober since.

FINDING HOPE

One thing you notice right away when you hear Dan and Carol tell their story is how cheerful and lighthearted they are. They laugh with each other about the ridiculousness of Dan’s lies and the extent of Carol’s obliviousness. They banter over the details. (“Wait, we had ceiling tiles in that house?” says Carol.) They talk passionately about the recovery process that has kept them together.

It’s clear that there has been so much healing that this story no longer evokes pain. Instead, it is a testament to hope. They both say their relationship is stronger than it’s ever been (although not perfect), and there are a few key things they say helped their marriage survive the destruction of addiction.

“Any difficult spot that you’re in now… You don’t wish it on anyone but it can only make you a stronger person for that.”

Everyone’s story is different. Here is theirs:

1. They both got help.

Carol is a big piece of why they’re still together. She didn’t leave Dan during the worst of it. (“My dad really wanted me to,” she says.) But she also didn’t leave all the recovery work in Dan’s court. If she had, Carol is the first to say she’s not sure they would be together.

“I think one of the main reasons our marriage survived,” says Carol, “is because we both got into some kind of recovery program. If Dan would have done recovery and I just would have sort of kept being my bullsh*t self, I don’t know… Maybe we’d still be together but we wouldn’t be healthy. I mean I can’t imagine what it would look like.”

She didn’t always feel that way.

Carol initially recoiled at the suggestion she might need help. “The first time I went to Al-Anon and found out we were working on the Twelve Steps, I was like, f*ck this. I’m not doing this sh*t. I am not the one with the problem,” says Carol. But, at the urging of others in the group, she gave it a chance. After six sessions, she was hooked.

Carol, herself the adult child of a now-recovered alcoholic, says “I realized how much crap I had brought with from my own childhood. As a child of an alcoholic, you just don’t know how to deal with life. I came to realize how much my father’s addiction had shaped a lot of my attitudes, how I responded to things, the expectations I had about myself, about my life…”

On top of that, says Carol, “There’s no way you can draw a line and say this is the addict’s problem and it hasn’t affected me.” Eventually, Carol says she found serenity for herself—regardless of what Dan was going to end up doing.

“That’s the epitome of what recovery is,” Dan says. “You have to start with yourself—that’s all that you have control of. You have your own behaviors and your own actions to look at. And, as you become healthier with yourself, the bonus is that you’re healthier with the other person. So if it’s working on both sides, you’re going to end up healthier together.”

2. They persisted.

For Dan, treatment required more than one round. Although this can be (and was) discouraging, it’s common. Many professionals compare addiction relapse rates to those of other chronic conditions such as diabetes, hypertension, and asthma, all of which involve both physical and behavioral aspects. The good news is – relapse does not mean failure. It just means more—or different—treatment is needed.

Returning to treatment can be humbling, but, for Dan, his persistence paid off.

Carol, too, needed to find the right support. For her, it ended up being Al-Anon, a Twelve Step program—but even that took some trial and error. One of her early Twelve Step experiences was handled very differently from others she had seen before, or since. That particular experience was “very shaming,” she says. Fortunately, she knew something was off, and she looked for better options.

Now she says, “I’m so thankful I’ve discovered and worked through Twelve Step recovery because I think it’s just good living. It’s good for anybody. It doesn’t matter if it’s related to addiction or not. We all have things in our life that that kind of rigor helps us work through.”

Still, recovery wasn’t a quick fix for either one of them.

“One thing people don’t always understand,” says Carol, “is how long working on yourself takes. It takes a really long time…to get to a place where you feel changed. It takes a long time.”

“I’m so thankful I’ve discovered and worked through Twelve Step recovery because I think it’s just good living. It’s good for anybody. It doesn’t matter if it’s related to addiction or not. We all have things in our life that that kind of rigor helps us work through.”

4. They got honest.

One of the things that’s changed in Dan and Carol’s relationship is they understand each other better. Both understand that Dan’s brain is wired in a certain way and that, for him, recovery means rewiring the pathways addiction created. Both understand that he’s still an addict—an addict in recovery.

“To this day I still have pill-seeking dreams,” says Dan. “Why do I have those? The only thing I can think of—and the language I use—is an ‘induced mental illness’. It’s an illness of the brain, which is a particular organ in the human body, and if you have a genetic component and the capacity to run in this path, when you add chemicals to it, it induces you into this insane state.”

Dan knows he’s still wired to sometimes make poor choices. “I’m still impulsive,” he says. “I still struggle with these things. I still need to work on them in myself.”

“I’m still crazy,” he adds, “that’s part of my problem.”

Carol counters, “I think we’re honest about our craziness now. We used to have a lot of untruths.“ Carol admits she used to sometimes tear people down to help herself feel more confident. Especially her husband. “I was just looking for any dumb little thing to nitpick about. Even if I had that same issue myself I was just… I could just be really mean.”

“I try not to be mean anymore,” she says, smiling, “I try to say what I want rather than be catty or hinty about it—I try to just be direct.”

Dan says, “I think the marriage has changed now because I’m healthier, because she’s healthier, and because we have a commitment to say what’s going on.”

4. They found purpose.

So where has all of that addictive energy gone these days? Dan says, “The most important thing, if you’re trying to get sober, is you need to find purpose and meaning in your life. For me, I have to create. It doesn’t matter if I’m writing or if I’m on a website studying CSS code or if I’m writing a play or any of that. I have to create and I have to continue doing that. I found that for me, it drives me. It’s enough.”

Today, as a four-time published author and freelance writer, Dan is a sought-after speaker and the brainchild behind several businesses, including two that provide creative resources to churches (rclworshipresources.com and funchurchplays.com).

“Life is pretty good,” he says. “I love doing what I’m doing. I’m pretty good at it. And it’s germane to Carol and I being together.”

These days, Carol and Dan take long walks with their dog every day. They cook, they eat out, they parent their boys (now 17 and 13), they visit open houses for inspiration. “We love our walks, we love our talks,” says Dan. “I mean, she really is my best friend.”

Carol adds, “He’s my best friend too—but we’re our own individuals as well.” She turns to Dan. “My life isn’t dependent on your life, and your life isn’t dependent on mine either. We’re able to function individually while at the same time just enjoying each other.”

5. They’re grateful.

Dan knows he’s been lucky. “The number of times I could have died!” he says, with a mix of amazement, horror, and humor.

Dan knows many addicts don’t have access to the kind of insurance that paid for his in-patient treatment three times. He knows many addicts arrested for felony trespass would never get the opportunity to eventually move on with life. He knows many addicts need more than three trips to treatment. And he knows not everyone who loves an addict can (or should) stay in the relationship as long as Carol did.

His gratefulness is palpable.

“The irony,” says Dan, “is that where we are now is because of all the difficult times we went through. I think that’s a word of hope. Any difficult spot that you’re in now… You don’t wish it on anyone but it can only make you a stronger person for that.”

“But only if you do the work,” adds Carol, with a smile.

Dan and Carol Maurer on a recent trip to Alaska

__ Author’s note: Interviewing this exceptional couple left me with a range of emotions and insights. I suspect it may do the same for others. I have known and loved more than one addict. At some points early on, it would have been incredibly helpful for me to know there were others struggling with similar issues, to know where to begin finding help, and—especially—to know recovery was possible, for myself and also for the addict.

I hope this article offers a glimpse of that hope to you. To learn more about Dan Maurer and his journey, visit Transformation is Real. To learn more about addiction, the Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation, and Twelve Step resources, follow the links.

Image sources: 1/ 2

Julie Rybarczyk is a freelance writer, fair-weather blogger, and well-intentioned mom who has almost never remembered to send lunch money to school. She’s perpetually the chilliest person living in Minneapolis—so most of the year you’ll find her under layers of wool, behind steaming cups of tea. Or at shortsandlongs.net.

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somekindamushroom · 7 years ago

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AMANITA DERIVATIVES: A NEW TREATMENT FOR DEMENTIA? - PART III

Apparently, Tiger Woods could stay erect, keep shagging for hours, crash out, and wake up with total amnesia of the whole event. “You know you have crazier sex on Ambien. You get into that Ambien haze. We have crazy Ambien sex”, remarked his femme fatale Rachel Uchitel. But when the woman who wrecked the billionaire golfer's marriage and career (she is the grand-daughter of Ukrainian-born, Jewish-American gangster Maurice Uchitel) uttered these infamous words, I doubt she was saying them for nothing. She took a large sum of cash from Woods to keep schtum over his affairs. Six months later, sex-hunter Donald Trump offered her a job on 'Celebrity Apprentice'. It was a Friday. Over the weekend, Drew Pinsky (who also had a Ukrainian-born grandfather) got wind and approached Uchitel personally, plotting to trump Trump. That Monday the pill-popping 'mob princess' signed a more lucrative, $500,000 offer to appear on 'Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew'. I'd bet every penny I never spent in El Morocco that her probably-offshore bank account inflated a little every time she said the word “Ambien” on the now-scrapped 'reality' show; whereas she would have been fired for doing so on Trump's abomination. Welcome to the darker side of Big Pharma. This media amplification is why the number of U.S. Ambien abusers rushed into ER increased 220% in just five years, from 6,111 in 2005 to 19,000 in 2010. The majority of them were female, including many date-rape victims.

Every month in America there's another 9/11, and the “terror” is Big Pharma, who fully capitalized on post-9/11 hysteria as sales of sedatives, hypnotics and anticonvulsants like Ambien mushroomed through the naughties. 3000 Americans a month die from prescription drug abuse alone, not counting the 1000's more prescription side-effect fatalities. Additionally, tens of thousands of 'serious complications' a month arise in both abuse and non-abuse populations which require months, years or even decades of therapy with yet more prescription drugs, generating huge amounts of cash for the industry. Up to 90% of the U.S. sales for opiate, benzodiazepine and drugs like Ambien come from off-label prescriptions, which is why Big Pharma promotes these drugs in ways most Americans wouldn't imagine, exploiting the mantra that 'all publicity is good publicity' through exposure on reality TV, in gossip columns, on internet forums and blogs. Interestingly, the higher up in American society you go, the more the lines between legal and illegal drugs become blurred. Rachel Uchitel's father, who died in a painful, convulsive cocaine seizure aged 44, didn't buy poor-quality coke from some corner street-punk. The super-wealthy who frequented El Morocco got their hash, speed, barbs, coke and heroin from personal physicians and pharmacists as well as the chemists making the prescription drugs.

The Fly Agaric sleep drug gaboxadol could have gone to market as a viable and far safer alternative to Ambien (or other generics containing zolpidem) if only the aforementioned Marika Lancel had filed her patent five or 10 years earlier, before zolpidem was commercialized in the mid-90s. Gaboxadol performed exceptionally well in Phase I and II human trials. In February 2004, New York-based Merck, one of the biggest of the Big Pharma's (and one of the last people would want to mess with) signed a $270 million contract with Lundbeck to develop gaboxadol. $70 million was paid upfront. Lancel must have been rubbing her hands with glee. Why it then took another three years to get to late-stage human trials is anyone's guess. It's interesting to note that, though $70 million seems like a lot of money, it was chicken-feed compared to the revenue generated by Ambien alone in that three-year period. Seven months after Merck got on board with gaboxadol, the firm withdrew its multi-billion anti-inflammatory drug Vioxx after five years of withholding information from doctors about the risks of heart attack and stroke. As a result, at least 140,000 people had heart attacks over that period.

Meanwhile, a massive media backlash (apparently) against Ambien and similar delirium-inducing drugs had begun which created an unfavourable climate for gaboxadol. It seemed as if every celebrity, businessman and politician was abusing them. Sales of Ambien rocketed. There were stories of sleepwalkers doing crazy stuff, of sleep-drivers crashing their cars on their way to work, of sleep-eaters, sleep-phone calls and, of course, sleep-sex. As Hamilton Morris recounts in his 'Gaboxadol' article for the August 2013 issue of Harper's Magazine: 'Patrick Kennedy woke up in his somnambulistically crashed Mustang convertible; people discovered empty food containers in their beds, evidence of uncontrollable bouts of nocturnal binge eating; an Australian woman awoke with brush in hand to find she had repainted her front door; and a teenager reportedly stole his mother’s credit card to purchase four alpacas he could neither afford nor care for.'

This is only the tip of the iceberg. The current 28-page, FDA guideline pamphlet for Ambien 5mg and 10mg tablets gives detailed results of all clinical trials to date, involving 3,660 human subjects in total. It lists literally hundreds of adverse effects, all observable within a maximum 35-day trial (28 days is considered 'long term' use). It makes grim reading. Rather than treating insomnia, some people experienced a 'worsening of insomnia or the emergence of new thinking or behavioural abnormalities'. In kids with ADHD, 7% reported hallucinations and many turned psycho on just 0.25mg. In people 70 years old or over, an incredible 93% reported dizzy falls resulting in hip fractures, cracked skulls and 'intracranial hemorrhage' or bleeding in the brain. Some of the worst effects reported include: visual and auditory hallucinations, life-threatening allergic reactions (anaphylaxis), hives and swelling all over the skin (angioedema), breathing problems ('may occur and be fatal'), kidney failure, thoughts of suicide and 'completed suicides'. The dangers of sudden withdrawal or loss of supply of Ambien are even worse. Seizures are common. Eric Clapton's four-year old son walked out of six-foot high sliding windows left open on the 53rd floor. On Ambien you could do this somnambulistically thinking you were stepping into your car. Most of this nightmare might have been avoided with gaboxadol.

Alas, if the writing-on-the-wall for (possibly) the ultimate sleep-drug wasn't already evident with all this media frenzy going on over Ambien, then the fact that Sanofi-Aventis's patent on Ambien timed-out in 2007 rang gaboxadol's death knell. New and cheaper versions of Ambien suddenly flooded the market. That year, Merck and Lundbeck decided to scrap gaboxadol during the final Phase III trial. The reasons were not published. The bottom line, most likely, is that the drug was deemed no longer commercially viable. The whole sleep-drug market was approaching saturation point: hundreds of millions of prescriptions, kickback-loving doctors all committed to one manufacturer or another (Sandoz of Switzerland, Teva of Israel, and five more). To enter it at this time with a drug that was better for the target disorder, but had little of those side-effects the off-labellers craved, would have been commercial suicide.

And so, for the second time, the mushroom-derived gaboxadol was put back on the dusty shelves of Lundbeck's useless drugs room, and anyone wanting to try it would have to buy the original synthesized product - gaboxadol hydrochloride - from chemical retailers like Sigma-Aldrich online (it's not cheap). But it would not sit quite as long on Lundbeck's shelves as it did when it was first put there in the 1980s.

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