Recovery Is Sexy.com

Alcoholism and Memory

Sparrow — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 08:39:00 PDT

Study Finds Alcoholics Overrate Their Memory

Alcoholics overestimate their ability to remember things, according to a new French study, HealthDay reported Aug. 27.

Researchers tested 28 patients diagnosed with alcoholism and 28 non-alcoholic controls.

Participants memorized 20 pairs of items and then predicted how well they would remember them after 20 minutes. They also completed a questionnaire in which they rated their capacity to remember. Researchers then compared their actual performance with their predictions, and evaluated both their memory and their executive functioning.

"[People with alcoholism] had a tendency to overestimate their memory capacities, believing themselves capable of recognizing the correct word when in fact they subsequently failed to do so,” said the study’s lead author, Anne-Pascale Le Berre.

According to Le Berre, the study has implications for teaching alcoholics relapse prevention strategies. If patients “overestimate their memory abilities, they will benefit only partially from their clinical treatment, since they will labor under the illusion that they have sufficiently consolidated this important clinical information for everyday life, whereas the reality is actually very different."

The study was published online on Aug. 24, 2010, in Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research.

From Join Together Online

Random Articles

Tie Up Your Camel

Sparrow — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 08:10:01 PDT

Trust Your Higher Power, But Tie Up Your Camel

There was once a man who was on his way back home from market with his camel and, as he’d had a good day, he decided to stop along the road and offer his thanks to his Higher Power.

He left his camel outside and went in and spent several hours offering thanks to, praying and promising that he’d be a good person in the future, help the poor and be an upstanding pillar of his community.

When he emerged it was already dark and lo and behold – his camel was gone!

He immediately flew into a violent temper and shook his fist at the sky, yelling: “You traitor, God! How could you do this to me? I put all my trust in you and then you go and stab me in the back like this!”

A passing sufi dervish heard the man yelling and chuckled to himself.

“Listen,” he said, “Trust your Higher Power but, you know, tie up your camel.”

This is the classic answer for those who believe that their faith alone will carry them through life. Innocence can indeed be a valuable shield but there are basic measures that have to be taken just as a matter of common sense.

No amount of belief is going to change the basic facts of living in this world.

Action is the key.

Share, print or e-mail this article

Random Articles

Definition of Codependency

Sparrow — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 08:10:00 PDT

Codependency is a condition that results in a dysfunctional relationship between the codependent and other people.

A codependent is addicted to helping someone. They need to be needed.

Enabling

This addiction is sometimes so strong, the codependent will cause the other person to continue to be needy. This behavior is called enabling. The enabler will purposefully overlook someone abusing a child, will call in sick for someone suffering from addiction, will put roadblocks to prevent their child from becoming independent, or even keep a sick family member from getting the treatment that would make them well.

These are behaviors common to codependents. A codependent often suffers from a ‘Messiah Complex’ where he sees problems with everyone and sees himself as the only person who can help. Here is where I need to work…trying to be ‘Mr. Fixit’ for everyone…even those who don’t feel they need anything fixed.

A codependent counselor (common) will never think your sessions are done. In fact, they often create issues that weren’t there just so they can continue to feel they’re an important or essential part of your life.

Codependency Test:

Take this test to find out if you’re helping people who need or needing people to help:

Do you feel demeaned, hurt or offended when someone you love tells you they don’t need your help?
In the last year, has anyone resorted to arguing, begging or raising their voice to get you to stop trying to help them?
If you had plenty of money and your child, sibling or parent had an addiction to drinking, spending, gambling or drugs, and they asked you for money to help with their necessary expenses (food, rent, clothes, bills), would you give them the money?
When someone shares a life or relationship problem with you, but doesn’t ask for help, do you offer help or advice, anyway?
When you survey your relationships, do you find yourself surrounded by mostly people who need you?
Do you ever find yourself making excuses for the needy people in your life?
If someone you love has a substance abuse, emotional, spending or gambling problem, do you avoid confronting them?
Do you measure your self-esteem by how much someone depends on you?
Do you ever remind people where they would be without you?

A. If you answered ‘yes’ to any of the above, read the rest of this article and monitor yourself for the next 3 months to verify your answers.

B. If you answered ‘yes’ to 3 or more of the above, you may have a codependency problem. Read the rest of this article, get a trusted friend who is independent of you to keep you accountable, and read a couple books on the subject of codependence.

C. If you answered ‘yes’ to 5 or more of the above, do ‘A’ & ‘B’ above and ask your friend to attend an Al-anon, Narcanon or codependents anonymous meeting with you.

Causes Of Codependency:

Many codependents, like other addicts, blame the people around them for their problem, or, more accurately, use them to deny their problem. ‘I’m not codependent, I just love them so much.’ ‘It’s just that they need so much help.’ ‘They couldn’t get along without me.’

Let’s face the facts…the needy people in your life need to learn to take care of themselves, take responsibility for their own problems and begin to solve them. If you’d stop bailing them out, they’d learn to handle life’s challenges, themselves.

So, actually, you’re hurting them by trying to help or enable! (we’re not talking about a rare emergency situation…we’re talking about a lifestyle of needyness.)

I remember how upset I was when, in my early 20′s, my mother told me to get a job and move out of her house. It was the best thing she could have done for me. I resented her for at least 5 years.

If you can be as strong as my Mom with the habitually needy around you, you’re not codependent. Codependency, like any other addiction, is caused by a feeling of emptiness…a low self-esteem.

Instead of a drug, a codependent uses the needs of others to make themselves feel whole.

That’s why no one around them is allowed to recover…the codependent wouldn’t be needed.

Full story at Way 2 Hope

I Can’t Do It Alone

Sparrow — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 11:33:00 PDT

I alone can do it. But I can’t do it alone. – Anonymous

We’re the luckiest people alive because we don’t have to do anything alone! Whether we have a new assignment to tackle, a new relationship to cultivate, a new boss to please, we’ll never fail as long as we rely on the program, our sponsors, and our Higher Power.

That doesn’t mean we won’t have trying times and some failures. But the companionship we need for handling the difficult periods will never be denied us. Perhaps we think it will. Maybe that’s why we try to do too much alone.

We didn’t end up in this Twelve Step program as the result of living peaceful, productive lives. We’re here because we got scared. Our lives weren’t working. And they won’t work now if we insist on doing it alone. This is our second chance. Let’s take it.

I will seek the support I need from friends and God today. I’ll have a good day because of this.

You are reading from the book A Woman’s Spirit:

A Woman’s SpiritBuy today …-

Share, print or e-mail this article

Random Articles

Twelve Step Sponsorship

Sparrow — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 06:31:25 PDT

Twelve Step Sponsorship

Passing it on is a key concept in the Twelve Step community and many of the traditions and knowledge of the Twelve Step recovery program have been passed down by word-of-mouth from one generation of sponsors to the next.

Twelve Step Sponsorship effectively takes this knowledge and tradition and applies it to a working manual for sponsors, guiding them through their role in reaching out and helping new program members.

Designed as a “how-to” program for sponsors, Twelve Step Sponsorship offers:

reading assignments
common questions that sponsors face
procedural suggestions for leading a newcomer through the Twelve Steps
general guidelines for becoming an effective sponsor

Twelve Step Sponsorship offers sponsors the first complete handbook for working with a newcomer — from the first meeting through the Twelfth Step and into the years that follow.

Twelve Step Sponsorship

Share, print or e-mail this article

Want to Quit Smoking?

Sparrow — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 06:31:24 PDT

Quit Smoking?

Getting professional help for quitting

Does counselling work?

Yes. Getting advice, counselling, and support from a doctor, nurse, or trained counsellor can help you quit smoking. Pregnant women who smoke and smokers who are admitted to the hospital are especially likely to benefit from advice and counselling.

What is counselling?

Your doctor, nurse, or counsellor may suggest that you quit smoking, explain why, and give you a few tips on how to do it. Or you may take part in group sessions that are part of a stop-smoking programme. There are many different types of counselling. Here are some examples of what counselling can mean:

Your doctor tells you about the benefits of quitting and gives you some leaflets with useful advice and helpline phone numbers in them
A weekly session with someone who has been specially trained to help people quit smoking (this could be a nurse, psychologist, or counsellor)
Group therapy with a counsellor, where you and other people in the programme may talk through the problems of quitting and share tips on how to cope when you’re tempted to smoke. Sometimes these programmes include breath tests to make sure nobody is cheating. The tests measure the amount of carbon monoxide you breathe out.

You may want to get counselling in addition to another type of treatment. For example, if you’re using nicotine replacement therapy, you may also want to take part in group therapy. Ask your doctor about what’s available in your area.

How can it help?

Getting advice and support from healthcare professionals seems to help people quit smoking. And the more support you get, the more it helps. For example, if you’re in a group of people who all want to quit, and you all meet regularly with a nurse to talk about quitting, you may be more likely to be successful than if you just get a leaflet about quitting from your doctor.

Without any advice, about 4 people in 100 quit smoking for at least a year. With advice from a doctor, nurse, or counsellor, about 6 in 100 manage to quit for at least a year.

It may not sound from these figures that counselling improves your chances of quitting a great deal. But the research shows that counselling helps many thousands of people to stop smoking every year.

Why should it help?

Getting practical advice from a health professional about how to quit can boost your willpower. The same goes for staying stopped once you have quit: it helps to get support. Getting advice on stopping from a doctor or counsellor who knows your medical background may make it count more because they can tell you how smoking is harming you.

Can it be harmful?

The trials we looked at provided no evidence that advising or counselling people to help them quit smoking is harmful.

Some patients don’t like being told by their doctor that they ought to quit smoking. A few patients might be so annoyed that they won’t go back to a doctor who keeps advising them to quit. But a study of almost 3000 patients in Minnesota found that they were generally glad that their doctor advised them to quit smoking. This was true if patients wanted to quit or not.

Zosia Kmietowicz in BMJ VOLUME 327 13 DECEMBER 2003 bmj.com

Share, print or e-mail this article

Admit It and Be Free

Sparrow — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 06:31:23 PDT

Many people in early recovery from alcoholism, addiction and codependency struggle with some of the paradoxes of spiritual change. Some of the more profound ones are;

Admit to being frightened, and your courage will grow.
Admit to not knowing, and you will learn.
Admit your weaknesses, and you’ll become stronger.
Admit your mistakes, and you’ll begin to move past them.
Admit you don’t know what to say, and you’ll have said just the right thing.
Admit that you’re confused, and you’ll begin to understand.
Admit that you’re hurting, and you’ll begin to heal.
Admit that you care, and the things that truly matter will grow stronger.

Being honest with yourself, with others and in life, can often be difficult and intimidating. Yet honesty is always the most reliable, the most direct route to truly attain whatever you seek.

Any attempt to deceive will ultimately end up wasting your precious time. Live the truth of who you are, and it will bring out the best you can be.

A Paradox

We SURRENDER TO WIN. On the face of it, surrendering certainly does not seem like winning. But it is in A.A. Only after we have come to the end of our rope, hit a stone wall in some aspect of our lives beyond which we can go no further; only when we hit ’bottom’ in despair and surrender, can we accomplish sobriety which we could never accomplish before. We must, and we do, surrender in order to win.

Some Gifts of Sobriety

Sparrow — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 06:22:20 PDT

If we work hard at the 12 Steps suggested to us;

We’ll be amazed at and proud of changes in our lives
We’ll be freer and happier than we could imagine
Our mistakes won’t haunt us
We’ll feel calmer and more confident
What we’ve been through will help us help others
We’ll stop feeling stupid and sorry for ourselves
We’ll be more considerate of our friends and family members
We’ll lighten up
We won’t be so afraid of people and situations
We’ll stop worrying about money and how much we’ve got and haven’t got
We’ll be able to trust our gut instincts when times get tough
We’ll feel loved and cared for.

Distorted, Stinking Thinking

Sparrow — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 06:22:19 PDT

Stinkin’ Thinkin’ or distortions in thinking.

Many alcoholics / addicts and their partners become stuck in distorted thinking that needs to be recognised and eliminated in recovery.

Stinking thinking can be grouped under several headings such as;

ALL-OR-NOTHING-THINKING: Things are seen in black-and-white categories. If performance falls short of perfect one sees oneself as a total failure.

OVERGENERALIZATION: One sees a single negative event as a never-ending pattern of defeat.

MENTAL FILTER: One picks out a single negative detail and dwells on it exclusively so that ones vision of all reality becomes darkened, like the drop of ink that discolors the entire beaker of water.

DISQUALIFYING THE POSITIVE: One rejects positive experiences by insisting they "don’t count" for some reason or other. In this way one can maintain a negative belief that is contradicted by ones everyday experiences.

JUMPING TO CONCLUSIONS: One makes a negative interpretation even though there are no definite facts that convincingly support the conclusions.

Mind Reading: One arbitrarily concludes that someone is reacting negatively, and don’t bother to check this out.
The Fortune Teller Error: One anticipates that things will turn out badly, and one feels convinced that the prediction is an already established fact.

MAGNIFICATION (CATASTROPHIZING) OR MINIMIZATION: One exaggerates the importance of things (such as a goof-up or someone else’s achievement), or one inappropriately shrink things until they appear tiny (ones own desirable qualities or the other fellow’s imperfections). This is also called the "binocular trick."

EMOTIONAL REASONING: One assumes that ones negative emotions necessarily reflect the way things really are: "I feel it, therefore it must be true."

SHOULD STATEMENTS: One tries to motivate oneself with ‘shoulds’ and ‘shouldn’ts’, as if one had to be whipped and punished before one could be expected to do anything. "Musts" and "oughts" are also offenders. The emotional consequence is guilt. When one directs should statements toward others, one feels anger, frustration, and resentment.

LABELING AND MISLABELING: This is an extreme form of overgeneralization. Instead of describing ones errors, one attaches a negative label to oneself: "I’m a loser." When someone else’s behavior rubs the wrong way, one attaches a negative label to them: "He’s a goddam louse."

MUSTURBATION: Placing over realistic demands on yourself. Self-talk such as ‘I must complete this today’, or, ‘I have to be at their place exactly in time’. Or, ‘I must be a perfect person’.

Share, print or e-mail this article

Marijuana Anonymous

Sparrow — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 06:22:18 PDT

Overview of Marijuana Anonymous

Marijuana Anonymous is a fellowship of men and women who share our experience, strength, and hope with each other that we may solve our common problem and help others to recover from marijuana addiction.

The only requirement for membership is a desire to stop using marijuana. There are no dues or fees for membership. We are self-supporting through our own contributions. MA is not affiliated with any religious or secular institution or organization and has no opinion on any outside controversies or causes. Our primary purpose is to stay free of marijuana and to help the marijuana addict who still suffers achieve the same freedom. We can do this by practicing our suggested twelve steps of recovery and by being guided as a group by our twelve traditions.

Marijuana Anonymous uses the basic 12 Steps of Recovery founded by Alcoholics Anonymous, because it has been proven that the 12 Step Recovery program works!

The Twelve Steps of Marijuana Anonymous

The practice of rigorous honesty, of opening our hearts and minds, and the willingness to go to any lengths to have a spiritual awakening are essential to our recovery.

Our old ideas and ways of life no longer work for us. Our suffering shows us that we need to let go absolutely. We surrender ourselves to a Power greater than ourselves.

Here are the steps we take which are suggested for recovery:

We admitted we were powerless over marijuana, that our lives had become unmanageable.
Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God, as we understood God.
Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
Humbly asked God to remove our shortcomings.
Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong, promptly admitted it.
Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God, as we understood God, praying only for knowledge of God’s will for us and the power to carry that out.
Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to marijuana addicts and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

Do not be discouraged; none of us are saints. Our program is not easy, but it is simple. We strive for progress, not perfection. Our experiences, before and after we entered recovery, teach us three important ideas:

That we are marijuana addicts and cannot manage our own lives;
That probably no human power can relieve our addiction; and
That our Higher Power can and will if sought.

Share, print or e-mail this article

Recovery Is Sexy.com

Alcoholism and Memory

Random Articles

Tie Up Your Camel

Random Articles

Definition of Codependency

Related Articles

I Can’t Do It Alone

Random Articles

Twelve Step Sponsorship

Related Articles

Want to Quit Smoking?

Related Articles

Admit It and Be Free

Related Articles

Some Gifts of Sobriety

Related Articles

Distorted, Stinking Thinking

Related Articles

Marijuana Anonymous

Random Articles