Recovery Michigan

Before Joe Thompson switched treatments for his opioid addiction, he was a devoted stay-at-home father, caring for his infant son after his wife returned to work. His recovery was aided by the anticraving medication buprenorphine. But after over two years free of heroin, Mr. Thompson, a former United Parcel Service worker from Iowa, relapsed and decided to try another kind of treatment program.

Unfortunately, his new counselors insisted that continuing his buprenorphine, though it was approved by the Food and Drug Administration, was just as bad as using heroin, according to his wife, Deborah. He wasn’t even allowed to start therapy until he’d been abstinent for several weeks. Stressed by withdrawal, he went to a third center. It, too, banned medication. Within a week of entering the program, he was dead from a heroin overdose. He was 35.

Buprenorphine is one of only two treatments proven to cut the death rate from opioid addiction by half or more. But the programs Mr. Thompson tried viewed abstinence as the only true recovery — even though abstinence treatment has not been shown to reduce mortality and is less effective than medication at preventing relapse.

Megan knew her baby girl was going through withdrawal, because everything about her was tight. This was a feeling she recognized. “That’s what it’s like,” she explains. “You’re not yourself.” She holds up her fists to demonstrate. The baby wouldn’t stop crying. She couldn’t get comfortable. For almost the entire nine months of her pregnancy, Megan had been on buprenorphine (brand name Suboxone) to treat opioid dependency. Stephanie Bobby, the nurse in charge of the Pregnancy Recovery Center (PRC), warned Megan that withdrawal was a possibility. The chances were one in three, although Megan never thought it would happen to her child.

She was scared and didn’t want it to be true, but Megan knew she had to do what was best for her baby. The nurses at Magee Women’s Hospital in Pittsburgh, where the PRC is housed in the basement, treated her baby for withdrawal, or neonatal abstinence syndrome (NAS), for 17 days.

Megan, who talks quickly and seems capable of getting anything done, stayed on buprenorphine for the next two years. When she and her husband — also treated with buprenorphine for opioid addiction — started talking about having a second child, the thought of putting another baby through withdrawal was unbearable. Megan wouldn’t even consider getting pregnant until she’d slowly weaned herself off the buprenorphine.

When Bobby found out Megan was completely off buprenorphine, she asked her to interview for the peer navigator position the PRC was creating with grant money. As a peer navigator, she’d guide PRC patients using her firsthand experience with the recovery process. She knew what they’d be going through. The PRC maintains that medication-assisted treatment (MAT), such as buprenorphine, can be a long-term solution for addiction, and the hospital does not propagate abstinence, yet they wouldn’t hire Megan if she was still taking the medication.

This is a confusing contradiction that raises the question: Does being “clean” require abstinence?

There are two simple and contradictory answers.

One, yes. Twelve-step programs such as Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous work on the basis of complete abstinence. For example, no marijuana in AA. They aren’t going to kick you out (because according to one of their traditions, “the only requirement for membership is the desire to stop drinking [using]”), but if you tell people you’re smoking marijuana, someone is probably going to tell you that you aren’t “sober.”

Bullying and violence in the workplace were linked with an increased risk for type 2 diabetes in a large Scandinavian cohort study.

Since it launched in 2004, Facebook has been working to “give people the power to share and make the world more open and connected.”

This sounds great. But is it, actually?

Does connecting with everyone you’ve ever met ever on Facebook make you happy? Does sharing everything with them on Facebook make you jump out of your seat with joy? Probably not.

In fact, if the research is any indication, you may actually be finding Facebook and other social media sites aren’t so great for your mental health. Instead of feeling blissfully open and connected with your friends, you feel inadequate or maybe even a bit depressed.

Is social media making us sad because technology is inherently alienating? Is Facebook actually just evil?

The trouble it caused went like this.

In everyday life, we tend to have different sides of ourselves that come out in different contexts. For example, the way you are at work is probably different from the way you might be at a bar or at a church or temple.

Sociologist Erving Goffman used concepts of theatre to explain these different aspects of our identities, for example, front stage and back stage.

YOUR PERFECT SELF

The key to understanding social media depression lies in the social norm that has emerged around how we manage Facebook’s context collapse in a way that is acceptable in all contexts. That social norm is being your perfect self. And the consequence of that is we are all performing our perfect selves, thus all making each other feel depressed and inadequate.

IT DIDN’T HAVE TO BE THIS WAY

First, a quick caveat: I am not a physician, nor counselor or psychologist, and this article deals with my personal experiences with DDD and finding treatment. Consult with your own doctor or care provider if you are in need of professional help.

If I had to pick the most impactful moment of my life thus far, developing Depersonalization-Derealization Disorder (DDD) would unfortunately be the first on my list. Having lived with the disorder for a bit over a year now, one of the most frustrating aspects of this disorder is the relative invisibility and lack of attention it has garnered thus far, both in the general public and in medical communities. It’s time to change this.

This article is meant to be an overview of DDD from a non-professional point of view. It’s intended both for people who think they may suffer from the disorder, and for people who want to expand their awareness about mental health in general. Half of the article (Defining DDD and Living with DDD) is directed at those suffering from dissociative disorders, and half (Describing DDD and Helping with DDD) is intended for a broader audience that want a better understanding of what it’s like to live with, and how to support others.

Go brew yourself a cup of tea (I’m sipping peppermint tea as I write this), because there are a lot of definitions and examples coming up. I promise it’s worth it in the long term.

My personal 50th-anniversary events in combat start in early March this year. I posted this also because of the effort the Newseum took to make the exhibit accessible.

https://goo.gl/pSQY1J

On the 50th anniversary of the Tet Offensive, “The Marines and Tet: The Battle That Changed the Vietnam War” will showcase the work of John Olson, a young photographer with Stars and Stripes who spent three days with the Marines at the 1968 Battle of Huêˊ (pronounced hway), the bloodiest single battle of the Vietnam War. Huêˊ was one of more than 100 cities and villages that North Vietnamese forces struck with a surprise attack on the holiday known as Tet.

This innovative exhibit will feature 20 large-format photographs and 10 tactile versions of those photographs with touch-activated sensors that provide audio interviews, allowing blind and low-vision visitors to experience the images through touch and sound. The Newseum is the first museum in the United States to host a major tactile exhibit designed to include blind and low-vision visitors.

Olson’s photographs were featured in Life magazine, and he won the Robert Capa Gold Medal for his work. His image of a tank carrying wounded Marines at the Battle of Huêˊ became one of the most iconic images of the Vietnam War.

The exhibit will also include unique artifacts, including Nikon cameras that Olson used in Vietnam and personal items from the Marines, as well as newspapers and magazines that published Olson’s photography. Ten Marines were interviewed for the exhibit, including the battalion and company commanders, some of them revealing their stories publicly for the first time.

Some of the Marines in Olson’s photographs have been identified, but others remain nameless. As part of his mission to identify all the men in the photos, Olson has set up www.tet1968.com, a website that allows the public to assist with his research and share their stories of Tet.