Late-Night Funnyman Craig Ferguson does his monologue, and brings up his alcoholism, and the insanity he lived through until getting sober (and staying sober) since Christmas Day 15+ years ago.

Please take a moment to comment, write a post,or subscribe to our RSS feed!

How meth addiction happens. If alcohol’s impact on brain cells is wide-ranging and diffuse, and marijuana’s impact is selective and subtle, the impact of cocaine and amphetamine is much more straightforward. “There is certainly lots of evidence for common neurological mechanisms of reward across a wide variety of drugs,” said Dr. Robert Post, chief of the biological psychiatry branch at NIMH. Animals will readily administer cocaine and amphetamine, Dr. Post once explained to me, but when researchers surgically block out areas of the brain that are dense with dopamine receptors, the picture changes dramatically. “The evidence definitely incriminates dopamine in particular,” said Dr. Post. “In animal models, if you make selective lesions in the dopamine-rich areas of the brain, particularly the nucleus accumbens in the limbic system, the animals won’t self-administer either amphetamine or cocaine.” When you knock out large slices of the nucleus accumbens, animals no longer want the drugs. So, one cure for addiction has been discovered already—but surgically removing chunks of the midbrain won’t do, of course. At the heart of the meth high is a chemical paradox. The entire range of stimulative effects hits the limbic system within seconds of being inhaled or inject, and the focused nature of the impact yields an astonishingly pleasurable high. But the long-term result is exactly the opposite. The body’s natural stock of these neurotransmitters starts to fall as the brain, striving to compensate for the artificial flooding of the reward center, orders a general cutback in production. At the same time, the receptors for these neurotransmitters become excessively sensitive due to the frequent, often unremitting nature of the stimulation. The release of dopamine and serotonin in the limbic structure called the nucleus accumbens lies at the root of active drug addiction. It is the chemical essence of what it means to be addicted. The pattern of neural firing that results from this surge of neurotransmitters is the “high.” Dopamine is more than a primary pleasure chemical—a “happy hormone,” as it has been called. Dopamine is also the key molecule involved in the memory of pleasurable acts. Dopamine is part of the reason why we remember how much we liked getting high yesterday. One reason why amphetamine addicts will continue to use, even in the face of rapidly diminishing returns, is simply to avoid the crushing onset of withdrawal. Even though the drug may no longer be working as well as it once did, the alternative--the psychological and physical cost of withdrawal--is even worse. When addicts talk about “chasing a high,” the metaphor can be extended to the losing battle of neurotransmitter levels. In the jargon used by Alcoholics Anonymous, addicts generally have to get worse before they can get better. Speed, then, is diabolically well suited to the task of artificially stimulating the limbic reward pathway. Molecules of amphetamine displace dopamine and norepinephrine in the storage vesicles, squeezing those two neurotransmitters into the synaptic gap, and keeping them there, where they repeatedly stimulate their receptors. By mechanisms less well identified, cocaine accomplishes the same feat. Speed also interferes with the return of dopamine, norepinephrine, and serotonin molecules to their storage sacs, a procedure known as reuptake blocking—the same mechanism by which the so-called selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRI) antidepressants increase the availability of serotonin in the brain. Adapted from “Addiction: The Search For A Cure” ©Dirk Hanson

From “The Language of the Heart” page 82-83; “For to our kind, those who suffer alcoholism, recovery is a matter of life or death. So the Society of Alcoholics Anonymous cannot, it dare not, ever be diverted from its primary purpose.” Fortunately, for all of us, Bill knew what an undying promoter and glory seeker he was, as are most of us. “Temptations to do otherwise will come aplenty. Seeing fine works afoot in the field of alcohol, we shall be sorely tempted to loan out the name and credit of Alcoholics Anonymous to them; as a movement we shall be beset to finance and endorse other causes. Should our present success continue, people will commence to assert that AA is a brand new way of life, maybe a new religion, capable of saving the world. We shall be told it is our bounden (?) duty to show modern society how it ought to live.” Putting aside the fact that today’s modern society needs a LOT of help, it somehow feels to me that Bill had had a case of possible wishful thinking. “Oh, how very attractive these projects and ideas can be! How flattering to imagine that we might be chosen to demonstrate that olden mystic promise: “The first shall be last and the last shall be first.” Fantastic, you say. Yet some of our well-wishers have begun to say such things.” I have the suspicion that right about here God delivered a reality check to ole’ Bill and Bill became re-centered :) “Fortunately, most of us are convinced that these are perilous speculations, alluring ingredients of that new heady wine we are now being offered, each bottle marked Success! Of this subtle vintage may we never drink too deeply. May we never forget that we live by the grace of God - on borrowed time; that anonymity is better than acclaim; that for us as a movement poverty is better than wealth. And may we reflect with ever deepening conviction, that we shall never be at our best except when we hew only to the primary spiritual aim of AA. That of carrying its message to the alcoholic who still suffers alcoholism.” Thank you God for keeping Bill on the right track… For those of you who think Alcoholics Anonymous is supposed to give you your life back - think again! Do you really want that life back? Or have you been spewing “sound good” in meetings? Tags: 12-traditions, 5th-tradition, AA Groups, carry-the-message, responsibilityShare This (Source: A Dozen Steps)

Tightrope  to the Higher Power “My sponsor was a living damper on my intolerance. But even more, he told me that it would be all right for me to doubt God, that A.A. was not a religious program and, to belong, I did not have to adhere to any set of beliefs. “He suggested that for me a good starting point would simply be recognition of the fact that I had failed in running the world—in short, acceptance of the fact that I was not God. He also suggested that I might try occasionally to act as if I believed in a Higher Power. Somewhere I had heard that it is easier to act yourself into a new way of thinking than to think yourself into a new way of acting, and this made sense in the context of ‘acting as if.’” Alcoholics Anonymous, (2001) pg. 366. Access the Power of Your Higher Self (Pocket Guides to Practical Spirituality) by Elizabeth Clare Prophet Amazon books; Subscribe to Recovery Is Sexy by Email (Source: Recovery Is Sexy.com)

Do you really mean that? Are you sure? It seems like this months Daily Reflections are more on target, for me, than most other months. What today’s actually speaks to my mind is: “Count Your Blessings, Not Your Troubles” “One exercise that I try to practice is to try for a full inventory of my blessings…” “What did I have to be grateful for? I shut myself up and started listing the blessings for which I was in no way responsible, beginning with having been born of sound mind and body.” Well, maybe he was born with a sound mind lol. “I went through seventy-four years of living right up to the present moment. The list ran to two pages, and took two hours to compile; I included health, family, money, A.A. - the whole gamut.” Instantly, I’m also grateful! I have a long way to go before I’d have to go through 74 years! Of course, family and money are still sticky issues for me and might not make it to the list, for now. “Every day in my prayers, I ask God to help me remember my list, and to be grateful for it throughout the day. When I remember my gratitude list, it’s very hard to conclude that God is picking on me.” God picking on me was one of those “overriding” states of mind I once had. Convinced there was something wrong with me that was hopelessly beyond repair. Thank God for AA.  (Source: A Dozen Steps)