Wonderland Recovery Blog

We’re hoping that you feel at home, that you can be yourself here and perhaps come to grow as a person to the point where you can help other. We know that this is what is motivating us.

If you’ve got something you think needs to be said then feel free to contact us and we’ll do our best to get that conversation started.

Call it a Dope-a-log, whatever, if you can see yourself in this and see that there is a way back to clarity and happiness then that’s all to the good.

Check out the Heroin Diaries here.

What do the following bands have in common: AC/DC, Association, Average White Band, Blind Melon, Blood, Sweat & Tears, Byrds, Carpenters, Crazy Horse, Deep Purple, Def Leppard, DOA, Family, Blind Faith, Grateful Dead, Hole, Led Zeppelin, Mother Love Bone, New York Dolls, Pretenders, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Sex Pistols, Sha Na Na, Smashing Pumpkins, Styx, Sublime, Temptations, Thin Lizzy, Uriah Heep, The Who, Jimi Hendrix, The Doors, Janis Joplin?

The question would be much more difficult if it were posted on the Rolling Stone Magazine’s website…But, since you are reading this blog on Wonderland Center’s website you may be thinking something about drugs and alcohol.

All of these groups have had at least one member die behind addiction. Some bands like the Pretenders, New York Dolls and the Grateful Dead have lost two.

One musician, Karen Carpenter died of a heart attack after years of struggling with anorexia nervosa and bulimia. It is estimated that 5 million people suffer from eating disorders. After Carpenter’s death other celebrities went public about their eating disorders, among them Tracey Gold and Diana, Princess of Wales. The general public had little knowledge of anorexia nervosa and bulimia prior to Carpenter’s death, making the condition difficult to identify and treat.

Research has shown bulimic patients were found to have lower than normal serotonin levels. Neurotransmitters, such as serotonin, dopamine, and norepinephrine, are released as you eat.
Researchers have also found low cholecystokinin levels in bulimics. Cholecystokinin is a hormone that causes one to feel full and decreases eating. Cortisol is a hormone released by the adrenal cortex which promotes blood sugar and increases metabolism High levels of cortisol were found in people with eating disorders. This imbalance may be caused by a problem in or around the hypothalamus.

Similar factors that place individuals at risk for substance abuse are often found in individuals with eating disorders. With addiction and eating disorders there is a need to discharge affective experience through action rather than feeling or being able to talk about them. This is why our Clinical Director, Bernadine Fried, MFT encourages the use of a number of therapies that do not involve “talk”. It is very effective to use a combination of services including EMDR, Equine Assisted Psychotherapy, Psychodrama, Art Therapy, Yoga, meditation and exercise to compliment traditional “talk” therapy.

We cannot cure addiction, but we can help reduce its devastating impact on our lives by working together. One organization that has been helping musicians for a very long time is MusiCares. MusiCares is part of the Grammy Foundation and provides treatment scholarships and other services to musicians with addiction problems. MusiCares is found at http://www.grammy.com/MusiCares/. This holiday season please send a little something to MusiCares, a wonderful organization that has helped many, many people…

A friend of mine, Glenn Kulik, the Chairman of the Chandler Lodge Foundation, a sober living facility for men, sent me an article today on President Bush’s admission that he abused alcohol until the age of 40. If President Bush abused alcohol, how many others did?

I need to come forward. I did. I’m in recovery 3.5 years. Who else?

According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, In 2003, there were nearly 1.7 million admissions to publicly funded substance abuse treatment programs. Most admissions (23.2 percent) were for alcohol treatment.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration estimates that drugs and alcohol affect drivers in approximately 20 percent of crashes. One out of every 5 accidents.

At least half of the individuals arrested for major crimes including homicide, theft, and assault were under the influence of illicit drugs around the time of their arrest.

At least two-thirds of patients in drug abuse treatment centers say they were physically or sexually abused as children.

Alcoholism and addiction is tragic. Recovery from alcoholism and addiction is amazing.

I wonder what would happen if more people came forward and admitted to drinking or using too much? Would the shame many of us feel about being addicted lesson? Would more people get into recovery? Stay tuned…

On Tuesday, November 20, 2007, Barack Obama spoke out about his past in front of a group of Manchester, N.H. high school students, telling them that there were times when he got into drinking and experimented with drugs …

State Sen. BARACK OBAMA, D-Chicago wrote in 1995 book “Dreams From My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance,”: “Junkie. Pothead. That’s where I’d been headed: the final, fatal role of the young would-be black man,” Obama wrote. “Except the highs hadn’t been about that, me trying to prove what a down brother I was. Not by then, anyway. I got high for just the opposite effect, something that could push questions of who I was out of my mind, something that could flatten out the landscape of my heart, blur the edges of my memory. I had discovered that it didn’t make any difference whether you smoked reefer in the white classmate’s sparkling new van, or in the dorm room of some brother you’d met down at the gym, or on the beach with a couple of Hawaiian kids who had dropped out of school and now spent most of their time looking for an excuse to brawl. … You might just be bored, or alone. Everybody was welcome into the club of disaffection.”

The sentiments of Barack Obama sound incredibly familiar. In adolescents and as young adults, most of us struggle to discover ourselves, take some risks, possibly experiment with cigarettes, drugs or alcohol. The real question is why didn’t Barack Obama end up in rehab, in jail or die? What spared him? Why do so many of our family members and friends end up rehab? Why not Barack Obama?

If Barack Obama had a different brain chemistry, he may be singing the Amy Winehouse hit “They’re tryin to make me go to rehab”…Some people suffer from addictive disorders, some people don’t. Alcoholism has many similarities to Diabetes. A person may develop Diabetes as a child or as an adult. No one can predict it. Some people get Diabetes, other don’t. Maybe Senator Obama was just “lucky”, he doesn’t have the disease of addiction. He could stop!

But what would happen if Barack Obama marries Betty Ford and they have children, will their children be alcoholic? (Sorry, sometimes I try too hard to be funny!)

The point is alcoholism and addiction is hereditary. Children of alcoholics and addicts are 50% more likely to have the disease. According to a study by the research group University of Granada the Beta-endorphins in a person’s brain constitute a useful biological marker to identify specifically those subjects who have a higher risk of developing alcohol abuse, the research claims. Regarding the results of this study, professor Rico states the following: “alcohol-abuse prevention must consist of locating and identifying genetically predisposed subjects.” More campaigns for children and teenagers should be launched before these young people make contact with alcohol. Alcohol awareness is fundamental to prevent addiction, the researcher affirms, because alcohol is a drug with reversible effects up to a point.

According to the statistics - 1 out of 10 people in the United States are addicted to drugs or alcohol. GOP candidate Mitt Romney, who was campaigning in Iowa Tuesday, called Obama comments a “huge error.”It’s just not a good idea for people running for president of the United States, who potentially could be the role model for a lot of people, to talk about their personal failings while they were kids, because it opens the doorway to other kids thinking, ‘Well I can do that too,’”

Mitt Romney may want to check in with professor Rico about education. He should also check out the government reports on addiction in the United States. Alcohol and drug addiction are more costly to the United States than Cancer and Diabetes combined! Alcoholism and addiction cost the United States $340 Billion per year according to National Institute on Drug Addiction. Cancer $170 Billion and Diabetes $130 Billion.

Education is important to help stop the damage alcoholism and addiction is doing to our country. Senator Barack Obama characterized his experimental use of drugs and alcohol as a mistake. We agree. It is a mistake to experiment with drugs and alcohol. It is especially damaging because twice as many people who use drugs and alcohol before the age of 14 will suffer from alcoholism and addiction than those who don’t.

Senator Barack Obama and G.O.P candidate Mitt Romney have an obligation to help solve the horrible problems of alcoholism and addiction. We need more candid discussions and education. We support the courage it takes to speak up and let people know. We are a community of recovering addicts and alcoholics that share the damage and destruction alcohol and drugs did to us in the past. And now we share the happiness we have found in our recovery! We have a lot to be grateful for this Thanksgiving, we hope many more people in the United States experience the freedom of living clean and sober.

Alex Shohet
Founder
Wonderland Center

WSJ - HEAVENLY HELP

The Situation: Angel investor groups are expanding their reach beyond hot tech start-ups. What’s In: Newer groups fund firms, regardless of sector, that serve a certain mission — including minority or women-led businesses and those that help a certain cause. Other groups that focused on high tech are now branching out to other sectors as well.

More Widely Available - What changed?

Angel investment groups — wealthy individuals who band together to invest in companies, often for an equity stake — used to concentrate almost exclusively on hot high-tech start-ups considered able to produce fat investment returns in about seven years or less. But a potentially dramatic shift in the funding landscape is emerging. As more angels with varying backgrounds link up, a growing number of these groups are aligning themselves with a mission and funding all sorts of businesses that support the cause.

Meeting Their Mission

Among the missions newer angel groups are focusing on are spurring economic development in a distressed region, funding women- or minority-led businesses, or helping a social or environmental cause. And mission-based groups are often willing to fund companies in any sector as long as they fit the group’s criteria.

Mission-based groups include 12 Angels Investment Group, started in 2005, which invests in firms that help prevent or treat addictions, such as alcoholism. The Los Angeles group’s first and only investment, so far, was Wonderland Center, drug and alcohol rehabilitation center.

“We already feel like we have a niche, and we don’t want to further narrow it down,” says Erica Duignan Minnihan, executive director of Golden Seeds, a New York-based angel group started in late 2005 that invests only in companies where a woman holds a central role. About one-third of Golden Seeds’ investments are consumer-product companies. The group is close to providing funding to a diaper company. Ms. Duignan Minnihan says while high-tech firms still tend to be the “most scalable,” meaning they can produce the high returns and fast exit angels generally seek, other types of companies can be just as lucrative if they have the right business plan and leaders. Artemis Woman LLC, a Wilton, Conn., firm that sells its beauty-care products through Wal-Mart and other chains, has received about $1 million in funding from Golden Seeds since 2004. Co-founder Ann Buivid says she and her partner were fortunate to find an angel group that understood women and the selling potential of their products. “When I show microdermabrasion products to men, they say ‘I don’t know what that is — will it wax my car?’

Recovery Summit
This last weekend the Sober Living Network held a Recovery Summit at Loyola Marymount University. The Summit was well attended, fun and extremely informative.

Dr. H. Westley Clark was the key note speaker for the event. Dr. Clark is the Director of the Center for Substance Abuse Treatment (CSAT) of the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. He leads the agency’s national effort to provide effective and accessible treatment to all Americans with addictive disorders.

Wonderland’s founders Dr. Samuels and Alex Shohet presented on “Recovery of the Whole Individual” and “Entrepreneurship in Recovery”.

After the event, we came across the following article in the Santa Monica Mirror…

“A Better Life Awaits…I Promise”
This past Saturday was the first annual Los Angeles Recovery Summit at LMU. I was originally drawn to go because the word on the streets was they were serving BBQ mutton sandwiches for lunch. Aint not’n like mutton I always say! That aside, this gathering was to be a very important cross-section of recovery professionals serving our communities. It’s a broad world within itself encompassing the services of psychiatrists, psychologists, therapists, addiction counselors, sober coaches, marriage/family counselors, grief specialists (notice I listed marriage and grief one after the other), and so many more. The spectrum of recovery far exceeds the scope of what most people think it to be, and with various different methodologies they each share the same common goal, “SOBRIETY.” For all you normal over-achievers who never had the pleasure to abuse drugs or alcohol, the term “sobriety” can be applied not just to alcohol, but to drugs and other addictions as well. It’s not about the term or poison-of-choice, it’s about the underlying multi-faceted malady that perpetuates this destructive lifestyle.
The struggles of alcoholism and addiction are said to impact the lives of approximately 60% to 70% of the public, either from personal experiences or by association through family, friends, coworkers, etc. Everyone is affected, not just the individual. Consequently, many perceive such people to be ignorant, lazy, or as without having a set of morals and ethics that would otherwise prevent them from such destructive behaviors. This isn’t so, quite the contrary, these folks are among the most intelligent, charismatic, and loving group of people among us. Once sober, their positive qualities typically shine, but of course every garden has a few weeds in it.
Volumes have been written on the world of alcoholism and addiction. This is the only disease known to man that centers in the brain and will literally tell the sufferer that he or she does not have a disease, thereby encouraging continued abuse. It’s a mental malady; it’s a physical malady; it’s a spiritual malady; anyone who says otherwise is either wrong, drunk, or the messiah. No wonder it takes a monumental assembly of specialists to counter the colossal powers of this disease, it strikes from all angles. And here’s the worst part: people don’t get blamed or in trouble when they have cancer, autism, diabetes, etc., but not so with addiction. Families are turned upside down, jobs lost, divorces, legal troubles, financial issues, death, illness, and so on, hence the need for so many various specialists in this field, both in the physical and emotional sense.
This summit was a true force in collaborative thought-sharing on all fronts. So many theories exist on this topic, and the purpose of such a gathering is to broaden the scope of applied knowledge into the dark abyss of alcoholism and addiction. People, I speak from personal experience when I say “getting sober and remaining sober is far and away the single greatest battle of my life!” Those of you who have read my past commentaries know quite well that I cherish the opportunity to write on life’s funnier moments and extract humor from even the sickest scenarios, but this is a life and death matter for millions of people around the world.
So why do I choose to write about this? For understanding, not sympathy. Awareness is the key. The words “just say no” might as well be “just say no, well…ok, but just this one time.” There is no equation, no absolute standard, no concrete format; each person is unique and has their own set of variations. Everything has to be taken into account regardless of the scenario. Recovery specialists follow formats and guidelines, but nothing is absolute or close to it. This year’s summit was a success in that people’s base of knowledge grew and new associations were made, and all for one common goal, “SOBRIETY!”
If you are an alcoholic, addict, gambler, food junkie, or whatever, there is help waiting. Southern California is the Mecca for recovery and if you need it you will find it right here. Anyone is more than welcome to email me with questions, or if help is needed, and I will point you in the right direction. I am not a certified specialist of any kind in the field of addiction, but I’ve certainly been around the block and have many resources to suggest if you need help.
Warm wishes to all!
Ron Prosky
Santa Monica
ronprosky@gmail.com

We also want to let you know about a new series of addiction recovery videos launched in September, which is National Addiction Recovery Month. The videos feature segments with Bill Siddons, Bob Forrest, Slash, Dave Kushner and Ozzy Osbourne. We have received strong positive media attention and Web traffic for these pieces and are grateful to everyone who participated. They can be viewed online at http://www.grammy.com/MusiCares/.

MENTAL HEALTH PARITY LEGISLATION UPDATE -
Congress is making slow, but steady progress toward passage of insurance parity legislation guaranteeing coverage for mental health disorders. The Senate has passed the parity legislation. The House version has passed the House Education and and Labor Committee, as well as the House Ways and Means Committee. However, it is still awaiting final passage from the House Energy and Commerce Committee. The bill must then pass the full House.

Both the House and Senate version require equality in deductibles and co-payments, for example, if health plans include treatment for both physical and mental disorders. But there are a number of differences, with backers of the House bill saying their measure provides more parity. Differences include coverage for “out-of-network” providers (the House version includes this provision, the Senate does not), as well as the final date for implementation once the legislation is passed.

One of the original sponsors of the House bill is Rep. Patrick J. Kennedy (D-RI). The Senate bill is sponsored by his uncle, Sen Edward Kennedy (D-MA). The two will have to work out the differences in conference once the bill passes the House. Rep. Kennedy has already stated he will fight to get the House version passed by the full Congress.

The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco ruled that the constitutional dividing line between church and state has been violated by sentencing a parolee to go to Alcoholics Anonymous or any other 12 Step program.

Alcoholics Anonymous, is one of the most trusted and respected programs for the treatment of alcoholism and addiction. The court ruling sited the references in AA and other 12 Step based programs that reference “God”.

The court referenced the 2nd Step where it states “a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity” and the 3rd Step which asks a person to “turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.”

Friday’s 3-0 ruling allows a Honolulu man to go to trial in a suit on behalf of his late father, Ricky Inouye, who was paroled from a drug sentence in November 2000.

Wonderland Center is huge advocate of the 12 Steps! We believe in the effectiveness and support the 12 Step groups provide to our community. At the same time, we understand the court’s opinion.

Our goal is to help addicts and alcoholics achieve recovery. Currently, 12 Step programs in conjunction with medical and psychological teatment provide the most effective treatment for our community of recovering addicts and alcoholics. Early recovery is very difficult and 12 Step programs are effective, abundant, available and free.

We know that many people do not like to participate in 12 Step programs. Therefore, at Wonderland Center we provide alternative programs based on medical and psychological treatments. We treat each client at Wonderland Center individually. Our goal is for every client to find their own recovery, health and happiness.

A new study by Désirée Lie, MD, MSEd published in Medscape in August of 2007, systematic review of longitudinal studies suggests there is sufficient new evidence that the use of cannabis (marijuana) increases the risk for later psychotic illness by roughly 40%. The study showed a trend towards an increased risk for depression in people who had used cannabis, but the evidence was not as strong.

Psychosis is a generic psychiatric term for a mental disorder, with or without organic damage, characterized by derangement of personality and loss of contact with reality and causing deterioration of normal social functioning.

The general public has considered cannabis to be relatively harmless in comparison with alcohol and opioids, however, the potential long-term hazardous effects of cannabis with regard to psychosis seem to have been overlooked, and there is a need to warn the public of these dangers, as well as to establish treatment to help young frequent cannabis users

We applaud the doctors, scientists and clinicians that continue to learn more about drug use and the brain. Addiction is a disease, whether a person is physically addicted to a drug or psychologically dependent on gambling, food, love, sex, pornography, computers, work, exercise, cutting, and shopping. We continue to learn more about the functioning of the hypothalamus and the production and release of endorphins within the brain.

We are not responsible for our addiction but we are responsible for our recovery. That is why we work so hard at Wonderland Center to help our clients find recovery and learn to live clean, sober, happy and productive lives. It is amazing to be sober!