Abuse/Addictions

Addictions to various substances is an epidemic in the United States. People become addicted to street drugs, pharmaceutical medications, alcohol, food, sex and many other various addictive behaviors. It is a very difficult behavior to break once you have become addicted.

One of the ways that is growing the fastest are people who have had Traumatic Brain Injuries or TBI's. A TBI can occur from a automobile accident, a fall, an assault, sports injury or for the many soldiers we now have coming home from unjustified wars with TBI and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). When you have a TBI your brain functions differently. It is like a computer that has been corrupted by a virus. It will not operate the way it is designed to do. Think of memories as being stored in computer files. When a TBI happens it is like a virus has attacked your computer and corrupted the files of your computer. The files may still be there, but you cannot access them. Sometimes you can open the files but most of the time you cannot, thus you lose your memory. Usually it is your short term memory that is the problem. Long term memory may stay intact, but you cannot access the file where what you had for dinner last night is stored. Thus you cannot remember. It is extremely frustrating.

You may not recognize people, or places, or memories of your marriage. It is very troubling to the person and the family with a TBI or PTSD. You may not remember the route back to your home, thus you can easily get lost.

If a TBI victim is picked up by the police and asked where he/she was on the night of June 24, 2009, you can forget it. The person will not remember, and chances are they will then be arrested and begin their journey through the hell of the "Justice" system. I wonder how many people who are in jail or prison who are innocent and are locked behind bars because of memory loss due to a TBI.

It takes Neurologist a long time to determine which part of the brain is damaged, how much damage has occurred and how best to treat it. If you are a patient with a TBI be prepared for a long journey through many classes and types of pharmaceuticals as the doctors try and find the right combination of medications for you. It is a slow process. What works for one patient will not work for another. In the mean time the patient's brain is often running in overdrive, hopping from random thought to random thought. The short term memory is a major problem and strange activities may become part of daily life. You see things. You hear things. You feel things, that may not be there, but they are real to you. Paranoia runs deep. Your life and your families life has now been altered.

While waiting for the doctors to come up with some sort of help for you almost 100% of TBI/PTSD patients will self medicate. It will happen. Self medication means the patient will try anything to try and slow the brain down, to bring some peace to his mind, to just feel normal again, if only for a few minutes.

This is where addictions will take place. Some people try alcohol and become abusers of alcohol; some will try cocaine, heroin, ecstasy, barbiturates (valium, ativan), some may become addicted to Oxycontin. Anything that the patient thinks may help, they will try until the doctors can find the combination's of medications needed to slow the brain down and make the patient feel sort of like their old selves. By doing so, you will then become addicted.

Now you have at least two problems: a brain injury and addiction to something. You've just compounded your problem. In this phase a person can lose their job (If they haven't already done so, their marriage, their home, their dignity, their sense of self. Many people who are homeless and sleep on the street have a brain injury which is untreated. They are not lazy, they are sick and untreated. Their lives ruined often by an occurrence they could not control and no one reached out to help them.

This is where you can end up if you become addicted to some substance with a TBI.

I had an abuse problem, after my head injury in 2003. I treated my runaway brain, my lost memory files which I could not open, by drinking wine. It slowed my brain down. I would tell my wife, I just want a "little peace", just for a while and the wine did that for me, while the doctors looked for medications for me. After a while the wine became all consuming. The broken brain will compensate and soon you will need more and more of the substance which you are using to keep the brain quiet.

I went through a 9 week Intensive Alcohol rehab class (3 hours a day three days a week for 9 weeks) which helped somewhat. The participants were nurses, engineers, students, IT workers. In other words your neighbors.

The problem with these classes is they try and push you into Alcoholics Anonymous (A.A.). Each of these programs think the twelve step program is the cure-all for the addiction. The problem is they only treat two parts of your problem: The mental and the spiritual. They ignore the physical and and the emotional parts which are usually where the addictions spring from. Either from TBI, mental abuse from parents, spouses, sometimes actual physical mental conditions (bi-polar, schizophrenia, depression, etc). Only 1/2 of the possible causes are treated and I feel they are the two least important.

I went to a few of the A.A. meetings and was appalled at them. It was a total waste of time and total crap. I am not afraid to say so. We do not know how to treat abuse/addictions in the US. To treat them effectively you must treat all four parts of the body: Mental, physical, emotional and spiritual. Healing and detoxing the body is just as important as sitting around a meeting, smoking cigarettes and bragging about your last episode of stupidity.

I, to this day, will not recommend A.A., C.A., N.A. or any of the other "A's" to anyone. They are a group of people who learned to be dependent (addicted) on each other and the group. You substitute one addiction for another. Why do they push "90 meetings in 90 days?" The meetings I attended, the people sat around and talked about how drunk they got two weeks ago before calling their sponsors to come help them out. The men and women of the groups were each trying to pick each other up for the night (another addiction). Before you could speak you had to stand up and say, "Hi, my name is William and I'm an alcoholic", or I'm Rochelle and I'm a drug addict".

And that my dears is what keeps people coming back to A.A. for support. That is their hook. Keep the people repeating, "I am an addict", "I am an alcoholic". I am not a human being with value, I am just a drunk who needs this group.

I found that to be so disgusting that I left and never went back. A person is much more than an "alcoholic' or and "drug addict" as they make you identify yourself. This is a way they control you and brain wash you into staying that person. They tell you once an addict, always an addict. There is no hope but for our meetings. As long as you get to wear that label you will be that person. It is a self perpetuating myth. The truth of the matter is A.A., N.A., C.A. and all the other "A's" need you much more than you need them. I told my intensive alcohol group therapy that I would not attend their A.A. meetings after trying a few out. They never pushed me to go again.

Once my doctor was able to find the right combination of medications to help my runaway brain, I no longer had a desire to drink wine. I have not had any in over three years and I'm quite content. Having a drink does not cross my mind.

My advice is don't rely on the superficial Alcoholic Anonymous groups who will keep you addicted to drugs and alcohol. The A.A.'s own reports indicate that only 2% of their members stay sober for any length of time. This is not a very promising therapy, if you ask me. Don't waste your time with these people who are actually dependent on you to keep coming back because they cannot handle their own problems.

Oh, by the way, it is reported when Bill Wilson (Bill W. the founder of this organization) was on his death bed, his last wish was for.....a beer.

Give your doctors a chance and then you can have a chance to some sort of life with a TBI and without the alcohol , drugs or parasitic support groups.