RegLink

When my counselor mentioned I transfer to a dual diagnosis program from a drug and alcohol program I got scared. Then he explained that the drug and alcohol program did not have the capacity to meet my psychiatric needs. That a dual diagnosis program could treat my drug, alcohol and psychiatric problems. So off I went to a dual diagnosis program.

Although I felt so sick to be this sick, he was right. the dual diagnosis program focused right in on my problem and treated me with medication and comfort. Interesting enough the dual diagnosis program was also able to provide me with another perspective than was the drug and alcohol program. I am grateful to Lakeview for its dual diagnosis program.

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Tarrant County mental health professionals and advocates are drafting a pilot program aimed at treating teens who are slipping into alcoholism.

The proposed High School Alcohol Diversion Program, modeled after college programs, would allow teens with alcohol violations to stay at their schools instead of being sent to alternative schools.

That would help prevent them from losing academic focus and allow professionals to help them combat alcohol abuse.

“We’re hoping that by fall 2009, we are up and running at one of the local high schools,” said Greg Sumpter, a Tarrant County probation officer who is working on the pilot program.

The proposal is the result of ongoing efforts by Mental Health Connection of Tarrant County to improve treatments for children and young adults struggling with problems including addictions, autism, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, trauma, and at-risk behaviors such as truancy and delinquency.

Mental Health Connection is a collaboration of area mental health professionals, consumers and advocates who have been working for about 10 years to close the gap between research and treatment.

That goal is the main theme at the group’s second annual symposium on mental health treatment, Bridging the Gap - Moving Toward Evidence-Based Practice.

The two-day event, which began Monday at Texas Christian University, continues today with expert discussion on how to prevent problem behaviors by using research-based mental health treatments.

Pasty Thomas, president of Mental Health Connection, said the group is trying to find the best treatments for the mental health issues challenging Tarrant County.

“If there is early intervention, it makes a world of difference,” Thomas said.

Part of the group’s work includes understanding the many reasons that young people abuse alcohol. For example, social anxiety - often manifested as extreme shyness - sometimes contributes.

“You are less able to resist pressure if you are socially anxious,” said Bruce Chorpita, a professor of psychology at the University of California and a symposium speaker.

Alcoholism often surfaces among shy teens who want to stop feeling bad about themselves and among thrill-seeking teens who drink for the buzz. But genetics also play a role, Chorpita said.

Understanding what treatment works for which condition helps parents and mental health providers better address young people’s mental health problems, he said.

Social anxiety disorder can be treated by challenging teens to face their fears so they can better handle social pressures while maintaining their individuality, Chorpita said.

“It’s OK to be shy,” he said. “We don’t try to give kids a new personality.”

Teens and alcohol Among the emerging concerns listed by Mental Health Connection of Tarrant County:

The average age that Tarrant County youths begin drinking is 11.6 years.

Teens who drink perform 10 percent worse on memory, geometry and IQ tests than teens who don’t drink.

In a 2006 survey, about 37 percent of Tarrant County youths reported using alcohol in the month before.

7,800 youths try alcohol for the first time every day.

Girls who drink are 63 percent more likely to become teen mothers than girls who don’t drink.
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source: Star Telegram

My co-workers and I thought of dining out and having good food since we got so bored with our baon. It’s funny that I’ve more shots of them smoking than us enjoying the food. We weren’t really happy with the food anyway…so…

(Hover on the photos for captions)

Bye-bye, Angela. I’ll miss my partner in crime. If it gets too crazy there in Summit, go back here nalang.

Mas masaya dito, madaming scandal. Jewk.

Building from yesterday’s post is a story with this headline from the Eugene Register-Guard. “Emerging new toxins at core of river samples analysis.”

“It’s also one of the next ground zeroes for scientists looking to identify an emerging set of toxins in Oregon’s rivers that come from both farms and people’s homes.

Some of the technological advances we are making maybe producing new toxins we don’t know or understand. Again the effects, especially long term detrimental effects from some of these new emerging toxins are not known.

And as the article points government budget cuts have stripped away some of the ability of those monitoring the toxins to track and understand these new toxins.

We do live in a toxin infested world and we must chronicle and understand what these toxins are, but to fully understand them and their long term effects will take years, in the meantime the only reasonable approach is to personally detoxify.

The Associated Press

PENSACOLA, Fla. -

Escambia County will have a tobacco-free hiring policy starting in October.

All applicants for county jobs are currently required to take a drug test, which will be expanded to include testing for tobacco use. Any applicant testing positive for tobacco will not be eligible.

Officials say the policy is aimed at improving the health of employees and to get the county’s health insurance costs under control. It’s one of several policies county commissioners approved this week.

The county also is enacting a 50-foot smoking ban from the entrance or exit of any county building on Oct. 1. In two years, no county employee will be allowed to smoke anywhere on county property.

Why do I ask such question?

To me, the mind is a concept that human beings are used to describe the driver of thought. It does not exist, neither in material form nor in energy form. Therefore, chemical reaction cannot occur in the mind. If a chemical reaction is absent, then drugs could certainly not affect the mind. Then why the countless drugs coming out every day to cure “mental” health problems?

Before I answer that question, I will prematurely conclude that such drugs does not 100% guarantee a cure. If I’m to bluntly speculate, no drug existing or that has existed could ever guarantee a 100% cure because the reaction is not mathematically accurate. If you think about it carefully, can a medicine produce a chemical reaction and completely eradicate the misbehaving organism within your body? Drugs are tested in the basis of statistics. With hypotheses, scientists would perform an experiment and observe the effect, but never quantize the reaction between matters to the zero limit.

To avoid further argument, I will assume that a subnormal behavior exist and is defined to be a behavior which is not usual to the majority population. Such behavior is considered a mental health illness. When we say mental, it directly pertains to the mind. Many drugs are out to further minimize the abnormalities. How can this be possible when I previously stated that the mind cannot foster chemical reaction? The drugs do not affect the mind, rather they affect the nerves.

The nerves are the only explanation why a human being does certain things. It’s not the mind. The nerves are the ones driving the thoughts and actions. A combination of nerve state is a function. If we have countless numbers of nerves, you take countless combinations of those would give countless number of functions. A function would consist of a frame of thought or action, so a set of function could trigger a thought, actiong, or emotion. That’s the only way I can tell how medicine affect the normality of a behavior. It could either trigger the nerves to add more combination if it is lacking or turn off a combination if it has turned on a function that is usually off on a normal human.

So, is there such thing as a mind? I always carelessly use the word, but I am going to deny its existence.

I remember when I was in college I knew a guy who always complained of a tooth ache. Weeks went by and he would never eat anything because of his tooth. One day I bumped into him on in front of Sproul Hall and I asked him how is tooth was. He said it was fine. I was glad to hear that he finally saw a dentist, but when I he told me that he hadn’t I asked how he solved his problem. He was quick to answer: cocaine.

Of COURSE! Cocaine is sometimes used as a topical (applied to the surface layer) anesthetic.

Heroin, Ecstasy, Marijuana, Methamphetamine, Alcohol, Cocaine, and LSD…all drugs that of us are familiar with. One is legal in the US of A, a handful are gate way drugs used by many high schoolers and college students. Now, the University of Utah has developed a clever way to teach their students of how these drugs affect the chemistry of the brain. At the Genetics Learning Center at the University of Utah, professors are using a unique way to teach how drugs alter the brain’s reward pathway.

For example, here you are told that alcohol particularly effects areas of the brain involved in memory function, decision making and impulse control. Then you are taken into the brain of a mouse.

Just a fun thing I thought I share. You can play with it here:

The New Science of Addiction : Mouse Party

P.S. For some of you non-science people, Dopamine, Serotonin, GABA are different types of neurotransmitters, which are chemicals that relay, amplify and modulate signals.

| if I knew all the words I would write myself out of here. |

If you’ve been with my blog for any amount of time, you’re familiar with my struggle with my weight and with getting that down to a healthy range. You know I have a love for fitness, not that I love to work out, but for challenging myself and always moving forward with that part of my life. I am not scared to try a new exercise and make a complete fool of myself doing it. Through my gym I’ve acquired a love for dancing, kickboxing and especially strength training. At some point though I got so burnt out on the gym. Right about that time I got married and with Jimmy’s schedule and the way it changed my routine, I stopped biking to work a few times a week. About that time as well I did a stupid thing and stopped weighing myself AND journaling my food. I think I just had a burnout. Jimmy and I also ended up eating out a lot in August which was a very busy month for us. Can you see where this is going?

Long story short, I weighed myself the other week and since June I had gained 14 lbs. Not only had I put myself back in the 200s (I was SO stoked to finally be in the 190s in June) but I had gained a significant amount of weight. This did not make me happy. After you lose a lot of weight (I’d lost 72 lbs overall) the notion of putting it back on is not one you’d like to revisit. Thus my 14 pound wake up call.

I have come to terms with the fact that for the rest of my life if I want to manage my weight, I need to work out and I need to keep tabs on what I’m eating. So it’s back to basics for me. Which is why you haven’t heard much from me on the site lately. When I get motivated to do something, i do it to death. That’s always how it’s been for me. Remember August when I sewed like 10 garments in a month or something? Yeah. So now I am focusing on nutrition and working out. When I get motivation in that area I have to really go for it, any of you who have struggled with that can identify!

So here’s what I’ve been doing:

• Using Sparkpeople to track fitness and nutrition. Good ol’ calorie counting! I also like tracking my workouts so I actually have something to look back on.
• Mixing up my workouts. I’m working out 5 days a week right now, usually twice a day. I’ve renewed my love of workout DVDs thanks to Genevieve. When I visited her a few weeks ago, I did the Biggest Loser Cardio Max DVD and it kicked my butt! I love that. There is only so much Billy Blanks one can take if you know what I mean, I really needed some new DVDs to mix it up. On Gen’s recommendation I also am doing Jillian Michaels 30 Day Shred (TOUGH!) and Workout: One on One Training with Jackie which I don’t love as much as the other two. I have a couple more in my Netflix queue so I’ll keep you posted if I like them. I’m also doing a lot longer walks with Kyla, still going to yoga usually once a week and walking on my lunch break at work.
• I do a lot of resistance training using my own body weight too, good ol’ squats, lunges, pushups, core work and military style calisthenics. It gets the heart rate up and builds muscle which in turn burns more fat.
• I am going to try martial arts for the first time! I am 99.9% sure that I’m going to enroll in the Norfolk Karate Academy where they combine Tang Soo Do with Jiu-Jitsu. I have never tried this but everything I’ve been reading about it is really appealing to me and I like the discipline aspect of it. I’ll definitely be updating you guys on that one.
• Just one more thing that sort of relates to all this and that is a great food find! I am now a big fan of Arnold 100% Whole Wheat Sandwich Thins. 100 calories, 6g fiber, 5g protein, they are soft and taste great (not diet-food-tasting), they are just like a regular sandwich roll but thinner. No weird ingredients like high fructose corn syrup or nasty chemicals. I love these and I am out which means a trip to the grocery store!

Anyway I know some of you guys like to hear about the working out and the nutrition stuff so that’s what I’ve been up to! It feels good to pay attention to food again, I have so much more energy too, and I’ve already lost 5 pounds, which is great encouragement.

So, do you guys have any great new activities you’ve tried? What’s your workout routine looking like?

It’s a cold rule, and it boils down to this: The “Freshman Freeze” is a policy that prevents freshmen from entering on-campus Greek houses for the first month of school. The official purpose is to allow freshmen to adjust academically before being exposed to Greek life, but it’s really more about keeping fraternities from throwing out-of-control parties for recruitment.

If you have a working set of eyes, you also know that no one takes the Freeze seriously: Practically the only people in fraternities Fall Quarter are freshmen. McCormick freshman Scott Kellert called it a “futile effort to stop freshmen from drinking.” Fraternities throw off-campus events during the Freeze that are well-attended by freshmen, which are made all the more enticing by being against the rules.

Granted, the university’s intentions (at least the whole let-them-adjust-first shtick) are solid, and I do believe that the Freeze theoretically makes sense: Who better to recruit than impressionable, homesick freshmen looking for a family away from home? But with the Freeze, instead of having freshmen sucked into the Greek system too soon, the fraternities and sororities would hypothetically wait a few months and welcome in more well-rounded, secure candidates with a broader view of the campus.

But keeping freshmen out of frats doesn’t work, and both the freshmen and the fraternities are the cause. “Greek life is too major an element of campus life to be hidden away for a month,” said Mike Haas, chapter president of Northwestern’s Sigma Alpha Epsilon. “Social freshmen looking for a place to go out at night will naturally gravitate towards the fraternity quads.”

Plus, fraternity recruitment is a competition: if one chapter defects from the Freeze and recruits heavily during the fall, and the rest play by the rules, that one chapter will get a major advantage during recruitment - and the rest will be screwed. “It’s essentially a prisoner’s dilemma situation,” said Peter Koelsch, president of the Interfraternity Council. “Chapters have to trust one another not to violate the policy or else they are [tempted] to violate it in order to keep up in what becomes something of a recruitment arms race.” So everyone defects, and no one plays by the rules.

Even if Freeze prevents a handful of students that would normally seek fraternity life from doing so, freshmen have no trouble finding alternative places to get boozy. “The dorm parties I’ve been to so far have been crazier [than frat parties],” Kellert says. And while he doesn’t have a fake ID himself, Kellert’s friends frequent bars like The 1800 Club and The Keg.

No matter where students party, it goes without saying that the risks of alcohol extend far beyond the Greek world. Matthew Sunshine, the SESP freshman who died in June from alcohol poisoning after attending a party in Foster House, continues to serve as a reminder of how easy it is to get in trouble with alcohol, regardless of where you are and how heavily the area is supervised.

So the Freeze is ineffective, and needs to be changed. But there are good reasons not to abolish it altogether.

“The Freshman Freeze at least provides an incentive for Greek organizations to be extremely careful if they are going to invite freshmen to their houses, for fear of being caught,” said Haas. “The significant drop in hospitalizations during [Wildcat Welcome] this year . . . is evidence that Greeks have taken the administration’s crackdown on violations of Freshman Freeze seriously, and freshmen are safer because of that.”

Instead of revoking the policy altogether - which is too lofty a goal, let’s admit it - the administration should consider revising it. For example, if fraternities could invite an entire dorm to take part in an event, it would take some of the edge off underground recruitment tactics, and allow the freshmen to bond with each other as well as get to know the organization.

Drinking is so integral to college culture that a single rule like the Freeze probably isn’t going to have a huge impact on it, regardless of how it tries to create change. The administration should not view the Freeze as a tool to curb drinking, but instead as a way to keep freshmen from being prematurely influenced - as it claims to, but really doesn’t.

Kellert, who plans on rushing, said, “I think [the administration has] the right idea, trying to get the freshmen adjusted to college life before starting at fraternities. I just don’t think they’re going about it the right way.”

Albert Hofmann, the Swiss chemist who discovered LSD, recently died of a heart attack on april 29. Dr. Hofman was 102 years old. 102 years! It proves that maybe LSD is not that bad!!

Here is a short LSD story. LSD was created in 1938 and was discovered by Dr.Hofman who accidentally “tried” it. He then tried to convince people that it could deal with mental illness, but without success. LSD subsequently became a drug sold on the streets since the sixties.