Early Education on the Dangers of Drugs

The Importance of an Early Education on the

Dangers of Drugs

Teach your children about drug abuse and addiction early on. That is the first line of defense against addiction. They will learn it from somewhere, and you don’t want the TV babysitting when this lesson comes on. If your kids are young, then they are still listening to the radio and watching BET when you’re not around, at least. They are learning about drugs already.

 

The media isn’t your child’s parent; you are. Guide them early about the dangers of addiction and abuse. If you don’t it’s becoming more likely each day you’ll regret it. It may be uncomfortable but burying the child before she is an adult is far more uncomfortable. That is the worst pain, I imagine. I can see the pain lingering in the faces of parents who’ve lost a child for whatever reason, but losing one to addiction leaves you, the protector, the role-model wondering why you didn’t do more. I see it every day.

There is no handbook on raising a kid. There is no fault to place on the parent, usually. It’s a disease with social and psychological influence. That means any predisposition that may be already there, in the child, can be offset by an executed plan of guidance. You can find ideas here and here.

A child being raised in a good family and a nice home isn’t near enough. That’s exactly the youth that the dreaded, lethal overdose seems to favor. I have watched many parents bury their kids, as young adults, due to an overdose. I’ve been to the funerals. It's so twisted, this disease.

To share something personal I normally wouldn't, because I still am unable to get past this, is a close friend's death. In another horrible drug death, one of my closest friends, Josh Kelsey, who was too much for the world, left it while I looked on. His heart stopped while he was lying on my lap and I was helpless. What can you do? I had no idea of things that could have raised his odds. The ambulance arrived and got his heart to beat, but in the short time his brain was without oxygen, he suffered massive damage and could no longer even breathe on his own. He died on 11.01.2006, two weeks from his 23^rd birthday.

It’s not a stretch to imagine most people in grips of addiction have a similar story. People believe that they can manage these addictive drugs. That belief is false and is known as denial. If you feed into this belief to protect, show love & loyalty or can’t quite figure out why, mainly because we take on denial to when defending an addict, then you are enabling this person. You are facilitating a myriad of adverse consequences that are coming into that loved one’s life, and your own.

You don’t want to have to deal with a full-blown addiction in your child. It is complex, to say the least. It’s much easier to go ahead and have that first conversation with little Billy Jr. and Mylie. 

When we are young, we are confused. We are trying to balance fitting in and being accepted with being who we really are, after we find out who that is. Hell, I was confused until round about thirty-two. When a kid is trying to fit in, especially a kid with social anxiety, or the opposite: narcissism, she will do things that seem illogical. But, they are perfectly logical from her point of view. You can probably remember when being a popular school kid was paramount. If a kid is having trouble figuring out how to be popular, he might look to the coolest guys he knows of for so help.

Lil Wayne is one of the coolest guys I know of, but I bet he doesn’t even raise his kids to think that his entertainment façade is real. Well, we don’t know all that when we are young. I can still remember this exact situation. While struggling to be cool, I looked to the coolest guys I’d ever heard of: Tupac Shakur and Kurt Cobain. No, I didn’t shoot myself or go get caught in a drive by, yet. But I started doing what all the Rockstars’ and Rap Phenom’s records talked about. Luckily, I couldn’t find hard drugs back then, but I started smoking pot, which made my anxiety better or worse, depending on the pot and my mood prior to. But, all in all, it didn’t do much of anything. It was new and exciting. I felt like Tupac, damnit.

 

I think the music and my quest for validation had a huge impact on my behavior. I don’t know if this is always true, but I do know that human beings are programmable, especially young ones. I was easily influenced. This led to an unimagined world of trouble for me in a few short months. But, it can be worse yet.  An inexperienced kid, invincible and immortal still, will do some irrational things in the name of popularity or validation. Add drugs into the mix and it could be, and is often disastrous. 

Focused Life has three missions, along with using best practices to bring a recovering addict safely home with all the tools and resources to remain drug free. These missions are to carve out a place where recovering individuals can go without the stigma and alienation they usually endure from many parts of society, and have all of the opportunities they would had they not suffered from addictive disorder. The second and third missions involve always advocating in favor of the addicted and recovering as well as reaching out to the suffering addict without limiting ourselves. Deeper in the missions (those are the summaries), you’ll see that the best way we can think of to advocate for addicts, reach out to them, give them opportunities, and so forth, is to promote education so that they are never addicted in the first place.

Check out those links above, if you need ideas on how to approach any age group, about the dangers of drugs.

Let’s hear some stories of how you parents have had success with this. I’ve been hearing too many bad stories lately. Click below to comment.

Focused Life Residential Recovery Program, Coming Soon. 

Is Addiction a Disease?

Is Addiction a Disease?

I have a friend, Allen, who at eighteen, became addicted to opiates. It was a horrible contrast that led to a couple of overdoses and a decade of misery. He was either high and out of his mind or he was sick from withdrawals and suffering, 100% of the time. I could relate in a way. I was addicted too, to benzodiazapine. That’s just the fancy word for Valium or Xanax of which I had a prescription for the maximum allowable amount when I was 22 and I made sure that I didn’t find out much about withdrawals during the very same decade. I thought that I was different, and in some ways I guess I did have a much different experience. In fact, even though he was a very close friend, all of our other friends and I had to separate ourselves from him. Nobody likes a guy that can’t handle his smack. Ya know.

There were many differences in our experiences actually. The main one being supply. My prescription was $8 a month, not even a quarter of what a dose of the drug he was addicted to cost at that time. I would get 120 every four weeks from the pharmacy and another 30 – 90, for $2 apiece, from a street dealer. Of course, Allen had to go out and hunt his down. And he did whatever was necessary. It’s a hard thing to get a grip on. He is responsible, but in a way I know that isn’t really him. Before the drugs he would have never stolen a candy bar. It seemed like no matter what the action and repercussion, he would put that drug first. It came in front of friendships and his relationship with his family. He stole from several of our mutual friends and I constantly heard crazy-Allen the addict stories. I did not consider myself an addict. I didn’t steal for it, I didn’t ruin friendships, I’m sure I kept the gossip mill busy, like him though, but I had an easy, steady supply of the drugs I was addicted to.

He forced us all away from him because of his behavior. We felt conflicted knowing that had he not tried drugs he would be the awesome guy that everyone liked. I’m sure he didn’t imagine he would ever become addicted. That’s never the goal. If you’ve faced addiction before, then you know exactly what I’m talking about. If you haven’t then you are taking the same position that we took right before we became addicted.  Of course, I’m sure you are in no danger. The difference was that were doing drugs then justifying it with denial, because prior to being addicted you could never image that life of constant dependence on a chemical. It often happens quickly because of the snowball effect that accompanies the feelings of sudden worthlessness. I believe Allen went through that as well.

I remember coming back for three weeks in the Army to do a Hometown recruiting Program before I became addicted to Xanax. When I left, Allen wasn’t addicted either, but in 90 days when I got back, I was shocked to see how he had changed. He lost his laid-back personality and charisma that caused everyone to like him. Allen was something else now. It was like a body-snatcher got him. I didn’t see the day to day contrast, but he was addicted heavily very fast.  I will never forget how he told me his back was starting to hurt and he needed forty dollars and got upset when I didn’t have it. I knew that he was off then.

A couple of years later, I got out of the Army for good and Allen hadn’t even gotten his driver’s license yet. He still doesn’t and he is 33 years old. He won’t have the opportunity for another three and a half years. He is finishing up a 12 year sentence for a drug related incident. I get letters from him and it breaks my heart that he is going through the torture that he is.

I only recently started wondering what made him so different. I always thought he just turned into a scumbag because he didn’t care about anything but OxyContin and movies…until he pawned his DVD player and cable was out of the question. For the price of a month of the premium package he could get an 80 mg pill and be high for five hours. I didn’t understand that kind of an addiction. He and I had different severities of addictions because, again the supply, and the price. time, until I got hooked on oxycodone in 2011 after trying it once. I couldn’t think about anything else the next day until I crushed one up (one means three, by the way) sniffed it off the bathroom sink. But, I watched him do them with other friends of ours and they didn’t steal from each other and get sick from doing it every day. Those things were so expensive, that my other friends that did them, did them about twice a month and eventually just quit spending the money. Money meant nothing to Allen in the presence of an oxy. He would pay whatever the dealer wanted. That’s why they became so expensive. I knew a hundred other people just like Allen in the town we lived in.

And just like Allen, the part of their brain located in their frontal lobe had no problem differentiating the euphoria of dopamine made in a lab, from the depleted neurotransmitter that used to be made in his head and associating that pill with the feeling. Seeing how many people that do become addicted to strong opiates after several days of abuse, compared to the individuals who do not, I could almost argue that it’s not a disease. That’s normal. However, I am familiar with the numbers polled by NIDA*, ASAM* and the like. The vast majority do not become addicted when they experiment with the same thing that had him at hello.

I have no excuse. His addiction is what kept me from using opiates myself for all of those years. I thought benzos (Xanax) were nothing compared to opiates, like oxys, dilaudide, morphine, heroin, fentynal and opnana. They may not be as instantly addicting for some of us, but when I was so high all of the time from abusing both, I didn’t stand a chance. I think opiates kept me at bay by the preventive prices for all those years, but when I discovered Tampa, FL and it’s plethora of Pill Mills, prior to House bill 7095 which stopped doctors from writing so many with a dozen or so sanctions, and prevented patients from “doc shopping”, making appointments with multiple crooked doctors, by instituting a database and policies on its mandatory use, Florida’s free-for-all ended overnight in November of 2011. I saw it on the news from the Hillsborough County Jail, in Tampa. I finally ran out of benzos, and I understood the desperation that Allen had been living with.

I didn’t know it then, but your panic switch is on permanent because the part of your brain that keeps us alive in dangerous situation is activated, and though you don’t consciously think so, your grey matter in charge of survival thinks you are going to die. In fact, random neurons are firing at a rate that often causes seizures and actually can lead to death. It causes painful tension that leads to insanity within a few days. The worst part is that when the “acute withdrawal is over, your brain may not return to its pre-addicted condition for many years. This is called post-acute withdrawal syndrome and it’s indescribable, because of the duration and the level of intensity, even though the brain has started healing and producing the neurotransmitters that it ceased to create when it was receiving either GABA or dopamine, without getting too technical, for benzos and opiates respectively.

The thing about addiction is that nobody expects it. I didn’t. I’ve often heard people explain that they don’t  get addicted, no matter, if the use occasionally, which is actually likely, but if someone has to explain that , then the chances are that they are saying that for their own benefit to justify abusing the drug, which is a common indication of denial of the disease.

National Institute on Drug Abuse

www.nida.org

NIDA is a huge Federal Agency that is responsible for research, funding, treatments, drug policy consukting

and anything relating to the relationship between drugs and everything affected by drugs. This is the Agency

that should have jurisdiction over drug policy reform in the US, I believe. 

NIDA was partly responsible for the recent teduction in severity scheduling reduction of marijuana from it's

ridiculously high Federal status of Schedule 1, which meant that the Federal government regarded pot

as having the highest potential for addiction and no medicinal purposes.

NIDA was the first agency to solve drug related problems with science. It was established in 1955 and has

significantly improved the level of drug recovery quality in America since it's inception.

American Society of Addiction Medicine

www.asam.org

These are two of several giant researchers of drugs through scientific method. ASAM predates NIDA and it was 
previoujsly a NY Physicians Association focusing on .Addiction. They added the AM Addiction Medicine in the 
seventies when most of there funding was from another giant that is ultimately subservient to NIDA. They started recieving funds then directly from NIDA to research and develop medical treatments. This organization advocates for the treatment of addiction medically and educates physicians and certifies then to be able to administer addiction medicine programs.

The website I am working on, is https://addictX.org. For some reason it is in groundhog's day mode. Everyday, I add content and come back and it's disappeared. I am going to switch back to an easier to use CRM until I figure out the problem. Check it out. I'm on Facebook, Linkedin, Instagram and rarely twitter, but I have to crank it up a notch. I am going to be depending on my community and online supporters to implement the Focused Life Program in a transitional housing environment in Octtober. If you would like to help. Please, join me and be a part of Focused Life. I know this program will succeed. But, the more people who care and can help the better. Thank you. And, please, be the first to leave a comment on this blog.

How bad will it get before we see a change?

How can people be programmed like a machine? 
It's been a ten days since we saw Baltimore break out in what I would say is "minor rioting". I'm not here to debate the level of damage or violence and I know that a riot like that hasn't happened in quite some time. Many of our members of society were glued to the tube, hanging on every word Nancy Grace, Barrack Obama and Bill O'Reilly said.  That's where the problem lies. We as a nation are too conditioned by "social proof". If something new our unusual happens we often look to others when decided how to properly react. In this case, those others were the talking heads on TV. Its human nature to do this and its part of how we develop our belief systems over time, especially when we are developing them. Most of us will subscribe to the dominant theory, keep our head down, never question it, not because we are sheep or anything like that, but because we are so frickin distracted. 

We all have several roles we play in life. And, we literally 'play' those roles. We act different around different people, in different environments. We can usually sense when a trend is shifting that directly concerns peer appraisal of an aspect of one of our roles. It's a lot harder to notice the beginning of a revolution that will demolish Versailles and the beheaders meet the guillotine. I hope you follow that I wish no ill will towards those who are the oppressors in our society, and if I could’ve saved Marie Antoinette, I wo……...

I do wish that we could start to acknowledge it. I was even a little disappointed with the way things turned out in Baltimore. I didn't want to see any violence or vandalism, but we missed an opportunity to show the leaders what the American people are capable of. We can peaceably assemble and do it at the capitol, with a mob.  

We sit, governed by an entity that is not holding up its part of the bargain, and the reasons why are beyond the scope of this post and even the scope of this blog. We are programmed to be incapable of showing our bought and paid for leadership and the institutions that suck up tax payer's scarce resources simply to maintain their place in the establishment. I know that it will continue to get worse and worse and more of our constitutional rights will be interpreted away based on party affiliations and lobbying corporate interests.

It’s not okay for me to spew negativity. I am passionate about the spin on injustice that we are suckered into buying, or have no choice in this free nation. I apologize for the attitude of this post, but I continue to be disturbed by these games that satisfy the masses. Had there been no riots, there would have been no indictments passed down to those trained killers, and bullies who’ve lived with impunity in a different world be having brunch right now.

"Often your thoughts are not your own."

We give enforcing entities a little power as civil servants or agencies and it's not enough. We pay for their salaries and it's not enough, they take valuable seizures to earn more, they make decisions based on personal agendas that have ended or are postponing the freedom of one in every 100 adult, American men's lives: 1 in 9 African-American lives*. It's not okay. Now, that money is a prime aspect and the hundreds of thousands of Americans that get rich off of the suffering of the millions of socially inferior or less fortunate (by way of birth, environment or genetics), complicate things even further and have caused a divide in our cities, families and especially in Washington. Take a closer look. We pledge allegiance to a political party and not to our country. We have a nation that we could be proud of still, but I see it getting worse. Of course, it will get worse before it gets better, if we don’t allow the scale in hands of “blind justice” to tip beyond a point of return.

I am done spouting and I’ll get to the real point I’d like to make. This is the reason that half of the readers are shaking their heads. Posts like this one can quickly ruin ones credibility, but at the risk of doing just that I will tell you only the truth. If you don’t subscribe to my point of view, I believe you just haven’t had the time to examine the nature of our system of order and justice.

The Bible says, “The love of Money is the root of all evil.”  However, more often you can hear it correctly misconstrued when stated.

If money isn’t the root of evil, it sure as hell is the root of distraction. Most of us are forced to spend most of our time chasing, thinking about, or working for it. I want to challenge my readers to think of the reasons this is. I’m not claiming a conspiracy. I simply believe that when you view money for what it really is that your very attitude towards it will put it in the back seat to what is important.

In my experience, the more I see it as the illusion of fractal and centralized banking the easier it is for me to create it in my life. Money is the biggest, but it’s only one distraction. Distractions come from every direction, even within our own minds. You have an often untamed babbling of nonsense that springs forth from, God knows where. I believe we all have this baseless “voice” that never shuts up. And, you shouldn’t want it to. It is to be mastered; the first thing on your path to lasting change. Even though, it is ongoing and the only off buttons, have a small side effect of unconsciousness. Since there isn’t an off switch, find the volume knob. This is a powerful step. The way to figuratively “turn down” this scripting is through an understanding of how the radio works. There is a popular consensus of where the station comes from, but a shift in your perception doesn’t literally turn it down, it empowers one to choose how sensitive one is to this Kim Kardashian in your head. Why would you listen to something that limits your fulfillment? The consensus I spoke of, belongs to more than the self-help gurus, it belongs to all men who conquer self. It comes from conditioning, programing, brainwashing, you pick the name, but the primary sources are clear

I want to challenge every reader to put any bias and ego aside and use your concentrated perception, not on Ms. Grace's words, but the very valid emotions and assessments that come from a logical mind when it is clear of all programming. I hate to think that I am a puppet, and that's how I felt when I realized that my own thoughts were not my own. Your thoughts are not your own. You are subject to conditioning just like anyone else. The mainstream media is not the best place to get your fix of current events. Unless, of course, you want your news poisoned with programming that we often adoringly call "spin". Spin is deceit and that's a fact; no spin. 

Are you good at your job? How about if you have 20 years’ experience?  How good would you be? What if your job was to play Chess and you studied and learned from mentors early on, mentoring others later and had a couple of hundred years of Chess industry information to draw on? You'd be pretty damn good right? Now, imagine you are teaching new Chess students to play, but you’re super powerful Chess boss creates an environment where you and all of the best Chess players compete, not on the board, but against one another for a coveted position of prestige. The only catch is; these noob Chess players aren't to be taught how to play effectively, they are only to be distracted with learning how to move a couple of pawns. If you can effectively get them to believe they are getting really good, and their Chess style is better than a competing style, you get the coveted position of prestige. These students come to Chess class daily to hear your leftmost pawn movement theories, but you really know how to annihilate your opponent on the board. Power corrupts, and you'd like to keep your status and not fall from Grace, so to compensate for the deceit that you are filling these many student's lives with you shift your views. Of course, you can still destroy any other Chess player, but you convince yourself that the leftmost pawn theory is one of the most important beginning and middle game aspects. Hell, you even start to move your left pawn first when you play.

If a student notices that there is much more going on behind the row of pawns and is bold or dull enough to stand in front of the rest of the students and suggest that there may be more to it than this, he is invited to make clear his points. With your leftmost pawn, you start and as the others watch, laughing at his absurd notion, you go on to make a quick victim of him. Everyone, including yourself is reinforced in left-pawn theory, and rarely ever will anyone raise their hand to suggest otherwise again. Subgroups may for believing the bishop, or knight is key. But they are so distracted they don't realize that controlling the most squares, and the important squares could be a factor. During their days of lifelong right-pawn Chess students, they have many other distracting roles. When they turn the TV off in the morning after recharging their conditioning of pawn theory, they must go off and pay even closer attention to their tainted Monopoly class, maintaining the ability to watch your Chess class on a 65 inch curved smart TV, with instant playback, and pointless features. Not everyone buys into your theory of pawn power, but they identify with it while they are able to get better and better at Monopoly and trade that game for hotels. Some get caught up in pawn theory and all of the other distractions and trade Monopoly for Sorry or even worse: Candy Land, the most distracting game of all.

The code must be entered consistently as the person develops. Some things we believe are ridiculous. We would still believe in Santa if everyone else did and there was no one to tell us when we are 7 that he is only a myth.

Volunteering with Focused Life is easy, fun and rewarding!

If you want to help Focused Life's Mission, just email me at bizwizardx@gmail.com 
vols@addictX.org

We need people to help out with the social and online media, and raising awareness in y her way, you will be a great asset and an original team member,at this point.

I've been planning this new type of transitional recovery residence for almost 3 years. I've gone through countless hours of SBIC &; STA training, I've collected hundreds of surveys and have done more research than is probably necessary, I'm days away from starting the 1st SMART Recovery meeting in Tampa and this is my passion, because I've experienced the suffering of a wasted life, and the resistance society imposes against anyone who tries to make their past, their past.

We have so much science for change now and it works when an individual is immersed in this environment. Fortune 500 companies pay hundreds of millions of dollars annually to have experts in change to guide them through a three day seminar to teach these processes. Addiction isn't and everyday habit and three days will not fix alive controlling problem, however the allotted amount of time, using these techniques at the forefront of science and medicine will most definitely have the optimum impact on the visual that we could expect in this day and age. This is the cornerstone of our recovery program.  However, the details are just as important. They are too numerous to list here,  but are documented in the curriculum of our coursework.

Focused Life is launching the recovery program as an L3C, a business entity that is structured like an LLC but it must be socially motivated. This means that if we make decisions based on our bottom line and settle our social impact we can lose our license. It also means that we are able to except program related investments. Program related investments are like grants that you have to pay back. They are issued by foundations and only to socially motivated businesses. And L3C stands for low profit Limited Liability Company. They are often described as hybrid between private sector and non-profit organizations.

We have a proven method for creating lasting change, showing others the processes and the psychological sciences behind what makes addictions such strong habits. Addiction have ruin the lives of people that we all know. The DSM 5 now names addiction as a disease and as such, when the person is treated successfully they should not be held in such high contempt by society, especially since we all know an addict, and have seen that person change from, likely, a good person to someone you wouldn't want to be around. This makes it one of the most undesirable diseases that one could have to face.

We believe in holding people accountable the same way as everyone else, except once the individual demonstrates that they are no longer actively addicted and it is unlikely they will return to their addiction , if they have paid for any misdeeds they might have acted out in their addiction, then they should be forgiven by their community and allowed an enjoyable life, like everyone else.

This leads me to Focused Life's Mission Statement. First and foremost, we are setting up to continue and enhance individual's recovery for a heightened chance of success. However, a close second to that, is our mission to create an environment where individuals, who were once addicted to drugs, alcohol or any life controlling problem, can expect to have a life in the future, the same as that is available to those who haven't experienced addiction. We are already working with local business owners who can comprehend the fact that these people that we are working for can change, and have changed.

They are empathetic to our cause , not necessarily because they can relate to it, but because they don't agree with the injustice of an unforgiving society towards an individual who has paid for his mistakes and has done an incredible thing in overcoming a life controlling problem. 

This is an amazing feat, considering that most recovery doctrines hold the individual as powerless over this issue. We know from extensive research and observation that this is not the case. People are resilient. The human factor cannot be dismissed even in the case of addiction. So, our third mission is to raise awareness of these truths and stop enabling addicted behaviors individually, and as a society, by leading them to believe that they are powerless over their own choices. I agree that most likely they cannot make these changes in their current state, environment , doing the same things, with the same people, in the same place where there is addiction was born.

Our doctrine is based on practical processes that can be implemented by anyone, and teaching these processes in the right environment with the proper group dynamic. We offer, because of the above-mentioned business owners and empathetic employers, good jobs, schooling, training and guidance to quickly transitioning these individuals to a new level.

Often these individuals, because of their disease, have lost much more than their health. We work with them to restore relationships, guide them to the best practices in transitioning back into society while focusing on helping these individuals regain everything that they have lost.

If you feel a connection with this cause I encourage you to volunteer to help anyway that you can. We are, of course in need of volunteers to help out with the initial workload of starting something like this and fighting addiction not the addicted individual. The war on drugs failed because we were fighting the wrong enemy. The entire recovery industry is broken because we were allowed dogma and superstition into our recovery programs. We focus on the life of the individual and her continued recovery. So if you are considering being a volunteer, I ask you to just start out with something small. We can talk about what you feel you can contribute and allow you to help in any way that we agree is fitting for our purpose. We need you.

We also need corporate sponsorship because we are starting A crowdfunding campaign in less than 60 days on IndieGoGo.com. That is why I am working so hard to build an online audience. I have an investor who had agreed to match my personal investment. The rest has to come from online investors.

I am currently most in new of print companies, online directories, Pro Bono business legal help in certain states*, preferably MI &  FL. Marketing, news media, grant writing &, SEO or anything.

If you just want to help doing something small, that would be great. You get the tee shirt regardless. If you are attempting to get your state's certified addiction specialist license, this is a great way to do some of the really specific volunteer hours.

Call 813.310.5563 for more info.

* FL, IL, VT, WY, KS, MI, , ND, RI or UT