nurofen plus

cianirwin

To be honest speaking as a recovering codeine\nurofen plus addict all I can day is no codeine products should be sold over the counter..when I went to my local HSE addiction centre they asked me if I want to go on a methadone programme because they said it can be just as hard to give up as heroin..I refused that option but accepted counselling but to be honest N+ is still a daily struggle for me..most days I get by but sometimes I do give in..I suffer from awful panic attacks and the first time I took N+ was for a knee injury and realized they relaxed me..which I though was great...but over the years they have caused more problems...basically in my opinion no addictive substances should be sold OTC....even if by putting them on prescription if it helps one person its worth it...

JuliusCaesar

Of course the problem is that the substances that people get addicted to are many and various: alcohol would be the major one. Cigarettes. All kinds of drugs, both legal and illegal. Food. Sex. In fact anything which makes you feel better immediately.

Most people however do not get addicted. So is addiction the fault of the substance or the person? (By which I do NOT mean that people deliberately seek to get themselves addicted!) But I've heard this from a lot of people with alcohol problems - if only there weren't pubs and off-licences on every street corner!

I can feel for your frustration, and can to some extent as an ex-smoker share it. But it is our own feelings and urges that we have to deal with.

bharr

JuliusCaesar wrote: »

Most people however do not get addicted. So is addiction the fault of the substance or the person? (By which I do NOT mean that people deliberately seek to get themselves addicted!) But I've heard this from a lot of people with alcohol problems - if only there weren't pubs and off-licences on every street corner!

Tricky one.

Over the years I have worked with many hundreds of people dependant on alcohol and other drugs. I never met one who had addiction as a goal on his life plan! Indeed. Most would be happy to have their addiction gene surgically removed, probably without anaesthetic, were it possible.

The modern take on addiction is that it is a biopsychosocial disorder caused by the effect of the substance on brain chemistry. This causes neuroadaption and then this neurological adaptation becomes the main problem, whatever the reason the person originally took the substance for.

Valmont

bharr wrote: »

The modern take on addiction is that it is a biopsychosocial disorder caused by the effect of the substance on brain chemistry. This causes neuroadaption and then this neurological adaptation becomes the main problem, whatever the reason the person originally took the substance for.

That explanation is irrelevant when we look at just one person who quits a bad habit cold turkey. If addiction is caused and perpetuated by a physical 'neuroadaptation' then we should we not see people who decide to simply quit smoking and never look back. Yes, these people may be in the minority, but their existence undermines any overly biological theory of addiction. Regardless of how much somebody is addicted to something, they choose to do it again and again - that they don't like themselves for doing this does not alter the fact that ultimately they are in control.

You seem to think that having a 'reason' only plays a part during the first encounter with an addictive substance but for an addict to finally quit smoking or drinking after many years, they need another 'reason' strong enough to convince them it is worth the trouble. Agency is part of the entirety of addiction and I don't see how it takes a back-seat to some as yet unsubstantiated neurological processes.

bharr

I understand your reasoning but disagree with your statement that choice pays a part in why an addict uses. Maybe in the beginning but most recovering addicts will tell you that they really had no choice but to drink or use drugs. This is what I mean by a neurological or neuropsychological process. The rational mind is hijacked by the limbic system.

Not sure what you mean that agency is part of the entirety of addiction.

What I mean by addiction is when an individual meets the diagnostic criteria for alcohol (or opiate, cocaine etc) dependence syndrome. Quitting is easy, staying stopped is another matter. Best practice addictions treatment is about preventing relapse by managing relapse triggers and high risk situations. This is where the biopsychosocial approach is used. It is demanding and exhausting work for all involved.

Valmont

bharr wrote: »

I understand your reasoning but disagree with your statement that choice pays a part in why an addict uses. Maybe in the beginning but most recovering addicts will tell you that they really had no choice but to drink or use drugs. This is what I mean by a neurological or neuropsychological process. The rational mind is hijacked by the limbic system.

How can you explain somebody who simply quits cold-turkey, never looking back? I would also point out that the biological theory of addiction you are referring to is only one of many competing theories: researchers are not entirely sure of the exact role of the brain.

dar100

bharr wrote: »

I understand your reasoning but disagree with your statement that choice pays a part in why an addict uses. Maybe in the beginning but most recovering addicts will tell you that they really had no choice but to drink or use drugs.

The only individuals who will make this statement, are doing so after been indoctrinated with a 12 step/disease model of treatment. I work with many people using a range of interventions which promote choice. In fact, the only model of "addiction counselling" that encourages no choice is the disease model.


This is what I mean by a neurological or neuropsychological process. The rational mind is hijacked by the limbic system.

The mind of a substance user is irrational long before they pick up a substance.



What I mean by addiction is when an individual meets the diagnostic criteria for alcohol (or opiate, cocaine etc) dependence syndrome. Quitting is easy,

Quitting psychoactive substances is far from easy!! But it is a choice.


staying stopped is another matter.

It requires the learning of coping strategies/relapse prevention, again another choice.

JuliusCaesar

dar100 wrote: »

The mind of a substance user is irrational long before they pick up a substance.

I would say rather - not that we are by nature irrational, but that we are creatures of emotion. And emotion may have its own internal consistencies, but it definitely isn't rational.

When people say they have no choice, it doesn't actually mean they have no choice - but that they feel they have no choice. A different thing entirely.

Valmont

I think the biological theory of addiction is dangerous - it could easily convince somebody that they are literally helpless against some rogue part of their own brain. Does anybody know if any studies have been done on people's attitudes and opinions to their own addictions?

Labarbapostiza

Valmont wrote: »

How can you explain somebody who simply quits cold-turkey, never looking back? I would also point out that the biological theory of addiction you are referring to is only one of many competing theories: researchers are not entirely sure of the exact role of the brain.

How can you explain someone taking a nurophen plus and not becoming a codeine addict?

A lot of addicts are fundamentally traumatised people. The alcohol and drugs are a response to the trauma. The responses are the four Fs. Fight, Flight, Fawn, and Freeze. Flight is drink or drugs. I have seen the brain scans where the cognitive function (frontal lobe activity) has nearly completely shut down, and the only activity is the limbic system. When cognitive function is impaired, the persons ability to make good choices is also seriously impaired.

If someone has a physical dependency on a drug, but there isn't an underlying trauma, then it might be relatively easy for them to stop. However, if someone is using a drug to combat high anxiety, removing the drug may allow the anxiety to rush in, knocking out their cognitive function, and letting the limbic system have what it demands; which is the drug.

I can't remember the exact statistic. But the majority of cigarettes sold in the US are sold to people with mental illnesses. It's probably the same here.

JuliusCaesar

Brain scan are wildly overestimated. Tell it to the dead salmon.

There does seem to be a degree of correlation and some sort of relationship between addiction and trauma, but what it suggests is that early intervention is surely the answer, not waiting until addiction has become a problem.

I would also suggest that the drugs prescribed for mental disorders create almost as many problems as they solve, and that we really need to move mental health treatment to an labour intensive psychosocial model as soon as possible. This isn't going to happen without massive investment though and there is no political will to do this.

dar100

Labarbapostiza wrote: »

How can you explain someone taking a nurophen plus and not becoming a codeine addict?

A lot of addicts are fundamentally traumatised people. The alcohol and drugs are a response to the trauma. The responses are the four Fs. Fight, Flight, Fawn, and Freeze. Flight is drink or drugs. I have seen the brain scans where the cognitive function (frontal lobe activity) has nearly completely shut down, and the only activity is the limbic system. When cognitive function is impaired, the persons ability to make good choices is also seriously impaired.

If someone has a physical dependency on a drug, but there isn't an underlying trauma, then it might be relatively easy for them to stop. However, if someone is using a drug to combat high anxiety, removing the drug may allow the anxiety to rush in, knocking out their cognitive function, and letting the limbic system have what it demands; which is the drug.

I can't remember the exact statistic. But the majority of cigarettes sold in the US are sold to people with mental illnesses. It's probably the same here.

Id imagine it is because they diagnose far more individuals with "mental illness" than any other country

dar100

JuliusCaesar wrote: »

Brain scan are wildly overestimated. Tell it to the dead salmon.

There does seem to be a degree of correlation and some sort of relationship between addiction and trauma, but what it suggests is that early intervention is surely the answer, not waiting until addiction has become a problem.

The problem here is that the addiction rarely becomes apparent until it is a problem. The secret nature of substance use, and the defences/behaviours used make sure of this.

I agree that there is a huge relationship between trauma and addiction, also mood an emotional disorders, and PD's. Whether the initial trauma caused these disorders, I'd say yes. Addiction just becomes a way if coping with the daily struggle.

Much more needs to be done at a policy level, but sadly I can't see this happening. Unfortunately the majority of people who suffer from addiction come from less advantaged socioeconomic areas, and those who make the policy, well they don't

Valmont

Labarbapostiza wrote: »

How can you explain someone taking a nurophen plus and not becoming a codeine addict?

In any number of ways. I take pain killers if I have a bad headache and when the headache is gone I choose to not take any more - perhaps I have misunderstood your question?

Labarbapostiza wrote: »

However, if someone is using a drug to combat high anxiety, removing the drug may allow the anxiety to rush in, knocking out their cognitive function, and letting the limbic system have what it demands; which is the drug.

What you've done here is to ascribe moral agency to both a person and his limbic system simultaneously which is impossible; if I want to be less anxious I take the drug, if I don't take the drug my limbic system makes me take it. I would also point out that there is no neurological or psychological evidence that anxious people are mindless morons running around acting on the whims of their limbic systems, totally bereft of control of their lives.

The limbic system is only one part of the process of reinforcement and as I demonstrated above, we only need one hardcore addict to quit cold-turkey to prove that any one part of our brain does not exert deterministic control over our behaviour

Labarbapostiza wrote: »

I can't remember the exact statistic. But the majority of cigarettes sold in the US are sold to people with mental illnesses. It's probably the same here.

I think you need to provide some evidence to back up such a wild claim.

Torakx

I think it is for the most part a matter of adaption with regards to neurology and brain chemistry.
I had been ok not smoking for most of my life, although from my mid teens onwards I was drinking alcohol. At 26 i switched from alcohol to smoking and so I have been an addict most of my life. if you count sugar and sweets growing up, you can say i have always been an addict and thatit has never changed.
I would also say I have an addictive personality(whatever water that label holds I don't know).
At around age 19 or so I gave up drinking for 3-5 months just to test how I felt about it. It was fine, so I went back to drinking.. haha
I have given up smoking for 3 months last year, when my life began to turn around and I became very busy with a new career path. But after 3 months I wanted to smoke.. so I did.
Really I would like to be happy not smoking, but I also really enjoy smoking, especially while I think, which is a lot....

Could it be said that those cases of people who smoke and then suddenly give up, are either not addicts at all, or they are just moving on to another addiction?
I think that theory on the limbic systme should not be disregarded so quickly. It is very much related to behaviour generally I would think. Maybe some cases are one scenarioand other cases are different.

Labarbapostiza

JuliusCaesar wrote: »

Brain scan are wildly overestimated. Tell it to the dead salmon.

"neuroscience" has more than it's fair share of charlatans.

Now, neuroscientist Craig Bennett and his dead salmon. He's either dishonest or stupid, but more likely he is both. I could repeat the experiment with a cold dead JuliusCaesar and the fMRI machine and I would also see activity in the brain, like Bennett did with his salmon. However, if I did my electroencephalogram with electro sensors on the heads of Julius, and the salmon, they would both appear to be quite dead with no activity registering. What's going on? It's simple, but maybe not simple enough for Bennett. The electro sensors are a passive form of measurement, whereas fMRI is an active form. The powerful magnetic field of the fMRI machine will rotate molecules in the dead brains. This will cause thermal noise. It's not brain activity registering, it's brain cooking.

There does seem to be a degree of correlation and some sort of relationship
between addiction and trauma, but what it suggests is that early intervention is surely the answer, not waiting until addiction has become a problem.

Yes, well, if you don't abuse a person as a child, they won't grow up to suffer from trauma related to childhood abuse. That would be the perfect intervention.

The substance abuse issue may be the most apparent problem, but it could be masking trauma. And deleterious effects that you might assume are the
result of the substances are in fact the result of the trauma.

Research that concluded methamphetamine use to cause frontal lobe damage was based on testing the cognitive function of recovering meth addicts. The assumption was that their poor cognitive function was the result of their meth use, and not that their meth use was a result of poor cognitive function, as a result of trauma. Typically addicts experience abuse and exclusion before they become problematic substance users. Blaming it all on the meth let's society off the hook.


e

drugs prescribed for mental disorders create almost as many problems as they
solve,

What drugs do you mean, in particular?

and that we really need to move mental health treatment to an labour
intensive psychosocial model as soon as possible. This isn't going to happen without massive investment though and there is no political will to do this.

First you have to know what you're doing. Arresting addicts, imprisoning them, and policing them out of wealthy suburbs onto my doorstep is labour intensive and expensive, but it is how society, or at least the powerful in society believe how resources should be used. Currently, the homeless population in Dublin are being treated like medieval lepers. Just being given enough crusts of bread, so society in general doesn't feel guilt for letting them die on the street. And the drugs are society's cop out.
.
Many mental health professionals do not even want to engage with people who are using any substance, let alone being under the influence of a substance. Who do they want to treat? People with very mild conditions? people who do not really have mental health problems.

We have garda cars spinning around day and night. But do we have mental health specialists, trying to track and do anything for the homeless addicts. And I don't mean trying to teach them mindfulness techniques.

With the whole drug issue I get very annoyed. There are people making very good livings, doing nothing more than wagging their fingers from a position of complete ignorance, and that depends on the continued ignorance and demonization of drugs.

And will spending more money just result in social predators, like refugees from Anglo Irish swooping in to feed.

Valmont

Torakx wrote: »

Could it be said that those cases of people who smoke and then suddenly give up, are either not addicts at all, or they are just moving on to another addiction?

That's just an all-to-convenient way of throwing out the strongest evidence against a biological theory of addiction. As long psychologists are presented with people who simply quit the most crippling addictions out of thin air, we have to conclude that engaging in addictive behaviour is not determined neurologically. I'm an ex-smoker too and struggled to quit several times over a two year window until I had really bad chest infection which prompted me to never buy a packet ever again - that was three years ago.

It's frustrating that many psychologists don't want to examine the single most important factor in any addiction: reason. I quit because I had a reason to, not because of some unsubstantiated causal neurological connection. People who seem to be unable to quit have a reason for carrying on smoking even knowing it is bad for their long term health; this reason can be as simple time preference - yes it is bad for my health long term but I value satisfying my craving right now in the present over my overall health.

It's rather ironic that the psychology of addiction is drifting away from the psychosocial factors, as JC alluded to above. We simply cannot tackle addiction without reference to thoughts, feelings, values, or relationships. The nature and solution to any one addiction rests within that realm (as proved by cold-turkey quitters) and turning it into a medical issue simply dehumanises the addict and implicit tells him or her that he has no control over how he behaves. When somebody is convinced of that fact they lose most of the ability to help themselves of their own volition.

Torakx

Good points there. I think I would agree with that if pushed to a decision.
Occams razor and all that.
In my case regarding unhealthy food, I made myself very sick when combined with legal drugs.
I have been trying to stay off bread and refined carbs ever since. Often I fail and revert back.
But I did need a good enough reason to change and I found it out of desperation.
Now I am in a middle zone of mostly eating healthy, but still unable to maintain a strict healthy diet.
I think actually it was the chronic depression thatmade me change my ways the most. But now I have dealt with that through diet i can keep it the depression maintained at nearly non existant while stillfailing the diet.
Which means I lost my reason and may continue to lose grip of this diet as I get more sick and then revert back again torelieve depression stymptoms.

Will power seems to be the factor there and as you say it most likely needs to be supplemented with a good reason.
I have the reason anyway. I will get very sick and die young if I continue to eat bread, sugar etc. But I am missing the willpower to keep it up during the craving periods.
It seems like an addiction, where relieving the withdrawal symptoms becomes more important than the reason. Same with the Nurofen and many others I suppose.
i would much prefe to be locked into some kind of camp for 6 months and forced to eat healthy or nothing at all.
Trying to live even a seminormal life while avoiding allthe things everyone eats feels like an imposible task. And this is without any self judgement on whether I am an addict or not. I accept it could be either way.

Personally it doesn't seem to change my behaviour if I think I am an addict(or addictive personality) or if I am like everyone else and just weak of will.
Either way I seem to have a strong need to relieve symptoms of withdrawal.

One other thing that helped me stopsmoking was a new career choice and a hope for the future. A goal to aim for thathelped distract me from smoking.
I am still trying to figure out how to recreate this feeling and use it regularly, because I can't change career choices every 6 months for that motivational boost
All tips welcome.
By tips, I mean facts on what has been effective in these cases, to satisfy my curiosity lol
Not advice

Valmont

When it comes to willpower I think the best book on the subject is Henry Hazlitt's The Way to Will-Power. It is rooted in stoic philosophy but is well ahead of its time in anticipating many of the behavioural components of CBT. My own personal belief is that the under-developed theory of CBT could do well with drawing from some of the older classics of psychology such as Hazlitt's and William James's.

Torakx

Valmont wrote: »

When it comes to willpower I think the best book on the subject is Henry Hazlitt's The Way to Will-Power. It is rooted in stoic philosophy but is well ahead of its time in anticipating many of the behavioural components of CBT. My own personal belief is that the under-developed theory of CBT could do well with drawing from some of the older classics of psychology such as Hazlitt's and William James's.

Thanks for that link. Enjoyable read
I think he is on to something there alright.
Philosophy of mind is one of the most interesting things in philosopy for me, when I can link it to psychology too.
Most likely why I enjoyed Carl jungs books over Freuds.

And his mentioning of the Will and its mechanics sounds similar to Nietzsches writing on "The Will".
Talk of everything man does is to serve the will or in the link you posted mentioning desire.

I suppose then a good target is to learn to control or manipulate our own desires.
I've only gotten as far as page 15, but I will try set time aside to read more. Looks good.

Torakx

With regards to comments on the limbic system.
For me this kind of links your comments on the limbic system and the will/desires.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qp0HIF3SfI4
5:40 is the part of note, but it's all good.

If it can be done for marketing, then we can surely market to ourselves somehow.