Humans need to belong. We are a social species. We want to be acknowledged and loved. We seek respect and worth. So, we reach out to the world to fulfill those needs. Today technology makes reaching out to people easier than ever. We can broadcast ourselves to the world in search of human contact. We have the tool of social media.

When we present ourselves to the world our instincts tell us to promote ourselves in the best light. It seems reasonable to present the best parts of ourselves. Our best qualities. The images that make us look the best. To even go beyond our present reality. To project the self that we aspire to be. We think that telling others how great we are will bring us the attention that we want. And, we have been told that telling ourselves how great we are will make us feel good about ourselves.

But I want to share with you that this is not true. I want to show you how presenting your ideal self on social media may be bad for your self-esteem. And, that telling yourself how great you are can make you feel bad. You think this is crazy? Before you turn away, give me a few minutes to explain. Let’s start with considering the following study.

The study that I want to share with you was done by the researchers Wood, Perunovic, & Lee in 2009. And, it’s cited by the great professor Timothy D. Wilson in his book “Redirect: Changing the Stories We Live By“. Here is how the experiment was made:

The experimenters tested a group of people. They gave them tests to identify which ones had high self-esteem. They also identified which ones had low self-esteem. Then they divided everyone into two groups. They assigned people to either one of the groups at random. So the groups included people with high self-esteem and people with low self-esteem.

Then, they asked the members of one group to repeat the phrase “I am a lovable person” every fifteen seconds. They called this group the “Stuart Smalley” group. They did not ask the members of the other group to say any phrases.

At this point, I would like to explain why they called one group the “Stuart Smalley” group. The following video shows Stuart Smalley:

Video: Stuart Smalley – Daily Affirmations

Stuart Smalley is a character from Saturday Night Live. This video shows Stuart Smalley doing “affirmations”. The way that he presents himself reminds me of a lot of social media profiles that I see. I don’t doubt that this is what Stuart Smalley’s social media profile would look like if he had one. Now, let’s get back to the study to see what happened when people did affirmations like Stuart Smalley.

The people with high self-esteem showed a “small benefit”. Telling themselves how great they were made their mood go up a little. But, the people that had low self-esteem felt worse after repeating the “affirmations”. The researchers explained the results. Saying “I am a lovable person” reminded people with low self-esteem of all the ways in which they are not lovable. This produced feelings of discontent. (from “Redirect: Changing the Stories We Live By” by Timothy D. Wilson)

When you present yourself how you would like to be seen, you remind yourself that you are not those things. You remind yourself how you are not what you are presenting. This awareness will make you feel worse, not better about yourself.

So, when you present yourself in social media be careful. Ask yourself if you want to gamble with your feelings. Do you want to risk feeling badly in order to maybe feel better? The results will depend on the level of true self-esteem that you have now.

In a future post, I will share more about how to develop true self-esteem. For now, I will offer you the strategy that is the Royal Road to true self-esteem: be yourself. There is no downside to that strategy. But, paradoxically, is one of the most difficult things for a human being to be.

I wish you balance.

Fentanyl is a drug. It belongs to a family of drugs called opioids. Opioids are used as a pain medication and anesthesia. It comes in an injectable form. It’s also available as lozenges, and as a Fentanyl Patch. In these forms, Fentanyl is a very effective drug.

But drug dealers turned it into a murderous drug. They produce their own kind of Fentanyl. A kind of Fentanyl that is hundreds of times more potent than the medical kind. And they sell it as heroin, cocaine, OxyContin, and MDMA. Fentanyl traces have been found even in marijuana.

Their motivation is profit. They create these Fentanyl-laced versions of drugs to compensate for low-quality drugs. Low-quality drugs that they would have to sell at low prices. And, would not be accepted by addicts because of their low potential to produce a high. Instead, the Fentanyl-laced versions command higher prices. And are sought after by addicts looking for a stronger high.

But, their profit scheme turns deadly. The illegal Fentanyl produces more respiratory depression than the medical versions. Using it as a recreational drugs is deadly. It leads to Fentanyl overdose. Often resulting in death. And, the source of these deaths is clearly documented.

Eighty-two percent of deaths from Fentanyl overdoses involved illegally manufactured fentanyl. While only four percent originated from a prescription.

Drug traffickers and dealers killed 82% of people that died from Fentanyl overdose. They killed them with the product that they created. They killed them to enrich themselves. That makes them murderers.

A man sits at home hiding. He is looking at pornographic material. He has already masturbated several times. He should have felt a sense of satisfaction when he first reached an orgasm. His mind should have stopped sending him the urgency to reach one. It did. For a short while before the impulse to seek sex returned.

His body sent him the message that it was spent after the orgasm. The message is clear. In spite of his efforts, he can’t get an erection. But instead of yielding to his body, he searches for more images that will make him excited again. Harder images. His mind will not let him let go. The compulsion is relentless.

He is frustrated and the frustration makes him anxious and angry. He wants to get rid of it. As a result, he does not have sex with his partner. When he does he has trouble getting an erection. His penis is not responsive. His partner can’t compete with how the porn stars look, and what they do. No one can. It’s an act. But he gets excited only by these extreme images. He is castrated by his excessive masturbation. This is what porn addiction and porn addiction erectile dysfunction look like.

Seeking help with porn addiction and porn-induced erectile dysfunction is challenging. The treatment for erectile dysfunction is simple. Drugs like Viagra and Cialis are very effective. They treat the physical conditions that affect the ability to get an erection. But these medications cannot treat obsession and compulsion. They are not designed for porn addiction treatment. They can’t treat the source of this kind of erectile dysfunction.

However; breaking ineffective patterns that drive obsession and compulsion can stop porn addiction. They can stop the erectile dysfunction that it causes. But such treatment needs to be composed of medical, cognitive, and behavioral interventions. Nothing less will do.

Dealing with erectile dysfunction is difficult. Dealing with porn addiction induced erectile dysfunction is even more difficult. Even considering treating it seems impossible. But if it’s damaging your life seek help. There is effective and private help available. There is no shame in seeking help.

The most important question when you are dealing with alcohol addiction is: What is the best treatment for alcohol addiction?

The oldest treatment for alcoholism came in the way of Alcoholics Anonymous. AA, as is usually known, is a fellowship of alcoholics dedicated to the mission of helping other alcoholics to regain their lives through sobriety. People who suffer from alcoholism are welcomed to these fellowship meetings, where they are given support by people that have attained sobriety and will guide them through a system composed of attending meetings and working on tasks, like reading, writing about oneself, and mastering the 12 principles of AA, which are listed in a numbered list known as the “12 Steps”. This is offered for free since AA is not composed of professionals, but of sober alcoholics that offer their time and help voluntarily.

After AA, treatment for alcoholism began to be offered by professional treatment centers. Today there are over 14,000 of these centers in the U.S. This is both fortunate and unfortunate. It’s fortunate because, in theory, they offer many sources of help to people suffering from alcohol addiction and all chemical dependency problems. On the other hand, it is unfortunate because many addiction treatment centers, or “rehabs” as they are popularly called, have been created for the sole purpose of making profits by exploiting people who suffer from alcoholism and drugs addiction when they are the most vulnerable, and offering them mediocre treatment, or no treatment at all.

Instead of delivering the best-proven care, many addiction treatment centers attract people suffering from alcohol addiction, and drug addiction, with amenities and marketing, and fail to deliver the care that they need. So, how would someone know what the best care for alcohol addiction (alcoholism) and drug addiction is?

The best care for alcohol addiction.

1. An addiction treatment center that is owned and operated by healthcare professionals with experience in addictions—not a business entity, business people, and least of all treatment hustlers who profit from human suffering.
2. An addiction treatment center that has a designed and focused program of treatment that Incorporates medicine, psychology, physical fitness, mental fitness, emotional fitness, and spirituality, in one comprehensive and focused approach—not an erratic collection of interventions and attractions patched together without rhyme or reason, because they are fashionable or fun.
3. An addiction treatment center that has a treatment system that develops living skills that lead to self-sufficiency, independence, and self-reliance. Treatment that results in a successful return to work, careers, education, and family life.
4. An addiction treatment center that gives people the opportunity to learn and experience the skills that they need to stay sober in the middle of real life, not isolated and separated from the reality that they will have to live in after treatment.
5. An addiction treatment center that is designed to get sober while you continue to be engaged in your life. In real life, people need to be able to continue to work while in treatment to protect their employment and professions.
6. An addiction treatment center that understands that people that need treatment still have demands and responsibilities to their work and their families.
7. An addiction treatment center that offers tailored treatment programs that combine intensive outpatient treatment, with or without housing, during day or night, continues to offer the opportunity to come to groups for support after the initial treatment is over—forever.
8. An addiction treatment center that has developed a system of treatment that can break down the barriers that keep people from getting the treatment that they need, even when they have received mediocre previous treatment that didn’t work.
9. Finally, and most importantly, the best alcohol and drug treatment addiction center has to have a treatment system that goes beyond drug treatment, and unleashes the human potential of the person treated, freeing them to attain strength, power, and vitality, not just be sober “dry drunk”.

Five years ago I founded a treatment center named Adaptive Center. Actually, it’s not a “rehab”, it’s a Human Potential Center that specializes in treating addiction. However, that’s not the subject of this post. The subject of this post is that working in all kinds outpatient rehab centers for the past 25 years I have met cowards and sheep; Heroes and Eagles. Today I want to say something about the Heroes.

I have met Cowards and Sheep; Heroes and Eagles.

In the addiction rehab world, there are different kinds of programs. “Residential” (where people live and go to treatment), Partial Hospitalization (where people come to treatment all day), Intensive Outpatient (where people come to treatment several times per week), and Outpatient (where people usually come 1 to 3 times per week for treatment). In this writing, “Outpatient” means any treatment that is not Residential.

People who come to Outpatient alcohol and drug addiction treatment are facing struggles that the average person cannot even imagine, so I will try to put it in perspective. Imagine that you have not eaten for 3 days. Also, imagine that you have to manage your hunger as you work, take care of all of your daily chores and responsibilities, study, attend to family and friends, etc. Imagine that you have to abstain from eating, and fight the urgings of your own body and mind, in a world that is filled with delicious food that is being advertised in attractive ways all around you, that wherever you go you are surrounded by restaurants of all kinds. Also imagine that, if you yield to your hunger and eat, you will loose your loved one’s, family, work, career, your freedom, and possibly your life. Now imagine that, for the sake of protecting these beloved things, you put yourself through the battle of making it through the day, one day at a time, without giving in to your hunger. How would you describe yourself? Would the word Hero apply?

The people that I work with in my center are facing a challenge like this. They are not protected by the walls of an institution that keep them sheltered from the reality of a culture where alcohol is everywhere, glamorized and part of most social interactions. Neither are they protected by the isolation and pampering of a rich Spa, disguised as a residential alcohol addiction rehab. No, the people that I work with fight to preserve their work, their families, their careers and their freedom by facing themselves and their addiction in an act of defiance and heroism that transforms them every day into the people that they have the potential to become. Again, what would you call them?

In Adaptive Center we treat a lot of opiate addiction. Painkillers and heroin belong to a family of drugs called opiates. Many of the painkillers that are prescribed for back pain, post surgery, and dental procedures are opiates, and close relatives of heroin.

In the last few years two factors have contributed to an epidemic of heroin addiction:

• The cracking down of “Pill Mills” or “Pain Clinics”
• The low price of heroin

Here’s what happened.

Opiates are very addictive. Many people that were prescribed opiates for chronic pain became addicted to them, and when doctors refused to continue to prescribe them, they found “Pain Clinics” in which by simply reporting symptoms of pain, and paying a fee, they could get prescriptions for any amount of opiate pills they wanted. These “Pain Clinics” became known as “Pill Mills”.

These Pill Mills spread like fire. In Florida, for example, they were so available, that drug dealers from other states would bring bus loads of people, line them up in front of these “Clinics,” and have each individual person get prescriptions that amounted to thousands of pills that the drug dealers would sell—illegally—back home.

As a result, many young people—and people medicating chronic pain—began buying these pills from the same drug dealers that had previously sold them marijuana and other “party drugs,” and became addicted to opiates very quickly.

The Cracking Down of Pill Mills

The existence of Pill Mills became so scandalous that law enforcement cracked down on their operators very hard. The majority of the Pill Mills were closed, and many of their operators faced legal consequences. However, these effective law enforcement measures cut the supply of pills to the drug dealers, and following the laws of supply and demand, as the supply of pills ran out, caused the price of pills to go up.

So, people addicted to opiates in pill form experienced the pain of withdrawing from them, and the pills harder to find. The drug dealers, however, had plenty of heroin.

The Low Price of Heroin

As the availability of opiate pills was going down, and their price kept going up, heroin was becoming cheaper. More and more heroin began to be manufactured in Mexico, instead of the old—and more distant—sources in the East and Europe. Mexican heroin was cheaper to make and easier to smuggle into the U.S. As a result, the supply of heroin sky-rocketed, and—again—according to the laws of supply and demand, the increasing amount of heroin made it cheaper.

The low price of heroin made it possible for people who were addicted to opiate pills to escape the pain of withdrawal by medicating them with heroin: it was cheap, and the drug dealers had a lot of it. Unfortunately, by reaching out to heroin as medication for opiate withdrawals, opiate addicts discovered what one of my clients described as “the King of the Opiates.” And the story that followed is tragic.

Here is the tragic story of the descent into Heroin addiction, as told to me by the majority of heroin addicts that I have known: First they began using heroin as a substitute for opiate pills that had become too expensive and too hard to find. Usually, they started by snorting it, in the same way that cocaine is used. However, soon they found that they needed to constantly buy more in order to escape “getting sick”: the withdrawal symptoms that follow the drug use. During their use, they met a more experienced user who taught them that if they injected the heroin it would be more potent and the effect would last longer—and eventually—even those that had been “horrified,” “disgusted,” and had looked down on people that injected heroin as “junkies,” tried it. And when they did, they report, that life as they had known it ended.

They report that life became an endless seeking of heroin—using—and seeking again. They became unstoppable and ruthless in their seeking—and they were stopped only by profound despair, death, or treatment.

Today this story is being lived by millions of people from all races, ethnicities, religions, and socio-economic status. While you were reading this article many died, and many want to stop because they can’t stand the despair of living for the sake of a drug, and many of those are looking for treatment to be able to stop and stay stopped. And it all began with Pills. They are not Heroin, but they led to it.

It’s our hope that this information may be of help to you and your loved ones, and that it may empower you and those you care about to avoid the trap of Opiate/Heroin addiction. If you think that we may be of even further help, call us.

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The Holidays are a time of great personal expectations. Your family has high hopes of having the stereotypical happy and joyful Holiday events. Family members that otherwise live separate lives come to visit. The stage is set for your addiction to do great damage to the relationships with your family. What could be forgiven by your family in private, and in the course of everyday life, may be too much to bear in front of others. The damage that you cause may be irreparable.

2

The Holidays are a time in which many people feel lonely and depressed. These emotional states can cause you to seek the relief of drugs and alcohol, and since they are so plentiful during this time, they can take you to dangerous extremes.

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Drugs and alcohol are plentiful, and are all around you. Even people who don’t abuse them regularly do so during this season. You will be surrounded by frequent use and abuse, and you will be encouraged to participate. It will be impossible to resist such an attack for long.

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The environment of a good treatment center is not for the sick. It is an environment of support, and of loving embracing of yourself, away from the pressures and expectations that drive you to stress and pressure during this season.

If you are thinking of using Adderall, maybe it is because you feel pressured by parents, teachers, or peers to do better in school. Maybe you are planning to use it to help give you a boost of energy so that you can stay up all night and study. If you are hoping that Adderall will help you focus and concentrate, you might actually get what you ask for and more—and you won’t like it. You will concentrate and focus for sure. But the problem is that you will concentrate and focus on porn, masturbating, your accelerated heart rate, and obsessing over ideas and people. As a result, all of this hyper-concentrated-focus will make it impossible for you to finish the work that you are supposed to do.

According to SAMHSA, full-time college students were twice as likely to have used Adderall non-medically as their counterparts who were not full-time students, according to a National Survey on Drug Use and Health report released in 2009 (1).

Adderall is a drug designed to stimulate the area of the brain responsible for concentration—in brains where this area works slowly. This is the condition that causes ADD, or Attention Deficit Disorder. So, if you have this kind of brain dysfunction, Adderall will boost your brain into normal speed. But if your brain is already working at normal speed, Adderall will throw it into over-drive: instead of concentration and focus, you will go into Obsession and Compulsion. Instead of becoming a focused person, you will become an obsessed and compulsive one.

And then it gets worse.

After sustained use, you will discover that even when the effects of Adderall become negative, and your compulsive porn watching, masturbating, and obsessing screw up your work, relationships, and school—you will have a hard time stopping it. Instead, you will actually begin to seek more, become preoccupied with having enough, and tell yourself and others outrageous explanations about why you really need it. Examples of these completely ridiculous reasons are:

1. It’s a prescribed medication.
2. It’s legal.
3. You need it to function.

The problem with these explanations.

1. You can always find a doctor that prescribes you anything if you lie to them about your symptoms, and hide from them the truth about how the medication affects you. If you are prescribed Adderall ask yourself if you really do suffer from ADD or if you have been exaggerating to get a prescription. Are you kidding yourself into believing you really need this medication when you know you have not been honest?
2. Legality has nothing to do with drug abuse. The most addictive and deadliest drugs in the world are nicotine, alcohol, and legal drugs made by pharmaceutical companies. More people die from abusing them than from abusing illegal drugs. Many people feel that overusing their prescribed medications is inconsequential in fact, according to one study by the American Academy of Pediatrics, many Ivy League students asked don’t view ADHD medication misuse as cheating (2).
3. If you really needed it, it would not be turning you into an obsessive-compulsive person that is experiencing negative life consequences.

At some point one of two things will happen

You will continue to use Adderall until you lose your job and your relationships and get kicked out/or fail out of school. Then you will have to get help stopping.

You stop bullshitting yourself and pay attention to the reality that with Adderall you are engaging in compulsive behaviors that are not normal, that you are obsessing, and that you are failing at the very tasks that the Adderall was supposed to help you with. Then you act like a smart human being, and you seek help to stop—and protect the most important things in your life.

In order to stop using Adderall, look for a treatment center that is not a “rehab.” Look for a center that is interested in solutions to human problems, and that doesn’t label everyone walking through their doors as an “addict.” You need professional, rational, and scientifically validated treatment.

The first step of this treatment is detox. You have to stop the use in a protected environment, away from the places that you use. In a detox you will also receive medical help to deal with the anxiety and confusion that you will initially feel—don’t worry, it won’t last long.

Then you engage in an effective process of therapy, exercise, and self-discovery to identify what the deal was: How did you get into the Adderall? What were you after? What did you think it was going to do for you? Through the exploration caused by these questions you will clarify your crazy thinking, and will substitute it with rational-realistic-non-bullshit beliefs that will move you to meet your goals and reach success for real.

Sources:

(1) SAMHSA – Nonmedical Use of Adderall® among Full-Time College Students

(2) AAP Article – Many Ivy League Students Don’t View ADHD Medication Misuse as Cheating