People who’ve been victims of drug abuse, addiction or even alcoholism would be able to tell you that getting pass the phase of withdrawal symptoms was the hardest but once that phase had passed, life was better and things got easier. If you’re trying to kill a bad opiates addiction and want to survive a heroin detox, know that with the right amount of willpower and effort, you can do it at home.
First thing you’d need to do would be to get rid of all drugs and substances that make you chemical dependant from your household. Take out the trash too, because in desperate times, you would be surprised to see that you would be willing to dig in through the trash for a quick fix. Aside from that, look up the internet for withdrawal symptoms. If you want to kill your habits, you’d need to be prepared for all that would come your way and you should be able to fight each challenge without falling apart.
Set a week in which you’d like to start over and clear your schedule for that one week. Take off from work, send your kids to the sitters and have the house all to yourself. In this time period, write out your goals, make visualizations and believe in yourself. Then, focus on curing the symptoms you’d be feeling by preparing with over the counter medication like ibuprofen, aspirin, painkillers, sleeping pills and anti-nausea as well.
In addition, there is no harm in preparing hot baths for yourself with bath salts and going for frequent massages through this week. These little self pampering activities would not only soothe your body from all the symptoms, it would also take your mind off things and help you relax. To sum it up, you can hold yourself together, just stay focus and be dedicated.
People say that opiate detox is like having a bad flu. Well, if you’ve been there you know that is the understatement of the century! Detox from opiates is a painful, miserable experience. Even at inpatient facilities with medical assistance there will still be some discomfort.
If you want to, or have to detox at home there are ways of making it more tolerable.
Days or even months before you begin your detox it’s helpful to start a mental detox. This is the real key to maintaining sobriety, or even returning to ‘normal person’ status. By ‘normal person’ I mean returning to the person that you were prior to opiate addiction.
Experts will tell you that this is impossible, once an addict always an addict, that you have a disease. Well, it’s just not true. All of those things ‘experts’ tell us are theories. The methods the medical community uses, based on those theories have been failing to work for 60 years now.
It is possible to train yourself to no longer desire your drug of choice. It all starts in the mind, with your thoughts.
I had some “Addict heal thyself” light-bulb moments while I was still a heroin addict, just before I finally got sober. I want to share with you the most profound:
1. No person, program, or meeting could do anything for me to help me reach my goal of returning to who I was prior to heroin. In fact, they did everything in their power to discourage me from believing that I could be cured.
2. If I believe it’s possible I can make it happen.
3. I have control over every aspect of my life. I am not now, nor have I ever been powerless.
It was a very important day for me when I gave up on finding help through any outside sources. That was the day that I took my power back. I decided that if everyone wasn’t wrong that I would make them wrong. When I stopped looking for help outside of myself I finally decided to help myself.
Though it seemed sudden when I came to this realization, in retrospect it wasn’t. I had been reading personal development books for quite a while. I read a lot about the power of the mind. It struck me, reading about people bending metal with the power of their mind and having surgery without anesthesia using only metal abilities, how could these amazing things be possible, yet we are taught to believe that once an addict always an addict? It simply can’t be possible that I can change everything about my life except this one enormously important area.
And so, I have been happily chemically independent for some time now. I think the secret of my success is that I had a running start. Prior to putting the needle down I went to work on myself. I wrote goals, did visualization, watched and changed my thoughts, and I meditated. After a short time I just didn’t want drugs anymore. Even when I went into withdrawal I just didn’t want the drugs. I don’t struggle one day at a time, attend meetings, avoid people places and things – I don’t have to.
Detox itself will be more tolerable if you are working toward something that excites you.
Once you’ve made worthwhile goals and learned a little bit about the powers of the mind the desire to get sober and get a great life will increase. Once you feel that passion you know you’re ready to put down and move on. This is true for any drug.
If you are opiate, benzodiazepine, or alcohol dependent you’re likely in for some physical withdrawal. If you decide to detox at home there are a number of things you’ll want to do to ensure as much comfort as possible. Remember that detoxing from certain substances can, on rare occasions, be fatal (this is the case with alcohol and benzos) so you will want to discuss your options with a doctor.
To ensure as much comfort as possible begin planning your detox ahead of time. Focus on treating the symptoms you are going to be feeling.
1. Make sure that you reschedule any commitments for at least a week.
2. If you have children you might want to make arrangements for them to stay elsewhere or for you to stay elsewhere. At a minimum make sure there is someone else looking after them. Don’t underestimate the depression and irritability and lack of energy that accompanies detox.
3. Have over the counter medications on hand that you may need
a. Anti nausea
b. Anti-diarrhea
c. Sleep aids
d. Benadryl (to stop the endless eye watering, sneezing, and nose running)
e. Epsom salts for hot baths (these can be lifesavers, especially if you are prone to intolerable skin burning sensations like me)
f. Motrin for pain
4. If you can, ask that someone gives you frequent massages. This will take your mind off of the discomfort and help the muscle and bone pain. Even a hand massage can work wonders.
5. You will likely feel hot and cold sweats or be freezing even though you are sweating through the sheets. Having someone to change your sheets for you is always helpful. I used to have so little energy that I could barely walk to the bathroom, never mind changing sheets!
6. This is a bit controversial, but some legal herbs can be very helpful. Kava Kava, a powdered ceremonial herb can be used to take the edge off.
7. Once you endure the worst of it (days 2-4) try to get up and walk around as much as possible. At first you will probably be dizzy, but it’s important to keep your body moving.
8. Throughout the process stay hydrated. Back headaches accompany most detoxes and water should help to relieve them.
There are some symptoms that people rarely mention, like the sensation of burning skin. I often felt as though I had a very bad sunburn when I went through withdrawal. You might experience strange sensations on your skin and scalp, eyes that are so dilated any amount of light can be overwhelming, and any stimuli can be too much for some people. There was one time I had to walk into a Walmart during a detox and it was stimulation overload. The florescent lighting blinded me and I felt dizzy, there was so much stuff! I never made it past the front door.
If you or someone you know is addicted to opiates such as heroin or hydrocodone then you are going to have to go through detox in order to change your life and ultimately get off the drugs. The fear of detox and the severity of the withdrawal symptoms can prevent many addicts from getting and staying clean, so it will help to have a plan in place in order to deal with these symptoms.
If your plan is to simply stop taking the pills and go through the withdrawals cold turkey, then that is not a very good plan. People who do this almost inevitably will end up relapsing very soon after trying, and the success rate will be very low. In order to increase your chances of staying clean you need to ask for help.
For most people this will mean going to a drug rehab of some sort where they can detox you in a medical setting. The reason this is an advantage is because they can give you medication at the rehab that will help to control your withdrawal symptoms and prevent you from feeling so miserable. They can do this without getting you addicted to any other medications as they will carefully ween you down if they have to until you are completely drug free.
Many people think if they go to rehab they will end up hooked on medications and so they justify their decision not to go get clean. This is ridiculous and if you go to rehab you will in fact emerge drug free if that is your choice. The decision is up to you, all you have to do is to ask for help and then follow through with your decision.
Tricia Gooden wants to quit smoking.
“I keep seeing all those commercials on TV about people who are like dying – who have holes in their throats,” says the 24-year old office manager who has smoked on and off for six years. But a previous effort to kick her nicotine addiction with patches failed.
“Once you start it’s really hard to stop,” she laments.
Nicotine addiction has even been compared to narcotics like heroin or morphine, also known as opiates. Neuroscientist Dan McGehee, of University of Chicago says the relapse rates are much higher for tobacco users than the users of other drugs, citing approximately 40 percent relapse on average for all drugs of abuse compared to 80 to 90 percent for tobacco.
“Many factors contribute to this difference, and one of these is the addictive effects of these drugs,” he says.
McGehee’s recent study gives more evidence that nicotine and heroin have similar effects in the brain. He measured these effects in individual rat brain cells in lab dishes using a sophisticated technique to record electrical activity. He also measured the release of the pleasure chemical dopamine.
Nicotine and opiates increase dopamine release in the pleasure center of the brain. This center is also involved in the addictive properties of both types of drugs. Dopamine is also released in large quantities in response to experiences such as sex and running.
McGehee and his team applied nicotine and a heroin-like substance called endomorphin to brain cells. Because the two drugs work in completely different ways, the researchers did not expect to find that the cells in a particular area, called the nucleus accumbens, responded in an identical way to both drugs.
“We were a little surprised to see an effect that was so similar between these two different classes of drugs,” says McGehee.
Dopamine-releasing brain cells release only small amounts of dopamine until they are prompted by a stimulus to release large bursts of dopamine. The researchers knew from prior studies that nicotine caused the low level release of dopamine to be suppressed. This results in hypersensitivity in that brain area to dopamine, which can greatly enhance feelings of reward. In this study the scientists found that in the presence of the heroin-like substance, the neurons responded in the same way.
“And so when the sensitivity of those cells is enhanced, we believe that’s going to contribute in a big way to reward and motivation. So people that are exposed to drugs will go out and seek them again because it’s something that makes them feel particularly good,” explains McGehee.
But McGehee points out that this study only looked at first time exposure to both drugs, not at addicted individuals. In the future he would like to study what happens to the brain after long-term exposure to nicotine and drugs like heroin. He hopes that further research will lead to treatments to help people beat addiction to many different types of drugs. In the meantime people like Gooden, who says she smokes to cope with stress, will have to keep trying to break the habit in other ways.
In the early days of epic fantasy women were often characterized as damsels in distress and nothing more than window dressing for heroes to rescue. This didn’t last long as a host of writers created memorable female characters that were skilled swords women, capable world conquerers, and adventurers in their own right – yet still alluring. This article introduces you to some of the best heroines that have appeared in epic fantasy over the past several decades.
The presence of heroic women has been felt all throughout the history of fantasy literature and this can be easily displayed in the tales of the Arabian Knights where Sheherezade uses her sensuality and her wits to survive. This characterization of the woman as witty, wily, and sensual was pretty much the norm, and it was the stereotype for the first thousand years of fantasy literature.
But women took on a new, and more powerful, role in epic fantasy in 1934 with the creation of the Red Sonya of Rogatino character in the Robert E. Howard short story The Shadow of the Vulture. In this story Red Sonya was a swashbuckling heroine who was capable with both the pistol and the sword. (Howard is also the creator of the famous Conan character).
This Red Sonya character was inspiration for the 1974 creation, and now famous, Red Sonja who fulfills two very important archetypes in traditional epic fantasy. The first archetype is that of the fierce yet savagely beautiful warrior who often times wears nothing more than some kind of a metal bikini. It’s an overused, yet wildly successful stereotype. The second archetype she fulfills is one that is used very often in the development of the typical hero in epic fantasy. That is the archetype of the young boy who witnesses the killing of his family and the destruction of his village then grows up to become a powerful warrior that exacts revenge on the pillagers. This is a very familiar archetype and it has been done many times with male characters and Red Sonya is the first woman to take on the role successfully.
In the 1980′s the genre of woman as protagonist and heroine was taken to new heights with the publication of the first book in the Swords and Sorceress series edited by Marion Zimmer Bradley. This anthology was created to offer alternatives to the typical stereotypical roles of women in fantasy and it has become a force that remains to this day. The series of anthologies is currently 22 volumes and the most recent volume was just published this year (2007).
Bradley herself, aside from the Swords and Sorceress anthologies did much to promote the image of woman as heroine in her own novels and one of the best examples of this can be found in her Mists of Avalon books. The first book, which was published in 1979, was a re-telling of the Arthurian Legends from the perspective of the women involved in the legend of the round table. These books are often credited by many now successful women as being inspiration for them to pursue a career in fantasy writing.
Some other authors who have had tremendous success in a similar way to Bradley are Lin Carter, Mercedes Lackey, and Anne McCaffrey. Each has created all encompassing fantasy worlds complete with strong heroic women characters.
Every archetype that was previously the domain of men has now been explored with female protagonists and one of the most powerful of these archetypes is the coming of age story. It is a very familiar story and usually follow a young boy as he grows painfully into manhood and follows a destiny that is loosely laid out before him. This archetype has now been fully explored from a woman’s perspective and one of the best examples of this is found in Ursula K. LeGuin’s The Tombs of Atuan which is a coming of age telling of the main character Tenar. The Tombs of Atuan is the second novel in LeGuin’s Earthsea Cycle books. In the first book A Wizard of Earthsea we experience the coming of age of a young man named Ged. This young woman coming of age and following her destiny to make the world right can also be found in the currently popular Golden Compass books the first of which is now a major motion picture.
