Recently in Addiction/Recovery Category

In discussion of Stephen Ilardi's book, "The Depression Cure," I wanted to offer my my 12 steps to beat depression, as well.

Many comments on the boards lately have asked this question: What did I do to get better, or what would I suggest a person do to get better? 

Well, I'm not sure. I spent much of my deep depression wandering aimlessly, completely lost, not knowing which voices to follow. I acted on everyone's suggestions. Some worked. Others didn't.

I compiled the exercises that made me feel better into a personally designed 12-step mental health program, related to but different from the 12-step program practiced by addicts and their kin. They are ways to boost my neurotransmitters into action--getting those lazy bones passing messages from one neuron to the next--and to inspire nerve generation and cell reproduction in the amydgala and hippocampus regions of the brain.

Step One: Find the Right Doctor

Some depressives are lucky enough to find a good psychiatrist in their first visit to a head doctor. I wasn't one of them. I went through six--and practically gave up on all traditional medicine--before I met the seventh, who was perfect for me: she was conservative with meds (she didn't try a new antipsychotic every week like doctor number two); well-informed on new developments of treatment; and, using her sharp intuition, treated me as a person (with unique personality traits and philosophies that had to be considered), not as a set of symptoms.

Step Two: Find the Right Cocktail

I wish I could report that my doctor waved her wand once to arrive at the magical prescription that cured me. No, a few different faces (six of them) had to wave the wand 23 times before I felt any magic, or found the right cocktail. But that's extreme. Most depressives have only had to try a few different medications before feeling huge relief.

Step Three: Exercise!

As a recovering addict, I love any buzz I can get. Working out--any exercise that gets my heart rate over 160 beats per minute (into the cardiovascular zone) does the job. And in a safe way, so I don't have to cheat on my sobriety. I'm probably as addicted to exercise as I was to booze, but this is one mood-altering activity that doesn't deteriorate my marriage and my other relationships (with my kids, with myself, and with God).

Some researchers say that exercise acts like antidepressants in increasing the activity of serotonin and/or norepinephrine in your brain; working out releases endorphins and other hormones that reduce pain, induce euphoria, have a calming effect, and combat stress.

Step Four: Eat Well

The more I investigate--both through research and nonscientific experiments with body--the more I realize how my diet affects my mood.

Here are the bad boys: nicotine (although I was only a social smoker, I had to give it up because smoking destroys practically every organ inside your body); caffeine (it's a drug, which is why I'm addicted to it), alcohol (it made me crazy); white flour and processed food (what you live on when you have preschoolers who won't touch tofu and spinach); and sugar (oh man, I'm trying, but oh man).

Here are the good guys: protein (eggs, milk, cheese, yogurt, meat, fish, chicken, seeds, nuts); complex starches (whole grains, beans, potatoes); vegetables (broccoli, spinach, squash); vitamins (vitamin B-complex, vitamins E and C, and a multivitamin); minerals (magnesium, calcium, and zinc); omega-3 fatty acids.

I was recently invited by Caren Osten Gerszberg and Leah Odze Epstein who write and compile the fun blog, "Drinking Diaries" to contribute my two-cents on where I am with the whole drinking thing. Check out the other interesting pieces at www.drinkingdiaries.com.

Here is some more information on the blog, Drinking Diaries:

Whether we are drinking it or not, alcohol remains a potent part of our lives. Our culture is saturated with it, steeped in it. We confront alcohol everywhere we go--from the home to the office party, date night to ladies' night, happy hour to super bowl. Every season has its own liquor--there's the champagne at New Year's, beer on St. Patty's Day, summer's mojitos, autumn's new vintage of velvety red wine, and winter's warming brandy. Each religion has its prescribed ritual, from egg nog at Christmas to Manischevitz at Passover. Every culture has its signature drinks, from ouzo to sake and rum to Aquavit. Skol! Kampai! Cin cin! Salud!

Ask anyone you know to scratch the surface and she will find a drinking story. Maybe it's the night she got smashed and so belligerent she spat in the bartender's face. Or the time her alcoholic mother poured wine into a Sprite bottle so she could ride an Amtrak train, her self-medicating uninterrupted. It may be that her teenage daughter's scar--from the time her beer-drinking boyfriend crashed the car--is healing, while hers is not. That the deepest philosophical question the stressed-out mom ponders is: "How big the glass?" Or the eyebrow-raising looks she gets when she mentions she doesn't touch the stuff.

Here you can read other women's drinking stories and/or spill your own. The Drinking Diaries will have guest posts and interviews, as well as links to articles, studies, and just about anything that has to do with women and alcohol.

For the two of us, alcohol is a loaded topic.

Leah: For my first grade school photo, my alcoholic mother put my sailor dress on inside out. My mother stopped drinking when I was nine years old, but by the time I hit fourteen, my older sister was sent to rehab. I spent half my adolescence at self-help meetings, and although I would rather have been hanging out with my friends, I found the personal narratives of fall and redemption riveting. From high school to college student, writer to stay-at-home mom, I have run the gamut from abstainer to binge drinker.

On Mindful Monday, my readers and I practice the art of pausing, TRYING to be still, or considering, ever so briefly, the big picture. We're hoping this soul time will provide enough peace of mind to get us through the week!

By taking time to focus on the body part by part we begin to realize that we are more than our busy minds. We give our bodies the acknowledgment it rightfully deserves, possibly noticing pleasant or unpleasant sensations that we are carrying with us throughout the day. We may also become more aware as thoughts or emotions rise up in connection with particular body parts. Connecting with the body in this way is often where deep healing can occur.

Since today is not only St. Patrick's Day, the biggest drinking day of the year, but also my 20th anniversary of sobriety (yah!! Except for the one-night relapse in college but I don't count that), I wanted to talk to Patrick about dual diagnosis, since he is also a recovering alcoholic.

I asked him this:

I'm intrigued by your recovery from addiction and how that colors your perception of mental illness. Awhile back I interviewed Dr. Ken Duckworth, medical director of NAMI. He helped me tremendously understand the culture clash between recovery from alcoholism, the AA way, and recovery from a mental illness. Said Duckworth: "In the substance abuse culture, the person is generally viewed as the agent of the problem, and they are held accountable and have consequences for their relapses. In the mental illness culture, the person is often viewed not as the agent of the problem, but as the victim of their illness. We tend to hold people a little less accountable for bio-chemical processes." As you did your research, did you run up against that clash yourself?

Patrick replied:

Yes, the idea was that we alkies sort of brought this on, whereas schizophrenics had it done to them. I think this question opens up a big philosophical debate that depends on one's point of view. I tend to come down on the side that says while no one is to blame, ultimately we are responsible for our own recovery.

My family is a portrait in dual diagnosis. We are a study in the intersection between recovery from the experience of hearing schizophrenia's voices and recovery from the experience of hearing alcoholism's voices. I began to wake up to my alcoholism in my mid-twenties, a good five years after my sisters tumbled into what is considered the most severe form of mental illness. So my frame of reference for "insanity" was a bit skewed from what most people have in mind when they see the second of the twelve steps up there on the wall for the first time. The suggestion that there was something that could "restore us to sanity" really troubled me because it implied that I had "schizophrenia."

I got an immediate resentment because, as I looked around the room, I did not see what I'd seen on the psych wards. I saw no one talking to invisible friends. I saw no one twitching and drooling from the side effects of meds. So in my mind, I saw no insanity and felt the second step mocked my sisters by not taking them seriously. This resentment kept me out on the lash for another twenty years, basically.

On Mindful Monday, my readers and I practice the art of pausing, TRYING to be still, or considering, ever so briefly, the big picture. We're hoping this soul time will provide enough peace of mind to get us through the...

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