In the first of Uprising's Speaker Series, world famous Dr. Gabor Mate comes to Los Angeles for an all new talk on Wednesday, Nov. 30, 7:00-9:00 pm at the Immanuel Presbyterian Church, 3300 Wilshire Blvd.
Addicts in recovery -- are cycling through the "Realm of Hungry Ghosts" (the Peta Loka in Buddhist cosmology) -- could find themselves racing against the clock to beat their addiction in Maine before health insurance coverage for their treatment ends.
Treatment? Doctors say, "Let's give heroin addicts heroin" (madmikesamerica.com).
The Maine Morning Sentinel reported [on Oct. 15, 2011] that state officials for Medicaid and MaineCare programs have proposed capping prescription drug and counseling services at two years.
The move would save money but hit the state during an epidemic of addiction to painkillers. A Sentinel editorial opposing the cuts to treatment programs predicted the result “would be a self-defeating exercise that could end up costingmuch more than the short term budget savings.”
Drug use remains controversial in the US. Addicts are stigmatized and often considered unworthy of help.
Portion of scroll (thangka) depicting the plane of hungry ghosts (pretas) who suffer from intense craving with no store of profitable karma to alleviate their craving. A store of merit is a tremendous blessing human and superhuman beings often take for granted.
However, there is a growing movement for compassionate models of addiction treatment. The approach has a strong advocate in physician and bestselling author Dr. Gabor Mate.
Doctor Mate, What is the "Realm of Hungry Ghosts"?
After a career including 20 years as a family doctor, Dr. Gabor Mate spent 12 years as a physician in Vancouver Canada’s downtown Eastside, notorious for its highly addicted population of indigent and transient residents. His experience with this complex population is chronicled in his bestselling In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters With Addiction.
Dr. Mate makes a convincing case that without abandoning medical treatment, the social and interpersonal basis of disease from addiction to attention deficit disorders must be examined and understood to effectively treat and prevent them.
Dr. Mate’s medical expertise combined with a rare kindness, humor, and intellect have made his books bestsellers. He is now a much sought after speaker on health. A, and he is coming to Los Angeles to give a talk tailored for the KPFK audience.
Dr. Gabor Mate is the bestselling author of four books, includingWhen the Body Says No: Understanding the Stress Disease Connection. Based in Canada, Dr. Maté ran a popular family practice in East Vancouver for two decades. For seven years he also served as Medical Coordinator of the Palliative Care Unit at Vancouver Hospital, caring for the terminally ill. More recently he worked for twelve years in Vancouver’s notorious Downtown Eastside neighborhood with patients suffering from hardcore drug addiction, mental illness and HIV. In 2009 Dr. Maté received an Outstanding Alumnus Award from Simon Fraser University, and has recently been appointed Adjunct Professor in SFU’s School of Criminology. In 2011 he will receive an Honorary Degree from the University of Northern British Columbia.
Uprising Media presents Gabor Mate on Nov. 30
All proceeds benefit KPFK
Tickets are $12.50 each ($25 a pair) for general admission at 7:00 pm and $50 each ($100 a pair) for the pre-event reception plus preferred admission at 6:00 pm.
In 2006, Amy Winehouse (1984-2011) became a star, the voice of a new generation, by insisting she would not be going to "Rehab." She would be dead within five years.
Already a star in the U.K., Winehouse makes her debut on U.S. TV with "Rehab."
Singer Found Dead in Apartment
LONDON, England - Troubled British singer Amy Winehouse [with her violent partner in prison] was found dead at her flat in north London, police said. She was 27 years old. The Grammy award-winning [neo-]soul singer struggled with well-documented drink and drug addictions. Her death is being treated as unexplained. "Police were called by London Ambulance Service to an address in Camden Square shortly before 4:05 pm (local time) today, Saturday 23 July, following reports of a woman found deceased," a police statement said. "On arrival officers found the body of a 27-year-old female who was pronounced dead..." More
Drunk and/or stoned, Amy Winehouse is booed during comeback tour, live in Belgrade on June 18, 2011. She then launches into "Back To Black."
Rehab without a "Higher Power"
Recovery from addictions of all kinds is possible in a Buddhist context. Buddhism is nontheistic (not dependent on a God for "salvation"/enlightenment). Many Buddhists are theists, but many others are atheistic, agnostic, or undecided.
Not recognizing a supreme being as a higher power makes traditional 12-Step programs unpalatable. (Of course, the nature of the "higher power" one chooses need not be a god, but that is definitely how most participants treat it as part of their recovery.
Thanks to mavericks like Kevin Griffin, who wrote One Breath at a Time: Buddhism and the Twelve Stepsit is quite possible to successfully overcome addiction and unrelenting craving in a nontheistic context.
A Buddhist Version of the 12 Steps
Step 1 - We admitted we were powerless over our addiction -- that our lives had become unmanageable.
Step 2 - Came to believe that spiritual practice could restore us to sanity.
Step 3 - Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the power of the Dharma.
Step 4 - Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
Step 5 - Admitted to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our suffering.
Step 6 - Were entirely ready to let go of all these defects of character.
Step 7 - Humbly asked for our shortcomings to be removed through prayer and meditation.
Step 8 - Made a list of all persons we had harmed and became willing to make amends to them all.
Step 9 - Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
Step 10 - Continued to take personal inventory, and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
Step 11 - Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with reality and to live a life with more wisdom and compassion.
Step 12 - Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to other addicts and to practice these principles in all our affairs.
Nikki Lee: "I’ve had sex with 5,000 men in nine years (but never the same man twice)," boasts the 25-year-old beauty therapist and model.
Is it a compliment or a slap in the face to "victims" of promiscuity?
[Some may hail it as the triumph of feminism and gender equality, but others sadly recognize the telltale signs of childhood trauma.] A 25-year-old beauty therapist has claimed to have slept with 5,000 men in just nine years -- or 3,285 days.
Nikki Lee also boasts about having a "personal best" of four men in one night and she claims she has never had sex with the same conquest twice. In an admission that will shock most people, the blonde Essex girl has told how she has had casual sex in nightclubs, alleyways, parks, cinemas, and teen discos since losing her virginity at 16.
"Obsessed" with conquests, objectification, one night stands
Miss Lee, who also works as a model, admits to going on regular sex holidays, where she sleeps with men in clubs, on beaches, and even on balconies. She averages having sex with two men every day and has kept the details of each of them in a little red notebook -- all with scores.
By the time she was 21, Miss Lee claims to have had sex with 2,289 men. Although the admission, made to a weekly real-life magazine, cannot be verified, has been called "emotionally very dangerous" by a relationship expert. More>>
Promiscuity can spread all out of control like an addictive drug to the brain, and we build tolerance. But What the Bleep do We Know?
What are we coming to when these are our top artists and celebrities? Ke$ha, Lady Gaga/Beyonce ("Telephone"), Rihanna ("S&M"), Britney Spears, Paris Hilton (night vision technology), Kim Kardashian, gender-bending and celebrity lesbian roles and displays (Sandra Bullock, Annette Bening, Marlee Matlin of "The L Word" fame, child star Miley Cyrus, Vanessa Hudgens, the cast of "Sex and the City," Christina Aguilera, Lindsay Ronson-Lohan, Katy Perry... What would parents do without Rebecca Black, Justin Bieber, prodigy Jason Kertson, and the Jonas Brothers?
For Memorial Day Democracy Now! presented special programming combining the amazing contributions to understanding the root of diseases many think are genetic. He also exposes the complicity of the pharmaceutical industry: Americans, who comprise only 5% of the world's population, are prescribed 66% of the world's psychoactive medications such as Prozac.
Sex addiction is one of the main compulsions in America today, largely stemming from our traumatic childhoods, exposure to ubiquitous porn, our craving for comfort, and religious oppression. (Image: a scene from "Choke," nytimes.com).
They are actually due to childhood trauma, diet, and stress. Canadian physician, disease and addiction expert, and bestselling author Dr. Gabor Maté presents his findings together on one program.
The screen, the screen, we're as addicted to our screens as children are to candy.
Internet porn, masturbation, adultery, alcoholism, "acting out," what's at the root of our compulsive/self-soothing behaviors?
From disease to addiction, parenting to childhood ADD (attention deficit disorder), Dr. Maté’s work focuses on the centrality of early childhood experiences on the development of the brain and susceptibility to a wide array of "incurable" diseases and addictions.
Early childhood experiences such as being sexually mole
sted or emotionally traumatized impact everything from behavioral patterns to physical and mental illness. The relationship between emotional stress and disease -- and mental and physical health more broadly -- is often considered controversial within medical orthodoxy.
But Dr. Maté convincingly argues that many doctors seem to have forgotten what was once a commonplace assumption -- that emotions are deeply implicated in the development of illness, addictions, and psychological disorders and, more importantly, in their healing.
If someone is struggling with an addiction, there is no doubt a great deal of pain, frustration, anger, and fear. Addiction is indeed a disease. It baffles both the addict and the addict’s loved ones in ways not common to other medical and mental conditions.
Addicts at the mercy of their disease betray themselves and those around them. As they destroy their bodies and their lives, addicts sometimes seem to be in systematic pursuit of death itself.
If we are seeking answers about addiction and recovery, we are in the right place. Recovery from addiction is possible. There is help available for substance abuse at drug rehabs in many cities.
What is addiction?Addiction is a compulsive, persistent need for a substance or behavior that the user cannot moderate or control. This is in spite of the fact that one knows it to be harmful. Many of us joke about certain behaviors, foods, activities (particularly sex), and substances, saying, “I’m addicted to brownies” or “I’m addicted to running.” More
Buddhist 12 Steps: One Breath At A Time (Kevin Griffin)
(TIME) Any American who has bought a pack of cigarettes since the mid-'60s might have seen the health warnings. One of the first, quaint and timid, said, “Cigarette Smoking May Be Hazardous to Your Health.”
By comparison, last year I bought a scary pack of Lucky Strikes that I keep in the freezer for Don Draper-esque emergencies. It says, “SURGEON GENERAL'S WARNING: Smoking Causes Lung Cancer, Heart Disease, Emphysema, And May Complicate Pregnancy.”
Such government warnings work, sort of -- research has shown that smokers in countries with strong warnings are more knowledgeable about smoking risks than those in countries where warnings are weaker. But it's unclear whether smokers who see any warning actually smoke less.
Public-health advocates have known for years that individualized messages are far more effective at getting smokers to stop. More
