The ASAP Family was founded over twenty years ago by Dr. David Lewis. Since then the ASAP Family has been dedicated to serving the Southern California community with quality chemical dependency treatment and mental health programs, as well as educational and preventative programs.
(USA TODAY) — Marriage mostly makes people happier, and a close family “inoculates” many kids against despair, according to long-term research.
U.S. adults born in the 1920s were happier during the Depression if their parents had a strong marriage. Compared with equally deprived peers growing up in unhappy homes, “they were happier not only in childhood but adulthood, too,” says University of North Carolina sociologist Glen Elder.
A newer study of Iowa farm families with adolescents during the 1990s confirms that a good home can buffer youngsters against economic hardship. “These people were doing more poorly the longer they stayed in farming,” says Elder, the study leader. But multi-generational closeness prevailed. “Grandparents would drive long distances just to see the kids in plays or at sporting events.”
The teens who grew up in hard times remain, overall, very happy as young adults, Elder says. “It’s clear these strong relationships are a source of resilience for kids if there’s not much money.”
Marriage per se, even if it’s not such a great marriage, tends to improve well-being, says University of Chicago sociologist Linda Waite. In large surveys, 40% of the married say they’re very happy, compared with 22% of the never married and 18% of previously married.
Among those who live with a romantic partner, 24% are very happy; engaged couples are the only live-in partners as happy as married people, Waite says.
There’s some evidence that those who marry are happier to begin with, “but there’s much stronger research showing that once adults marry, their well-being improves,” she adds.
She’s analyzed large federal surveys that followed thousands of married people over five years. About 90% who say they’re happily married have spouses who also are pleased with the marriage. The happily wed who ended up divorced five years later became much less happy. That’s perhaps not surprising, Waite says.
But the stunner is that about two-thirds who were unhappily married at the outset said they were happy five years later. Meanwhile, the unhappily married who had divorced five years later were no happier than those who stayed with their original spouse.
The bottom line: “There’s a certain plasticity in marriage, an up-and-down. A lot of problems resolve over time, and married people tend to get happier,” Waite says.
“It’s a message some people disbelieve,” she concedes, “but they have unrealistic ideas about marriage.”
Copyright 2002 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc.
PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) – Student-athletes subject to random drug testing at an Oregon high school were almost four times less likely to use drugs than their counterparts at a similar school who were not tested, a study shows.
The one-year pilot study by researchers at Oregon Health & Sciences University compared Wahtonka High School in The Dalles, where all student-athletes were subject to random testing, and Warrenton High School, a demographically similar school near Astoria, where they were not.
Of the 135 athletes subject to the random testing at Wahtonka, only 5.3 percent said they were using illicit drugs by the end of the school year, versus 19.4 percent of the 141 athletes at Warrenton.
They also were three times less likely to use performance-enhancing substances like steroids, according to the survey responses, which were confidential.
The study, conducted during the 1999-2000 school year, was funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, an arm of the National Institutes of Health. The results are published in next month’s Journal of Adolescent Health.
“The differences between the schools were dramatic,” said Dr. Linn Goldberg, a lead researcher in the study. “And the differences between the non-athletes (who were not tested at either school but who filled out questionnaires about drug use) were not significantly there” – 32.2 percent at Warrenton and 26.6 percent at Wahtonka.
The study comes six months after the issue was thrown into the spotlight by the U.S. Supreme Court. In June, the court ruled that children attending public schools can be required to participate in drug testing if they join any competitive after-school activity, from football to chess.
Merry Holland, principal at Wahtonka, said the school has continued to test athletes since the study ended.
She said she believes the program has helped curb drug use. But, she said, the drug testing has also led some students to switch to substances that are more difficult to track, like beer.
“There are a lot of parties with alcohol,” she said. “If they want to stay with sports, and participate, they might switch to something they think is harder to detect.”
Over the past few years, about 5 percent of schools nationwide have required that athletes be drug tested. About two percent have tested students in other activities.
The Oregon pilot study is the forerunner of a wider, three-year study at 13 Oregon high schools.
Dubbed SATURN, for Student Athlete Testing Using Random Notification, the wider study is meant to examine whether the threat of testing really keeps kids away from drugs. It was suspended in its third year after a federal agency expressed concerns about some of the methodology used in the study’s latter two years.
The Office of Human Research Policy said the study violated a number of federal regulations by not properly obtaining informed consent from children or protecting research subjects from coercive environments. The survey results used in the published study were not affected.
OHSU issued a response this month offering to better ensure student confidentiality, to stop using principals and coaches to solicit participation in some schools and to end financial incentives for participating schools. Goldberg said researchers are awaiting word on whether the study will be reinstated.
Copyright 2002 Associated Press. All rights reserved.
(Cox News Service) — If you can read this, bless your luck: New Year’s Eve may have been even more dangerous than you thought.
Binge drinking by Americans has risen by 25 percent since 1993, researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention say in a study published today, and those who binge are 14 times more likely to drive while drunk than those who drink lightly.
But those who binge-drink – defined as having five or more drinks in a row – may not be who you think they are, the researchers said.
Most binge drinkers are older than 25. Only 31 percent of them are 18 to 25 years old, a group that includes teens too young to drink legally. Younger drinkers, though, binge twice as often as older ones.
And few binge drinkers are alcoholics or habitual heavy drinkers: 73 percent of those who binge have just one or two drinks a day most of the time.
“This makes the point loud and clear that alcohol abuse is a problem in the general population,” said Dr. Tim Naimi, lead author of the study in today’s Journal of the American Medical Association. “It is not restricted to heavy drinkers or alcoholics, or to college students.”
The study relies on data from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, a nationwide telephone survey of Americans 18 and older that the CDC conducts every year.
Between 1993 and 2001, the researchers found, episodes of binge drinking rose from 1.2 billion to 1.5 billion per year.
“On average, that’s 7.4 binge drinking episodes for every American adult, every year – and almost half of the population doesn’t drink at all,” Naimi said. “Collectively, Americans binge-drink at about the same rate they get haircuts.”
Half of the 100,000 alcohol-related deaths in the United States each year are due to binge drinking, the study estimates. Binges also are responsible for numerous costly injuries and accidents, from falls and drowning to domestic violence and unintended pregnancies.
“The general public isn’t aware of the dangerous health and social consequences of binge drinking,” Naimi said. “We still view it with an attitude of ‘Boys will be boys.'”
Copyright 2002 Cox News Service. All rights reserved.
NEW YORK (AP) — Chronic cocaine use harms brain circuits that help produce the sense of pleasure, which may help explain why cocaine addicts have a higher rate of depression, a study suggests.
It’s not clear whether cocaine kills brain cells or merely impairs them, or whether the effect is reversible, said study author Dr. Karley Little. But it’s bad news for cocaine addicts in any case, he said.
“I personally wouldn’t want to lose 10 or 20 percent of my reward-pleasure center neurons, or have them just deranged or not working right,” said Little, of the Ann Arbor, Michigan, Veterans Affairs Medical Center and the University of Michigan.
He and colleagues studied brain samples taken during autopsies from long-term, heavy cocaine users. Their results were reported in the January issue of the American Journal of Psychiatry.
Little said the research did not reveal whether the brain impairment resulted from years of use or just recent use before death.
Stephen Kish, head of the human brain laboratory at the Center for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto, said researchers have “always considered cocaine to be a dangerous drug” because of its potential for addiction and harm to the heart.
“We now have to add to the list (of risks) a damaging effect of cocaine on the brain, which was something we never expected before,” Kish said.
The research provides “a piece of the puzzle” in explaining why cocaine users run a higher risk of depression, said Dr. Deborah Mash, a neuroscientist at the University of Miami School of Medicine.
It remains unclear whether cocaine causes depression or whether people start using the drug because they are depressed. But in either case, Mash said, the study suggests brain changes could “light the fuse” for depression in a cocaine user who is prone to it.
The study also suggests that the brain changes could cause the depression commonly seen during cocaine withdrawal, Mash said.
In the study, Little and colleagues studied brain autopsy specimens from an area called the striatum in 35 cocaine users and 35 non-users of similar age and sex.
They measured levels of a protein called VMAT2, which is found in brain cells that signal each other with a chemical called dopamine. Dopamine neurons form circuits that are critical for the brain to feel pleasure.
The study found that cocaine users’ VMAT2 levels were lower on average. That could mean dopamine neurons had been damaged or killed – an effect not observed in animal studies – or that they were making less VMAT2, which suggests they also were making less dopamine, Little said.
A person with impaired or missing dopamine neurons could have difficulty feeling pleasure and might become depressed, said Little, who added that researchers will now compare the number of dopamine neurons in the autopsy specimens.
The study found hints that VMAT2 levels were lower in cocaine users with severe depression than in other users, but statistical analysis suggested this could be a coincidence. Little said the link is strengthened when other data are taken into account.
Copyright 2003 Associated Press. All rights reserved.
CHICAGO (AP) — Being obese at age 20 can cut up to 20 years off a person’s life, with the biggest impact on black men, according to yet another study that underscores the long-term dangers of being overweight.
The research appears in Wednesday’s Journal of the American Medical Association and was released a day after another study that said that being fat at 40 shortens a person’s life by at least three years.
The JAMA study, led by University of Alabama at Birmingham biostatistician David Allison, found that life expectancy for 20-year-olds with a body-mass index of at least 45 is 13 years lower for white men and 20 years lower for black men, compared with people of normal weight.
Body-mass index is a height-to-weight ratio; 30 and above is considered obese. A person who is 5-foot-4 and 262 pounds would have a BMI of 45 — and look like a sumo wrestler. But millions of Americans are that fat, Allison said.
The life-shortening effects were found to be lower for 20-year-old severely obese white women (eight years of life lost) and black women (five years lost).
Obesity increases the risk for several life-threatening conditions, including heart disease, diabetes and some types of cancer. Allison said younger people are especially vulnerable, in part because they have more years to live and more time for the obesity to take its toll.
Dr. JoAnn Manson of Harvard’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital said the study helps emphasize that obesity is far worse than just “a cosmetic problem.”
Until this week, data attempting to quantify the effects of obesity on life span were scarce.
In Tuesday’s Annals of Internal Medicine, Dutch researchers presented data on about 3,400 mostly white, middle-aged Americans. The researchers found that being overweight at 40 is likely to reduce life expectancy by at least three years — as much, they said, as smoking cigarettes. Obese, or severely overweight people, lost even more years — about six or seven.
The JAMA study was based on an analysis of nationally representative surveys of more than 14,000 Americans.
Life-shortening effects were less dramatic in people who were less obese. And there were startling racial differences in how fat people had to be before life expectancy started to drop.
In blacks, life expectancy was not shortened in obese men with BMIs under 31 and in obese women under 37. But in whites, reductions of about one year occurred in young people who were merely overweight — in men with a BMI of about 25.5 and in women with a BMI of about 27.5.
BMIs between 25 and 30 are considered overweight; the ideal is between 18 and 25.
Allison said the reasons for the racial differences are unclear. But some researchers have speculated that blacks may have relatively more lean mass, or muscle, than fat. A JAMA editorial said the differences may be due to limitations in the study.
“It would be a great disservice to blacks if these results were used to promulgate the concept that excess weight is not harmful to them,” said Manson and Shari Bassuk of Brigham and Women’s Hospital.
Copyright 2003 Associated Press. All rights reserved.
“Life with Spencer while he was using was life without the Spencer I know and love,” the father said. “Instead of family weekends, dinners and water skiing, there were calls from police, searching his room for clues to what was going on, only to find things that were stolen … another morning in court.”
Spencer Kehn, now 16, tried out a series of drug-treatment programs before meeting success, and has now been drug-free for one year. But finding a program that worked entailed a lot of trial and error.
“The first program was unsuited for Spencer because it did not involve his family,” said Barbara Kehn, Spencer’s mother. “We then got him into a residential program which had after-care. So he has continued to learn and he’s gotten a network of non-using friends.”
More than 1 million American teenagers need treatment for substance abuse, but only one in 10 is actually undergoing treatment, according to the National Household Survey on Drug Abuse. Parents who do seek treatment are often faced with an assortment of programs and need to know which work best. Today, a nonprofit group called Drug Strategies is releasing a first-ever comprehensive guide to teen drug treatments.
Getting Into a Teen’s World
Mathea Falco, the president of Drug Strategies, said parents who want help for their teens should look for some very specific things.
“A good program should use a nationally recognized assessment interview to determine a teen’s drug use, their psychiatric history, their family and school situation,” Falco told ABCNEWS’ Good Morning America. “More than half the teens in drug-treatment programs have psychiatric problems that also need to be addressed. And these should be found in a screening.”
The programs with the best track records should also use a comprehensive treatment approach, meaning they address factors other than drug use.
“Effective programs address the full reality of the teen’s world, from school to family to peer pressure to juvenile court, where many teens are referred to treatment,” Falco said. “It can’t just look at curtailing substance abuse.”
In addition, family members should be involved in the treatment process, in areas such as counseling, group meetings and drug education.
“Some programs even have caseworkers who come to your home,” Falco said.
Avoiding Relapse
Parents should also ask programs what their retention rate is, since three out of four teens in drug treatment drop out of their programs before finishing. Most teens fail to finish a 90-day program, Falco said.
Finally, a good treatment program has continuing care that stretches on, even after the teen has bidden the program itself goodbye. Three in four teens relapse in the first three months after treatment programs.
“Successful programs link teens to community services that can help them, things like 12-step programs, psychiatric services, remedial education,” Falco said.
Residential facilities that are live-in and have around the clock supervision can cost around $15,000 a month. Most outpatient programs, which provide treatment one to three times a week, cost about $800 a month. In some cases, treatment is covered by insurance.
The Turning Point for Spencer
Spencer Kehn said that he started using marijuana and alcohol when he was 13 and tried other drugs as well. At first, his parents thought that he was turning around on his own, but then he would get into more trouble at school, or with the police.
Spencer ran away from his first treatment program, which didn’t involve the family at all, and his parents then sent him to a lockdown-type facility. When he was ready to leave that program — which was not successful — he called his parents and got a surprise.
“They told me they didn’t want me at home,” Spencer said. “That made me realize the effect I was having on everyone, it wasn’t just about me. So I thought I would at least give treatment a shot.”
Next he tried an outpatient program, but was disorderly and got kicked out. He then attended a residential program that offered follow-up treatment, and has been drug-free for a year.
Marty Kehn said that struggling with Spencer’s addiction was tough, but ultimately brought the family closer.
“Trust your instincts, even if it goes against what you want to believe about your child,” he said. “We have learned so much about ourselves and human behavior. We have also become much closer as a family.”
Finding Teen Treatment Centers
In Treating Teens: A Guide to Adolescent Drug Programs, Drug Strategies offers a list of hotline numbers to help parents find teen substance abuse treatment centers in each state. Here is the list.
Parents concerned about whether their children are abusing drugs might also want to keep their medicine cabinets under lock and key.
Across the country, children and teens are intentionally overdosing on cold medicine or “robotripping” in order to get a hallucinogenic high.
Robotripping,is the slang term for intentionally overdosing on over-the-counter cold medication such as the cough medicine Robitussin. Although cough syrup abuse is nothing new — it dates to more than 30 years ago — it seems to be undergoing a revival lately, with cases of teens overdosing on the medicine popping up across the country.
Robitussin, NyQuil, Benadryl and Coricidin are among the favorites. Tom, a 16-year-old boy whose last name is being withheld, told Good Morning America that some school friends told him about robotripping and he got high off a bottle of Robitussin. He then began experimenting with other over-the-counter medicines, taking eight to 16 Coricidin tablets at a time, he said.
“I started out with Robitussin, I drank an eight-ounce bottle,” Tom said. “The Robitussin was more like a high off of marijuana, and with Coricidin you can’t sit still, you keep talking,” he said.
Ian, 17, said he used Coricidin, Nyquil and Benadryl to get high.
“It kind of got all concentrated into your head, and you really got kind of hyper and are all over the place and acting real stupid,” Ian said.
DXM Is Trouble Ingredient
The culprit ingredient is dextromethorphan, a common additive in cough suppressants that can cause hallucinations when used in large amounts, according to Dr. Drew Pinsky, an addiction expert.
“There’s Web sites out there that tell these kids how to do this, how to get the pills, how to take enough pills,” Pinsky said.
Users can suffer psychosis, brain damage, and seizures. Overdoses can be fatal. Fourteen people died last year from intentional overdoses of cold medicines, and several hundred were hospitalized, Pinsky said.
“These are legal drugs, so only the worst cases of overdose make it into the records,” Pinsky said.
More than 80 over-the-counter cold medicines contain DXM, or dextromethorphan, a chemical that serves as a powerful cough suppressant when taken properly, but produces psychedelic effects when taken in large doses. DXM abuse is hard to track because it is legal and most abusers are under 18.
Ian and Tom say they’re off Coricidin and Robitussin now, after getting help.
“I never got caught with it, but I got caught in school for being drunk and high, and they sent me to a drug counseling program and that covered everything,” Ian said. “I’ve been clean off of that stuff for about two months now,” he said.
Tom, who says he used Coricidin and Robitussin from late last year until October of this year, said he had managed to keep up a normal appearance in front of his teachers and parents, even when he was hallucinating, but away from home or school, he sometimes became uncontrollable. He would sleepwalk, talk in his sleep and have blackouts.
Tom says he’s clean today and in an outpatient rehabilitation program while attending narcotic anonymous meetings.
Pee Wee Drug Dealers
There is also concern about the age at which children are abusing drugs, which seems to be getting younger.
In Port St. Lucie, Fla. last week, two 9-year-old children were found with 15 small bags of marijuana, reportedly while riding the school bus to their elementary school. One boy was passing the baggies to the other. The two boys are both in the third grade.
Police are investigating whether the boys intended to sell the drugs
Experts say adolescents should be made aware of how using drugs and alcohol can lead to sexual activities that may change their lives forever.
While drinking and having sex may be unofficially authorized milestones in the typical American teen’s coming of age, a new study reveals that more and more adolescents are experimenting with both, leaving themselves susceptible to pregnancy, disease and violence.
In a random survey of 1,200 adolescents and young adults ages 13 to 24 throughout the United States, the Kaiser Family Foundation found that 81 percent reported that they have had intercourse, and 50 percent agreed that “people their age” mix alcohol and drugs “a lot.”
Experts say these findings, to be presented today at a substance abuse and sexual behavior conference at Columbia University in New York, are so disturbing because drugs and alcohol can significantly compromise one’s judgment and put teens into high-risk situations.
“We knew that teenagers were doing this, but frankly it is a bit shocking that the numbers were so high,” said Dr. Timothy Johnson, ABCNEWS’ medical editor.
Unintended and Unprotected Sex
Drinking and doing drugs often leads young people to engage in more sexual activity than they intended to partake in, and more importantly, to unprotected sex, says Joseph Califano, former U.S. secretary of health, education and welfare and president of The National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia.
Overall, 29 percent of sexually active 15- to 24-year-olds surveyed say that they have “done more” sexually than they had planned while drinking or using drugs, and 74 percent say their peers “often do not use condoms when they are drinking or using drugs.”
Considering the high rate of alcohol use among high-schoolers, it is no wonder the Centers for Disease Control reports that almost 1 million unwanted teenage pregnancies occur every year, and one in every three sexually active people in the United States will contract a sexually transmitted disease by the age of 24. This includes everything from genital warts to the life-threatening HIV.
In addition, drinking has been shown to play a predominant role in sexual violence, with more than half of college campus rapes including alcohol use by either the victim, the attacker, or both. Experts believe alcohol causes people to both misread and missend sexual signals, and also can create situations where people are vulnerable to attack.
Mix Your Messages
So what can concerned parents do to help their teens avoid these hazards? Califano says the best thing you can do is get involved.
“Parental engagement is probably the most effective way to reduce the risk of smoking, drinking, and doing drugs, and the overwhelming majority of research studies show that teens who are close to their parents are more likely to remain sexually abstinent and postpone intercourse, more likely to use contraceptives if they are sexually active, more likely to have fewer sexual partners, and less likely to become pregnant,” says Califano.
And whether you believe that abstinence is a moral imperative, or if you think that sexual activity is simply a rite of passage for all teens, Califano emphasizes that “everyone must drive home the very real dangers of mixing alcohol, drugs, and sex — pregnancy, HIV, STDs, and rape.”
He also strongly recommends that when having the “big talks” with your kids, emphasize the connection between drinking and sex. Because even though your teen may feel strongly about “how far they will go,” morals and intentions can be easily led astray after a couple of beers at a party.
“Make sure that every time you talk to your kids about sex, you also talk about drugs and alcohol, and every time you talk to them about drugs and alcohol, you talk to them about sex,” Califano advises. He says kids should learn how the topics are connected, so they are better equipped to deal with challenging situations when they arise.
Experts also suggest keeping an eye on the television shows your children watch, the music they listen to, and the Web sites they visit, because staying aware of outside influences helps parents become better equipped, as well.
Eat like grown-ups. Snack when the kids have dinner, but sit down to a real meal later. “Eat by candlelight, use china plates, and drink from the stemware you haven’t seen in months,” says Jody Johnston Pawel, author of The Parent’s Toolshop. It’ll encourage both of you to slip from parental mode into a couple’s mind-set.
Go for grooming. Shower together, let your husband wash your hair, or give each other a pedicure. The physical contact and nurturing are great connectors.
Drink up. “My husband and I have a romantic ritual: We make hot cocoa,” says Carol Brietzke, a mom of two in Montclair, NJ. “We dim the lights and talk about our days, our dreams and schemes.”
Make a more intimate nest. Try some moves that will bring you together: Drop the leaves on your dining room table for a cozier supper, position your favorite love seat so you can snuggle while you watch TV, clear the toys and kids’ clothes out of your bedroom. “I’ve pulled a mattress into the living room in front of the fireplace, and we’ve spent the night there near the crackling embers,” says Laura Shay, a mom of two in Austin, TX. “It turns the evening into a surprise.”
Get out. You needn’t venture any farther than your porch or patio. Set up the baby monitor to keep an ear out; then sit outside, have drinks on the deck, and look at the stars.
Listen up. Music is even more of an emotional trigger than sight or smell, says Edie Raether, a psychotherapist in Holly Springs, NC. “Hearing songs that you like or listened to when you fell in love brings back all of those positive memories.”
NEW YORK/TORONTO — Chicago Blackhawks right wing Theoren Fleury has been cleared to return to play following a period of rehabilitation in the joint National Hockey League/National Hockey League Players’ Association Substance Abuse and Behavioral Health Program.
On October 8, 2002, Fleury entered an intensive outpatient and follow-up program and has since been monitored under the care and counseling of the program doctors, Dr. Dave Lewis on behalf of the NHL and Dr. Brian Shaw on behalf of the NHLPA. Fleury has participated fully and has been cooperative in his intensive treatment program. He will now participate in an intensive aftercare plan monitored by the program doctors.
The NHL and the NHLPA implemented the program in 1996 with the primary objectives being education, treatment and rehabilitation for NHL players and their families.
Chemical dependency treatment and mental health programs: ASAP Family