45% of rehabilitation admissions are alcohol related
27 June, 2018Articles, News
An increasing number of people are being admitted for rehabilitation every year and the numbers are rising. In 2016 8787 people where admitted for treatment. One year later in 2017 the number increased to 10047. Nearly a 15% increase in 1 year!
Up to 45% of all admissions for Inpatient residential treatment, where admitted for alcoholism. Alcohol abuse is reported to be behind 65% of all road accidents in 2017, with 5943 of the 9175 driver’s being charge with drunk driving. There is much debate globally around the legalization of Cannabis. It was found that 57% of admissions for residential treatment stated cannabis as the primary substance abused. 37% of admissions where for Methamphetamine; 11% for Cocaine and between 11% and 12% for either injecting or smoking heroin. (statistics via SACENDU)
It is encouraging to see more people seeking help and families are encouraged not to ignore the problems and challenges their loved ones are faced with.
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The encouragement, love and support from the team at Crossroads allowed me to eventually see that I was worth something - that my life could be turned around and that I could accomplish the things that had long been a forgotten dream.
On the last day of my stint at Crossroads I could only express gratitude towards all who works there. A wise councillor once commented on my question when one is ready for rehab by explaining that when one is ready for rehab, rehab is ready for you.
I was lost and my soul was broken until I ended up at Crossroads and was introduced to the Twelve Steps. With the help of their excellent staff and amazing support I have recently been clean for 18 months, I could not have done it without them!
"Just for today I am more than three years in recovery. I have Cross Roads to thank for this wonderful gift. Cross Roads helped me to set a firm foundation in my recovery on which I can continue to build."
Gambling Is Not Only A Man’s Issue — It’s On The Rise Amongst Women As Well
16 August, 2017Articles, News
Chances are that you consider problem gaming to be a “man’s issue”. But the reality is that as many as 51 percent of all South African women gamble; what’s more, female problem gamblers are likely to be more severely affected by the condition.
So says Heidi Sinclair, treatment and counselling manager at the South African Responsible Gambling Foundation, a not-for-profit organisation that has been set up to promote responsible gambling in South Africa. She notes, too, that gambling addiction takes a shorter time to set in amongst female gamers than among their male counterparts.
Take Lesego**, a marketing consultant from Alexandra, for example. Lesego’s started visiting casinos to escape from the twin pressures of a new job and financial stress. At first, it was fun, glamorous and exciting –- especially as she won R15,000 in one of her first plays on a slot machine. But as she took more time out for her secret habit, lying to her family about what she was doing, and digging herself into a cycle of debt, the fun started wearing off.
During the two years she grappled with her addiction to gambling, she won only R17,000 –- yet she was trapped in a cycle of emotional highs at the thrilling prospect of the win, then depression when that prospect remained unfulfilled.
Sinclair notes that, like Lesego, many female gamblers experience intense anxiety. This is typical of the condition, which is most often accompanied by other disorders. But while this may take the form of psychological issues with women, male gamblers usually often present with alcoholism or drug addiction, she says.
Sinclair adds that men are also more likely to participate in several forms of gaming, more often, and are usually willing to spend more on their gaming. In contrast, women’s gambling frequently centres around activities that require little strategies, such as slot machines or bingo, and it is these activities that may trap them in a cycle of problem gambling. This may be changing, though, as more women are becoming attracted to online gambling, perceived to be safer than land-based venues.
A casino dealer collects chips at a roulette table in Pasay city, Metro Manila, Philippines, March 27, 2015. REUTERS/Erik De Castro
Men and women gamble for different reasons, too. While both may use gaming as a stress release, women are more likely to take this to a dangerous degree. Sinclair notes that this may explain women’s extensive use of slot machines, which become an unhealthy coping mechanism to escape stress, loneliness and boredom.
“When gaming serves a psychological need like this, there is a greater likelihood that the individual will develop a problematic habit,” she says, noting that gambling to earn income may also heighten the risk. Men, on the other hand, may fall into the gambling grey area when they become preoccupied with the game, or when their feelings about winning or ego distort their perception about what the health of their habit.
Sinclair observes that women’s health is negatively affected by health issues associated with gambling. In general, problem gamblers may present with a wide range of conditions, ranging from tachycardia to angina, cirrhosis and other liver diseases. Added to this, females with gambling disorders are more likely to experience chronic bronchitis, fibromyalgia and migraines, along with lower general health, than women who don’t have an addiction.
There is also a link between problem gambling and intimate partner violence (IPV). Although Sinclair says that the nature of this relationship has yet to be fully determined, unsteady employment and clinical anger issues, impulsiveness and alcohol and substance abuse play a role in both.
Sinclair emphasises the importance of obtaining help, whether for you or for a family member or friend. SARGF offers a free, anonymous hotline and provides eight free face-to-face counselling sessions, to equip problem gamblers with the skills they need to overcome their addiction. In severe cases, the foundation will also assist in providing a self-exclusion order.
The encouragement, love and support from the team at Crossroads allowed me to eventually see that I was worth something - that my life could be turned around and that I could accomplish the things that had long been a forgotten dream.
On the last day of my stint at Crossroads I could only express gratitude towards all who works there. A wise councillor once commented on my question when one is ready for rehab by explaining that when one is ready for rehab, rehab is ready for you.
I was lost and my soul was broken until I ended up at Crossroads and was introduced to the Twelve Steps. With the help of their excellent staff and amazing support I have recently been clean for 18 months, I could not have done it without them!
"Just for today I am more than three years in recovery. I have Cross Roads to thank for this wonderful gift. Cross Roads helped me to set a firm foundation in my recovery on which I can continue to build."
EVERYONE should try doing a 12-Step Program. Not just alcoholics, gamblers, drug addicts and people addicted to sex; everyone. I guarantee the world would be a better place as a result.
More people would say sorry. Honesty and unselfishness would be more common. Roads and workplaces would be more harmonious.
For me personally, the steps saved my life.
I’d tried everything to stop drinking — fitness, therapy, religion, self-help books, and pure white-knuckled determination. And nothing worked … I had a successful job, a wife and kids … and I was thinking about killing myself on an almost daily basis.
Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) was the last card in the pack and the only thing that worked.
Initially meetings helped me stop, but I kept returning to drink for the first few years. Then I was taken through the steps by someone further along the journey than me. My life changed and I haven’t had a drink for almost a decade now.
MY LIFE CHANGED
Because the 12 Steps are not just about recovering from an addiction, they’re about living life the right way. They’re about being a decent person who builds self-esteem through honesty, dignity and reliability.
They’re about apologising to the wife when you snap at her. They’re about saying sorry to your parents for the way you treated them. They’re about being less controlling. They’re about helping others …
The 12 Steps are a Design For Life.
In fact, if you look at the 12-Steps, alcohol is only mentioned once, in the first half of the first step. You admit that you’re powerless over alcohol and then the remaining eleven and a half steps are about changing your life and the way you live it.
Here’s the thing: Alcoholism isn’t so much about alcohol per se, it’s about the person in addiction. The same goes for gambling and drugs and sex. If it was about alcohol then everyone who had a drink would become an alcoholic.
In fact, alcohol is as much the “solution” as the problem for alcoholics. Yes it causes all kinds of mayhem, but alcoholics feel compelled to return to it despite the consequences because it changes the way they feel.
That’s what all addictions are about; escaping yourself and the self-loathing that engulfs you. Alcoholics talk of “being born uncomfortable”; of feeling isolated and full of fear. Alcohol takes that away. But at the same time, it magnifies the problem on a long-term basis and drives people further into addiction.
The 12-Steps allow you to change the person you are. To become comfortable in your own skin. And so you no longer need to drink, drug or gamble away the way you feel.
Surely everyone in life wants that? To be comfortable with who they are and how they live life.
Bill Wilson, one of the co-founders of AA, first proposed the steps in 1939 as part of the main text of Alcoholics Anonymous. They are largely derived from a mixture or spiritual principles found in religion and psychology, with a touch of Bill’s own experiences of recovery from alcohol.
Taken in order they form a simple pathway to recovery …
Steps 1 to 3: Admitting you’re stuffed, that life is a mess and that you can’t stop drinking when you want to. Recognising that you’re not the centre of the universe, and can’t control everything that happens around you.
Steps 4 to 9 are then about “cleaning house” and turning your life around: Looking at your past bad behaviour and hang ups, discussing them with someone more experienced than you, and learning the pattern of thinking that lead you to these stuff ups. Then saying sorry to the people that you’ve hurt, so that you can hold your head high again.
Essentially: Learning to live a decent life.
Steps 10 to 12 are basic maintenance based on the previous nine. And Step 12 also asks you to pass on the message to those who need it and help others in life. Which only seems fair, given what the other 11 have done for you.
That’s essentially it. Although with almost a decade in recovery, I’m still understanding the subtleties and nuances of the wisdom in these seemingly simple set of guidelines.
I should at this point mention God. The G-word is littered throughout the steps as you can see below.
I’m not a religious person; my conception of spirituality is more of an underlying intelligence and energy to the universe. I use the word “God” these days because it simply cuts down on confusion. But plenty of atheist alcoholics have recovered using a 12-Step program. The steps involving God are really about releasing control. In fact, Facebook is littered with memes saying the same thing:
“Accept what is, let go of what was … Learn to let go of what you cannot control … Accept what is and have faith in what will be …”
It’s hard enough running your own life, but it’s absolutely exhausting trying to run the world around you.
So you may not be an alcoholic or shooting up smack on a daily basis to escape your consciousness, but who doesn’t have problems in relationships, or suffer from unfounded fears, perhaps feel irritable and discontented, or prey to depressive feelings?
Perhaps steps can be taken to alleviate the way you feel …
THE 12 STEPS
1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol — that our lives had become unmanageable.
2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
5. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.
12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics and to practice these principles in all our affairs.
The encouragement, love and support from the team at Crossroads allowed me to eventually see that I was worth something - that my life could be turned around and that I could accomplish the things that had long been a forgotten dream.
On the last day of my stint at Crossroads I could only express gratitude towards all who works there. A wise councillor once commented on my question when one is ready for rehab by explaining that when one is ready for rehab, rehab is ready for you.
I was lost and my soul was broken until I ended up at Crossroads and was introduced to the Twelve Steps. With the help of their excellent staff and amazing support I have recently been clean for 18 months, I could not have done it without them!
"Just for today I am more than three years in recovery. I have Cross Roads to thank for this wonderful gift. Cross Roads helped me to set a firm foundation in my recovery on which I can continue to build."
