IRL : "You do anything long enough to escape the habit of living until the escape becomes the habit." A short film by a recovering WoW addict.
posted by crunchland
on Jan 31, 2012 -
35 comments
"Because of our mutant powers of obsession, it’s my guess that a lot of nerds suffer from addiction. Nerds get caught up in minutiae, because there is a tremendous and fulfilling sense of control in understanding every single detail of a thing more than any other living creature. But we also tend to have a very active internal monologue (in some cases, dialog). These are some delightful ingredients—mixed with a bit of genetic predisposition—for overdoing things that make us feel good in the moment."
Chris Hardwick offers "self-help for nerds."
posted by jbickers
on Nov 28, 2011 -
23 comments
Caution: Disturbing, potentially triggering and possibly NSFW content: The Meth Project, known for their gritty, confrontational and disturbing
online and
print ads, which graphically depict the effects of methamphetamine drug use, launched a
new, interactive website last week. The revamped site gives visitors an opportunity to
share their own stories. They've also premiered four new 30-second television PSA's by the director of
Black Swan and
Requiem for a Dream, Darren Aronofsky:
E.R.,
Deep End,
Losing Control and
Desperate.
(Via) [more inside]
posted by zarq
on Nov 16, 2011 -
103 comments
"On the 28th October 1975 my
mother gave birth to a
heroinhead - that was/is me.
My father was a young Glaswegian junkie nicknamed Puggy. I was born with heroin in my veins. 7 years after my birth, my father was brutally murdered by infamous British serial-killer
Dennis Nilsen.
[more inside]
posted by metaxa
on Oct 10, 2011 -
36 comments
TheFix.com is a new site targeting the more than 40 million Americans who are recovering from drug and/or alcohol addiction. It features Ask-An-Expert
videos, news, editorials and thorough
reviews of rehab facilities based on Zagat's system.
Founded by Maer Roshan, one of the founders of Radar Magazine.
(Via) [more inside]
posted by zarq
on Apr 7, 2011 -
36 comments
Can you get hooked on diet soda? 'Government surveys have found that people who drink diet beverages average more than 26 ounces per day (some drink far more) and that 3% of diet-soda drinkers have at least four daily. Are these diet-soda fiends true addicts? And if so, what are they addicted to? The most obvious answer is caffeine -- but that doesn't explain the many die-hard diet drinkers who prefer caffeine-free varieties.' But at least it's not sweetened soda with all attendant problems,
such as high blood pressure, so what about artificial sweeteners?
[more inside]
posted by VikingSword
on Mar 2, 2011 -
180 comments
For millions of addicts around the world, Alcoholics Anonymous's basic text - informally known as the Big Book - is the Bible. And as they're about to find out, the Bible was edited. After being hidden away for nearly 70 years and then auctioned twice, the original manuscript by AA co-founder Bill Wilson is about to become public for the first time next week, complete with edits by Wilson-picked commenters that reveal a profound debate in 1939 about how overtly to talk about God.
posted by Joe Beese
on Sep 22, 2010 -
76 comments
"
It would have been quite a news conference, and it very nearly happened. Last fall, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the British Columbia Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS, after months of intense, private talks, agreed to face the media together to declare their agreement that research shows
the 'benefits' and 'positive impacts' of supervised injection sites for intravenous drug users. For the RCMP, making such a statement would have been a turning point: the Mounties would have had to distance themselves from
dubious studies, commissioned by the force itself, that were critical of
Insite, Vancouver’s
pioneering safe
injection facility."
But it didn't happen.
posted by Alvy Ampersand
on Aug 23, 2010 -
50 comments
"Our
research indicates that excessive internet use is associated with depression,but what we don't know is which comes first - are depressed people drawn to the internet or does the internet cause depression?"
posted by Elmore
on Feb 3, 2010 -
48 comments
"Indian country begins where the serene prairie of Custer county gives way to the formidable rock spires marking out South Dakota's rugged Badlands. The road runs straight until the indistinguishable, clapboard American homesteads fade from view and the path climbs into a landscape sharpened by an eternity of wind and water. At this time of year, the temperature slides to tens of degrees below freezing and a relentless gale sets the snow dancing on the road, a whirligig of white blotting out the black of the asphalt."
A sobering look at
one Native American community and their hopes during the Obama years, by
The Guardian's Chris McGreal.
posted by saturnine
on Jan 10, 2010 -
18 comments
On 200 mg a day of baclofen, in an important meeting with several associate deans of my college and three new department chairs (I was made chair of my philosophy department just a few weeks before I tried to commit suicide), I fell asleep with my head on the conference room table and, for 40 minutes, everyone was too embarrassed to wake me. Somnolence is the most obvious and inconvenient side effect of baclofen. I reduced my dosage to 100 mg a day, and started taking it only at bedtime. A few days later, a colleague asked if I had changed my medicine. ‘Yes,’ I told her. ‘Why do you ask?’ She is German, an analytic philosopher, and therefore very direct: ‘You are drooling less than you were.’
My Life as a Drunk is a searingly honest essay by novelist and philosophy professor Clancy Martin about his experiences with alcoholism, AA, valium and
baclofen.
posted by Kattullus
on Jul 1, 2009 -
46 comments
"The 2000 census found that nearly 23 percent of families living in Letcher County, KY, fell below the poverty line. The median household income in most counties is at or below $25,000, with individuals making on average $12,000 a year."
The White Family by
Carl Kiilsgaard [more inside]
posted by saturnine
on Jun 23, 2009 -
45 comments
The Portugal experiment. On July 1, 2001, a nationwide law in Portugal
took effect that decriminalized all drugs, including
cocaine and heroin. Under the new legal
framework, all drugs were “decriminalized,” not
“legalized.” Thus, drug possession for personal
use and drug usage itself are still legally prohibited,
but violations of those prohibitions are
deemed to be exclusively administrative violations
and are removed completely from the criminal
realm.... The data show that, judged by virtually every
metric, the Portuguese decriminalization framework
has been a resounding success. Within this
success lie self-evident lessons that should guide
drug policy debates around the world. (
pdf of complete paper)
[more inside]
posted by caddis
on May 22, 2009 -
94 comments
The novlist Julie Myerson has written a book, The Lost Child, about her son's addiction to cannabis, the violent behaviour she says this caused and her tough love policy.
Extract. Her son is
angry that she's published it, and says his parents over-reacted: "I wasn't doing anything that most other teenagers do, but such was their naive terror of drugs they were acting like six-year-olds". It comes out through
MumsNet that Julie Myerson was the anonymous author of a Guardian column, "Living with Teenagers," which described her children's behaviour candidly without their knowledge.
Extract. Myerson first
denied this. The Guardian discusses whether it was
right to publish the columns. Myerson is
interviewed about whether she was right to publish The Lost Child. Her partner, and son's father, Jonathan Myerson supports her:
This is an emergency. Her son says she's
addicted to writing.
[more inside]
posted by paduasoy
on Mar 15, 2009 -
160 comments
Addiction: thousands of studies have been done claiming that it is a
disease, often using rats in isolated cages with a bar-press system of delivery, showing they will repeatedly get high even if it means starving to death. Bruce Alexander was a skeptic, questioning the ecological validity of all such results: "They were said to prove that these kinds of dope are irresistible, and that’s it, that’s the end of the addiction story right there," and after delivering one particularly fruitless seminar in 1976, he decided to build
Rat Park to conduct his own studies...
[more inside]
posted by tybeet
on Feb 12, 2009 -
47 comments
According to legend, Einstein was eating chocolate when he came upon the theory of relativity. These sites are all about chocolate and candy in general.
Chocolate Obsession.
Hyperbole? Maybe. Just a little. Ok, a lot. Chocolate does have a lot to offer, though. It is a one of a kind food characterized by a truly unique and intense flavor. The idea of
Jim's Chocolate Mission came after a discussion with friends about the greatest chocolate bar. Was is the Wispa? Galaxy? Clark?
The Chocolate Review is most likely to review English chocolate because that's where they're from, but they also do imports.
[more inside]
posted by netbros
on Feb 8, 2009 -
39 comments
In December 2003, Brent Cambron gave himself his first injection of morphine. Save for the fact that he was sticking the needle into his own skin, the motion was familiar--almost rote. Over the course of the previous 17 months, as an anesthesia resident at Boston's Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Cambron had given hundreds of injections.
-
Going Under by Jason Zengerle of The New Republic [
print version] is heartbreaking article about the high rates of drug addiction among anesthesiologists. It tells the story of Brent Cambron and his spiral into addiction. His live was also sensitively chronicled in The Boston Globe by Keith O'Brien in
Something, anything to stop the pain [
print version].
[more inside]
posted by Kattullus
on Jan 9, 2009 -
96 comments
French Doctor Finds Cure for Alcoholism in a Pill, Causing a Stir. Having himself suffered from
dipsomania, Dr. Olivier Ameisen, claims in his book,
Le Dernier Verre (
The Last Glass), that the muscle relaxant
bacloflen suppressed his craving for alcohol, curing his alcoholism. A top cardiologist in France, and doctor to
a former French PM, Ameisen has called for clinical trials to verify his bold claim, while causing some in the field to accuse him of irresponsibility for suggesting alcoholism can be cured by a pill, although
other pills are in the works.
posted by Azaadistani
on Dec 6, 2008 -
54 comments
