Daily Lessons from Life 05 September 2009

"Fri, Sep 04, 2009 - The Straits Times - Hooked, high & out of control

THE clock inches past 8pm. Outside the dimly lit, shabby, little Redhill office, evening is thickening into night as commuters hurry home from work.

But a motley crew of a dozen recovering alcoholics, drug addicts and even food addicts is oblivious to the city's rhythms. They are unburdening their most private thoughts in the hope that fellow sufferers will somehow help them get rid of the secret compulsions that haunt them.

The day has been especially hard for Ravi, 45, whose drinking habit cost him six jobs before he decided in 2004 to seek treatment and therapy to haul himself out of his abyss. A favourite aunt took her own life that morning. Her alcoholic husband left her decades ago after a short, violent marriage. She also learnt recently that another close relative had chained herself to the bottle. Clinically depressed after being unable to help either person, she decided to end it all.

'Since I am in recovery now, I tried to get her to seek counselling, to seek help, but she refused,' says Ravi, who became hooked on alcohol while at university in Britain.

Figures from the National Addiction Management Service (Nams) show that more than 1,000 new patients sought addiction treatment at the Institute of Mental Health's (IMH) specialist outpatient clinics in the last financial year, up from only about 200 in 2002.

Senior consultant psychiatrist Munidasa Winslow, one of the foremost experts here on addictions and impulse-control disorders, has been treating people with addictions for nearly two decades.

'As a society, we tend to be rather reticent about talking about issues or seeking help early,' he says.

AT THE all-addictions group that Ravi and his friends attend every Wednesday evening, participants have been clean for a year on average. Yet, every day, they face the possibility of slipping back into their bad old ways.

'Time does not guarantee anything,' says Ravi, as others listen in rapt silence. 'Coming here, talking to you guys is what keeps me grounded.'

A KEY challenge facing doctors: Addicts usually seek treatment too late, says Dr Winslow, who after two decades at IMH now has a private practice at Raffles Hospital.

The longer you wait, the harder it is to treat an addiction successfully. On average, addicts struggle for four to eight years before seeking help, he estimates. 'Recovery is never instantaneous. Doctors need to learn to treat addictions like the chronic medical conditions that they are, and not expect instant results.'

Consultant psychiatrist Tan Chue Tin of Mount Elizabeth Medical Centre agrees that the problem usually starts as a coping behaviour, an attempt 'to destress, which gets out of control'.

MANY addicts need to hit rock bottom before denial morphs into the desire to get help. For recovering drug addict V. Arumugam, 37, rock bottom came in October 2006, when the cleaner and his girlfriend drank two bottles of pesticide in a suicide pact. Mr Arumugam survived. His girlfriend did not."

I am commenting on yesterday news literally. But is it? Is addiction to substance or non-substance ever a flavour of the month issue? No! Many the type of addictioins changed. But the addiction stay! The pains and destructions are quite real regardless of the type of addictions to the 'patient', the families and loved ones, and to the society!

Lessons for me are:

1. don't start it as we CANNOT fight it. The spirit is willing but the flash is weak;

2. don't wait for help. Don't wait for others to help the 'victim'. Just do it! Don't ask for permission to help someone you love or care for! Most of the time, the person who needs help DOES NOT realize he or she needs help! Be prepared for the pains, the struggles and the heartbreaks. At the same time, just in case we are wrong, get an independent 3rd party or 4th party to confirm your observation of the problems. However, don't take more than 1 month or 4-week to confirm; before it is too late!!;

3. becoming dependent medically or physically or biologically to something is very very difficult to get rid of. It takes absolute resolve and determination to kick the old habit and start a NEW habit! It will take discipline and it will need a lot of supporting, but tough-love type of, people to remind, reinforce, restrict, and remove temptation and barriers to develop the new habit. That's why all the group therapy sessions are needed. That's why the specialists are needed.

May the addicts find salvation in their own quest to find their way and be free from addiction again. And STAY clean!!

It is tougher than trying to develop the 7e leader's behaviors and habit!