By Maia Szalavitz
Twitter and Facebook are harder to resist than alcohol and cigarettes, but so is the urge to work, according to new research on people’s daily struggles with self-control and desire. The counterintuitive findings may reveal more about the complexities of defining addiction and self-discipline than anything else.
Researchers gave BlackBerrys to 205 adults and signaled them seven times a day at randomly selected daytime hours for one week. When they were contacted, participants reported whether they were experiencing desire for something, what it was that they wanted, how strong the urge was, whether they wished to resist this desire and if they did in fact yield to the temptation.
The most strongly felt desires were for sleep and sex. Unexpectedly, cravings for cigarettes and alcohol were reported as weakest. In terms of actual behavior, participants had the hardest time stopping themselves from checking social media when they preferred not to, and from working when that was not what they truly wanted to do, suggesting that these urges actually drove people’s actions more than drugs or sex did.
Full story at Time
By Kathy Gyngell
Free heroin dispensing on the NHS is getting closer. For seven years now the Department of Health has pumped our money into its ‘injectable opiate treatment trials’ to prove that it ‘works’. Now, according to announcement this week, it plans to pour good money after bad, efficacious or not and regardless of other austerity measures. With lifesaving drugs being denied to people in need, there can be no justification for its ‘Phase Two programme roll out’
According to NTA accounts we have already funded this ‘experiment’ to the tune of £4.5 million, and nearly £2 million just in the last two years. The total spent since 2005 when the trials started, I have not yet been able to elicit, though one dedicated centre cost a cool half million to set up and run. The press officer I was directed to could not tell me. Nor did he know how much had been budgeted for the future of this ‘programme’.
The DoH declared on the press release that Injectable Opioid Treatment (IOT) is a ‘clinically-effective second-line treatment’ for people with chronic heroin addictions. This is based on its trial results. An alternative view of them, however, is that they prove the adage that an addict always wants more. For the 127 addicts initially involved in the trials it must have seemed all their Christmases had come at once.
Full story at The Daily Mail
By Michelle Fay Cortez
Nicotine-replacing gums and patches like those from GlaxoSmithKline Plc and Pfizer Inc. failed to help smokers who quit the habit stay off cigarettes, even when used with professional counseling, a study found.
Researchers surveying 781 former smokers found almost a third relapsed even after using nicotine replacement products. Scientists said the results cast doubt on the long-term benefit of products like Pfizer’s Nicotrol inhaler and GlaxoSmithKline’s NicoDerm CQ patch and Nicorette gum, leaders in a market worth $1.2 billion annually, according to IMS Health, a research firm.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration should only approve products that have been shown to help smokers quit and stay off cigarettes for years, said researcher Gregory Connolly, director of the Center for Global Tobacco Control at Harvard School of Public Health, in a statement.
“Using nicotine replacement therapy is no more effective in helping people stop smoking cigarettes in the long-term than trying to quit on one’s own,” said lead author Hillel Alpert, a Harvard research scientist.
Full story at Bloomberg Businessweek
Scunthorpe Telegraph
Three out of four people in North Lincolnshire do not smoke – and now health bosses are urging the others to come in out of the cold this Christmas.
Smokers can still to be spotted at this time of year shivering in doorways or draughty shelters while their family, friends or workmates enjoy the warmth, light and festive fun inside pubs, clubs or restaurants.
This year, 900 people in North Lincolnshire have already quit with the help of specialist stop smoking services.
And this does not include the many others who will have given up with other forms of support or gone it alone.
The army of non-smokers and ex-smokers is growing all the time in North Lincolnshire and there is lots of help for people who want to join them.
Full story at Scunthorpe
By Liz Barnes
Many a well-intended sober person has slipped or flat-out relapsed in this tricky holiday season.
It’s important to have a plan to steer you through these slippery times. It’s also important to be realistic and not attend drinking or using parties. I mean, come on now, do you really have any business being there? And really, do you think they will actually miss you? Didn’t think so.
During past holidays, stress, anxiety, loneliness, depression and worries disappeared in a flash by rubbing alcohol right across the tongue, then down to the tummy. Cocaine, pot and most any opiate also worked wonders on such terrible feelings.
So the plan needs to deal with these highly uncomfortable feelings. Let your loved ones in on your plan so they can help. It’s been said addiction is a feelings disease. Addicts hate to feel emotional and psychic pain more than most. Maybe, truth be told, they are just more sensitive to feelings. Who knows?
Full story at Auburn Pub
Twitter and Facebook are harder to resist than alcohol and cigarettes, but so is the urge to work, according to new research on people’s daily struggles with self-control and desire. The counterintuitive findings may reveal more about the complexities of defining addiction and self-discipline than anything else. 
