Counselling for women on the Northern Beaches

I write this post today with a broken heart grieving our beautiful fairy godmother who lost her long and brave battle with addiction this week.  Thank you darling lady for letting us know you.  

Northern Beaches Alcohol culture mirrored across the country!

One in seven patients entering hospital emergency departments on Australia Day were there because of alcohol-related harm, research by the Australasian College for Emergency Medicine has found.

The largest snapshot survey of its kind undertaken in Australia and the first to investigate the relationship between alcohol-related harm and Australia Day, it found that as of 11pm on Tuesday, 15% of patients across 100 emergency departments were there because of alcohol.

The chairwoman of the college’s public health committee, Associate Prof Diana Egerton-Warburton, said that figure was closer to 8% on an average weeknight.

On Friday and Saturday nights alcohol-related emergency presentations could reach 14%.

“We’ve been doing this survey for the past three years and this was the highest ever resulted recorded for Australia Day, and higher than an average Friday or Saturday night,” she                                                                 said.

The figures revealed a “huge and entirely unnecessary burden being placed on our already over-stretched emergency departments”, Egerton-Warburton said.

She urged government action on extended trading hours, low prices and heavy advertising of alcohol, all factors known to contribute to harmful drinking.

“For every additional late trading hour, there’s a 20% increase in serious assaults and injuries,” Egerton-Warburton said. “States like NSW and Queensland are already trying to take a lead on introducing early last drinks to help address this tide of human tragedy that arrives in our emergency departments.

“We need to have a national agreement on safe alcohol trading hours. It will save lives.”

“This is the cost Australia is paying for its all-too-familiar relationship with alcohol, and again supports our argument that governments are not doing enough and that the well-understood evidence about fixing this problem, including getting rid of quick access to booze and reducing trading hours, is the only way to address it.”

All things drugs and alcohol: MDMA needs to be studied, not demonisedMDMA, or ...

All things drugs and alcohol: MDMA needs to be studied, not demonised

MDMA, or ...: MDMA needs to be studied, not demonised MDMA, or as it's better known, ecstasy, is one of the most heavily regulated drugs wor...

MDMA needs to be studied, not demonised

MDMA, or as it's better known, ecstasy, is one of the most heavily regulated drugs worldwide.

But leading neuroscientists have just published a commentary calling for more research into the substance, claiming that understanding how it works could hold the key to new therapeutic compounds and treatments for psychological conditions such as PTSD.

This isn't the first time that researchers have shown that MDMA could have potential in treating psychiatric disorders - a trial of 12 people with PTSD, or post-traumatic stress disorder, showed that, in conjunction with counselling, the compound could treat the condition without any ill side effects.

Six years later, 11 of them hadn't had any PTSD symptoms return, and none had started abusing drugs (the 12th member of the original study wasn't available for the follow-up).

Another study in 1998 showed that one session of MDMA-assisted psychotherapy was as beneficial as a decade of regular talking therapy.

MDMA's therapeutic effect was often rapid, happening over the course of hours or only a few short therapeutic sessions.

The benefits appear to come from the fact that MDMA triggers electrochemical messaging in the brain that increases feeling of connection and empathy - which is why scientists class the drug as an "empathogen".

But on a neurological level, researchers still don't really understand how it works - and although initial brain scans have provided insight into which regions of the brain are involved in the process, there's still more to find out.

Which is why the scientists are calling for approval to use all the available tools of modern basic and clinical neuroscience research to map MDMA’s mechanism of action in the brain.

Right now, MDMA is classed as a schedule I drug in the US, alongside drugs such as heroin - and that means they're extremely hard for researchers to get ethics approval and funding to study.

To be clear, the researchers openly acknowledge that the drug can be dangerous in large doses, and shouldn't be used recreationally. But irrational barriers to its study based on poor understanding of its actions need to be minimised so that appropriate clinical studies can be performed.

Drugs like MDMA should be the object of rigorous scientific study, and should not necessarily be demonised.

http://www.sciencealert.com/scientists-say-mdma-needs-to-be-studied-not-outlawed

Mindfulness as Therapy

What may happen in a mindfulness session?

A mindfulness therapist will help you establish a daily mindfulness practice, often mindfulness of the breath. They may discuss with you what situations and thoughts are problematical with a view to helping you become much more mindful and aware in these situations. There is no attempt  to change your thinking, but simply to become more aware of the unhelpfulness of some thoughts. You may be encouraged to reflect on a difficult situation as it is happening or soon after. Similarly you may be encouraged to stay with an upsetting emotion for some length of time so that you can become more familiar with it and perhaps avoid the need to bring a lot of resources to fighting it off time after time. In essence the aim is to allow you to have a different, easier relationship with problematical  thoughts, emotions and bodily sensations. The result of this is an increase in well being, more control over your own mind as you spend less time dealing with difficulties and more resources for important activities. Often difficulties can disappear altogether.

Australian Prescription Drug Abuse Statistics

Prescription Drug Abuse Statistics

In Australia, two categories of prescription drugs are most commonly abused: Benzodiazepines and Analgesics. Benzodiazepines are minor tranquilisers and are most often prescribed by doctors to relieve anxiety or help people sleep. Benzodiazepines include drugs under the popular brand names Valium, Xanax, and Serepax.

Analgesics are medications used to relieve pain. Opioid analgesics such as codeine and oxycodone are the most commonly abused analgesics due to their ability to create sensations of euphoria. Those who are prescribed strong medications such as opioids or benzodiazepines can become dependent on these drugs without intentionally misusing them, as tolerance can develop and people will need to take more and more over time. However, prescription drug addiction occurs most frequently with the non-medical use of prescription drugs. Non-medical use is when people take prescriptions outside of their intended use, including taking a drug not prescribed to you, taking more than prescribed, or crushing, chewing, or otherwise misusing a prescription medication.

Approximately 4.5% of Australians 14 years or older have used tranquilizers or sleeping pills including benzodiazepines for non-medical purposes at some point in their life.

The non-medical use of analgesics is even more common, as almost 8% of Australians over the age of 14 have abused analgesics at some point in their life and 3.3% have done so in the past 12 months. Among young Australians aged 14-24 the average age they first try an analgesic for non-medical use is 15 years old.

Pain medications are the most commonly used drug, either licit or illicit, among 12-17 year olds. Four percent of 12-17 year olds take analgesics from home without permission and 3% buy them. This trend is especially frightening, as the younger people are when they experiment with addictive drugs, the more likely they are to develop drug addiction in the future.

Its about to get a lot harder to access prescription drugs on the Northern Beaches!

National real-time medicine monitoring will save lives

Our calls for the urgent  implementation of a national real-time recording and reporting system to decrease the inappropriate use of prescription  medicines seems to be very slowly actioned by the Federal and State Governments (although I find the speed of this "urgent" intervention to be a national disgrace).

As we loose countless wonderful people in this country each and every year from legally prescribed drugs I cannot fathom the attitude of our political leaders and the lack of interest they continue to show.  Be that as it may, this system will finally become a reality in the near future and I have further concerns as to how we are going to deal with the many thousands of individuals who are currently experiencing heavy dependence on these prescription medicines when they are not able to access their normal quantities.... 

Northern Beaches women are our clients and I can tell you that I personally see more women experiencing problems with alcohol and prescription medications such as Valium and Xanax than other illicit drugs combined.

The expected reporting  system ( Electronic Recording and Reporting of Controlled Drugs)  will include all drugs with potential for dependence meaning that all doctors will be able to access a patients record in the consultation - no more "doctor shopping"

This is great news but if we don't support these individuals they will experience dangerous health, social and psychological distress and/or probably substitute with alcohol or illicit drugs. 

We need to have some serious conversations and get ready!

Aly 

Aly Birmingham Geats

www.counsellingnorthside.com.au