Resources to overcome addiction and substance dependence
Nearly 50 million over the age of 12 reportedly have substance use disorders, which can include addictions to alcohol or drugs. Other issues that affect millions - such as gambling, shopping, gaming, and porn - have also been classified as addictions and mental health disorders.
All of these can be personally devastating, and sometimes life threatening.
Addiction can take many forms
Experts say about 5% of the population has a compulsive shopping disorder, buut there is less research in this area of addiction than that of drugs and alcohol for example. What is clear however, is the financial and emotional implications are very real.
"I have ADHD. I've had it, you know, I take medication for this. So, so the dopamine thing is an issue there," one compulsive shopper told CBS News New York. "It's kind of like, it, what, when you're on a roller coaster and you go really high, and then you come down, that feeling that you get when you're coming down. It's like, you just want to keep going with that feeling."
"People that are reaching for substances, or gambling, or shopping or sex, there's a seeking. They're seeking to fill some need," Rachel Wallace of Hackensack Meridian Health Carrier Clinic said. "What people are encouraged to do is find their own concept of spirituality... when people get outside and they feel that that connection with nature. Meditation is another concept... breathwork, music, dance, poetry, journaling."
From gambling to recovery
According to the New York State Gaming Commission, nearly $58 billion in bets have been placed in the three years since New York legalized mobile sports wagering. They add that bankruptcies have sharply increased, as well as incidents involving domestic violence.
Rob Sackowitz says he owed hundreds of thousands of dollars and tells a harrowing tale of his compulsive gambling, the lies it fostered, the financial devastation to him and his family and how it nearly ended his life.
"More gamblers commit suicide than drug addicts and alcoholics combined, and that's because they're in their brain, the only way out of their problem... because they owe so much money, is continuing to gamble," Sackowitz said.
For a dozen years, Sackowitz says he's been free of drinking, drugs and gambling. In 2022 he and his wife opened their own clinic called Right Choice Recovery, in Dayton, N.J. which offers a variety of programs and therapies.
"I would wake up when bank transfers in the middle of the night, what I know would clear," former compulsive gambler Scott Desch said. "It was controlling a lot of my thoughts, a lot of my time. It was hurting. It was hurting me, and then ultimately it hurts others."
"One of the one of the requirements of our of our program is that we engage in family therapy," adolescent therapist Allen Gabriel of Right Choice Recovery said. "I always do is encourage parents to set aside what I call talk time every week with your child, and that is just you spending an hour or two with your child and a place away from home where you guys have a conversation and there's absolutely no judgment. It's just creating a safe a safe space for them to be able to talk and really allow you to kind of understand the world as they see it."
Gabriel says asking for help is a sign of strength.
Alcohol and other substances
Nearly 30 million people struggle with alcohol use disorder, according to the National Institutes of Health. The effects of this disease are devasting and can impact nearly all aspects of a person's life - relationships, jobs, finances, and health, just for starters. As negative repercussions add up, the outcomes are often catastrophic. There are hundreds of treatment facilities in our area, but as we've come to understand from those who have lived through the throes of alcoholism and addiction, you have to be ready to receive help.
"If they don't see it as a problem, that it's one of the hardest things to, kind of, progress on what to do," addiction psychiatrist Dr. Tony Issac of Raritan Bay Medical Center said. "They're saying, you know, but I don't drink at work, right? But if they're still kind of having the physical withdrawal, by definition, that means you have a physical dependency on the alcohol."
Issac outlined some issues that can occur during the withdrawal process.
"With alcohol withdrawal tremors, it can progress to more severe alcohol withdrawal states, like alcohol withdrawal hallucinosis, where you start seeing things, hearing things, feeling things other people might not experience. It can progress to withdrawal seizures or delirium tremens, which are both medical emergencies," Issac said. "Reach out for help, whether that's your primary care doctor, whether it's family or friends, whether it's like a local psychiatrist, really, anyone... you want to encourage that conversation to kind of really bolster yourself in order to address whatever has to be addressed."
Overcoming addiction
Substance use disorder is recognized as a disease, and there is a range of effective treatment. There's inpatient rehabilitation, outpatient counseling, and a multitude of programs from 12 step, to cognitive and behavioral therapies, art, music, yoga - even spiritual healing. There are effective medications to block opioid cravings. There is also peer counseling, which provides an important connection and understanding, ultimately helping the user, and the counselor as well.
Delvoris Bryant is a peer counselor working at Carrier Clinic in New Jersey. She says she's been clean and sober for 12 years
"I'm a member of the community, so I'm able to help quite a few people that just may not know which way to turn, how to go about it," she said.
She found her way into hard drugs and an even harder life.
"And I had nothing left, but my mother, and I was watching myself kill her day by day with my drug abuse," Bryant said. "I could not live with that."
Now she continues to navigate her drug-free life, helping herself while she helps others.
"Addiction devastates families like no other illness or disease does... the behavioral elements of addiction can be really difficult to understand. Why people would steal from a loved one, why people would drive under the influence with children in the car, why someone who's pregnant would continue to use substances," Wallace said. "It's not a choice. Remember that their brain has been hijacked. They're in a significant progress state of addiction and without support and intervention."
Resources
- Debtors Anonymous of Greater New York
- Right Choice Recovery
- Gamblers Anonymous
- Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration
- Alcoholics Anonymous
- Retreat and Recovery at Ramapo Valley
- Carrier Clinic
- Raritan Addiction Care
- Mount Sinai Bridge Program
- National Alliance on Mental Illness/New York City
- 988 Lifeline
