Substance Abuse and Addiction

Kristen Diane Parker

Kristen Diane Parker is in the google news if you search google news on ‘drug addiction’. She was a surgical tech working in a hospital in Colorado and accused of stealing narcotics and returning the used needles to the hospital where they were used on surgical patients.

She has also been diagnosed with hepatitis C making it very possible she has infected hundreds of surgical patients.

She has an admitted fascination with needles and it seems she would also carry a syringe loaded with saline in her pocket at all times and if an opportunity to switch the syringe with another loaded with a narcotic arose, she would take it.

Admittedly she has been battling drug abuse for several years having been addicted to pain-killers after she, herself, had surgery. She has also used heroin and was on a methadone maintenance program for a while.

Recently she has been accused of stealing fentanyl for personal use. Fentanyl is a powerful synthetic opiate used for breakthrough pain when other pain killers fail. It is 100 times more powerful than morphine.

So far 10 former surgical patients have been diagnosed with hep C and others are being tested.

Is this a woman who made a long series of ‘bad’ choices resulting in addiction leading to dirty syringe swapping during operations? She admits she knew she had hepatitis C but seems to have somehow minimized it in her mind.

She describes herself as loving people and a former boyfriend says that she ‘has a big heart’ but addiction led to all this behavior…

Welcome Back! Thanks for visiting!

Addiction; is it a Choice?

The ultimate causes of drug addiction have been widely theorized in the past as genetic, bad environment and even moral choice.

The ‘moral choice’ theory went away a long time ago and addiction was seen more as a disease. A new theory by Heyman (his book, “Addiction; A Disorder of Choice”) is once again labeling addiction as a series of bad choices.

He believes that many addictions are overcome once the real life consequences of addictive behavior are realized making addiction a response to an out-of-control life.

Heyman further believes that labeling addiction as a disease will provide a crutch for many addicts to lean on and not give up the addiction.

That is a simple explanation and not all inclusive so to see more look up this author and book if you are interested.

Boston Legal

‘Boston Legal’ was a weekly television series in the USA and very popular. After many seasons they stopped making new shows and are now in syndication it seems. It portrayed a law firm in Boston, MA whose lawyers seemed to take on some strange cases and always seemed to get themselves into trouble.

The reason I mention this show is because they were on last night and had a show examining counselor ethics and patient privacy. It was very interesting and here it is:

A ‘Boston Legal’ lawyer is receiving therapy from a counselor but the counselor is clearly distracted and asks to reschedule. As the lawyer leaves, the counselor asks to speak to the lawyer as a lawyer for some advice and proceeds to tell her about a patient of his who is worrying him.

The patient seems to spend his sessions explaining to the counselor how he will kill his ex-wife and in graphic detail. The counselor is at the point where he thinks there may be some substance behind the patient’s ramblings.

The counselor believes if he keeps silent and the patient kills his ex-wife the counselor will be at fault. Yet he cannot call the police because he is not ‘reasonably certain’ the patient means what he says. And if he tells the ex-wife he is violating confidentiality and will be liable.

In addition the counselor has videotaped one of these sessions and plays the tape for the lawyer.

As the lawyer watches the tape she becomes convinced that something must be done and eventually decides to sit in on the patient’s next session posing as a fellow counselor.

During this session the counselor asks the patient about his ramblings of killing his ex-wife and the patient denies it all and storms off. The lawyer now decides to go and inform the patient’s ex-wife of the possible danger and shows the ex-wife the tape. She becomes frightened and asks the lawyer to represent her.

When the lawyer returns to her office she runs into the patient who has been sufficiently rattled to seek legal counsel of his own and happened to come to this same law firm.

As he sees the lawyer who posed as a doctor and learns why she did this he explains with tight control that explaining how he will kill the victim to his therapist is a way he vents his anger and has been doing so to therapists since he was a teenager. He explains that he has no intention of killing his ex-wife.

After he leaves, the lawyer decides to visit the ex-wife to explain and apologize but as she approaches the building she finds it is surrounded by police and ambulance.

When she arrives at the apartment of the ex-wife she learns that the ex-wife shot and killed the patient when he arrived asking to speak with her…

Talk about a legal quandary… both the lawyer and counselor acted as if they were never trained to perform in their respective roles. Not only was the law broken by both, but several ethical boundaries were violated. In my opinion both counselor and lawyer should lose their respective licenses and face criminal charges…

I found it interesting.

Ted Bundy, Sex Addict?

Was the famous serial killer Ted Bundy addicted to sex?

Ted Bundy, noted serial killer of at least 30 women (if not more) was executed by the State of Florida in January of 1989. He confessed to 30 killings but kept details at a minimum hoping for a stay of execution leading to a sentence of life imprisonment. He was executed anyway…

Bundy described an unremarkable childhood of strict Christian values. He described how he first found a soft-core pornographic magazine which he claims started him on the road to sex addiction and, in his case, went hand in hand with violence.

The magazine became many magazines and gradually evolved into murder, as he put it (not quite a logical progression as I see it). Sex was performed before and after the murder, by the way.

So was Ted Bundy a victim of addiction? A hopeless sex addict doing crazier things every day to achieve the ‘high’ he needed like any addict? Or was he merely a victim of deviant brain chemistry making him into a monster…

Success Story

I look back on my posts and I find I’m even depressing myself at times….

Yes, there is tragedy here in the posts – ‘Jerry, The Addict’, Tom, Len, Derek…. and the list could go for miles. Yes, I’m just a link in the chain and as such I may never see much success.

So here is a success story…

Doug has managed to overcome his weakness for whiskey, which he drank constantly for years. Whiskey brought out the ‘bad’ in Doug which meant several fights, several arrests and a rather serious motorcycle accident which left him with TBI, traumatic brain injury.

However this never slowed him down. The day he killed someone in a bar with a baseball bat was the day he stopped drinking – mainly because it landed him in jail which turned into a prison sentence.

No access to alcohol meant a rapid detox, extensive counseling and rehabilitation and lifelong AA group attendance. When Doug left prison he was remanded to a residential setting which meant more counseling, antipsychotic drugs and drugs to reduce his craving for alcohol such as Campral.

He virtually had to be taught how to live independently once again and after years of therapy, Doug now lives alone but is still supported through the residential setting. He holds down a part-time job, shops, pays bills on time including rent and has a cat.

He still takes his mood stabilizing and craving reducing drugs but has now made new friends; friends that would never have been made had he still been drinking. On the days that I work, Doug calls me several times for everything from looking for another apartment to how to cook something. He is a pleasure to talk to and I like Doug a lot.

Doug is on his way to a very fulfilling life complete with genuine relationships…all without alcohol.

Drug and Alcohol Counselor

The process of becoming a drug and alcohol counselor is tough, at least in Connecticut. Requirements include passing approved classes and completing an on-site internship experience in an actual counseling setting that touches upon each of the 12 core functions of the drug and alcohol counselor.

In addition you need recommendations, a completed case study on an individual in your internship and you need to pass the Connecticut Certification Board’s Drug and Alcohol Counselor Test which, apparently, many people have taken several times but failed.

You also need 6000 hours of training signed off by an LADC (Licensed Alcohol and Drug Counselor). The LADC is distinguished from the CADC (Certified Alcohol and Drug Counselor) by virtue of having a master’s degree.

And once you become certified you pretty much need a master’s degree to find a job…

Well I don’t have a master’s degree but I’m still plugging along. What it comes down to is that to want to be a drug and alcohol counselor you need to really, really want to do it.

I was a former computer programmer consultant working in state agencies and different insurance companies and pretty much spoiled by my salary.

These days my salary is 33% of what it used to be and I’m broke but I finally have a satisfaction and contentment with what I do. I could go back to it but I never will – working in an insurance company is a pretty useless job; you do absolutely nothing for others besides maintaining the company profit. And I’ll apologize in advance for those who are now working in an insurance company that I have offended.

In another year I will probably have 4000 experience hours under my belt. Since I’ve already completed the required classes, done the internship, gotten my recommendations and taken and passed the dreaded certification test I will apply for provisional certification.

And in another year after that I’ll have a full 6000 hours of experience and I’ll finally become fully certified; recognized by several states in the USA as well as internationally.

Wish me luck…

Substance Abuse and Addiction

Blog Posts

Kristen Diane Parker

Addiction; is it a Choice?

Boston Legal

Ted Bundy, Sex Addict?

Recent Posts

Recent Comments

Categories

Monthly Archives

Blogroll