Gene Linked to Alcohol Addiction

Results of a study published in Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research have concluded that a specific gene, previously unidentified may also be responsible for alcohol addiction and other addictive behavior. Author of the study, Danielle Dick, has stated that the gene named ankyrin repeat and kinase domain containing 1 (ANKK1) is one of the genes responsible for making people vulnerable to addiction.
Previous research has centered around the neighboring gene, DRD2. The research on the DRD2 gene has had serious limitations, however, and the new research on the ANKK1 gene sheds light on these limitations. By implicating another gene is the same region, researchers now believe that several genes in the same phenotype are involved.

UK Study Concludes Alcohol, Tobacco Addictions as Dangerous as Illicit Substances

A recent UK study has concluded that addictions to alcohol or tobacco are just as dangerous to a personal health as addictions to illegal substances including heroine, cocaine, marijuana and ecstasy. The study does not advocate for any kinds of legal or illegal drugs, but rather puts alcohol and tobacco on par with other drugs in regards to adverse health effects.
The study has caused some controversy in the United Kingdom by placing ecstasy at the bottom of the list for adverse health effects. The reason for this placement, however, is that only 10 people in the UK die each year from using ecstasy, whereas over 300 people die each year from alcohol abuse.

Chinese Find 396 Addiction Genes

Researchers at China’s Peking University have discovered 396 genes linked to addiction. These so-called “addiction genes” are linked to pathways for substance abuse problems involving alcohol, cocaine, opium and nicotine.
According to the director Wei Liping, “The research provides a more complete picture of drug addiction, as genetic factors contribute to about 60 percent of the vulnerability to drug addiction.” By identifying genes and pathways to addiction, researchers are able to more accurate development treatment methods.

Impulsive behaviour?

http://sciencenow.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/2008/606/2
Researchers at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom who are studying laboratory rats have linked impulsive behavior to cocaine addiction. In the addiction field, it has been unclear to many scientists which came first, the impulsive behavior or the cocaine addiction leading to impulsivity.
Now, the researchers believe the behavior comes first. The researchers separated out two groups. The first was the impulsive group and the second was the thrill seeking group. The thrill seeking group sampled the cocaine first, but quickly lost interest thereafter. The impulsive group was slower to sample cocaine, but also was the group that became addicted.

A report was published by the Independent Working Group, an advisory panel of experts from the police and the legal and health sectors back in 2006. I cant rememmber the nam of it sorry but it suggests that Britain should consider a proposal already in action in eight other countries. This involves the creation of drug consumption rooms — “shooting galleries”, as they are nicknamed — to which addicts can come for free needles, for medical support and even for companionship.
There is no evidence that it decreases crime, but it might at least help to prevent the spread of hepatitis and Aids. And it brings one of the most marginalised groups into touch with social services, often for the first time.

The idea has the support of senior police officers, including Andy Hayman, the chair of the Association of Chief Police Officers Drugs Committee. David Cameron, the Conservative leader, had declared back in 2006 that his party would not rule it out.

With any addiction it simple, You are trapped in a cycle of fast diminishing returns untill there are none left at all. You chase that first feeling like you chase the first sweet memories of childhood peace if you ever had any. But you can never, NEVER recapture it.

You can go only onwards and downwards into sad isolation.

Soon you need your first shot just to make you brush your teeth in the morning.

Drugs including booze promise freedom, but they imprison you in compulsion.
Thats COMPULSION!

You set out open-armed to experience. You end with your whole life narrowed down to one repetitive experience.

The entire world is focused on to a needle point. You feed like a vampire on your own veins. But every time you shoot up, you are shooting up your own sadness and self hatred.

You only crave for release.

No one can give up until they reach this point.
NO ONE!


It is no use clapping some offender into prison at vast tax payers expense.

But to supply the addict with drugs is to force the end game. You can’t maunder on for decades with heroin or crack or cocaine. You go down fast. Their are no old junkies.

You either die of an overdose. or you are brought to your knees. And it is only from your knees that you can beg for help.

This is when the State should step in, offering withdrawal programmes and counselling, paid for with the money that it has saved from policing the drugs industry.

And there is also Narcotics Anonymous, a true model of democracy, with a network extending throughout Britain. It asks for no fees, no leadership, no dues. No one forces you to join. You can walk out if you like. But people go because they want to go. They go for support.

That is why, in my opinion if you have compassion for the drug addict, you should give him a bit more crack.

GREAT YOUR FINALLY CLEAN

When an alcoholic stops drinking, OR AN ADDICT OF ANY DESCRIPTION STOPPS USING it’s cause for rejoicing.
Unfortunately, sobriety OR YOUR NEW CLEAN LIFE is not guaranteed to last. It takes hard work and commitment and a keen eye for dangers.
One danger to the non-using addict a set of habits and attitudes that take the joy out of life for the addict and those around him or her. Those habits often precede a relapse into using , even if the addict has been sober or clean for years.
Here are some signs that will help you recognize the dangers of using , and some suggestions on how to cope with it.

Warning Signs

During their drinking / using years, alcoholics/addicts develop many abnormal attitudes and behaviors, which come with them into sobriety.

Acting self-important, either by “having all the answers,” or playing “poor me.”

making harsh judgments of oneself and others.

being impatient or pursuing whims.

blaming others for shortcomings one suspects in oneself.

being dishonest, usually beginning with little things.

impulsive behavior which ignores what’s best for oneself and others.

inability to make decisions.

mood swings, trouble with expressing emotions, feeling unsatisfied.

detachment, self-absorption, boredom, distraction or disorganization.

nostalgia for the drinking/using life.

fantasizing, daydreaming and wishful thinking or euphoria.

.
Cure

Talk to your sponsor, key worker, or someone you love and more importanly trust to be honest with you, go to meetings, or your place of support where others are recovering also, meditation, and relaxation can help, just the simple act of doing something that is good to your self can go a long way, for those who are spiritual tune in to your higher Power and whatever you do don’t USE as this too shall pass.

Is the credit crunch a new kind of breakfast cereal?

Legendary investor Sir John Templeton said that the four most dangerous words are “it’s different this time”.

Sadly, history shows that each time these words are uttered, it turns out that what seemed to be an economic miracle was yet again a bubble fed by a seemingly insatiable appetite for debt. The international Monetary Fund recently said that the UK housing bubble looks even more overvalued than the US one, and that the world risks a “severe global downturn” as a result of the credit crunch.

When credit bubbles burst, the primary asset, this time housing, tends to fall in value by between 50% and 90%.

Japan began its own descent into the bust in 1989, and despite interest rates at zero, low unemployment, little room to build and a population of inveterate savers, it has fallen well into that range of price drops in both shares and housing.

The technology stock bubble that bust in 2000 saw falls of around 80%. The Wall Street Crash in the 1930s saw stocks fall by 89%.

The South Seas and Mississippi bubbles, the Canal Stocks and Railroad bubbles, and the Tulip Bubble itself all savaged their investors with falls of such magnitude.

It appears that every third generation must relearn the lesson that debt makes a treacherous friend.

When Satyajit Das, an expert of 30 years who designed many modern derivatives, was asked whether the credit crunch was now in its third inning, he laughed and said:

“We’re actually still in the middle of the national anthem in a game destined to go into extra innings.”

oh deaR

DEPRESSION

Now the banks are forcing everyone to remortgage at a higher rate and demanding large deposits.Im thinking this is going to be far, far worse than the housing recession of 1990-92. Fuelled by irresponsible bank lending, UK house prices nearly tripled in the decade to 2007 - a more lunatic rise even than in America. British prices have been running at nearly eight times average earnings against a historic average of 3.5. This was never going to be sustainable.

But right at the moment the bubble burst, in August 2007, a combination of related events conspired to turn this boom into an epic bust that is likely to consume the British economy and lead to a depression. You may think the credit crisis is over, but the real crisis is just beginning.

What can the government do? Well, Gordon Brown thought he could revive the market by in effect handing £50bn of public money to the banks through the Special Liquidity Scheme and by leaning on the Bank of England to cut interest rates. Not so. The banks took the £50bn in Treasury swaps in April and promptly put mortgage rates up even further.

Then in May, Mervyn King, the governor of the Bank of England, announced that there were likely to be no more cuts in interest rates this year because of rising inflation.

Tommorow we will see? but Im not optimistic.

This caused apoplexy in No 10. Brown wanted King to emulate Ben Bernanke of the US Federal Reserve, who slashed rates from more than 5.25 to just 2 per cent in eight months. But King stood his ground, and is right to do so. As anyone who goes to the shops knows only too well, the cost of living is rising faster than at any time in the past two decades. Cutting interest rates now could start 1970s-style hyperinflation.

There has been much debate about the causes of the recent global inflation in commodities, but in the end, in the circular world of economics, it all comes back to housing. It was the attempt by the Federal Reserve to revive the US housing market that ignited the current commodities boom. Its that simple.

It hoped that slashing interest rates below inflation would encourage people to put their money back into houses. It didn't.

Instead, the big investment houses, the pension funds and thousands of in dividuals ploughed their cash into oil, food - anything that looked as if it might become scarce. Roughly 60 per cent of the recent increase in the cost of oil is down to speculation. Yes speculation! Oil Futures etc !

In the US, cutting interest rates has actually made house prices fall faster. Pyramid of credit
The recent house-price boom in Britain has also been fuelled by immigration, much of it from Poland. With the British economy weakening and the pound falling in value, however, many eastern European migrants are returning home. There is still a shortage of houses in Britain, but we are about to find that the shortage is not as great as we thought.
Are falling house prices a bad thing? All things being equal, a return to sanity in the housing market is good for everyone, even estate agents. But we are facing a serious economic dis location here, not just a correction.

It was brought about by the astonishing short-sightedness of central bankers and politicians in Britain and the US who kept interest rates artificially low for more than a decade. A huge inverted pyramid of credit was built on top of the expectation of yields from British and US mortgages. Believing that house prices would rise for ever, and that even if they faltered the Bank of England would cut interest rates to reinflate the bubble, the banks began to lose any sense of financial risk, and started to relax credit standards and lend irresponsibly.

Private-equity firms were allowed to borrow huge multiples of their real assets. Banks started to hide their lending in off-balance-sheet devices such as structured investment vehicles.

In Britain, homeowners are seeing the value of their properties fall at about £2,000 a month at the same time as the cost of living is rising and their wages and salaries are stagnant. Deluded by house prices, British consumers borrowed and spent like there was no tomorrow.

Unfortunately, tomorrow has arrived and consumers are sitting on £1.4trn of debt, the highest for any country in the world. People can no longer defer their loans by remortgaging their properties, and the banks are demanding cash upfront.

In the past two months, many consumers have taken out huge one-off credit-card loans, which explains the paradox of recent unsecured lending going up as spending goes down.

Shelter has reported that at least a million people are putting mortgage payments on their credit cards - the height of economic madness.

The government is already overdrawn apparently and unable to spend its way out of impending recession.

The party is OVER and OUT!

Nothing sedates rationality like large doses of effortless money. After a heady experience of that kind, normally sensible behaviour drift into behaviour akin to that of Cinderella at the ball. They know that overstaying the festivities...will eventually bring on pumpkins and mice. But they nevertheless hate to miss a single minute of what is a helluva party. Therefore, the giddy participants all plan to leave just seconds before midnight. There's a problem, though: They are dancing in a room in which the clocks have no hands."...plus, there is only one door, and if everybody tries to leave at once, then they are going to bring the whole room down on the lot of them.