BANGOR, Maine — Two local churches have joined forces to offer Celebrate Recovery, a Christ-centered recovery program.

Columbia Street Baptist Church and New Hope Church a year ago began offering the Celebrate Recovery program on Monday nights at the Baptist church in downtown Bangor. New Hope meets at Penobscot Christian School on outer Ohio Street.

Celebrate Recovery is open to all believers struggling with “hurts, habits and hangups,” according to Aric Rice, who heads the leadership team.

Rice, who attends New Hope, is a mental health counselor in Bangor.

“Those hurts, habits and hangups often are a symptom of something that has happened in your life and has left a hole in it,” he said earlier this week. “Whatever you are trying to stuff into life to fill that hole — whether it’s drugs, alcohol, food or sex — it’s never enough. In my experience. Nothing can fill that hole but God.”

Celebrate Recovery was created about 20 years ago by the Rev. Rick Warren, head of Saddleback Church headquartered in Lake Forest, Calif.

Warren is best known for his best-selling book, “The Purpose-Driven Life.”

“Most people are familiar with the classic 12-step program of [Alcoholics Anonymous] and other groups,” Warren said on the program’s website. “While undoubtedly many lives have been helped through the 12 steps, I’ve always been uncomfortable with that program’s vagueness about the nature of God, the saving power of Jesus Christ, and the ministry of the Holy Spirit.

“So, I began an intense study of the Scriptures to discover what God had to say about ‘recovery,’” he continued. “To my amazement, I found the principles of recovery, and even their logical order, given by Christ in his most famous message, the Sermon on the Mount.”

The Beautitudes are laid out in Matthew 5-7.

Many of the 40 to 60 people who participate in the program, like team leader Tracy, who asked that just her first name be used, have taken part in and continue to attend 12-step programs.

“OA worked for me at the time and it was a great stepping stone,” she said. “I had a connection with people [in that group] but in Celebrate Recovery, I have a different type of connection, a deeper connection because we all have faith in the same savior, the same creator and we are all striving to be more like him.

“Knowing now who God is,” she continued, “it’s like the ultimate peace. There is only one way, one answer and that is Jesus Christ.”

In addition to the Monday meetings, groups divided by gender meet on Tuesday nights and use workbooks to go through the 12 steps, turning to the Bible often for guidance and inspiration.

In addition to Bangor, Celebrate Recovery groups meet at churches in Bath, Houlton, Lamoine, Lewiston and Portland, according to information at www.celebraterecovery.com.

For information about the Bangor group, call 745-5521.

Celebrate Recovery’s Eight Principles

Incorporating the 12 steps and based on the Beatitudes

• Step 2: Earnestly believe that God exists, that I matter to Him and that He has the power to help me recover.

  “Happy are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.”

• Step 3: Consciously choose to commit all my life and will to Christ’s care and control.

  “Happy are the meek.”

• Steps 4 and 5: Openly examine and confess my faults to myself, to God, and to someone I trust.

  “Happy are the pure in heart.”

• Steps 6 and 7: Voluntarily submit to any and all changes God wants to make in my life and humbly ask Him to remove my character defects.

  “Happy are those whose greatest desire is to do what God requires.”

• Steps 8 and 9: Evaluate all my relationships. Offer forgiveness to those who have hurt me and make amends for harm I’ve done to others when possible, except when to do so would harm them or others.

  “Happy are the merciful.” and “Happy are the peacemakers”

• Steps 10 and 11: Reserve a time with God for self-examination, Bible reading and prayer in order to know God and His will for my life and to gain the power to follow His will.
• Step 12: Yield myself to God to be used to bring this good news to others, both by my example and my words.

  “Happy are those who are persecuted because they do what God requires.”

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The changes in behavior that come about under the influence of alcohol, such as difficulty controlling muscles for walking and talking, may be influenced by immune cells in the brain, according to a new study from Australia published in the British Journal of Pharmacology this month.

Lead author Dr Mark Hutchinson, Australia Research Council (ARC) Research Fellow with the School of Medical Sciences at the University of Adelaide, told the press he and his colleagues had uncovered new evidence that immune responses in the brain were involved in behavioral responses to alcohol.

“Alcohol is consumed annually by two billion people world-wide with its abuse posing a significant health and social problem,” said Hutchinson, “Over 76 million people are diagnosed with an alcohol abuse disorder.”

“It’s amazing to think that despite 10,000 years of using alcohol, and several decades of investigation into the way that alcohol affects the nerve cells in our brain, we are still trying to figure out exactly how it works,” he noted.

For their study, Hutchinson and colleagues gave laboratory mice a single shot of alcohol and examined what happened to the animals’ behavior when they blocked their toll-like receptors. Specifically they blocked toll-like receptor 4 (TLR4) because, as they write in their introduction:

” Emerging evidence implicates a role for toll-like receptor 4 (TLR4) in the central nervous system effects of alcohol. “

Toll-like receptors activate the immune system when they encounter foreign substances, such as molecules derived from microorganisms (remember alcohol is made by yeast), breaching certain barriers to and inside the body, such as the skin and the gut wall.

The researchers were interested in finding out if blocking a particular pathway that was responsible for “TLR4-MyD88- dependent signalling” would interfere with the acute behavioural actions of alcohol. They also wanted to find out if alcohol could trigger certain pathways downstream of TLR4.

They used two ways to block the receptors: chemically, using drugs to inhibit TLR4 signalling, and genetically, by engineering mice with inactivated genes that code for the receptor.

They found that both methods significantly reduced the effect of alcohol and decreased the recovery time compared to controls. (To establish this they measured both sedation and motor impairment, the latter using tests called “loss of righting reflex, LORR, and rotarod).

Hutchinson said these findings show that blocking this part of the immune system, either genetically or with drugs, reduced the behavioral effects of alcohol.

He said he believes they would find similar results with humans and that they would add to our understanding of how alcohol affects us, “as it is both an immunological and neuronal response”.

“Such a shift in mindset has significant implications for identifying individuals who may have bad outcomes after consuming alcohol, and it could lead to a way of detecting people who are at greater risk of developing brain damage after long-term drinking,” he said, explaining that drugs targeting TLR4 could help treat alcohol addiction and overdoses.

Written by Catharine Paddock
Copyright: Medical News Today
Not to be reproduced without permission of Medical News Today

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The Tulsa Beacon, a right wing newspaper that makes the New York Post look like The New York Times, published a scathing indictment of Jim Roth (pictured), a recent appointee to the Oklahoma State Election Board.

Roth was recently appointed by Oklahoma governor Mary Fallin, who campaigned on her Christian values, according to the Beacon. The paper claims in an editorial that Fallin betrayed her campaign promises by appointing Roth, who they call an “outspoken homosexual.”

“The election board needs people of integrity, not those who live a perverted lifestyle, whether it be homosexuality or heterosexual promiscuity, alcoholism, drug addiction, or a host of other personal problems,” reads the editorial. “Undoubtedly, there are homosexuals who serve in state government. But someone who is open about his perverted lifestyle should not be appointed to a position of honor and integrity by a governor who wants to govern by biblical principles. Roth will serve immediately on an interim basis but his four-year post is subject to approval by the Oklahoma Senate. They should send him packing.”

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Alcohol is known to worsen the effects of disease, resulting in longer recovery period after trauma, injury or burns. It is also known to impair the anti-viral immune response, especially in the liver, including response against Hepatitis C (HCV) and HIV. New research published in BioMed Central’s open access journal BMC Immunology shows that alcohol modulates the anti-viral and inflammatory functions of monocytes and that prolonged alcohol consumption has a double negative effect of reducing the anti-viral effect of Type 1 interferon (IFN) whilst increasing inflammation via the pro-inflammatory cytokine TNFα.

Researchers from the University of Massachusetts Medical School looked at the effect of alcohol on monocytes collected from the blood of healthy volunteers. The group, led by Prof Gyongyi Szabo, focussed specifically on two disease related pathways – the first (Toll-like receptor 8 – TLR8) stimulated by single strand RNA viral attack and the second (TLR4) is involved in recognising bacteria.

Their results showed that, as expected, activation of these pathways resulted in an increase in the levels of the anti-viral cytokine IFN, however this was reduced by treatment with alcohol equivalent to four or five drinks a day for seven days. Similarly stimulation of these pathways resulted in an increase in the levels of the pro-inflammatory cytokine TNFα. However, while a single treatment with alcohol decreased the amount of TNFα, prolonged treatment increased levels of inflammation.

Prof Szabo said, “Alcohol has a profound effect of inhibiting IFN production in monocytes regardless of whether the danger signal is intracellular (TLR8) or surface-derived (TLR4). Such a reduction would impair the body’s ability to fight off infection. Additionally, the fact that Type I IFN production is depressed despite increased levels of the pro-inflammatory cytokine, TNFα, due to chronic alcohol exposure suggests that prolonged alcohol must change the immune balance of monocyte activation and impair host response to single-stranded virus infection like hepatitis C.”

More information: Inhibition of TLR8- and TLR4-induced Type I IFN induction by alcohol is different from its effects on inflammatory cytokine production in monocytes, Maoyin Pang, Shashi Bala, Karen Kodys, Donna Catalano and Gyongyi Szabo, BMC Immunology (in press)

Provided by BioMed Central (news : web)

For more than 100 years, alcoholism has been viewed as a disease; however, this framing has created barriers to diagnosing, treating and even understanding the condition, one psychologist argues.

“By adhering so strictly to the disease model…I think that we miss the opportunity to frame alcoholism in ways that could help some people,” said Lance Brendan Young, a postdoctoral research fellow with the Department of Veterans Affairs’ Center for Comprehensive Access & Delivery Research and Evaluation in Iowa City, Iowa.

Thinking of the condition in as a disease diminishes the moral stigma of it. However, this framing introduces the stigma of disease, Young said.

“It introduces the stigma of abnormality — of being permanently deviant in body and mind,” Young said.

While the disease model may be useful for treating people who consider themselves alcoholics, it may be harmful to people trying to determine whether their drinking is problematic, Young said. To be diagnosed with alcoholism means a person has to give up their identity as a “normal” person, and take on the identity of someone with a disease, Young said.

“Individuals are faced with this identity-threatening choice they have to make,” Young said. As a consequence, some people change their behavior so they can continue to think of themselves as normal. For instance, a person might believe “alcoholics” only drink alone, so he will try to get his friends to go drinking with him frequently. This way, he can continue consume alcohol excessively without needing to believe he is an “alcoholic,” or seeking treatment.

Young said he is not advocating eliminating the disease model, but hopes instead to move beyond it. The medical community should find away to frame the condition so it is less threatening to people’s identify, perhaps by using different words to describe it, Young said. And more research should investigate social and cultural influences on alcoholism, rather than focusing on biological causes of it, he argued.

Young published his views in the September issue of the journal Culture & Psychology.

Who is an “alcoholic?”

Alcoholism is a physical addiction to alcohol in which people continue to drink even though the drinking causes physical, mental and social problems, including problems with job responsibilities and relationships, according to the National Institutes of Health. As is the case with other addictions, alcoholism is considered a disease by many in the medical community, including the American Medical Association.

A drawback to framing alcoholism as a disease is that we tend to think of diseases as something that needs to be diagnosed by a professional, Young said. However, physicians often only meet with patients for a short time and cannot possibility have the same insight into an individual’s habits as she herself.

“I know of addicts who have been able to get a professional to tell them they are not addicted,” and then use that as justification to continue their excessive drinking, Young said.

The disease model also gives the false impression that alcoholism is solely a biological disorder, Young said, leading some researchers tend to adopt a narrow view, focusing on particular chemicals or brain cells that might be involved.

“We tend to look at smaller and smaller parts of the human body, and the human mind and the human brain,” to find the cause of something, Young said. In doing so, we lose sight of the bigger picture, including social and cultural influences that may play a role in alcoholism development. Factors including who you spend time with, how many liquor stores are near you and your religious affiliation all are linked with how much you drink, Young said.

Solutions

Young said he prefers to use the word “allergy” to describe alcoholism.

“It is less threatening to consider the idea that one might have an allergy than to consider the idea that one might be permanently diseased,” Young said.

“With alcoholism, there’s a dichotomy — you either are [an alcoholic] or you’re not. And that sort of marks you as an individual — you’re either normal or you’re deviant.” Young said. “With allergies, the deviance is much less significant.”

In addition, drinkers should not feel they have to leave their diagnosis to a physician. People should give weight to their own experiences, including what they perceive their drinking is doing to their lives, Young said.

Other experts point out that the problem of disease stigmatization or identity crisis is not unique to alcoholism.

“It really doesn’t matter what illness you have; people have a sense of loss,” said Dr. Ihsan Salloum, chief of the Division of Alcohol and Drug abuse at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine; who also called the Young’s article “more philosophical than scientific.”

The disease model has helped us understand alcoholism and develop drugs for the condition, Salloum said.

However, Salloum agreed there is a need to take into account subjectivity when diagnosing and treating the condition.

“When somebody is suffering, it’s not only the organ that’s suffering, it’s the whole person,” Salloum said.

If doctors want to help patients accept their diagnosis as an alcoholic, they should work to understand how the patient is processing what’s happening to him or her, Salloum said.

Pass it on: Viewing alcoholism as a disease may create problems in terms of diagnosing, treating and understanding the condition.

This story was provided by MyHealthNewsDaily, a sister site to LivScience. Follow MyHealthNewsDaily staff writer Rachael Rettner on Twitter @RachaelRettner. Find us on Facebook.

OSWEGO – The Oswego County Legislature recently proclaimed September as Alcohol and Drug Addiction Recovery Month with a presentation to the Oswego County Division of Mental Hygiene. All county residents are encouraged to embrace this year’s theme, “Join the Voices for Recovery: Recovery Benefits Everyone.”

More than 13,000 Oswego County residents, an estimated 12.9 percent, have a chemical dependence service need. Education is essential to prevention, overcoming misconceptions, and achieving long-term recovery. Treatment and recovery improve a community’s welfare; provide a renewed outlook on life for those who struggle with substance use disorders and gambling addictions, and offer hope and encouragement to their families and friends.

The Oswego County Division of Mental Hygiene works throughout the county to increase public awareness of substance abuse and gambling addiction issues and recognize the achievements of those in recovery. Dedicated local agencies such as the County of Oswego Council of Alcoholism and Addictions, Farnham Family Services, Harbor Lights, and OCO Arbor House provide support to individuals with addictions as well as their families and reach out to those in need of support. Service providers are also able to offer community outreach and prevention presentations to schools, churches, community groups and organizations.

If you or someone you know is affected by addiction, or if you would like to schedule a prevention presentation, contact one of the following community organizations:

• Oswego County Division of Mental Hygiene: 315/963-5361

• County of Oswego Council on Alcohol and Addictions (COCOAA): 315/342-2370

• Farnham Family Services: 315/342-4489

• Harbor Lights: 315/963-0777

Additional resources that also offer services include:

• NYS Hope Help-Line: 1-877-8-HOPENY (1-877-846-7369)

• Alcoholics Anonymous: www.aa.org

• Al-Anon Family Groups: www.al-anon.org

• Alateen: www.alateen.org

For more information, contact the Oswego County Division of Mental Hygiene at 315/963-5361, or visit the department’s Web site at http://www.oswegocounty.com/dss/mental.html.