CCS Home | Friday, December 27, 2024
CCS Home | Friday, December 27, 2024
The father of a southern Alberta teen is calling for a ban on the sale of electronic cigarettes to minors as his son recovers from burns, broken teeth and other injuries after an e-cigarette blew up in his face. Perry Greer says his son Ty, 16, was using the device in a car last week in Lethbridge when the e-cigarette exploded. "It lit my kid's face on fire, busted two teeth out," Greer said Wednesday. "It burned the back of his throat, burned his tongue very badly. If he wasn't wearing glasses, he possibly could have lost his eyes." Greer said the family raced Ty to hospital. He remembers hugging his son as he writhed in agony waiting for a dose of morphine to kick in.
When he turned seven, Tristan Parkes decided he would spend his birthday money buying groceries for the local food bank. The gesture came out of the blue for his parents, but his mom drove him to the grocery store and let him spend half, thinking the first grader may want to keep the remaining $75.
The son of a power engineer and a stay-at-home mom, Tristan had deep blue eyes and blond hair, then trimmed down to a buzz cut. He was goofy with a knack for deadpan humour. And he was timid. In the first grade, he continued riding his bicycle with training wheels because he was afraid of falling off.
Kathy Mitchell wants to share something with you. She’s not proud of it, and it’s not a behavior she hopes you’ll emulate. It’s just the truth: As a teen, Kathy drank alcohol while pregnant with her daughter, Karli. It was a perilous if unwitting mistake that has defined both of their lives.
Karli is now 43 but is the developmental age of a first-grader. In the home she shares with her mother and stepfather, she collects dolls and purses, and pores over Hello Kitty coloring and sticker books. Karli has fetal alcohol syndrome, the result of alcohol exposure in utero.
TORONTO – A 9-year-old boy from the Greater Toronto Area is being called a “hero” after he phoned 911 to tell police his mother was allegedly drinking and driving with him in the car.
“The boy is a hero, that’s for sure,” said York police Const. Andy Pattenden. “It’s an unbelievable situation where he has the wherewithal to make that call to 911 and stop basically an emergency or a crime in process even though it’s his mother.” Police say they initially received a call Wednesday just before 4:30 p.m. from a mobile phone but did not make contact with the caller. When the dispatcher phoned back they spoke with a boy who said he was in a van with his mother who was drinking behind the wheel.
In the 1930s a film called “Reefer Madness” warned viewers about the dangers of marijuana.
The film enjoyed an ironic renaissance in the 70s as an unintentional satire of the drug fears of uptight adults—at least so said advocates of looser drug laws. Well, it seems that those advocates are winning the cultural debate these days, and opponents have little more credibility than “Reefer Madness.” Recreational and medicinal marijuana are now legal in Alaska, Colorado, Oregon, Washington and the District of Columbia. And twenty-two states have laws decriminalizing or legalizing medical marijuana.
The Edmonton Police Service is cautioning the public regarding a new trend involving the use of electronic cigarettes for marijuana use by youth.
The service’s School Resource Officers are encountering increases in the use of marijuana oil by some students, who are using E-cigarettes to inhale the potent marijuana-based derivative. The E-cigarettes do not produce any discernible marijuana odour. Five incidents have been reported or discovered by School Resource Officers over the last two weeks; and many more where electronic cigarettes are being found on students.
Nearly 1 in 10 high school seniors in U.S. report extreme binge drinking: Almost one in 10 U.S. high school seniors have engaged in recent extreme binge drinking - downing at least 10 drinks at a rate that barely budged over six years, according to a government-funded report. Less severe binge drinking, consuming 5 or more drinks in a row, has mostly declined in recent years among teens. But for high school seniors, the 2011 rate for 10 drinks in a row - 9.6 per cent - was down only slightly from 2005.
The most convincing theory on how addictive thinking develops was presented in a 1983 article by Dr. David Sedlak. Sedlak describes addictive thinking as a person’s inability to make consistently healthy decisions in his or her own behalf. He stresses that this unique thinking disorder does not affect other kinds of reasoning. Thus, a person who develops a thinking disorder may be intelligent, intuitive, persuasive, and capable of valid philosophical and scientific reasoning.
The peculiarity of addictive thinking is the inability to reason with oneself. This can apply to various emotional and behavioral problems, but is invariably found in addiction: alcoholism, other drug addiction, compulsive gambling, eating disorders, nicotine addiction and codependency.
How does this inability to reason with oneself develop? First, a person must have adequate facts about reality. A person who does not know the damage alcohol or other drugs can do cannot reason correctly about their use. Second, a person must have certain values and principles as grounds for making choices. People develop values and principles from their culture as well as from their home. For instance, a young man growing up with family or cultural values that say that a man proves his masculinity by being able to hold his liquor may be expected to drink excessively. Failure to live up to these expectations can generate deep disappointment. Third, the person must develop a healthy and undistorted self-concept. Small children feel extremely insecure and threatened in a huge and overwhelming world. A major source of their security is reliance on adults, primarily parents. If parents make bad judgment calls and behavioral choices the child is unable to make the connection that the parent’s choice was irrational, but rather that they are unable to judge things correctly. They believe the world to be a fair, just and rational place, and when parents demand thing of young children, which they are incapable of doing, it reinforces the child’s thought that he is inadequate. On the other hand, when parents do too much for the child, which they could do for themselves, the feeling of inadequacy is reinforced in the child’s mind. Because of this feeling of inadequacy, the child could then be prone to sub- stance abuse in order to feel “normal”.
Denial, Rationalization, and Projection - The three most common elements in addictive thinking are (1) denial, (2) rationalization, and (3) projection. Although denial is thought of as lying about something, the denial of an addictive thinker is neither conscious nor willful. The addict may react according to their unconscious perceptions. If their perceptions were valid, their behavior would be perfectly understandable. Unless we can show them that their perception is faulty, we cannot expect their reactions and behavior to change. In the case of an addicted person, what is so terrifying is that awareness of being an alcoholic or a drug addict is beyond acceptance. Until denial is overcome, addicts are not lying when they say they aren’t dependent on chemicals. They are truly unaware of their dependency.
Rationalization and projection serve at least two main functions: (1) they reinforce denial, and (2) they preserve the status quo. Rationalization means providing “good” or plausible reasons instead of true reasons. A fairly reliable rule of thumb is that when people offer more than one reason for doing something, they are probably rationalizing. Usually the true reason for any action is a single one. Rationalizing also preserves the status quo, making the addict feel it is acceptable not to make necessary changes. This characteristic of addictive thinking can operate long after an addict overcomes denial and becomes abstinent.
Projection means placing the blame on others for things we are really responsible for ourselves. Blaming someone else seems to relieve an addict from the responsibility of making changes: “As long as you do this to me, you cannot expect me to change.” Since the others are not likely to change, the drinking and other drug use can continue. These three major elements of addictive thinking, denial, rationalization and projection, must be addressed at every stage of recovery. The progressive elimination of these distortions of reality allows for improvement in recovery.
