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Quotes about Alcoholics from the world's top natural health / natural living authors

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"This is why, for instance, alcoholism is a treatable but not curable disease. alcoholics who no longer drink properly refer to themselves as alcoholics in recovery, rather than ex-alcoholics, even if they have been sober for decades. If the alcoholic begins to drink again, the old brain circuits come back to life very quickly, and they usually become compulsive drinkers soon after that. Likewise, people who have overcome obesity are really "recovering" obese people who have the potential to fall back into their old patterns again unless they carefully manage their eating behaviors." - Michael T. Murray and Michael R. Lyon, Hunger Free Forever: The New Science of Appetite Control (Get the book.)

"Alcoholics Anonymous This wonderful organization has helped multitudes of alcoholics stay sober by use of a 12 step program based on Bible principles. I have known several severe alcoholics who ceased alcohol use after inviting Jesus Christ to become their personal savior. This same approach has worked well in helping persons with drug abuse(Narcotics Anonymous) and compulsive gambling(Gamblers Anonymous). Several of my patients also were able to give up heavy use of cigarettes when Christ entered their lives. Overweight There are more overweight people in the USA than in other nations." - James A. Howenstine, A Physician's Guide to Natural Health Products That Work (Get the book.)

"Alcohol is by far the most commonly abused depressant in America, accounting for 18 million alcoholics. Many of these alcoholics have severe deficits of dopamine, as do many people with ADHD. Other depressants that are often abused by people with ADHD are heroin, pharmaceutical painkillers such as Vicodin, and anti-anxiety drugs such as Valium and Xanax. Self-medication by ADHD adults appears to be increasing in incidence of late, because controlled pharmaceutical substances are now easier than ever to acquire, due to their availability on the Internet." - Kenneth Bock, Healing the New Childhood Epidemics: Autism, ADHD, Asthma, and Allergies: The Groundbreaking Program for the 4-A Disorders (Get the book.)

"Alcoholics who no longer drink properly refer to themselves as alcoholics in recovery, rather than ex-alcoholics, even if they have been sober for decades. If the alcoholic begins to drink again, the old brain circuits come back to life very quickly, and they usually become compulsive drinkers soon after that. Likewise, people who have overcome obesity are really "recovering" obese people who have the potential to fall back into their old patterns again unless they carefully manage their eating behaviors." - Michael T. Murray and Michael R. Lyon, Hunger Free Forever: The New Science of Appetite Control (Get the book.)

"She wondered what the determining factor was until one day she attended an alcoholics Anonymous meeting with a friend and realized that cooked food was addictive in much the same way that alcohol is. Thus she began a 12-step support program to get people off cooked food, which worked wonderfully for nearly all her students. Her complete program is found in the book 12 Steps to Raw Foods: How to End Your Addiction to Cooked Food. (Note: Most of the steps do not correspond to the ones found in the typical 12-step programs, like alcoholics Anonymous." - Susan E. Schenck, The Live Food Factor: The Comprehensive Guide to the Ultimate Diet for Body, Mind, Spirit & Planet (Get the book.)

"A groundbreaking study in 1990 revealed, for instance, that a lot of alcoholics have a gene variation (the D2R2 allele) that robs their reward center of dopamine receptors, lowering levels of the neurotransmitter. Presence of the D2R2 allele doesn't guarantee you'll end up as an addict, but it's more likely. While 25 percent of the general population has the variation, in one study researchers found it in 70 percent of alcoholics who had cirrhosis—presumably the most addicted, since they continued drinking in the face of life-threatening liver damage." - John J. Ratey, MD, Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain (Get the book.)

"Virtually all recovering alcoholics become carboholics. One study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition found that alcoholics don't consume that much sugar until they withdraw from alcohol. And another study recently showed that alcoholics favor high-sugar beverages at three times the rate of nonalcoholics. Many of my patients who are "carboholics" have a family history of alcoholism. "I don't drink alcohol, Dr. Hoffman. We've had enough of that in our family." Yet, they are addicted to sugar." - Ronald L. Hoffman, M.D., Intelligent Medicine: A Guide to Optimizing Health and Preventing Illness for the Baby-Boomer Generation (Get the book.)

"Every one of the substances that she uses are capsules because we long ago found out that alcoholics have very little ability to break down hard-pressed pills. Their pancreas produces fewer enzymes Dr. Larson's patients also receive melatonin, so that they can sleep, as well as a substance called GABA (gamma amino butyric acid), which is how the benzodiazepines like Librium and Valium work. They push GABA into the brain and block the re-uptake." - Gary Null and Amy McDonald, The Food-Mood Connection: Nutrition-based and Environmental Approaches to Mental Health and Physical Wellbeing (Get the book.)

"Some 80 percent of the alcoholics were able to control their cravings and stay off alcohol. The training also seemed to affect their blood chemistry, increasing their levels of beta-endorphin, another "feelgood" brain chemical. Biofeedback, combined with work on their self-image, eventually eliminated much of their dysfunctional behavior and transformed them into better people.54 Joe Kamiya, a psychologist at the University of Chicago, demonstrated the amazing specificity of brain-wave biofeedback through some remarkable brain research." - Lynne McTaggart, The Intention Experiment: Using Your Thoughts to Change Your Life and the World (Get the book.) "He divided the group randomly and had members of the Albuquerque Faith Initiative pray for the alcoholics each day for six months. Half of the participants (some from the treatment group and some from the controls) knew they were being prayed for by family members. At the end of the six months, Scott discovered that those in both groups whose relatives and friends were praying for them were drinking more heavily than the others. Prayer from those who supposedly had the patients' best interests at heart was having the opposite effect. Scott came up with an interesting interpretation." - Lynne McTaggart, The Intention Experiment: Using Your Thoughts to Change Your Life and the World (Get the book.) "The across-the-board negative effect of prayer by relatives may reflect their complicated, unconscious feelings toward alcoholics. Although consciously they might wish for their loved ones to recover, they might actually wish for them to carry on drinking, if the person praying is a fellow drinker and does not wish to lose a drinking buddy. Or perhaps the boorish, selfish behavior of an alcoholic has so hurt the relatives that they unconsciously wish for the alcoholic to die." - Lynne McTaggart, The Intention Experiment: Using Your Thoughts to Change Your Life and the World (Get the book.)

"In addition, 5 of the 14 mothers for whom Safer had information had been in jail, and three others were alcoholics. Half of the fathers had been in prison, and three were alcoholics. Safer found that the children's fuU-siblings were diagnosed with ADHD at a significantly higher rate than their half-sibhngs (based on retrospective, non-blinded "trained professional" diagnoses of 9/19 full-sibs, vs. 2/22 half-sibs). However, he did not state how much time the 17 children lived together with their siblings (although he provided median ages at placement)." - Jay Joseph, The Missing Gene: Psychiatry, Heredity, and the Fruitless Search for Genes (Get the book.)

"The brains of alcoholics show structural changes as well as physiological impairment (reduced cerebral blood flow and altered electrical brain waves). These changes can also be linked to nutritional deficits because people who are drinking heavily obtain most of their calories from nutrition-depleted beer and liquor. There is evidence that if people stop drinking and commit to a rehabilitation program, they can recover from some if not all of the impairment caused by their drinking." - Peter J. Whitehouse and Daniel George, The Myth of Alzheimer's: What You Aren't Being Told About Today's Most Dreaded Diagnosis (Get the book.)

"For instance, acute stress gastritis is caused by a severe illness or injury; chronic erosive gastritis is caused by irritants introduced to the stomach and is common among alcoholics; and viral, fungal, or bacterial gastritis is caused by a viral, fungal, or bacterial infection. Other causes of gastritis include bile reflux from the intestine and stress. Each type of gastritis may be acute, occurring as a sudden attack, or chronic, developing gradually over a longer period of time." - Tom Bohager, Everything You Need to Know About Enzymes to Treat Everything from Digestive Problems and Allergies to Migraines and Arthritis (Get the book.)

"It's often the result of what's called a "crush injury"—the type of severe muscle damage you can get after being pinned in a car crash or crushed by a heavy object. alcoholics who've had severe delirium tremens (DTs) can also have this condition. Overexertion from such activities as marathon running or strenuous bodybuilding can also lead to this disorder. In essence, rhabdomyolysis can result from any injury, disease, or disorder that causes skeletal muscle destruction." - Joan Liebmann-Smith, Ph. D., and Jacqueline Nardi Egan, Body Signs: From Warning Signs to False Alarms...How to Be Your Own Diagnostic Detective (Get the book.)

"The phrase 'dry drunks' refers to what happens to alcoholics that start switching to sugar instead of getting on a diet in which all the simple sugars are eliminated." Dr. Abram Hoffer also believes in the nutritional approach: "The general regimen that orthomolecular medicine uses for alcohol addiction (as with depression, schizophrenia, and a number of other mental disorders) is to pay careful attention to nutrition and the use of the right supplements," he says. "The first order of business is to make sure that the individual's basic diet is optimal." - Gary Null and Amy McDonald, The Food-Mood Connection: Nutrition-based and Environmental Approaches to Mental Health and Physical Wellbeing (Get the book.)

"Many of these alcoholics have severe deficits of dopamine, as do many people with ADHD. Other depressants that are often abused by people with ADHD are heroin, pharmaceutical painkillers such as Vicodin, and anti-anxiety drugs such as Valium and Xanax. Self-medication by ADHD adults appears to be increasing in incidence of late, because controlled pharmaceutical substances are now easier than ever to acquire, due to their availability on the Internet." - Kenneth Bock, Healing the New Childhood Epidemics: Autism, ADHD, Asthma, and Allergies: The Groundbreaking Program for the 4-A Disorders (Get the book.) "In short, each new day gets a little easier, just as it generally does for recovering alcoholics or drug addicts. One problem with the GF/CF diet, though, is that it can trigger hypoglycemia if a child begins to eat too many carbohydrates, particularly sugar, as a substitute for gluten and casein foods. Parents often allow this to happen, because they feel bad that their children's diets have been limited. Parents often like to reward their kids with treats, but sweets are the wrong reward. Thus, kids on the GF/CF diet may need to also be on the anti-hypoglycemia diet, at the same time." - Kenneth Bock, Healing the New Childhood Epidemics: Autism, ADHD, Asthma, and Allergies: The Groundbreaking Program for the 4-A Disorders (Get the book.)

"Alcohol, even in small amounts, drains magnesium. alcoholics are woefully deficient. • Colas and other soft drinks high in phosphates inactivate magnesium. • Some parts of the United States, notably the Southeast, have low levels of magnesium in drinking water. Evidence suggests that magnesium-rich (hard) water may be the most bioavailable form of magnesium. Hard water areas have a lower heart attack rate than places where the water is soft. • Stress depletes the body of magnesium. Any kind of stress has this effect: overwork, too much exercise or physical activity (athletes take note!" - Stephen Sinatra, M.D. and James C., M.D. Roberts, Reverse Heart Disease Now: Stop Deadly Cardiovascular Plaque Before It's Too Late (Get the book.)

"The insights I'm referring to are the ones that make behavior change natural. alcoholics sometimes refer to them as "moments of clarity." The insights you should strive for are the ones that help you realize you're not powerless over food—insights that help you realize there are better, easier, and healthier ways to deal with your problems than seeking the escape that food has provided up until now. When I work directly with patients, I help the insights that lead to behavior change arrive more quickly then if my patients were on their own." - Roger Gould, Shrink Yourself: Break Free from Emotional Eating Forever (Get the book.)

"Even detoxification centers for alcoholics and drug addicts tend nowadays to switch their patients permanently to other psychoactive medications, never permitting them to experience a drug-free brain and mind. After careful consideration, Regina, her family, and I decided to continue with the somewhat risky endeavor of treating her as an outpatient in my private practice. Over a period of several months, Regina gradually began to find her drug-free self. For Regina it was like coming out of a coma that she'd mistaken for an awful version of reality." - Peter Breggin, Medication Madness: A Psychiatrist Exposes the Dangers of Mood-Altering Medications (Get the book.) "Panic disorder rarely surfaces for the first time in older patients like Ron whereas paniclike symptoms plague alcoholics as they go through varying degrees of withdrawal on a daily basis. The Xanax label and multiple publications warn about cross-addiction between Xanax and alcohol. The FDA-approved label makes a direct comparison between the effects of Xanax and alcohol." - Peter Breggin, Medication Madness: A Psychiatrist Exposes the Dangers of Mood-Altering Medications (Get the book.) "With good reason, most of us want to hold drug abusers and alcoholics responsible for their actions. We believe that they should have anticipated the potential negative consequences of using intoxicating agents and taken responsibility for themselves. Similarly, the law offers little or no relief to someone who knowingly drinks or takes illegal drugs, and then commits a crime. The law treats drunkenness as a voluntary, rather than involuntary, intoxication." - Peter Breggin, Medication Madness: A Psychiatrist Exposes the Dangers of Mood-Altering Medications (Get the book.)

"This deficiency has multiple causes, including the increase in magnesium excretion in response to and the anorexia, erratic eating habits, malabsorption (especially fat malabsorption), and diarrhea commonly found in alcoholics. Some procedures used in the treatment of severe alcoholics may exacerbate magnesium deficiency. For example, because zinc deficiency is well recognized as a complication of alcoholism, patients are often given high-dose zinc supplements. However, the administration of large amounts of zinc leads to an increase in the excretion of magnesium." - Mark Sircus, Transdermal Magnesium Therapy (Get the book.)

"Thiamin deficiency is common among alcoholics, who often have inadequate food intakes. Alcohol provides energy without providing many of the necessary nutrients. Alcohol also impairs the absorption of thiamin, while increasing excretion of thiamin. Enzymes present in raw fish and shellfish destroy thiamin. Also, tannins in tea and coffee can oxidize thiamin, reducing the availability of thiamin in the diet. Extreme thiamin Table 1-1 RDAs for the B vitamins are bold and the AIs are not bold." - Dr. Steve Blake, Vitamins and Minerals Demystified (Get the book.)

"A court date was set for four months down the road, and his lawyer and I worked out a treatment plan — each week he had to take two drug tests and attend a meeting at alcoholics Anonymous and one at Narcotics Anonymous. He knew he had to stay clean at least until his court appearance, but he started to crave cocaine. His lawyer told him he'd probably get the maximum sentence of three years in jail, and he desperately wanted help. Dealing with his cravings was our first order of business, and I told Rusty that exercise could have a huge impact." - John J. Ratey, MD, Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain (Get the book.)

"There are certain rote recommendations that I was aware of: tell them to go to alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous, to go to "90 in 90" (ninety meetings in ninety days), to stay away from the "people, places, and things" that might trigger the desire to use drugs or alcohol—but other than these simple directives, I felt completely stumped. I had no tools with which to work. What I learned at the training gave me a framework to better understand my patients and their reluctance to change." - Charles Barber, Comfortably Numb: How Psychiatry Is Medicating a Nation (Get the book.)

"Scratch an alcoholic and you will find a hypoglycemic," says Mathews-Larson, whose Health Recovery Center in Minneapolis has treated alcoholics with vitamins, minerals, and amino acids for several decades. She believes addicts don't metabolize sugar properly, which is responsible for a good deal of the cravings and addictive behavior and that without correcting this situation, no treatment of alcoholism can be entirely successful, even if it does lead to abstinence." - Jonny Bowden, Ph.D., C.N.S., The Most Effective Natural Cures on Earth: The Surprising, Unbiased Truth about What Treatments Work and Why (Get the book.)

"While 25 percent of the general population has the variation, in one study researchers found it in 70 percent of alcoholics who had cirrhosis—presumably the most addicted, since they continued drinking in the face of life-threatening liver damage. In a subsequent study of cocaine addicts, half had the D2R2 allele, and 80 percent of those who also abused other drugs had it. Results tell a similar story with gamblers and the morbidly obese: about half display the gene variation, but when we factor in other addictive behavior, it's more like 80 percent." - John J. Ratey, MD, Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain (Get the book.)

"Alcoholics and drug addicts are often so depleted of amino acids that they can't create these neurotransmitters, leading to depression, hostile and aggressive behavior, confusion, anxiety, and paranoia," says Mathews-Larson. The formulas given at the Health Recovery Center vary and are based on an individual's needs, but most include a multivitamin, multi-mineral, B-complex supplement, gamma-linolenic acid, which reduces withdrawal symptoms and improves mental processes, and melatonin for better sleep, according to Mathews-Larson." - Jonny Bowden, Ph.D., C.N.S., The Most Effective Natural Cures on Earth: The Surprising, Unbiased Truth about What Treatments Work and Why (Get the book.)

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