blognonymous!

If you’ve ever wondered why Addiction Treatment Centers typically offer 28 or 30 day programs, then I might have the answer for you. Here’s what an article on addiction treatment in the Connecticut Post had to say:

Treatment programs of 28 or 30 days are still common. But this template was never based on medical evidence, says Dr. David Lewis, Vision’s medical director. Lewis, who in the 1970s helped establish the first addiction treatment program in the U.S. Air Force, says 30-day stays were scheduled for bureaucratic reasons — men and women didn’t need to be reassigned if they were away from duty for no more than 30 days. Other treatment centers followed suit, and insurers adopted the standard of 28 or 30 days of inpatient care.

This is a great article discussing the effectiveness of long term treatment for addiction. As much as I’d like to talk about everything the struck me as interesting in the article, it would require a very long post. So, I’ll break it up in to pieces.

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a post about a Canadian drug study called NAOMI where heroin addicts were given doses of heroin on a daily basis. The study contended that this was helping them. I disagreed. Apparently, I’m not alone. In a new article from from GlobeandMail.com they blast the study, pointing out a lot of holes in their argument.

I believe that giving heroin addicts daily doses and telling them that they are getting better only creates a feeling that they can use successfully. In GlobeandMail.com’s new article, one of the addicts agreed himself:

But Mr. Liang, 41, who began using drugs at 18, says the free heroin made him complacent about his addiction. Other addicts, he says, took advantage of the free heroin, even competing for how much they could consume each day. For some, their habits grew worse. “They were heroin pigs,” he said, shaking his head.

Giving reliable, structured doses of heroin to a heroin addict does nothing to treat the addiction. That’s like giving reliable, structured doses of peanuts to someone with a peanut allergy.

Talk about your sensational journalism. This morning I was browsing through headlines related to addiction and addiction studies like I always do. A particular headline grabbed my attention - Internet addiction plagues univ students nationwide. Sounds pretty intimidating right? After reading the article, I was a bit confused. There were a few statistics on possible negative side affects of spending too much time online, a reference to a fairly well known article entitled Is Google Making Us Stupid?, and a long, personal diatribe from the article’s author - Naomi Spector - on how the “virtual world is slowly turning us into zombies.”

However, the one important element missing is any real information that would lead me to believe that there is a “plague” of Internet addiction amongst university students nationwide. There are two relevant points:

• According to a recent Wi-Fi Alliance and Wakefield Research survey, almost three out of five students would not go to a college that does not offer free wi-fi. In fact, “nine out of 10 college students in the United States say wi-fi access is as essential to education as classrooms and computers,” says the study.
• [a different] survey states, “More than half [of the students surveyed] have checked Facebook or MySpace and sent or received e-mail while using their laptop in class.” I have seen, in my lecture classes, no shortage of high-achieving and academically motivated Brandeis students surreptitiously checking Facebook instead of taking notes. The temptation is strong. Is the Internet so addictive it prevents even the best students from concentrating in class?

and then one point that sounds like a silver lining to me:

• The survey even found that “If forced to choose, nearly half of respondents (48 percent) would give up beer before giving up Wi-fi.”

Here’s my point. I didn’t read anything that would cause me to believe there is a national epidemic of Internet addiction at universities. So what? Students want WiFi. So do I. In fact, I often choose hotels and restaurants based on their WiFi access, and have even not gone back to a hotel because the WiFi sucked. That’s just the way it goes. My livelihood is closely tied to this little black box that I carry around with me. Maybe this author should tone down the title a bit.