For 80% of Americans with resolved drug problem, significant personal achievements
Study offers hope to those in addiction recovery: Most people are able to rebuild important aspects of their lives.
2021-04-05
(Press-News.org) BOSTON - Addiction is associated with social exclusion, loss of access to resources, and general disengagement from civic life. Now, a study recently published in the journal Psychology of Addictive Behaviors and led by David Eddie, PhD, of the Massachusetts General Hospital's Recovery Research Institute has found that the majority of Americans who have resolved an alcohol or other drug problem report achievements related to self-improvement, family engagement, and civic and economic participation since resolving their addiction. Additionally, it appears these achievements accumulate with time in addiction recovery.
Incorporating data from the Recovery Research Institute's landmark 2017 National Recovery Study, which indicated for the first time that 23.3 million Americans consider themselves to have resolved a significant alcohol or other drug problem, this study is the first to report the national prevalence of personal, civic, and economic achievements among people in addiction recovery.
"Individuals in addiction recovery face numerous challenges, yet in spite of this, findings from this study show that most individuals are able to rebuild important aspects of their lives," says Eddie. "And perhaps more importantly, we saw that these achievements were associated with greater happiness, well-being and quality of life."
These study results challenge commonly held beliefs about the nature of substance use disorders as constantly recurring disorders with little room for improvement. "The fact of the matter is that addiction is a good-prognosis disorder with significant improvement over time in recovery," says co-author John Kelly, PhD, director of the Recovery Research Institute. "With more years in recovery, individuals achieved an increasing number of achievements, which are then supportive of ongoing remission and recovery."
The study authors also note that there are certain individual factors associated with accrual of achievements, including (but not limited to) race, education level, age of initiation of regular substance use, and co-occurring psychiatric disorders. However, Eddie cautions that this shouldn't be taken to mean there are some who can't accomplish significant personal achievements after resolving an addiction: "Recovery is achievable for everyone, and the majority of Americans who resolve their substance use problem go on to accrue numerous life achievements. At the same time, there are many individuals who face greater barriers and hardships as they attempt to rebuild their lives, and as a society we should be addressing the barriers that hamper their rebuilding efforts."
INFORMATION:
This study was funded by the Recovery Research Institute, with Eddie's and Kelly's involvement supported in part by the U.S. National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism.
About the Massachusetts General Hospital
Massachusetts General Hospital, founded in 1811, is the original and largest teaching hospital of Harvard Medical School. The Mass General Research Institute conducts the largest hospital-based research program in the nation, with annual research operations of more than $1 billion and comprises more than 9,500 researchers working across more than 30 institutes, centers and departments. In August 2020, Mass General was named #6 in the U.S. News & World Report list of "America's Best Hospitals."
ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:
2021-04-05
A new study by Stanford University biologists finds an explanation for the idea that physical characteristics such as skin pigmentation are "only skin deep." Using genetic modeling, the team has found that when two populations with distinct traits combine over generations, traits of individuals within the resulting "admixed" population come to reveal very little about individuals' ancestry. Their findings were published March 27 in a special edition of the American Journal of Physical Anthropology on race and racism.
"When two founding groups first come together, a visible physical trait that differed between those founders initially carries information about the genetic ancestry of admixed individuals," says Jaehee Kim, a postdoctoral research fellow in biology at Stanford and first author ...
2021-04-05
In the fight against cancers, activating mutations in the RAS family of genes stand in the way of finding viable treatment options. Now, scientists at the University of Missouri and Yale University have discovered that one of these mutations -- oncogenic RAS or RASV12 -- is also responsible for the regrowth of cancer cells following genotoxic therapy treatment, or drugs that cause damage to a cancer cell's DNA in order to eliminate it from the body.
"Most of our knowledge of how cells respond to DNA damage is mainly derived from studies looking at the single cell level," said Yves Chabu, an assistant professor in the MU College of Arts and Science. "Therefore, we don't know much about how tumor cells respond to DNA damage in the broader ...
2021-04-05
URBANA, Ill. ¬- If your day started with a cup of coffee, there's a good chance your morning brew came from Colombia. Home to some of the finest Arabica beans, the country is the world's third largest coffee producer. Climate change poses new challenges to coffee production in Colombia, as it does to agricultural production anywhere in the world, but a new University of Illinois study shows effects vary widely depending on where the coffee beans grow.
"Colombia is a large country with a very distinct geography. The Andes Mountains cross the country from its southwest to northeast corner. Colombian coffee is currently growing in areas with different altitude levels, and climate impacts will likely be very different for low ...
2021-04-05
Pregnancy can increase the risk of morbidity and mortality in women with cardiovascular disease; however, many cardiologists are not having pre-pregnancy contraception discussions with their patients of child-bearing age. There is a need to provide evidence-based guidance for contraceptive safety and effectiveness and pregnancy planning options for this high-risk patient group, according to a paper published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology (JACC). This paper is one of a five-part JACC focus seminar series addressing a wide range of topics in the emerging cardio-obstetrics field.
Prior research has found that 68% of females have had sex at least once by the time they were 17, ...
2021-04-05
A recent study proposed a three-dimensional LotusMenu that can "bloom in the palm". With this menu, even if you are not Nezha, you can also control your own lotus.
The research paper is titled: "LotusMenu: A 3D Menu using Wrist and Elbow Rotation Inspired by Chinese Traditional Symbol". It's published in SCIENCE CHINA Information Sciences recently, written by Associate Professor Lu Fei's human-computer interaction research team from Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications. Based on the metaphor of the traditional lotus pattern, the researchers ...
2021-04-05
The Bureau of Reclamation today released final technical reports supporting the Water Reliability in the West - 2021 SECURE Water Act Report. Reclamation's 2021 West-Wide Climate and Hydrology Assessment and seven individual basin reports provide detailed information on climate change impacts and adaptation strategies to increase water supply reliability in the West. A new 2021 SECURE Report Web Portal is also available to provide a user-friendly, web-based format for delivery of information in the reports.
"Western water supply and delivery systems are affected by changing hydrologic conditions and competing demands," Deputy Commissioner Camille Calimlim Touton said. "These reports highlight Reclamation's effort to use ...
2021-04-05
Humans have long explored three big scientific questions: evolution of the universe, evolution of Earth, and evolution of life. Geoscientists have embraced the mission of elucidating the evolution of Earth and life, which are preserved in the information-rich but incomplete geological record that spans more than 4.5 billion years of Earth history. Delving into Earth's deep-time history helps geoscientists decipher mechanisms and rates of Earth's evolution, unravel the rates and mechanisms of climate change, locate natural resources, and envision the future of Earth.
Two common approaches, deductive reasoning ...
2021-04-05
Researchers from North Carolina State University have developed an exosome-coated stent with a "smart-release" trigger that could both prevent reopened blood vessels from narrowing and deliver regenerative stem cell-derived therapy to blood-starved, or ischemic, tissue.
Angioplasty - a procedure that opens blocked arteries - often involves placing a metal stent to reinforce arterial walls and prevent them from collapsing once the blockage is removed. However, the stent's placement usually causes some injury to the blood vessel wall, which stimulates smooth muscle cells to proliferate and migrate to the site in an attempt to repair the injury. The result is restenosis: a re-narrowing of the blood vessel previously opened by angioplasty.
"The ...
2021-04-05
ITHACA, N.Y. - The cost of harvesting solar energy has dropped so much in recent years that it's giving traditional energy sources a run for their money. However, the challenges of energy storage - which require the capacity to bank an intermittent and seasonally variable supply of solar energy - have kept the technology from being economically competitive.
Cornell University researchers led by Lynden Archer, Dean and Professor of Engineering, have been exploring the use of low-cost materials to create rechargeable batteries that will make energy storage more ...
2021-04-05
AMHERST, Mass. - A team of polymer science and engineering researchers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst has demonstrated for the first time that the positions of tiny, flat, solid objects integrated in nanometrically thin membranes - resembling those of biological cells - can be controlled by mechanically varying the elastic forces in the membrane itself. This research milestone is a significant step toward the goal of creating ultrathin flexible materials that self-organize and respond immediately to mechanical force.
The team has discovered that rigid solid plates in biomimetic fluid membranes experience interactions ...
LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:
[Press-News.org] For 80% of Americans with resolved drug problem, significant personal achievements
Study offers hope to those in addiction recovery: Most people are able to rebuild important aspects of their lives.
