Alcoholism Affects Men’s and Women’s Brains Differently

By Janice WoodAssociate News Editor
Reviewed by John M. Grohol, Psy.D. on August 11, 2012

New research has demonstrated that the effects on white matter brain volume from long-term alcohol abuse are different for men and women.

Researchers from Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM) and Veterans Affairs (VA) Boston Healthcare System also suggest that when they stop drinking, women recover their white matter brain volume more quickly than men.

Previous research has linked alcoholism with white matter reduction, according to the researchers, who explain that white matter forms the connections between neurons, allowing communication between different areas of the brain.

In this latest study, a research team, led by Susan Mosher Ruiz, Ph.D., a postdoctoral research scientist in the Laboratory for Neuropsychology at BUSM and research scientist at the VA Boston Healthcare System, and Marlene Oscar Berman, Ph.D., professor of psychiatry, neurology and anatomy and neurobiology at BUSM and research career scientist at the VA Boston Healthcare System, employed structural magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to determine the effects of drinking history and gender on white matter volume.

They examined brain images from 42 abstinent alcoholic men and women who drank heavily for more than five years and 42 nonalcoholic men and women. The researchers found that a greater number of years of alcohol abuse was associated with smaller white matter volumes in the alcoholic men and women. In the men, the decrease was observed in the corpus callosum, while in women this effect was observed in cortical white matter regions.

“We believe that many of the cognitive and emotional deficits observed in people with chronic alcoholism, including memory problems and flat affect, are related to disconnections that result from a loss of white matter,” said Mosher Ruiz.

The researchers also found that the number of daily drinks had a strong impact on alcoholic women, with the volume loss 1.5 to 2 percent for each additional drink. Additionally, there was an 8 to 10 percent increase in the size of the brain ventricles, which are areas filled with cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) that play a protective role in the brain. When white matter dies, CSF produced in the ventricles fills the ventricular space.

The researchers also found that in men, white matter brain volume in the corpus callosum recovered at a rate of 1 percent per year for each year of abstinence. For people who abstained less than a year, the researchers found evidence of increased white matter volume and decreased ventricular volume in women, but not in men. However, for people in recovery for more than a year, those signs of recovery disappeared in women and became apparent in men.

“These findings preliminarily suggest that restoration and recovery of the brain’s white matter among alcoholics occurs later in abstinence for men than for women,” said Mosher Ruiz. “We hope that additional research in this area can help lead to improved treatment methods that include educating both alcoholic men and women about the harmful effects of excessive drinking and the potential for recovery with sustained abstinence.”

The research was published online in Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research.
Source: Boston University Medical Center
Brain scan photo by shutterstock.

APA ReferenceWood, J. (2012). Alcoholism Affects Men’s and Women’s Brains Differently. Psych Central. Retrieved on August 22, 2012, from http://psychcentral.com/news/2012/08/11/alcoholism-affects-mens-and-womens-brains-differently/42963.html

 

Consumption of Alcohol/Energy Drinks Linked with Casual Risky Sex

CONSUMPTION OF ALCOHOL/ENERGY DRINKS LINKED WITH CASUAL RISKY SEX

ScienceDaily (July 25, 2012) — A new study from the University at Buffalo's Research Institute on Addictions (RIA) has found a link between the consumption of caffeinated energy drinks mixed with alcohol and casual -- often risky -- sex among college-age adults.

---

According to the study's findings, college students who consumed alcohol mixed with energy drinks (AmEDs) were more likely to report having a casual partner and/or being intoxicated during their most recent sexual encounter.

The results seem to indicate that AmEDs may play a role in the "hook-up culture" that exists on many college campuses, says study author Kathleen E. Miller, senior research scientist at UB's RIA.
The problem is that casual or intoxicated sex can increase the risk of unwanted outcomes, like unintended pregnancies, sexually transmitted diseases, sexual assault and depression, says Miller. And previous research has linked energy drink consumption with other dangerous behaviors: drunken driving, binge drinking and fighting, for example.

"Mixing energy drinks with alcohol can lead to unintentional overdrinking, because the caffeine makes it harder to assess your own level of intoxication," says Miller.

"AmEDs have stronger priming effects than alcohol alone," she adds. "In other words, they increase the craving for another drink, so that you end up drinking more overall."

The good news: Miller's study found that consumption of AmEDs was not a significant predictor of unprotected sex. Drinkers were no less likely than nondrinkers to have used a condom during their most recent sexual encounter.

Regardless of their AmED use, participants in the study were more likely to use a condom during sex with a casual partner than during sex with a steady partner, consistent with previous research. A steady or committed partner is a less risky prospect than a casual partner whose sexual history is unknown, Miller notes, so using a condom may not feel as necessary.

To be published in the print edition of Journal of Caffeine Research and available online to subscribers of the journal, the study is part of a larger three-year research project by Miller, funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA).

The research included 648 participants (47.5 percent female) enrolled in introductory-level courses at a large public university. They ranged in age from 18 to 40 but mostly clustered at the lower end of the age spectrum. More than 60 percent were younger than 21.

According to the study's findings, nearly one in three sexually active students (29.3 percent) reported using AmEDs during the month prior to the survey.

At their most recent sexual encounter, 45.1 percent of the participants reported having a casual partner, 24.8 percent reported being intoxicated and 43.6 percent reported that they did not use a condom.

According to Miller, drinking Red Bull/vodkas or Jagerbombs doesn't necessarily lead people to get drunk and become intimate with strangers, but it does increase the odds of doing so. But she points out that these drinks are becoming increasingly popular with college-age adults and should be considered a possible risk factor for potentially health-compromising sexual behaviors.

The findings may provide a basis for educational campaigns or consumer safety legislation, such as warning labels that advise against mixing energy drinks with alcohol, Miller says.

Study: 40 million Americans ages 12 and older have addiction disease

Published on June 26, 2012 at 2:10 AM

Forty million Americans ages 12 and older have addiction involving nicotine, alcohol or other drugs, a disease affecting more Americans than heart conditions, diabetes or cancer according to a five-year national study released today by The National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University (CASA Columbia). Another 80 million people are risky substance users - using tobacco, alcohol and other drugs in ways that threaten health and safety.

The report, Addiction Medicine: Closing the Gap between Science and Practice, reveals that while about 7 in 10 people with diseases like hypertension, major depression and diabetes receive treatment, only about 1 in 10 people who need treatment for addiction involving alcohol or other drugs receive it. Of those who do receive treatment, most do not receive anything that approximates evidence-based care.

The CASA Columbia report finds that addiction treatment is largely disconnected from mainstream medical practice. While a wide range of evidence-based screening, intervention, treatment and disease management tools and practices exist, they rarely are employed. The report exposes the fact that most medical professionals who should be providing treatment are not sufficiently trained to diagnose or treat addiction, and most of those providing addiction treatment are not medical professionals and are not equipped with the knowledge, skills or credentials necessary to provide the full range of evidence-based services.

"This report shows that misperceptions about the disease of addiction are undermining medical care," said Drew Altman, Ph.D., President, The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation who chaired the report's National Advisory Commission. The report finds that while doctors routinely screen for a broad range of health problems like high blood pressure or high cholesterol, they rarely screen for risky substance use or signs of addiction and instead treat a long list of health problems that result, including accidents, unintended pregnancies, heart disease, cancers and many other costly conditions without examining the root cause.

This landmark report examines the science of addiction --a complex disease that involves changes in the structure and function of the brain--and the profound gap between what we know about the disease and how to prevent and treat it versus current health and medical practice.

Few Patients with Addiction Receive Quality Care

The CASA Columbia report found that while almost half of Americans say they would go to their health care providers if someone close needed help for addiction, less than six percent of all referrals to addiction treatment come from health professionals.

The report also found no clearly delineated, consistent and regulated national standards that stipulate who may provide addiction treatment in the U.S.; standards vary by state and by payer. Addiction treatment facilities and programs are not adequately regulated or held accountable for providing treatment consistent with medical standards and proven treatment practices.
Most providers of addiction treatment are addiction counselors who are not required to have any medical training. CASA Columbia's analysis of minimum state requirements found:

• 14 states do not require all addiction counselors to be licensed or certified;
• 6 states do not mandate any educational degree to become credentialed;
• 14 states require only a high school diploma or GED;
• 10 states require an associate's degree;
• 6 states require a bachelor's degree; and
s degree.

Physicians and other medical professionals who make up the smallest share of providers of addiction treatment receive little education in addiction science, prevention and treatment. In fact, CASA Columbia's report cites other research that found that of patients who had visited a general medical provider in the past year only 29 percent were even asked about alcohol or other drug use.
"Right now there are no accepted national standards for providers of addiction treatment," said Susan Foster, CASA Columbia's Vice President and Director of Policy Research and Analysis, who was the principal investigator for the report. "There simply is no other disease where appropriate medical treatment is not provided by the health care system and where patients instead must turn to a broad range of practitioners largely exempt from medical standards. Neglect by the medical profession has resulted in a separate and unrelated system of care that struggles to treat the disease without the resources or knowledge base to keep pace with science and medicine."

A Costly Disease

The CASA Columbia report reveals that addiction and risky use of tobacco, alcohol and other drugs constitute the largest preventable and most costly health problems facing the U.S. today, responsible for more than 20 percent of deaths in the U.S., causing or contributing to more than 70 other conditions requiring medical care and a wide range of costly social consequences and accounting for one-third of all hospital in-patient costs. Research suggests that effective health care interventions to prevent and treat addiction would significantly reduce these costs.
In 2010, only $28 billion was spent to treat the 40 million people with addiction. In comparison, the United States spent:

• $44 billion to treat diabetes which affects 26 million people;
• $87 billion to treat cancer which affects 19 million people;
• $107 billion to treat heart conditions which affect 27 million people.

"As our nation struggles to reduce skyrocketing health care costs, this report makes clear that there are few targets for cost savings that are as straightforward as preventing and treating risky substance use and addiction, " said Commission Chairman Altman.

Other Notable Findings

• Although addiction is often a chronic disease, treatment typically addresses it as an acute condition and does not include the necessary long term disease management.
• Public perceptions do not distinguish between risky substance use and the disease of addiction.
• Costs to federal, state and local governments amount to 11 percent of total spending; 95 cents of every dollar pay for the consequences and only 2 cents go to prevention and treatment.

Recommendations
The report offers a comprehensive set of recommendations to overhaul current intervention and treatment approaches and to bring practice in line with the scientific evidence and with the standard of care for other public health and medical conditions.
"It is time for health care practice to catch up with the science. Failure to do so causes untold human suffering and is a wasteful misuse of taxpayer dollars," noted Director Foster.
SOURCE The National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse (CASA) at Columbia University

The Turbulent Life of Rodney King

The Turbulent Life Of Rodney King: The Reluctant Icon’s Post-Riot Struggles With Substance Abuse And The Law

By Joseph Orovic: Subscribe to Joseph's RSS feed

June 17, 2012 4:18 PM EDT

Rodney Glen King's death has brought back to light the fragile state of race relations in Los Angeles two decades ago. But lesser known are King's own struggles and demons after that fateful night in 1991 that left him the unlikely symbol of injustice and racial tension in America.

The 47-year-old King was found dead at the bottom of his pool Sunday morning in Rialto, Calif., about 50 miles east of Los Angeles. His fiancé Cynthia Kelly called 911 around 5:25 a.m. Pacific Time, with responding officers finding King drowned and eventually pronounced dead at a local hospital.

Police will conduct an investigation and autopsy to determine the cause of death, though early reports claim King had gone on a marijuana and alcohol binge the night before his drowning.
   

While such early swirling rumors should naturally be discounted with the skepticism afforded most gossip, they tragically do not seem out of character for King, whose struggles to stay clean and out of prison continued well after the enormous 1992 riots in Los Angeles subsided, when West Coast cops began thinking twice before using their nightsticks at will.
Despite characterizations as a ne'er do well, with a rap sheet to match, King always presented himself as a man struggling, and often failing, to shun the path of his alcoholic father. The very same struggle that kept him in trouble for years was the seed the brutal night of March 3, 1991, when he was transformed into a living symbol.

Not far removed from release on parole from a robbery conviction, King was driving home from a night of drinking at a friend's house when he noticed an LAPD car following him. He panicked.
"I had a job to go to that Monday, and I knew I was on parole, and I knew I wasn't supposed to be drinking, and I'm like 'Oh, my God,'" he told CNN. He hit the pedal, careening down the freeway and local roads.
After giving up on hightailing, King gave in to the cops and decided to slow down and exit into a neighborhood. He was no stranger to what had become a landscape of punch-happy cops ready to dole out punishment to young black men in Los Angeles' dodgier neighborhoods. So he pulled over in a public area close to some apartments, thinking, "If something goes down, somebody will see it."
He was right.

King stepped out of his car and laid on the ground as police had instructed him. Then a traffic officer kicked him in the temple. In a panic, King leapt to his feet and ran alongside his car with his hands above his head, trying to prove he didn't pose a threat. The severe beating that ensued, four officers wailing away with nightsticks and zapping King with a stun gun as he writhed on the ground, was caught on tape by a man named George Holliday.

A photo of Rodney King after his run-in with police on March 3, 1991.

 

The cops -- Theodore Briseno, Laurence Powell, Timothy Wind and Sgt. Stacey Koon -- were never convicted on charges of assault with a deadly weapon and excessive use of force by a police officer. A three-month trial in suburban Simi Valley, home of the Ronald Reagan Library, before an all-white jury let the cops go without a single guilty charge.

That tape's inability to sway the jury, and the cops subsequent freedom, sparked the deadliest riots in LA history, and one of the most violent and turbulent periods in post-Civil Rights America. It was also a cathartic moment, one of unadulterated carnage and payback for what many felt was years of racial profiling, discrimination and police brutality. King wanted no part of it, though.

For all of his tribulations, he remained a figure fraught with uncertainty and guilt. The riots led to 50 deaths and $1 billion in property damage. And there stood Rodney King, emerged from three days of hiding during the riots. He shunned a statement, angry in tone, written by his lawyers. Instead, he blurted off the cuff words that would bring derision and fame.

"People, I just want to say, can we all just get along? Can we get along?" he pleaded. It became the clarion call for many, and epitomized King's own misgivings about his new-found life as a symbol of racial injustice. Yet the comparisons to Rosa Parks left him unnerved, as did the angry exchanges.

King admitted later that the blowback from his statement caught him off-guard.
"People were mad at me because they didn't think I was going to say, 'Can we all get along?' " King told NPR. "I had people come up to me and say, 'What the [expletive] did you say that for?!' "

The riots subsided, but King's own demons came back in greater force. Because in reality, King later acknowledged that yes, he did break the law, driving drunk and speeding at what he said was easily 100 miles per hour.
"I should have pulled over for the police," he said. "I was going too fast. I was on parole [for second-degree robbery of a grocery store], and I had been drinking some, too [...] It was wrong, but it didn't mean they should have beat me the way they did."
He was very open about his struggles with alcohol.

"The trouble that [people] see me in is a part of my life that I'm working on," he said in a CNN interview in 2011. "I'll always have an issue when it comes to alcohol. My dad was an alcoholic. The addiction part is in my blood. What I've learned to do is arrest my addiction -- arrest it myself, so I don't get arrested."

King had won a lawsuit against the city of Los Angeles, garnered $3.8 million in damages. Yet run-ins with the police did not subside. He spent more time in jail, or rehab centers. In the late 1990s, he was arrested for assaulting his ex-wife and daughter.
In 1996, he spend three months in jail for a hit-and-run.

In 2003, King was arrested for allegedly punching a girlfriend and also pleaded guilty to reckless driving after crashing into a house with his car. He was pulled over again on the 20th anniversary of the beating for what was later ruled a minor violation.
King released a book titled "Riot Within," two decades after the beating. The tell-all memoir chronicles his life pre- and post-"Can we all get along?" It revealed a man doomed to struggle with a difficult upbringing at the hands of an alcoholic father who also died in his 40s. The weight was compounded with living at the white-hot center of a racial flashpoint. And, as recently as April, King admitted he was flat broke.

"I realize I will always be the poster child for police brutality, but I can try to use that as a positive force for healing and restraint," he wrote.

At times, it proved too much, and King appeared on the VH1 reality show "Celebrity Rehab" in 2008 to combat his alcoholism.
"Sometimes he was doing great, sometimes not," said Bob Forrest, a drug counselor who worked with King on the show. "He was always gracious, an honest and gentle soul."

"Rodney King was a symbol of civil rights and he represented the anti-police brutality and anti-racial profiling movement of our time," the Rev. Al Sharpton said in a statement. "It was his beating that made America focus on the presence of profiling and police misconduct."

King often spoke of wanting to tell his side of the story. In one CNN interview, he said he'd just like to walk people through the footage of the four officers hitting him. It bothered him, he admitted, that some said he retaliated or fought back and deserved the number of blows to his body.

Ultimately, the "Riot Within" remains the closest distillation to that retelling King was ever afforded.
"I've tried more than once over the last twenty years to write about my life experience and what happened to me at the hands of the police and our system of justice," he wrote. "I knew I needed to dig deep to get readers to experience what it was really like to be there and how it felt, in the aftermath, to rebuild a shattered body and mind. It's now time for me to try to reach out and help others get to their better place. By letting go of the Riot Within, by telling my story truly and honestly, I have been able to heal."

Heroin and Other Opiates Use Rising in Colorado, Figures Show

HEROIN AND OTHER OPIATES USE RISING IN COLORADO, FIGURES SHOW

Federal and local data suggest an uptick in heroin use in Colorado, a troubling development for local drug enforcement agencies and treatment programs.

One new federal drug use survey, the Arrestee Drug Abuse Monitoring Annual Report, shows that street use of opiate drugs, including heroin and opiate-based prescription medicines such as oxycodone, has doubled between 2000 and 2011.

The report, released May 17 by the National Office of Drug Control Policy, tracks the blood test results of adult male arrestees in Denver and nine other U.S. cities. In Denver; Indianapolis; Sacramento, Calif.; and Minneapolis, the number of adult male arrestees testing positive for opiates, including heroin and prescription painkillers, rose from 3 percent to 4 percent in 2000 to 8 percent to 10 percent in 2011.

Most of the heroin in Denver comes from Mexican drug cartels selling black and brown heroin, said Tom Gorman, director of the Rocky Mountain High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area program.
Heroin use still lags behind methamphetamine, cocaine and marijuana, accounting for 3 percent of drug arrests in Colorado.

"It's out there," Gorman said. "It is increasing in our area. Heroin hasn't reached the level of other drugs yet, but pharmaceutical opiate abuse is skyrocketing. Those drugs are more expensive than heroin, and that moves people to go from opiates to heroin. It's the same kind of high, but cheaper."
New heroin users increasingly are under age 35, white non-Hispanics, and more likely to smoke heroin than inject it, said Bruce Mendelson, senior data consultant at the Denver Office of Drug Strategy.

Alcohol and marijuana still lead the list of the most-abused drugs in Denver, Mendelson said, followed by heroin. In 2010, heroin overdoses ranked third (behind marijuana and cocaine) in Denver metro emergency department visits related to illicit drug abuse.

During the first half of 2011, of Denver residents admitted for addiction treatment, nearly 18 percent were admitted for heroin and prescription opiate addiction treatment, surpassing methamphetamines, according to statistics from the Colorado Health Foundation and Denver Office of Drug Strategy. Heroin and opiate drugs have become the third-leading cause of deaths that are alcohol- or drug-related.

Data from drug-abuse-treatment programs also show an uptick in heroin use and a sharp rise in opiate pharmaceuticals, said Marc Condojani, associate director of community intervention programs at the state division of behavioral health.

"We had 1,676 heroin admissions in 2003, and then the numbers dipped for a few years, but then they went up again," Condojani said.

"In 2010, we had 1,755 treatment admissions for heroin. In the other-opiates category, we had 541 people admitted for treatment in 2003, and in 2010, there were 1,715. That's over a threefold increase. The alarming part, to me, is that people who are dependent on those prescription medications eventually look for alternatives. And that's usually heroin."
Claire Martin: 303-954-1477 or cmartin@denverpost.com


Read more: Heroin and other opiate use rising in Colorado, figures show - The Denver Post http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_20823072/heroin-and-other-opiate-use-rising-colorado-figures#ixzz1xPQlY2b9
Read The Denver Post's Terms of Use of its content: http://www.denverpost.com/termsofuse

Baby Boomers Getting Into Sex, Drugs, and Alcohol

Submitted by My Addiction on Jun 1, 2012

 

Perhaps it is the influence of coming of age in the 1960’s but according to the Senior Housing Newsa great deal of older adults are partaking in sex and are using drugs and alcohol as they coast into a new phase of life. A recent survey found the number of people 50 and older seeking treatment for addiction is rising drastically.

When it comes to sex, previous research has indicated that 80% of adults between the ages of 50-90 are sexually active. Between 2000 and 2009 the number of sexually transmitted infections in this age group has doubled.

Sex, drugs and rocking chairs
Aside from engaging sex, seniors are also consuming alcohol and using drugs. The Hanley Center, a drug and alcohol treatment center, predicts that without early intervention and treatment addiction levels will continue to increase which will lead to an addiction epidemic among older Americans.
For example, according to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, the number of older adults who reported illegal drug use within a year almost doubled between 2002 and 2007. In this study, 40% stated they didn’t begin to use drugs or alcohol until after age 48. Substances of choice included alcohol with (90%) and prescription drugs (49.5%). The survey also found the reasons this population used drugs or alcohol were depression, anxiety, financial stress and retirement concerns.

While this may be distressing news to some, the cannabis activist group Silver Tour is taking an active role is advocating the legalization of marijuana. Their rationale is that marijuana can help treat chronic pain and insomnia, both of which are common among older adults. While a 2009 report by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration showed that in the 50-54 age range the number of people who use marijuana either recreationally or medicinally is 6.1% and less for people 65 and older one theory is that as the baby boomers age that statistic will increase significantly as the baby boomer generation is more tolerant of marijuana use.

Music Industry Address Drug, Alcohol Problems

MUSIC INDUSTRY ADDRESS DRUG, ALCOHOL PROBLEMS

The drug-related deaths of popular entertainers like Whitney Houston have focused attention on drug and alcohol abuse, both inside and outside the entertainment industry. Celebrities may be at special risk, but some in the industry say they are addressing the problem.

The shocking stories are familiar - lives cut short by alcohol and drug abuse. Cocaine contributed to Whitney Houston's death. She drowned in her bathtub in a Beverly Hills hotel earlier this year. Michael Jackson died not far from there in 2009 after his doctor administered a lethal dose of the sedative Propofol. British singer Amy Winehouse was troubled by addiction and died last year of alcohol poisoning.

Experts say alcohol and drug abuse is a problem in the general population. But entertainers are especially vulnerable because of the long hours on the road and the intense demands of performing.

“There's a lot of down time, a lot of traveling, a lot of boredom, a lot of sitting, a lot of doing nothing," said Bob Forrest.

Bob Forrest is a musician, a recovering addict and a drug counselor.

"And so you tend to - at least I did, and most of my friends - tend to, at the very least, drink excessively," he said.

Drug and alcohol abuse is a special risk for those who find fame and fortune as performers, says Neil Portnow. He is president of MusiCares, an industry charity, and The Recording Academy, which presents the Grammy Awards.

“And the way that it plays out sometimes is over a long period of time, where somebody can develop the thick skin to deal with the issues that come with fame and fortune," said Portnow. "And then sometimes it's pretty quick and sometimes it's pretty young. And so those folks are not always well equipped to deal with that.”

He says some people around the artist can be enablers and others may turn a blind eye to the addiction.

Psychiatrist Charles Sophy treats celebrities. He says many are in denial.

“[They say] No, it's not me, or I don't use that much, but my doctor gives it to me," said Sophy. "All of those denial places are going to be impediments and hold you up from connecting to treatment to get a better outcome."

Sophy says successful artists are creative and driven, and some have underlying emotional problems that fuel addiction and need treatment.

“For instance, is there an anxiety disorder? Is there a mood disorder? Is there an attentional disorder, something that drove their creativity to become successful and where they're at, but also will become an impediment for them," he said.

Some young musicians think drug use is part of being creative, says Billy Morrison, a guitarist who stopped using drugs.

“The availability and the so-called 'cool' factor - which is disappearing - play a bigger part in the entertainment business than other professions," said Morrison.

He says the industry is less tolerant of drug use now than a few years ago. Harold Owens, senior director of the Musicians Assistance Program of MusiCares, says the industry is dealing with it.

“We get a lot of calls from managers," said Owens. "Managers, agents, they're concerned about their artist. One more time, their artist has relapsed and they need some guidance.”

He says MusicCares helps addicted entertainers get into good treatment programs.

Those who work with celebrities say the key to dealing with drug abuse is early intervention, effective treatment and a support system. They say recovery can be a lifelong process.