Mens Health Blog. Medical Blog

The simplest way to decide whether you are an addict or an alcoholic is to ask yourself what drugs or drink is doing to your life. You are an addict or an alcoholic if drugs or drink are causing problems in any of the following areas of your life – yet you are continuing to use drugs or drink:
1.   Health.
2.   Personal life.
3.   Family life – either problems with your parents, with your partner, or with your children.
4.   Social life.
5.   Work or occupational life. People who do not do paid employment should ask themselves if drugs are affecting their housework, voluntary work or other activities.
6.   Finance – look for debts, over commitments, too much spent on drugs or drink.
7.   Ethical behaviour.
These are the main categories in which drugs may be giving you problems. If you are an addict you may find it difficult to see the problems caused by drugs. So here are some more detailed questions, which cover the same kind of thing.

*51\116\2*

Yet chemical dependence is a progressive illness. It gets worse every day, week and month that the addict continues using drugs.
‘For a time it was fun. I tried lots of different drugs,’ recalls Susan, a recovering addict in her twenties. ‘I started on softer drugs and at the time I said I’d never snort. I found myself before very long doing just that. Next I said I’d never take hard drugs, then I was taking cocaine. I always said I’d never touch heroin but it wasn’t very long before I was taking heroin. Then I said I’d never inject. Then I started doing that.’
Sometimes, it’s true, there are times when it seems as if the illness is getting better. Perhaps the addict manages to give up drugs for a time. Or for a few weeks he seems to control how much he takes. Yet in the long run these are only temporary reprieves in an ever downward slope.
Getting honest-If this is an illness which tells you that you haven’t got it, how are you going to see the truth? How are you going to break through the inner denial?
Most addicts and alcoholics show this inner denial. They feel that they’re different. They’re not really addicts. They just take drugs. And they only take drugs because . . .
Because their parents didn’t love them, because their parents smothered them with love, because they are unemployed, because their job is so stressful, because their families were rich, because their families were poor, because, because, because . . .
These aren’t reasons. They are excuses. Every single one of them.
And to get well, addicts have to break through these excuses. They have to listen to that small voice within them which is still there. It may be only a tiny whispering voice. But it is telling them the truth – that they are ill and that they need help.
Honesty is what gets an addict well. The courage to be honest. The courage to look at what is really happening in his or her life.

*50\116\2*

There are two methods of preparing mother tinctures:
(1) The Natural Method popularly known as The Sun Method. In this method, Those flowers which bloom during the late spring and summer season when the sun is at its height, are picked at about 9 A.M and floated on water in a glass bowl full to the brim. Take care that the bowl of water placed near the flowering plants, on the ground is in a a place near the flowering plants, on the ground is in a place where tall grass or bushes or twigs of trees do not cast their shadow as the Sun moves across the sky. The flowers are collected from as many trees or bushes as possible. They are picked and placed on a broad leaf placed on the palm of the hand and then deposited gently on the surface of water in the bowl. The process is repeated till the whole surface is thickly covered, overlapping the flowers but seeing that each touches the water.
Do not cast your shadow on the bowl and do not touch the water with your finger.
Leave the bowl in clear sunshine for 3 Hours, after which the flower heads are removed with a stalk from the plant. The vitalized water is poured into a jug.
Take a one ounce bottle, sterilize it by placing it in boiling water for twenty minutes. Dry it, and half fill it with brandy, and fill the remaining half with vitalized water. Place the cap securely.
Label the bottle with the name of the tincture. It is form this tincture that stock bottles are prepared.
*13\308\8*