Here are – in reverse order of difficulty – the seven addictions people find hardest to quit.  You might be surprised…

By Dr. Stanton Peele

7. Cocaine. Cocaine is an episodic-use drug. It is one moreover associated with certain lifestyles – at one time (if not now) people in the financial industry and entertainment fields – and more often younger people. Studying long-term users of cocaine, Ronald Siegel found most moderated, controlled, or quit their use over time. Patricia Erickson and Bruce Alexander surveyed the research and found that fewer than 10 percent of cocaine addicts continued their addictions for substantial periods. After cocaine use peaked in the 1980s, most middle-class users quit (although use in inner cities continued some time longer). Remarking on this phenomenon, David Musto concluded: "The question we must ask ourselves is not why people take drugs, but why do people stop." He surmised that people with fewer resources had less to counterbalance their addictions.

6. Alcohol. Alcohol is the addiction most written about, both in scientific literature and as recounted in personal memoirs. Alcoholics Anonymous members swear AA is the only way to recover; treatment experts claim alcoholism is inescapable without treatment. But epidemiological research does not find this is true. The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism in 2005 published the results of its National Epidemiologic Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions. NESARC conducted 43,000 face-to-face interviews with a sample of Americans about their lifetime alcohol and drug use. Among these, 4,422 were classifiable at some point in their lives as alcohol dependent (or alcoholic). Somewhat more than a quarter had received any kind of treatment (including in an emergency room, attending AA, etc.). Among the large majority who went untreated, fewer than a quarter drank alcoholically at the time of the interview. Most (about two-thirds) of this group continued drinking non-alcoholically.

5. Valium. In general, drugs used for pacifying purposes (which are usually depressants), taken regularly over long periods of time, are hard to quit. This holds for sedatives, sleeping pills, barbiturates, and tranquilizers. Several best-sellers have been written about the difficulty in quitting Valium (benzodiazepine tranquilizers): Barbara Gordon’s I’m Dancing as Fast as I Can and Betty Ford’s The Times of My Life. A prominent New York City newscaster, Jim Jensen, recounted in People how he readily quit cocaine but couldn’t get off Valium: "Valium withdrawal soon plunged him into a massive depression that left him unable to eat or sleep. It took two more months in two hospitals for him to regain his mental and physical health." Ah, but Americans love these drugs, need them to survive – although in good part they have been supplanted by antidepressants.

4. Heroin. Powerful analgesics, taken regularly, are difficult for many (but not most) people to quit. After all, most of us have had intravenous supplies of narcotics in the hospital, followed by prescriptions for powerful analgesics when we went home. What is remarkable is not so much that heroin can produce serious withdrawal for some, but how variable this syndrome is and how comparable it is to other depressant and painkiller drugs and analgesics (like Vicodin and OxyContin), which are the fastest growing drugs of abuse and today are taken by the majority of illicit narcotics users and overdose victims. So much has been written about heroin withdrawal, it is mainly worth noting that when people quit the drug with little difficulty (as the major league ballplayer Ron LeFlore did when he entered prison and took up baseball) it is simply considered impermissible to describe or portray this aspect of their stories.

3. Cigarettes. In ratings by cocaine and alcohol addicts, smoking is regularly cited as the more difficult drug to quit, generally on par with or more difficult than heroin. Nonetheless, more than 40 million living Americans have quit smoking. While impressive, this still only represents about half of all of those ever addicted to cigarettes – although a higher percentage of those in higher socioeconomic groups have quit. When I speak to recovering people at addiction conferences I ask, "What is the toughest drug to quit?" By acclimation, the audience shouts out, "cigarettes" or "smoking." I then ask, "How many people in this room have been addicted to cigarettes but are now off them?" Half to two-thirds – often hundreds of people – in the room raise their hands. "Wow," I enthuse. "And how many have used any kind of therapy – medical or a support group – to quit?" Never have more than a small handful done so.

2. Potato chips. I use potato chips, of course, to stand for all kinds of alluring but fattening foods. These comfort foods, which deprive more Americans of life years than any other substance, are inextricably integrated with our own lives, and with the lives of all Americans. Although overweight is disapproved and regularly lectured against, it still doesn’t have the stigma of drugs, alcohol, and cigarettes, so that hidden (and not so hidden) food addictions are more readily tolerated. That gastric bypass surgery is growing so rapidly shows that this is the substance addiction people find hardest to quit, even those for whom it causes serious, life-threatening health conditions. In fact, we will never resolve our massive food addictions in the United States, but we hope to come up with medical cures to prevent their negative effects, as if we would succeed by simply deciding to let smokers continue to smoke noncancerous cigarettes.

1. Love. Ah, love is the hardest addiction to quit. It certainly causes more murders and suicides than any other addiction. And if you think people miss smoking, consider what people are like when they break up with long-time lovers or get divorced – even when they hate their spouses! (See the response to this post, "My divorce has left me . . .") On the other hand, we read frequently about people who totally sacrificed their lives to a lover who betrayed them or otherwise destroyed their psyches, yet who still didn’t quit the relationship – what is the answer, after all, when an abuse victim is asked why they simply don’t leave an abusive spouse? "Because I love him, and can’t live without him." I regularly counsel spouses of substance abusers about this.

Don’t despair, however, no matter what your addiction is. The large majority of addicts give up every kind of addiction. So can you. That most people do it, one way or another, tells you that it lies within your power.

Des moines drug rehab drug rehab Des moines IA drug rehab Des moines Iowa http://www.stgregorycrt.com Urbandale drug rehab drug rehab Urbandale IA drug rehab http://www.stgregoryctr.com/help.php Urbandale Iowa West des moines drug rehab drug rehab West des moines IA

Stanton Peele has been investigating, thinking, and writing about addiction since 1969. His first bombshell book, “Love and Addiction”, appeared in 1975. Its experiential and environmental approach to addiction revolutionized thinking on the subject by indicating that addiction is not limited to narcotics, or to drugs at all, and that addiction is a pattern of behavior and experience which is best understood by examining an individual’s relationship with his/her world. This is a distinctly nonmedical approach. It views addiction as a general pattern of behavior that nearly everyone experiences in varying degrees at one time or another.

fast drug rehabilitation http://www.fastdrugrehabilitation.com

Clicking ads on this site helps our tribe!

Roland John Morris, Sr.  Fall, 1998

What made this Tribal Elder want to work against Tribal government and federal Indian Policy?   Roland John Morris, Sr., tried of watching his family die, asked Senators in Washington DC to step away from current Federal Indian policy and begin to treat all men equally.  Read his story below.

My name is Roland Morris Sr. I am a full-blooded Anishinabe American citizen from the Leech Lake Band of Minnesota Chippewa. It is my hope you will discern the truthfulness of my message by examining both my heart, as well as my words.

When my brothers and sisters and I were growing up in the 50’s, the hateful overt racism did hurt. However, the reverse was also hurtful. When patronizing people essentially pat us on the head and said; "you poor dear, you are a victim and can’t possibly take care of yourself." and "you can’t be to blame for your actions", that was just as hurtful, if not more so.

On top of that, Federal Indian Policy itself views Native Americans as

Read the rest of this entry »

Clicking ads on this site helps our tribe!

Clicking ads on this site helps our tribe!

Please take 10 minutes to read!

Take a break from your hectic world for a moment, my Anishinabe brothers and sisters. Separate yourself from the chaos that has at times had the power to engulf your life. Allow the power to be shifted back to your authentic self. Reflect for a moment on the following idea:

Read the rest of this entry »

Clicking ads on this site helps our tribe!

Dakota County, Minnesota

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Dakota County, Minnesota
Map
Location in the state of Minnesota
Minnesota’s location in the U.S.
Statistics
Founded	October 27, 1849 [1]
Seat	Hastings
Largest city	Eagan
Area - Total - Land - Water	586 sq mi (1,519 km²) 570 sq mi (1,475 km²) 17 sq mi (43 km²), 2.86%
Population - (2000) - Density	355,904 625/sq mi (241/km²)
Time zone	Central: UTC-6/-5
Website: www.dakotacounty.us
Named for: Named after the Dakota people.

Dakota County is the third most populous county in the U.S. state of Minnesota. The county is bordered by the Minnesota and Mississippi Rivers on the north, and the state of Wisconsin on the east. Dakota County comprises the southeast portion of seven-county Minneapolis-St. Paul, the sixteenth largest metropolitan area in the United States with about 3.2 million residents. The U.S. Census Bureau estimated the population of Dakota County at 388,001 in 2006.^[1] The county seat is Hastings^[2].

The county is home to historical events at Mendota that defined the state’s future which included providing materials for the construction of Fort Snelling across the river and the signing of the Treaty of Traverse des Sioux which ceded land from native Dakota for the Minnesota Territory. The county’s history was initially tied to the confluence of the Mississippi and Minnesota Rivers, both strategically important for United States expansion and as the convergence of the Dakota and Anishinaabe nations who regarded the site as sacred. Influence shifted westward during the post World War II settlement boom when Interstate 35 connected the western half of the county to Minneapolis and Saint Paul and bedroom communities grew. Today, Dakota County has a population that rivals the city of Minneapolis. Most earn their living outside the county but like many metro counties is continuing to absorb more industry and jobs from the core cities.^[3][4]

Dakota is named after the Dakota (or Sioux) Native Americans who were the previous predominant settlers of the area.^[3] The name is recorded Dakotah in older U.S. Census records until 1851.^[5]

Clicking ads on this site helps our tribe!

My name is Pamela Zeller and I am the Acting Executive Director for the Mendota Mdewakanton Dakota Community located in Mendota, MN.  The tribe has been seeking federal tribal recognition for the past twelve years, and is incorporated presently as a 501 ( c ) ( 3 ) nonprofit.  

An historical context for the Mendota Mdewakanton is as follows: 

“In 1851 they and other Dakota tribes ceded twenty million acres to the federal government. Money and supplies promised in return never materialized. In 1862 a white trader whom they approached for food told a group of starving Dakota to eat grass. The next morning the trader was found with his throat cut, his mouth full of grass and his warehouses empty…

The ensuing conflict resulted in the deaths of about six hundred soldiers and settlers, precipitated the removal of those Dakota who did not flee to a concentration camp at Fort Snelling, and caused three hundred Indian men to be condemned to hang. President Lincoln stayed execution for most of them, but thirty-eight were hung at Mankato, the biggest mass execution in the history of the United States…

During the uprising, Mendota and other Dakota farmers who were friendly with white settlers saved more than three hundred women and children. (In the past they were often referred to as the ‘friendlies’.) In return, Henry Sibley, regional manager of the American Fur Company, wrote to the government on behalf of the Mendota, prompting the 1863 Congress to grant the people eighty acres and $50 apiece to start over.

The money was not sent. Nor did the people get the land. Instead, they were told to go to the reservations. Outraged, Sibley, a large landowner in the area, took the Mendota to a small lake in the region.

Until his death in 1891, he continued trying to get for them the land and money appropriated by Congress. After his death, his family simply kicked them off the land.

Meanwhile, the Dakota who had either fled or been shipped out of the region began returning home. The government now appropriated land for them in Shakopee, Prairie Island, Granite Falls, and Morton, Minnesota. There were plans for land in Mendota, too, but because whites in the area did not want Indians that close to Minneapolis and St. Paul, no land was ever provided there.” (Sacred Lands of Indian America, pp. 110-115
Text by Charles E. Little, Jake Page, and Ruth Rudner)

Consequently, former members of their own tribe that settled in Shakopee, Prairie Island and on other reservation lands are now part of federally recognized tribes. 

The question for the Foundation is whether or not the Mendota Mdewakanton Dakota Community will be eligible for funding under the Native nations’ self-determination focus of the Bush Foundation’s new guidelines.

Thank you for any clarification you can give to this matter.  I can be reached via email at zellersolutions@gmail.com or by telephone at (651) 399-3307.  For more historical information on the tribe and specific steps that have been taken towards federal recognition, please contact the Tribal Council’s Cultural Chairman, Jim Anderson at 612 328-7837 or via email at info@mendotadakota.com.

Respectfully,

Pamela Zeller, Acting Executive Director

Mendota Mdewakanton Dakota Community

Clicking ads on this site helps our tribe!

I was just sitting here thinking that I have never heard anyone say “I am part white” or “I’m 1/4 black”I thought of this after a friend of mine said “I am like 1/6 Native American”.

Who is keeping track of all these records of who is how much? Is it Whites? is it Indians?

When i was in school, my teacher asked everyone in the class as part of some project to write a paper about who they were, where they came from and what nationality they were… well in mine i wrote about being Native American. unlike every other student, the teacher asked me right then and there what Reservation I was a member of… I stammered and hemmed and hawed and said “none” the class laughed and she said “Then you are not an Indian”   wow.

Who askes Tupac Shakure or Will smith what part of Africa they are from, yet there is no doubt that they are “African American”

What’s your opinion on this, please share. thanks.

Bradley Sumpter bradfromiowa@gmail.com

Clicking ads on this site helps our tribe!

Minnesota Public Radio: American Indians prefer to reflect on their own history
http://minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2008/06/06/redlakesesquicentennial/

Clicking ads on this site helps our tribe!

Commentary: Sesquicentennial missed reconciliation

Audrey Thayer, Bemidji Pioneer
Published Wednesday, June 04, 2008

Bemidji was one of the five honorary locations that celebrated “Capital for a Day” and the 150 years of Minnesota statehood which was called “Minnesota’s Sesquicentennial.”Being indigenous, I thought what an opportunity to attend at least a couple of the state’s presentations on the history of great things that have happened since the “arrival of the immigrants” to Minnesota which was Dakota Territory and then later home to the Anishinabe people.

Looking at history, you might even consider the “arrival of the immigrants as being illegal immigrants” as permission was never questioned but assumed when treaties were signed that these documents were correctly honored and the right to use the Indian land in our state was appropriate.

I was disappointed in the “Capital for a day” in Bemidji and disturbed by the approach toward the Minnesota’s Sesquicentennial in this state.

It was clear our friends who joined us in sharing of the land now called Minnesota basically have not learned much in the past 150 years in cultural understanding.

Many of the cities’ ceremonial activities were planned extensively. I wondered how many of the honored cities directly asked local native groups to assist in planning the events. It was clear, not many.

The native Americans were overlooked, in some cases not included, in events throughout the state.

Celebrations focused on the immigrant who arrived in this state, leaving out the indigenous peoples who had a rich history here prior to the arrival of our guests and a depressive history during the 150 years of Minnesota Statehood.

This is sad as the Indian population was the original keepers of this land, the landlords, always treating this sacred land with respect.

Unfortunately, the true history of the 150 years of statehood from 1858 to 2008 was genocide, dishonesty and bad mission work when it came to the native American.

It can be difficult to include these facts in any historical celebration but this is part of our history and if we want to reconcile with the native American, it must be included.

It was tragic one of the Sesquicentennial events on May 11, at Fort Snelling, located outside the Twin Cities, resulted in native peoples arrested trying to bring to light public education of what really happened when the wagon trains rolled into the state of Minnesota 150 years past.

The history of Minnesota’s influential leaders in government toward Indians was genocide.

It allowed the stripping of the native culture, bad land deals clearly knowing without the resources from the land the native lifestyles depending on it encouraged a loss of identity, which is part of the historical trauma for native people today.

For Bemidji’s capital for the day, I felt like it was a rushed sideshow with a lot of military pomp and circumstance, throwing in a respected native drum, a prayer from a well-intentioned priest whose church had a history of destructive mission work and this was Bemidji Capital for a Day.

I think the little dab of including something native American missed the mark for this day.

The Diamond Point Park dedication in Bemidji included for the list of events was important.

The event reflected hard work by good citizens in this community but lacked real substance to the history of Diamond Point Park.

On that day of re-dedication, the emphasis of the Diamond Point Park history could have been presented in more detail instead of the quick speeches congratulating on the upgrades to the park.

The history of this park is gone without a whisper of why to the public.

At the end of the day and all is said and done, I brought my granddaughters to the premier of “Bend in the River” a historical production produced by a local theater company.

The production was presented twice in Bemidji, the night before and at the very end of the Bemidji Capital for a Day.

It offered a real descriptive and sound history from the indigenous history to logging not to forget the Paul Bunyan mythology.

The “Bend in the River” should have been presented when the large crowd gathered to celebrate the Minnesota Sesquicentennial and dedication of the Diamond Point area.

If I had not attended this play I would have truly missed one of the most important events for Bemidji Capital for a Day and Minnesota’s Sesquicentennial celebration.

I want to thank the individuals that were in this production for giving of their time and energy to show history.

In closing thought, the 150 years Sesquicentennial for me was a strong reminder of the history of destruction and stealing of land from the original people who lived in this state.

I am glad I supported the events that tried to grasp the concepts of the past 150 years but I fear people missed an opportunity for reconciliation with native people and the word exclusion comes to my mind.

Audrey Thayer is coordinator of the Greater Minnesota Racial Justice Project of the American Civil Liberties Union-Minnesota.

Clicking ads on this site helps our tribe!