Sherry Turkle : Alone Together

ChicagoHumanities

http://chicagohumanities.org - See more Chicago Humanities Festival events.

Smartphone notifications and Facebook newsfeeds have irretrievably changed the very nature of personal interaction. Long before the Internet, texting, and Twitter became a daily force in contemporary life, psychologist and sociologist Sherry Turkle studied the relationship between human beings and technology. Now the director of MIT's Initiative on Technology and Self and the author of Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other, Turkle draws on 30 years of research to explore whether our fascination with technology—and our increasing reliance on its capabilities—are irreparably degrading our appreciation of authentic encounters and human relationships.

This program is generously underwritten by the Aon Corporation.

Capitalism Makes us Crazy : Dr Gabor Maté on Illness & Addiction

Humans have always used drugs, but current level of drug abuse could indicate a bigger problem that we’re driving people into addiction. What’s the connection between the increase in chronic diseases, mental illness and drug addiction in our society today? On this edition, Dr. Gabor Maté talks about the relationship between mind and body health – and what the rise of capitalism has done to destroy both.
Special thanks to KPFA in Berkeley, CA.

Featuring:
Dr. Gabor Maté, physician and author of several books including, “In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction,” “Hold on to Your Kids: Why Parents Need to Matter More Than Peers” (co-authored by Gordon Neufeld), and “When the Body Says No: The Cost of Hidden Stress.”

Source :  http://www.radioproject.org/2012/02/gabor-mate-illness-addiction/

Dr. Gabor Mate on how addiction changes the brain

AllanGregg

How does addiction change the brain? According to Dr. Gabor Mate, it's a difficult struggle for hard core drug addicts to kick their habit because their brains are impaired. In a new book, he looks at the common roots of addictive behaviours and what can be done about them. It's called "In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction".

Dr. Gabor Maté ~ Who We Are When We Are Not Addicted : The Possible Human

artandmeditation

Dr. Gabor Maté gives us clues as to who we are when we are not addicted. Filmed January 9th, 2012 in Vancouver, B.C. as part of a launch for Beyond Addiction: The Yogic Path to Recovery. This four weekend program with Dr. Gabor Maté and Sat Dharam Kaur N.D. begins January 20th, 2012 in Vancouver. For more information see kundaliniyogatraining.com - Kundalini Training Programs - Beyond Addiction, Vancouver.

How to recognise an addiction - Dr Iain McGilchrist Priory Group

00159_Priory_addiction_Dr.McGilchrist  Carregado por broadbandtvchannel

The next programme in the Priory Healthcare News series looking at the subject of addictions and how to recognise when a habit becomes an addiction and requires specialist intervention.

“Filmed at The Priory Hospital Hayes Grove, a 45-bed acute psychiatric hospital offering a wide range of inpatient, outpatient, day patient and therapy services we hear from consultant psychiatrist Dr Iain McGilchrist.”

Arguments for the Elimination of Television

SpartacusMoriarty

Jerry Mander, author of "In the Absence of the Sacred" and "Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television", describes the drawbacks of television. An excerpt from the extended interviews of What A Way To Go: Life At The End Of Empire. A middle class white guy comes to grips with Peak Oil, Climate Change, Mass Extinction, Population Overshoot and the demise of the American Lifestyle.

To find out more go to: http://www.whatawaytogomovie.com/

Generation RX : A Prescription for Pain

This documentary tells the story four people and their struggles with prescription drug abuse and also of one woman overcoming the death of her mother, who passed away from the disease of addiction from an overdose. This film delves into the characters introduction to the drugs, their downfall from addiction into their rock bottom, while leading into their hope for freedom from active addiction touching on their recovery process.

“In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts”: Dr. Gabor Maté, Physician at Vancouver Safe-Injection Site, on the Biological and Socio-Economic Roots of Addiction and ADD

Dr. Gabor Maté is the staff physician at the Portland Hotel Society, which runs a residence/harm reduction facility and North America’s only supervised safe-injection site in Vancouver, Canada, home to one of the world’s densest areas of drug users. The bestselling author of four books, we speak to Dr. Maté about his latest, In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction, which proposes new approaches to treating addiction through an understanding of its biological and socio-economic roots. Maté also discusses his work on attention deficit disorder and the mind-body connection.

Week in Review: Dr. Gabor Mate: Judging the Addict

In his new book, In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction, Dr. Gabor Maté explains the lessons he’s learned in a long career of working with addicts. He draws the connections between drug addiction, stress, and other addictive behaviors, whether they be workaholism or compulsive shopping.

Dr. Maté joined us recently to talk about the way our society adds to our stresses, creates addictions, and then punishes people for their problems, and the best way to actually help people break out of the cycle of addictive behavior.
http://lauraflanders.firedoglake.com/

In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction

Webcast of the March 12, 2008 book launch of Dr. Gabor Maté's new book, "In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction", at St. Andrew's Wesley church, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. The event, sponsored by Necessary Voices Society, was a fundraiser for the Downtown Eastside Women's Centre and Aboriginal Mother Centre.

http://www.workingtv.com/

In this new book, bestselling writer and physician Gabor Maté looks at the epidemic of addictions in our society, tells us why we are so prone to them and what is needed to liberate ourselves from their hold on our emotions and behaviours

For over ten years Gabor Maté has been the staff physician at the Portland Hotel, a residence and harm reduction facility in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside. His patients are challenged by life-threatening drug addictions, mental illness, Hepatitis C or HIV and, in many cases, all four. But if Dr. Maté's patients are at the far end of the spectrum, there are many others among us who are also struggling with addictions. more

Interview - Dr. Gabor Mate - Close Encounters with Addiction

Interview with Dr. Gabor Mate author of "In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction" recorded January 16, 2010 in Seattle. For more info: http://www.drgabormate.com/

In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction

In this new book, bestselling writer and physician Gabor Maté looks at the epidemic of addictions in our society, tells us why we are so prone to them and what is needed to liberate ourselves from their hold on our emotions and behaviours

For over ten years Gabor Maté has been the staff physician at the Portland Hotel, a residence and harm reduction facility in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside. His patients are challenged by life-threatening drug addictions, mental illness, Hepatitis C or HIV and, in many cases, all four. But if Dr. Maté's patients are at the far end of the spectrum, there are many others among us who are also struggling with addictions. Drugs, alcohol, tobacco, work, food, sex, gambling and excessive inappropriate spending: what is amiss with our lives that we seek such self-destructive ways to comfort ourselves? And why is it so difficult to stop these habits, even as they threaten our health, jeopardize our relationships and corrode our lives?

Beginning with a dramatically close view of his drug addicted patients, Dr. Maté looks at his own history of compulsive behaviour. He weaves the stories of real people who have struggled with addiction with the latest research on addiction and the brain. Providing a bold synthesis of clinical experience, insight and cutting edge scientific findings, Dr. Maté sheds light on this most puzzling of human frailties. He proposes a compassionate approach to helping drug addicts and, for the many behaviour addicts among us, to addressing the void addiction is meant to fill. http://www.drgabormate.com/ghosts.php

Authors@Google: David Kessler

AtGoogleTalks

David Kessler visits Google's Mountain View, CA headquarters to discuss his book "The End of Overeating." This event took place on May 28, 2009, as part of the Authors@Google series.

Before we can begin to address America's eating epidemic, we need to understand WHY we have such difficulty controlling what we eat. Kessler spent the past seven years meeting with top scientists, physicians, psychologists, and food industry insiders, and conducting his own research to reveal how specific foods produced by giant food corporations and restaurant chains ("Big Food") feed our desire to eat by stimulating the brain with an infinite variety of diabolical combinations of salt, fat and sugar. People of all ages are being set up for a lifetime of food obsession due to the ever-present availability of foods laden with salt, fat and sugar. It is no wonder that millions of Americans are gaining weight and getting sick. The End of Overeating provides a highly readable and indispensable picture of the problems we face and offers solutions for how to fight them and regain control.

David Kessler, MD, served as commissioner of the US Food and Drug Administration. Dr. Kessler, a pediatrician, has been dean of the medical schools at Yale and the UCSF. He is the father of two grown children and lives with his wife in California.

2006 Ellis Grollman Lecture

View Grollman Lecture here.
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Nora D. Volkow, MD, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse at the National Institutes of Health, spoke to students and faculty at the University of Maryland School of Pharmacy's 2006 Ellis Grollman Lecture in Pharmaceutical Sciences May 10 and presented new images of the drug-addicted brain.

Volkow discussed how addiction is a disorder that involves complex interactions among a wide array of biological and environmental variables, and how new research has demonstrated the neurochemical and functional changes that occur in the brains of addicts.

Studies have shown that drugs to boost dopamine levels make people euphoric, but in the long run, repeated drug use reduces the ability of the dopamine pleasure center to produce euphoric or good feelings. Dysfunction in inhibitory control systems, by decreasing the addict's ability to refrain from seeking and consuming drugs, ultimately results in the compulsive drug intake that characterizes the disease of drug addiction. The discovery of such disruptions in the fine balance that normally exists between brain circuits may help researchers to develop more successful treatments for addiction.

Following the lecture, Volkow talked to news reporters about the recent statements by talk-show host Rush Limbaugh, U.S. Rep. Patrick Kennedy, and local sportscaster Keith Mills that they have become addicted to prescription pain killers. She said those cases are far from typical, but the problem of addiction to prescribed pain killing drugs is growing nationally.

Volkow also spoke to many faculty members and students at the School of Pharmacy to learn about research at the School. She was especially interested in the development of new opiate pain killers that do not possess the potential for addiction. Jia Bei Wang, MD, PhD, is studying how receptors respond after chronic treatment with opioids such as morphine or oxycodone, in order to model the dependent state, and how Andrew Coop, PhD, is designing new analogs of morphine in which dependence does not develop. Both projects have the long-term goal of creating new therapeutic drugs for the treatment of pain, but without the addiction liability of current treatments.

Speaking to The Baltimore Examiner newspaper, Volkow said people with dominant, outgoing, successful personalities actually have brains wired in such a way that makes them less likely to enjoy drugs and become addicted to them. "Some genes may protect you. Some may make you vulnerable. But genes can only take a person so far. Environment - that is, the how much people are exposed to drugs - is equally important."

In comments to The Daily Record, she said it is up to doctors, pharmacists, family members - and even employers - to be aware of the signs of drug abuse, prescription or otherwise, and to be open-minded about the problem. Volkow estimates as many as 10 percent of employees are abusing substances. "That's pretty high," she added. People exposed to prescription drugs as adolescents are "much more likely later to have problems with these drugs," she said.

Destigmatizing addiction inside the workplace is key, Volkow told The Daily Record, and making treatment available and affordable as part of an insurance plan, for example, is key to success. "If you have education and provide an infrastructure that would allow the person to seek help, it is clear it is considered a disease and not stigmatized," she explained. Otherwise, "the employee will not want to come up and say, 'I'm a drug addict,'" she added.

"If you have chronic pain, it is horrible. It can devastate someone's life. Opiate painkillers are incredibly beneficial for people who suffer from severe pain," said Volkow.

Alan Leshner Discusses New Science of Addiction

and What It Means to Society

Description:
Advances in science in recent decades have revolutionized the understanding of the nature of drug abuse and addiction and what society needs to do about them.

According to Alan Leshner, chief executive officer of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), there is now a clear understanding that drug abuse and addiction are bio-behavioral phenomena with important biological, behavioral and social-context components. Those components must be recognized in developing prevention, treatment and social-policy responses to the problems.

Speaker Biography:

Alan Leshner has been chief executive officer of AAAS since December 2001. AAAS was founded in 1848 and is the world's largest multi-disciplinary scientific and engineering society. Prior to his arrival at AAAS, Leshner was director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse at the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH). He has also served as deputy director and acting director of the National Institute of Mental Health, and has worked in senior positions at the National Science Foundation. He was a professor of psychology for 10 years at Bucknell University. Leshner received a bachelor's degree in psychology from Franklin and Marshall College and master's and Ph.D. degrees in physiological psychology from Rutgers University. President Bush appointed Leshner to the National Science Board in 2004. He also sits on the Advisory Committee to the director of NIH and represents AAAS on the U.S. Commission for UNESCO.