The Coleman Institute Blog

The internet is a marvelous thing. It can bring us information at lightning speed and help us learn things, get places, and entertain ourselves. Some of us older folks can remember life before the internet, but it is hard for anyone to imagine life now without the internet. But new inventions can have unintended consequences.

There have always been some people who enjoy sexual arousal and new inventions have often been used to feed that appetite. Soon after photographs were invented, some enterprising fellows began to make pornographic pictures. When moving pictures were invented around 1900, it was not long after that there were pornographic movies being made and watched. And, so it is with the internet. From the earliest days of the world-wide web enterprising people started to make money by providing pornography online.

There has been, and always will be, a ready market for pornography – it excites the Dopamine part of our brain that is biologically wired for sex and survival. We are born with a natural strong desire for sex, and anything that excites that part of our brain has a strong influence on us. Did you ever notice that beer and car TV commercials almost always involve seductively clad women? Online pornography has taken this to a new level. The numbers are staggering. In the US alone, there are over 100 million visitors to adult sites every month. It has been calculated, just in 2015, there were more hours spent on one particular pornography website than the number of hours that Homo Sapiens have been in existence!

I’m not saying that miracles can’t and don’t happen anytime and anywhere, but seeing miracles is a daily occurrence in my job.

For instance…this week James* came in to get his second naltrexone implant. April did the implant, but she grabbed me on his way out and said, “I knew you’d want to say hello to James.”

Now I’m getting older and a lot of times it takes me a minute to remember who I’m looking at. That’s what was going on as I looked at this handsome, smiling young man in front of me. He grinned kind of sheepishly and said, “ Sorry I gave you guys such a hard time during my detox.”

And then I remembered. James was terrified of the Accelerated Opiate Detox process. He had heard some horror stories about the ultra rapid detox done under anesthesia, but even more than that, he was terrified to give up his dope. It had become a very reliable friend to him. He had a three-week old son at home, and he knew he wanted to be the kind of dad this little one deserved. So he took a deep breath and went through with it.

Checking on him the first couple weeks after he was done, James was struggling with anxiety and sleeping issues. We encouraged him, gave him some tips, urged him to continue with the therapist we’d helped him find and assured him what he was feeling was normal.

And now, here he was, two months later. The 145 pound, 6 foot, acne-ridden guy that was with us in January was transformed. James has put on 15 pounds. His skin is clear, his smile is huge. He proudly flashed us a picture of his son.

That’s a miracle.

Look for another miracle story in the next couple days.

Joan R. Shepherd, FNP

*I don’t use anyone’s real name, and I change details that might identify a patient.

Just when you thought the heroin epidemic was bad enough, now we are seeing a new and even worse epidemic - Fentanyl. We started to hear about Fentanyl since it has been a contributing factor in many recent overdose deaths.

For those struggling with an addiction to alcohol or another substance, the end of the year can be a challenging time. Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s can bring up old temptations and triggers that can make your goal for sobriety seem out of reach. But now that the overindulgent holidays are past us, we can focus on the possibilities of the New Year that lies ahead.