My website is www.albertasequeira.com

Video Interview with Alberta at the end of the page.  Worth listenin to!

Nominated in 2009 for the “Editor’s Choice Award”

Someone Stop This Merry-Go-Round is now in e-book form for $3.49. http://www.amazon.com/Someone-Stop-This-Merry-Go-Round-ebook/dp/B0045JK1Z6/ref=sr_1_sc_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1338208409&sr=1-1-spell

This is a memoir that hides nothing from the reality of the affects of alcoholism on the whole family. The story follows an ordinary family with two daughters living with security and happiness until Richie  turned their lives upside down with fear, confusion and abuse to their mother from his drinking.

No begging or pleading, helped Richie come to realize the seriousness of this killer. He loses his business, family and dies in 1985 at the VA Hospital in Providence, Rhode Island at forty-five years of age to this horrible, worldwide disease.

Ride the merry-go-round of emotions as everyone continues the same habits of life without making any demands. Alberta innocently becomes an enablers only pushing Richie deeper into his addiction.

Paperback: Now $14.78 http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_i_0_32?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=someone+stop+this+merry+go+round&sprefix=someone+stop+this+merry+go+round

Autographed books at www.albertasequeira.com through PayPal.  Books can be sent from you to another person as a gift!

This heartless demon was not happy taking the husband.  Now, the monster returns to take the daughter.  The memoirs could be called ”What Not to Do!”  Read how Lori struggled in three alcoholic rehabilitation centers to only come out sitll in denial.  It’s a book of lessons from the mother who did it so wrong.

The last chapters contain the author’s actual talks to the substance abusers in halfway homes and rehabilitation centers.

Order the paperback at: $17.95

http://www.amazon.com/Please-God-Not-Alberta-Sequeira/dp/0741460297/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1302185366&sr=1-1

Autographed books at www.albertasequeira.com. They can be sent through Paypal from you to others as a gift!

I am now a blog writer on alcohol abuse for the CapeCodToday and Plymouth Daily News.  Here is my first write-up. Please support me to fight for substance abusers by going to the end of the article and sign a petition to help me.

Who is the Patient Privacy Act really protecting? Is it the hospitals, health insurance companies or the substance abuse locations? How many times do they see patients leave knowing that, when they walk out, they will be back again? Why not? How can ten days be enough time to help an alcoholic after years of drinking?

In 2004, our family realized that the decline in my daughter, Lori’s, health was caused by alcohol abuse. We learned this when she voluntarily entered the Gosnold Rehabilitation Center in Falmouth, Massachusetts. She was thirty-seven years old. By then, her physical signs were obvious; she had lost considerable weight, her feet caused her so much pain that she couldn’t wear shoes and was in slippers most of the time, and her hair was so matted she couldn’t comb it without pain.

At that time, Lori informed me that she was also bulimic. I thought her weight loss was from the stress of a broken marriage, losing her job and her car to repossession, and losing her home. She said her doctor had told her, nearly a year earlier, that her liver was so bad that if she continued drinking, she would only live another two years.

Her doctor wanted her to get on a liver transplant list, but she refused. (Before she could even be put on the list, she would have to be sober for a year). If we had been allowed to consult with her doctor, we might have been able to convince her to get on the program for a transplant, and help her with organizations to curb her drinking; she never fought her family when we talked to her about getting help. She kept us in the dark by always saying things were fine.

In 1985, her father, Richard Lopes of North Dighton, died of cirrhosis of the liver, caused by his alcohol addiction, at forty-five years of age at the VA Hospital in Providence, Rhode Island.

For two years, family watched Lori enter the Butler Rehabilitation Hospital in Providence, Rhode Island, and again for the second time at the Gosnold Rehabilitation Center. All three times during her recovery programs, we wanted to get involved in her counseling and doctor’s appointments but The Patient Privacy Act gave Lori the right to refuse. I knew deep down that a lot of her problems came from our alcoholic family life.

I believed Lori had been too confused and feared opening up with her counselors about things in her past. Her sister, Debbie, and I could have helped her to understand more about what happened when she was too young to know what was going on. We were not allowed into counseling sessions. For some reason, Lori would not talk to Debbie or me about her problems. We had hoped that family counseling would have helped her open up.

Alcoholism is called a “Family Disease” but it isn’t treated that way. We have AA meetings, Al-Anon and Alateen going on with every family member (the addicted, the husband/wife and the children) all going to different locations to discuss the same family problems from substance abuse. These serious issues include confusion, fear and physical abuse. Don’t you think doing this together would make more sense and be a more powerful tool in helping the alcoholic to recover? We are all sick when living in an alcoholic atmosphere.

Al-Anon told me for four straight years to go on with my own life and that my husband may have to reach rock bottom before he reached out for help or came out of denial. His rock bottom was his death, as was his daughter’s. I tried to control my husband’s drinking and abuse toward me, instead of protecting my two daughters by removing their father from the home.

Believing in Al-Anon and trying to hold the family together, I finally fell apart and had a small breakdown from the stress pushing my body and mind beyond what it could take, while waiting for a once-loving husband and father to admit he was an alcoholic and needed help. I enabled him and unknowingly pushed him deeper into his addiction.

I’m sure there are rehabilitation centers that are helping every family member. For the ones Lori attended while trying to recover, we would be informed by her counselors of the dangerous stage her liver was at, how fragile she was and the importance to her survival for her to be in a long-term 90 day program. I actually begged to get into counseling with her only to be told I couldn’t override the Patient Privacy Act.

It took two years to get Lori to sign herself in for the 90 days. Less than three weeks into her program the location gave her a choice to finish the time or go into a halfway home. What do you think she chose? She was just starting to open up to her sister and children.

She left for the halfway home and was kicked out after two weeks for staying out late. There was no director or staff member staying at the location as there were at the rehabilitation centers. Eight months later, on November 22, 2006 at thirty-nine years of age, two days before Thanksgiving, we had to make the painful decision to take Lori off life-support. She was put to rest beside her father at the St. Patrick Cemetery in Somerset, Massachusetts.

Once she died, I was allowed to purchase her counseling reports. Each page had me in tears, learning the pain my daughter was going through during her two years in recovery. Lori admitted not knowing what actually happened in her younger years and said she lived in fear all her life and couldn’t understand why. Incidents I could have helped her understand. I was left with the horror of learning that Lori alleged her father had abused her. She had never talked about the incident.

This is what the Patient Privacy Act protects? Are you serious! Secrets that make a sick patient go deeper into mental confusion instead of getting the help from their family; or, as in our case, giving our family the opportunity to work with counselors and doctors so we could have helped Lori face her past and present problems, along with her bulimic illness, and have a brighter future with recovery.

When Lori was a patient at the Charlton Memorial Hospital in Fall River, in her last three weeks of life, family was allowed to get all daily reports from the doctors on Lori’s condition. In other words, when they concluded that there was little or no hope for Lori at this stage, then we could be pulled in to know her every day detail of declining health. Two years before, when Lori had been told her liver was giving out, was the time we could have had a better chance of saving her. Now they gave us the right to make a decision with her life by pulling her off life-support. I watched my daughter take her first breath at birth and her last at thirty-nine years of age from a habit and action that each of us might have been able to help her fight.

On April 5, 2011, my husband, Al, and I met with Stephen Meunier, the Policy Advisor to Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts in Boston. Our initiate was to modify a change in the Patient Privacy Act, to allow immediate family (parents, and/or siblings) access to medical information which can be used to help a substance abuse patient get the proper treatment, primarily when a physician determines that the patient maybe in a life-threatening situation because of their addiction. We believe that the patient should have the “right to privacy,” but as the law stands now, it can actually be detrimental to their health and well-being. We believe it defeats the purpose.

Once alcoholics have come this deep into their addiction, we believe they are not mentally capable of making clear and healthy decisions with their treatment or not needing the help from family. This procedure in modifying the Patient Privacy Act is still active.

After Lori’s death, I have become a private and public speaker at alcoholic rehabilitation centers, halfway homes, businesses, organizations and schools to speak on “The Effect of Alcoholism on the Whole Family.” I offer a deeper talk to the alcoholic and addict patients.

I wrote about our lives in Someone Stop This Merry-Go-Round; An Alcoholic Family in Crisis and its sequel Please, God, Not Two; This Killer Called Alcoholism. I’m now working on a book for alcoholics and addicts that will be written by them. I want to learn what is and isn’t working in their recovery programs. It will become their book. Hopefully, it will help doctors and counselors learn a better way of helping addicts. If something isn’t working, we need a change. This has become a worldwide problem that is completely out-of-control. I am also looking for supporter to follow me in the future to Washington, DC to fight for a change.

I started a petition to modify the Patient Privacy Act. The full petition can be reviewed and signed at here.

Suicide is the 10th leading cause of death in the US; thus, it is a significant public health problem. A new study has reported that 24% of male suicide victims and 17% of female suicide victims are legally intoxicated when they die. In addition, compared to their sober counterparts, these individuals are prone to die by violent means such as hanging, using a firearm, or falling.

The results of the study were published online in BMJ’s journal Injury Prevention.

EMAX Health: Daily Health News

The study authors noted that it is well known that individuals with alcohol dependence are at a significantly increased risk for suicide, much less is known about the role of acute alcohol use in suicidal behaviors. Therefore, the researchers conducted an epidemiological study that assessed the prevalence and factors associated with acute alcohol intoxication.

The study group was comprised of 57,813 suicide victims in 16 states. The researchers accessed data from the restricted National Violent Death Reporting System 2003–2009 for male and female suicide victims aged 18 years and older. They compared individuals with and without alcohol intoxication (defined as blood alcohol concentration (BAC) of 0.08 g/dl or more).

The researchers found that men who were younger, American Indian/Alaska Native, Hispanic, military veterans, of lower educational attainment, and rural residents died from a self-inflicted firearm injury or hanging/suffocation were more likely to have been intoxicated at the time of death. Factors associated with a BAC at or above the 0.08 legal limit among female suicide victims were younger age, and being American Indian/Alaska Native. These women were more likely to die from using a firearm, hanging/suffocation, or falling.

The authors concluded that in both men and women, alcohol intoxication was associated with violent methods of suicide and decreased markedly with age. They noted that their findings suggested that addressing risks associated with acute alcohol use may provide the most significant benefit for the prevention of violent suicides among young and middle age adults. They explained that the study illustrates the need for government and state programs aimed at lowering suicide rates and developing targeted prevention strategies designed for groups identified at high risk of alcohol-associated suicide.

A treatment plan for alcohol abusers should include behavior-modification techniques, counseling, goal-setting, and use of self-help manuals or Internet resources. Counseling on an individual or a group basis is an essential treatment component. Group therapy is particularly valuable because it allows interaction with other alcohol abusers. It increases the awareness that one’s problems are not unique. Therapy may include the presence of a spouse or other family members. Family support is a significant component of the recovery process. Alcohol abuse may be a component of other mental health disorders. For these individuals, psychological counseling or psychotherapy may be recommended. Treatment for depression or anxiety may also be a part of follow-up. Beyond counseling and medication, other modalities may be helpful. For example, in September 2010, UCLA researchers released the results of a clinical trial on a unique new therapy that applies electrical stimulation to a major nerve emanating from the brain. The technique, trigeminal nerve stimulation (TNS) achieved an average of a 70% reduction in symptom severity over an eight-week study period.

Long-term pharmaceutical treatment may be used. Oral medications are available for treatment including disulferam, acamprostate, and naltrexone. Disulferam (antabuse®), which is taken by mouth, produces unpleasant physical reactions such as flushing, headaches, nausea, vomiting and headaches. Disulferam does not reduce the craving for alcohol; however, acamprosate (Campral®) may reduce alcohol craving. Naltrexone (ReVia®) also may reduce the urge to drink; furthermore, it blocks the pleasant sensations associated with the consumption of alcohol. A problem with oral medications is that if one desires to return to drinking, he or she can simply stop taking the medication.

Aftercare programs and support groups are essential for the recovering alcoholic to avoid (or manage) relapses and deal with the necessary lifestyle changes to maintain sobriety. Regular attendance at a support group such as Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) is often a component of follow-up care.

Reference: BMJ’s Injury Prevention

Photo Credits:

R&B bad boy Bobby Brown was forced to sit his children down and open up about his alcohol and drug troubles as they came of age, because he didn’t want them believing everything they read in the press.

The New Edition singer, a father of five, has long struggled with addiction issues and he has been arrested numerous times on charges including DUI.

However, the 43 year old insists he did his best to keep his personal battles a secret in a bid to protect his kids.

During a candid interview with three of his grown-up children on Today, which aired on Friday, the singer said, “You don’t subject children to things that you don’t want ‘em to be around.”

The My Prerogative hitmaker initially succeeded – his son Landon admits he was “completely oblivious” to any of his dad’s vices.

But, as Brown’s children grew up, the star knew he had to come clean so they’d be prepared to handle the media.

His daughter LaPrincia explained, “When things came out (in the press) about drugs, maybe he didn’t tell me what drug he might have been doing, but, when it did come out in the media, he did sit me down and he said listen, ‘I did (do drugs)’. I think he said marijuana… but he did let me know that it was something that he was in the wrong for, that he had done, and that he was gonna try to get better. And that’s all you can really hope for.”

Brown claims he kicked his substance abuse issues in 2005, but he was recently banned from drinking alcohol for 30 days following an arrest in March.

Latest Bobby Brown headlines:

VANCOUVER – Caffeinated alcoholic beverages pose health and safety risks, especially for youth, according to a report.

Caffeinated alcoholic beverages (CABs), also known as alcohol energy drinks, contain a mixture of alcohol and caffeine, which can be either pre-mixed by manufacturers or hand-mixed by consumers. The report, released by the Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse Friday, said young people drank four times the amount of CABs as the general public, particularly at universities, where the rate is almost double that of other youth.

Moreover, young people preferred hand-mixed over pre-mixed drinks, which put them at greater risk of dangerous side effects because hand-mixed CABs typically contained more caffeine and alcohol, it said.

Previous research has warned CABs keep drinkers awake and maybe drinking longer, increasing the risks of getting hurt, overdosing on alcohol or doing something else the drinker might regret.

After examining the trends and risks of alcohol and caffeine consumption, the report urged a comprehensive and proactive suite of initiatives to reduce the consumption of CABs.

Recommended initiatives include increasing the price of pre-mixed CABs, discouraging sales of energy drinks in high-risk places like bars and clubs, mandatory labels containing information on risks, and developing a public education campaign. (Xinhua)

This interview was when A Healing Heart was printed. It’s now republished with Riverhaven Books as A Spiritual Renewal; A Journey to Medjugorje. I’m still waiting for Amazon to put it on their site in paperback and Kindle. It was sent in late March 2012.
The book can now be purchased at www.riverhavenbooks.com or directly on my website with PayPal and it will be autographed.

The interview goes into my two alcoholic books.