Most. Amazing. Book. Ever.

Um, ok. Thank you, Deborah. You were right. This is the most amazing book EVER! I haven't read it yet but I have a feeling this book and its author, Dr. John Newport (I've already emailed him), will prove to be invaluable resources as I build out Active Recovery.

Check out the book's description and tell me it's not right in line with what I've been talking about:

"As you are well aware, chemical dependency is a serious disease with devastating consequences. Alcoholics and addicts whose diseases go untreated suffer major health consequences - including severe damage to their livers, hearts and other vital organs - often dying decades before their time. What you may not be aware of is the fact that millions of people in recovery - perhaps the majority - also shortchange themselves of years of joyful living as a result of their nicotine addiction, compulsive over-eating, junk food addiction and other self-destructive behaviors they carry with them into their recovery.

Fortunately, you can use the tools of wellness to take charge of your health and strengthen your recovery. A wellness lifestyle and recovery from chemical dependency go hand in hand. By embracing a wellness lifestyle, you will experience the many joys of recovery in “full spectrum Technicolor”! (source: http://www.wellnessandrecovery.com/?page=Exercise_and_Recovery)

I must meet this Dr. Newport. I must tell him about Active Recovery. I must get him involved somehow to spread the word and help us get this puppy off the ground. Should I fly to Washington where he lives and stalk him until he agrees to help me?

I guess 'just for today', I'll have to wait patiently for the book to arrive. And I can tell you guys about it.

Click here to check out Dr. Newport's website

Click here to order his book, "The Wellness-Recovery Connection"

(I'd love to post your reviews of the book if you've read it!)

Exercise Rounds Out Youth Treatment Center's Regimen

"Excelsior Turns Pain into Gain"

By Suzanne S. Brown
The Denver Post (03/09/2009)

AURORA — When Christina Barrios arrived at Excelsior Youth Center three years ago, she carried 189 pounds on her 5-foot-5-inch frame.

She also carried the weight of a short life filled with drug and alcohol addiction, sexual abuse and gang affiliation.

Barrios wears her dark brown hair cropped boy-short. It's a defense mechanism, she says, because her physical abuse often started with the attacker grabbing her by the hair. Now nearly 18 and looking forward to graduating from both high school and one of the country's largest residential treatment centers for troubled girls, Barrios has shed 60 pounds since she started swimming and working out last summer.

"When I first came here, I caused a lot of trouble," Barrios

Heather Caldwell, a science teacher at Excelsior, oversees push-ups during an after-class therapy session. Physical fitness is one part of the youth center's treatment program. (Cyrus McCrimmon | The Denver Post )

admits. "When you are fat, no one looks at you as a person. They just see that you are fat and ugly. You are the last person chosen for the team, if you even get chosen. I wallowed in self-pity for two years."

When she got control of her weight and health, she says, "It changed everything about me. I used to fall down and just lie there." After she started her exercise program, "I'd fall, and get up faster and keep going. I am looking at life in a whole new way."

Water-aerobics classes, circuit training, volleyball and basketball teams are among the dozens of exercise options that Excelsior's 180 residents, ages 11 to 18, have to choose from as part of their treatment, which includes mandatory therapy sessions, year- round school and being under the constant, watchful gaze of a staff that outnumbers residents nearly 2-to-1.

Working out depression

Nutrition and exercise have long been part of the treatment at Excelsior. But as the variety of options has increased — from meditative yoga to intensive kickboxing — counselors and teachers say it's easy to see how physical activity helps the girls battle depression.

Marty Zaffaroni, Excelsior's wellness director and a longtime fitness trainer and educator, says he has seen a shift in treatment approaches. In addition to getting therapy and taking medication, girls are counseled on exercise and diet.

"It's a more holistic approach," he says. "We've learned that when the girls get workouts, they sleep better, and they can handle stress.

"They say they look forward to going for a half-mile lap around the property. They like starting their day that way."

Jordan Binkley came to Excelsior already convinced of the need to exercise. A fan of team sports, the 14-year-old likes playing volleyball, running track and taking exercise classes.

"In a treatment center full of drama, it gives me something else to do," she says of her athletic interests. "It keeps me out of trouble and not thinking about stupid things, like running away."

Exercise, she says, "helps you be in good space."

It's easier to imagine Binkley running in track practice than running away from home when she was only 13. She spent several months on the road and then some time with a relative before being put in a group home. Next, a juvenile court judge sent her to Excelsior, where she has been for the past nine months.

She says she hopes to go home soon and wants to keep channeling her energy into athletics rather than running away from her problems. Binkley is typical of many residents at Excelsior, who stay about a year.

Barrios, with nearly three years at the center, is an exception. For the first two years, she largely fought authority and treatment.

"Kids who come from abusive homes assume blame for the behaviors," says Joan Gabrielson, Excelsior's executive director. "They think they caused the abuse, that they deserve it, that they are awful."

Often, the kids start bullying and abusing others.

It takes a lot of effort to turn those thoughts around, a task Excelsior tackles on multiple fronts with therapy, education and outlets for exercise, art and other forms of expression. The staff didn't give up on Barrios, and things began improving for her last summer. That was about the same time Excelsior finished work on a recreation center with an Olympic-size swimming pool, built with $1.7 million in foundation funds and donations, according to Kathy Graveley, development director.

Barrios didn't know how to swim, but she was drawn to the water and took lessons and aerobics classes. The more she exercised, the lower the number got on the scale. The better she got at swimming, the more her self-esteem rose. Barrios continued her lessons after the pool closed for the season, going off-campus to another facility.

The girl who her whole life was told she was fat and ugly became fit and strong and confident. She stopped bullying other girls and started mentoring them.

"I used to get picked on a lot," she says. "I know how it feels. Now I can empathize with people and encourage them to do what I do."

"Can exercise help prevent addiction to drugs or alcohol?"

(USA TODAY, 6/9/2008)
By Lauran Neergaard, AP Medical Writer

WASHINGTON — Sure, exercise is good for your waistline, your heart, your bones -- but might it also help prevent addiction to drugs or alcohol?

There are some tantalizing clues that physical activity might spur changes in the brain to do just that. Now the government is beginning a push for hard research to prove it.

This is not about getting average people to achieve the so-called runner's high, a feat of pretty intense athletics.

Instead, the question is just how regular physical activity of varying intensity -- dancing, bicycling, swimming, tae kwan do -- might affect mood, academic performance, even the very reward systems in the brain that can get hijacked by substance abuse.

What first caught the attention of National Institute on Drug Abuse chief Dr. Nora Volkow: A study found tweens and teens who reported exercising daily were half as likely to smoke as their sedentary counterparts, and 40 percent less likely to experiment with marijuana.

Volkow knows -- from her own 6-mile daily runs and from her scientific experiments -- that the brain literally likes physical activity. Exercise seems to invigorate neurochemicals that sense and reinforce pleasure.

"In children, it's innate," she notes. "Children want to move."

But the nation's children are becoming more sedentary, as illustrated by the obesity epidemic, "screen time" replacing outdoor play and a drop in school P.E. And as youngsters approach adolescence, the run around the yard that used to be fun too often becomes a chore -- the dreaded jog around the school track or the nagging to get off the couch. The sedentary teen turns into the sedentary adult.

"Why do we lose the ability to experience pleasure from physical activity?" asks Volkow.

Last week she brought more than 100 specialists in exercise and neurobiology to a two-day conference to explore physical activity's potential in fighting substance abuse, and announced $4 million in new research grants to help.

Drug treatment programs often include exercise, partly to keep people distracted from their cravings, but there's been little formal research on the effects.

The best evidence: Brown University took smokers to the gym three times a week and found adding the exercise to a smoking-cessation program doubled women's chances of successfully kicking the habit. The quitters who worked out got an extra benefit: They gained half as much weight as women who managed to quit without exercising, says lead researcher Dr. Bess Marcus.

She now is working with the YMCA on a larger, NIDA-funded study to prove the benefit.

Marcus cautions that people trying to kick an addiction have a powerful incentive to exercise. Could that possibly translate into prevention? Among the clues:

_Rats were less likely to ingest amphetamines if their cages had running wheels, suggesting exercise stimulated a reward pathway in the brain to leave them less vulnerable to the drug's rush.

_In people, exercise acts as a mild antidepressant and relieves stress. Depression, anxiety and stress increase risk of alcoholism, smoking or drug abuse.

_Volkow is intrigued that attention deficit disorder and obesity both involve problems with the brain chemical dopamine, one system that drugs hijack to create addiction.

_Baby monkeys who don't play enough in childhood have problems controlling aggression when they're older. The most aggressive tend to have defects involving the feel-good brain chemical serotonin -- and binge-drink when researchers offer them alcohol.

_Back to rats, physical activity increases production of growth factors and stem cells in key brain regions important for learning and mood; increases formation of blood vessels; and strengthens communication networks between brain cells.

Together, that's far too little research to know if exercise really matters for substance abuse, scientists at the National Institutes of Health meeting cautioned.

But, a few studies of school-age children suggest physical activity predicts better performance on math, verbal and other tests -- and better school performance in turn is linked to lower risk for substance abuse.

And getting sedentary seniors moving improves brain function -- research aimed at preventing dementia, not drug abuse, although the improvement is in an area that in younger people is linked to risky decision-making.

A caveat: If your own youth includes memories of parties with beer-guzzling athletes, well, the research concurs. A major study that tracks adolescent risk behaviors found that by 12th grade, exercise offers no protection against binge-drinking.

"Now the kids who exercise the most actually drink the most," says Dr. Lloyd Johnston of the University of Michigan. It may have to do with the celebratory nature of team sports, or getting revved for college -- or, other researchers suggested, even that competition is to blame.