They recorded pain-related data inside the brains of individuals with chronic pain disorders caused by stroke or amputation.

Scientists have long sought to understand how pain is represented by brain activity. With electrodes implanted in the heads of the patients, the researchers could record neural activity over the course of months. Then with machine learning, they could predict the pain severity scores from neural activity.

The researchers said the findings, published in Nature Neuroscience, could provide a way forward for developing treatments for chronic pain, which is one of the largest contributors to disability worldwide.

The research was funded by two initiatives - the National Institutes of Health's (NIH) Brain Research Through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) and the Helping to End Addiction Long-term Initiative.

"This is a great example of how tools for measuring brain activity originating from the e have been applied to the significant public health problem of relieving persistent, severe chronic pain," Walter Koroshetz, director of the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, said in a statement.

"We are hopeful that building from these preliminary findings could lead to effective, non-addictive pain treatments".

Researchers have typically gathered data about chronic pain through patients self-reporting using questionnaires about the intensity and emotional impact of pain.

This study looked directly at changes in brain activity in two brain regions - the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) and the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) - where pain responses are thought to occur, while patients self-reported their levels of pain.

Read more

• Luke Hurst is a Euro News technology journalist from Edinburgh, Scotland.

"I would say it's the biggest addiction society has seen and no one is really doing anything about it.

The statistics are eye-opening, people are watching pornography from very young," she says. Read more

"I can see later down the line that parents or caregivers who allow their very young children to be exposed to hardcore pornography on their phone and on their devices …that may be considered, in terms of social welfare and social services, as the active abuse of a child," said Mary Aiken, Adjunct Associate Professor at University College in Dublin and an Academic Advisor to the European Cyber Crime Centre at Europol for Ireland.

Aiken told Crux the widespread diffusion of sexual content online has been described in some circles as "the ‘pornification' of society."

This is a problem for youngsters, because "children are vulnerable to being damaged by what we call legal but age-inappropriate content," she said, explaining that in the UK, there is currently talk of developing an "A" and "B" internet, where households who actually want porn will have to put their name on a list and sign up for it.

Currently, the exposure of children to pornography is only considered a crime when predators intentionally expose children to hardcore porn as part of the grooming process.

Part of the problem, she said, is an increase in sexual assaults on children by other children, and while there isn't yet hard evidence to support it, her belief is that it's related to "the availability of hardcore pornography online."

Aiken was a keynote speaker at a Nov. 29-Dec. 1 conference on "Drugs and Addictions, an Obstacle to Integral Human Development," organized by the healthcare section of the Vatican department for Integral Human Development.

In addition to substance addiction, the conference touched on what experts are referring to as "new dependencies," which include addictions to gambling, sex and the internet.

Cardinal Peter Turkson, president of the Vatican's development office, opened by saying addictions to drugs, the internet, gambling and sex, including pornography, "strongly undermine the freedom of the person, which is the fundamental expression of the dignity of every human being."

Drugs and other dependencies "are a wound inflicted on our society, which traps many people in a spiral of suffering and alienation," Turkson said, emphasizing the need to reach out to those weak and suffering, helping them to regain hope and take charge of their lives.

Professor Umberto Nizzoli, a member of the National Commission of Experts on Addiction and a professor at the University Institute (IPU), in Italy, said that when people become dependent on something, without it they feel a "continuous hunger" whether it's an object, a person or a behavior.

The correct term for those who become dependent, he said, is not "addict," but "slave," because they lose control on both a biological and psychological level. Continue reading

The Dolphin Treasure pokie sits on a bench in Charles Livingstone's office at Monash University in Melbourne, too heavy for even two people to move and emblazoned with gaudy dolphins swimming merrily over a treasure chest.

Despite its location in the furthermost corner of the room, it's impossible to miss.

"From my observations of gaming floors I notice a lot of middle-aged and older women playing it, patting the dolphins and their little fins," says Livingstone, who has dedicated his career to studying the harms of pokie addiction.

"They seem to be attracted to the cute icons and graphics.

"One time late at night at a bar in regional Victoria, I saw a lady who was hugging the machine in a very affectionate manner. Research has shown there are some people who tend to anthropomorphise poker machines."

The Dolphin Treasure poker machine, with its brightly coloured sea creatures, is the focus of a landmark legal case brought by Shonica Guy against Crown Casino and the poker machine manufacturer Aristocrat Technologies.

Guy started playing the pokies when she was 17 and she says she lost thousands of dollars over 14 years.

She is being represented pro bono by Maurice Blackburn lawyers.

The case has been unfolding in the federal court in Melbourne over the past two-and-a-half weeks before Justice Debra Mortimer, with Guy's lawyers arguing that Aristocrat and Crown are engaging in deceptive, misleading and unconscionable conduct by providing Dolphin Treasure poker machines to the public.

The case hinges on the Dolphin Treasure machine because researchers such as Livingstone know more about how, Guy argues, it sets up people for addiction than any other machine on gaming floors in Australia.

Guy's lawyers are not seeking damages - rather, they want poker machines to be designed fairly and for players to be genuinely informed about their prospects of winning. Continue reading

Sources

• The Guardian, article by Melissa Davey, Melbourne bureau chief for the Guardian.
• Image: Latitude News

"It's hard to find a vein," he said, but he finally found one in his forearm and injected himself with the brown liquid. Blood trickled from his arm and pooled on the step, but he was oblivious.

"Are you O.K.?" Rita Lopes, a psychologist working for an outreach program called Crescer, asked him.

"You're not taking too much?" Lopes monitors Portuguese heroin users like Mario, gently encourages them to try to quit and gives them clean hypodermics to prevent the spread of AIDS.

Decades ago, the United States and Portugal both struggled with illicit drugs and took decisive action — in diametrically opposite directions.

The U.S. cracked down vigorously, spending billions of dollars incarcerating drug users.

In contrast, Portugal undertook a monumental experiment: It decriminalized the use of all drugs in 2001, even heroin and cocaine, and unleashed a major public health campaign to tackle addiction.

Ever since in Portugal, drug addiction has been treated more as a medical challenge than as a criminal justice issue.

After more than 15 years, it's clear which approach worked better.

The United States drug policy failed spectacularly, with about as many Americans dying last year of overdoses — around 64,000 — as were killed in the Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq Wars combined.

In contrast, Portugal may be winning the war on drugs — by ending it. Today, the Health Ministry estimates that only about 25,000 Portuguese use heroin, down from 100,000 when the policy began.

The number of Portuguese dying from overdoses plunged more than 85 percent before rising a bit in the aftermath of the European economic crisis of recent years.

Even so, Portugal's drug mortality rate is the lowest in Western Europe — one-tenth the rate of Britain or Denmark — and about one-fiftieth the latest number for the U.S. Continue reading

• Nicholas Kristof, writes about human rights, women's rights, health, global affairs for The New York Times.

Nearly every one of his brothers was a drunk. He was uneducated and unskilled, and he died in obscurity. And someday soon, God willing, Venerable Matt Talbot will be a saint.

Talbot (1856-1925) was the second of 12 children born to a working class Dublin family at a time when work and food were scarce and hope scarcer still.

Matt's home life was unstable and his schooling inconsistent. After a few years of sporadic attendance, Matt quit school entirely and entered the workforce.

His first job was for a wine seller, and the occasional taste he took of the merchandise soon turned him into a full-fledged alcoholic. By the time he was 13, Matt's life was driven by his need to drink.

He spent all his wages on alcohol, even pawning his boots when he didn't have enough for a pint. Matt's father beat him and made him change jobs, but it was too late.

The alcohol had taken hold of him and, as his father well knew, it wouldn't let go without a fight.

But Matt didn't want to fight. He wanted to drink. And only to drink.

His friends later said that he "only wanted one thing — the drink; he wouldn't go with us to a dance or a party or a school function. But for the drink he'd do anything."

For 15 years, Matt begged, borrowed, and stole whatever he needed to feed his addiction, once stealing the fiddle from a blind beggar to sell it for liquor.

Matt was a lost cause — so everybody said. But nobody reckoned on grace.

Matt Talbot was the life of the party but, one day, when he was 28, he suddenly saw how false his happiness was, how false his friendships.

He had been out of work for a few days and had drunk all his wages, so he stood outside a pub waiting for one of his many drinking buddies to offer to buy him a drink.

But as one old friend after another passed him by, Talbot began to realize the emptiness of his life. Continue reading

Sources

• Aleteia article by Meg Hunter-Kilmer, who profiles a saint for Aleteia every Thursday
• Image: St Michael's Homes

"Am I too late?" I asked.

"No, Steve's still with us," somebody told me. I looked down at the bed, the monitors, assessing his heart rate and blood pressure. Things I knew about.

Then I looked at my brother and knew the doctor was wrong. The truth was quite different.

In reality my eldest brother, 17 years my senior, had not really been with us in many years. We had been losing him a little bit at a time to a disease we had long held off giving a name.

We didn't know what to call it. Sometimes we thought we knew, other times we felt blind. We held back from labels, organised dinner without wine when it seemed prudent, with wine when things seemed all right.

We were just fumbling about in the dark.

Because what we came to accept in those final years, and what was more obvious than ever as we stood at his bedside, was that what had resulted in his latest, and final admission, had a name. Steve was an alcoholic.

But it wasn't always like that. Alcoholism takes its time, comes and goes as it pleases for years. There was a time, many years before, when my brother pushed me about in my buggy, played at being Dad.

He took me fishing, teased me, and made me hate him by locking me in his room while Michael Jackson's Thriller played on repeat.

Years later, he called me when his cats were giving birth, and looked after me when it was school holidays and my parents were at work. Continue reading

• Michelle Adams is the author of My Sister, published by Headline.

It may not cause physical harms, such as those caused by tobacco and alcohol, but it has the potential to cause long-term damage to our emotions, behaviour and relationships.

While the older generation - those born in the baby boom period shortly after World War II - had alcohol and drugs as their vice, the younger generation - the so-called millenials - have social media as theirs.

The millennials, born between 1984 and 2005, have embraced the digital age, using technology to relax and interact with others. Social media is a big deal for them; it is a lifeline to the outside world.

Although people of all ages use social media, it is more harmful for younger users than it is for older people.

All consuming

Addiction may seem a bit of a strong word to use in the context of social media, but addiction refers to any behaviour that is pleasurable and is the only reason to get through the day. Everything else pales into insignificance.

Millennials may not get liver damage or lung cancer from social media, but it can be damaging nonetheless.

The harm lies in their change in behaviour.Their addiction means spending increasing amount of time online to produce the same pleasurable effect, and it means social media is the main activity they engage in above all others.

It also means taking away attention from other tasks, experiencing unpleasant feelings from reducing or stopping interaction with social media and restarting the activity very soon after stopping completely.

We should also be concerned about the effect of social media on sleep and doing less "offline", such as making time for work responsibilities and direct face-to-face social interaction.

It has also been linked to depression and loneliness, both of which may be the cause or the effect of social media addiction. Continue reading

Sources

• The Conversation, article by Tony Rao, Visiting Lecturer in Old Age Psychiatry, King's College London
• Image: seodirect

In days gone by, for many families, a lunch at the local club wasn't complete until the adult diners had lightened their pockets with a flutter on the pokies.

Affectionately known as "one-armed bandits", the mechanical devices devoured spare change of any size and occasionally rewarded players when a bunch of coins clattered back into the tray.

These days, poker machines are an entirely different beast. And an unsuspecting Australian public is far worse off because of it.

Australia is home to 20% of the world's poker machines, and the Australian Government estimates that 600,000 people play the pokies every week, with 40% of them addicted.

Whereas the old-style pokies had winning odds of about one in 8000, their modern electronic counterparts often only cough up a major prize once in every 10 million - or more - hits.

The repercussions of problem gambling

Australians lose more money per capita to gambling than any other nationality in the world, says The Economist, with $20 billion dollars going down the gambling gurgler every year. Of that, $11 billion is swallowed up by poker machines.

If losing all of that money isn't enough of a problem, gamblers and their families lose in many other ways as well: the Australian Gambling Research Centre says that gambling problems affect a gambler's intimate relationships with partners, children, parents, siblings and grandparents.

Research has also identified an association between problem gambling and the rate of family violence, and has also shown that the children of parents who have a gambling problem are at a much higher risk of becoming problem gamblers themselves.

To top things off, local businesses miss out on much-needed revenue when it is instead being fed to electronic machines in large clubs and gaming venues. Continue reading

Sources

• Maurice Blackburn Lawyers, social justice law firm article in The Guardian
• Image: The Guardian

Yet as Catholics, our first thought may be to try to eradicate any sinful behavior with some good old-fashioned perseverance and, of course, grace from the Sacrament of Confession.

I had the opportunity to talk with Dr. Peter Kleponis, a clinician who also is the Senior Advisor for Educational and Clinical Programs for Integrity Restored, who has helped many men and women in their healing journey breaking free from porn. He told me about why, most of the time, perseverance and grace are important, but they aren't enough to break free from pornography use.

First of all, do all porn users automatically need professional help? In other words, when does a porn user become an addict? Does it parallel drug addiction?

Not everyone who struggles with pornography use is an addict. Just as a person can have an alcohol problem and not be an alcoholic, so can a person have a pornography problem and not be a porn addict. Dr. Patrick Carnes (2007) notes 10 characteristics of problematic online sexual behavior:

1. Preoccupation with sex on the Internet
2. Frequently engaging in sex on the Internet more often or for longer periods of time than intended
3. Repeated unsuccessful efforts to control, cut back on, or stop engaging in sex on the Internet
4. Restlessness or irritability when attempting to limit or stop engaging in sex on the Internet
5. Using cybersex on the Internet as a way of escaping from problems or relieving feelings of helplessness, guilt, anxiety or depression
6. Returning to sex on the Internet day after day in search of a more intense or higher-risk sexual experience
7. Lying to family members, therapists, or others to conceal involvement with sex on the internet
8. Committing illegal sexual acts online (for example, sending or downloading child pornography or soliciting illegal sex acts online)
9. Jeopardizing or losing a significant relationship, job, or educational or career opportunity because of online sexual behavior
10. Incurring significant financial consequences as a result of engaging in online sexual behavior Continue reading

• Caitlin Bootsma is the editor of Human Life International's Truth and Charity Forum.

Plainly dressed in khakis and a large grey cardigan, her fine tawny hair pulled back in a loose bun, she fidgets only slightly, running her long fingers heavy with rings repeatedly around her eyes.

She doesn't feel qualified to talk about getting clean, she says, but the sight of young people queueing alongside her at the chemist every week is enough reason to speak out.

Three days a week Melanie waits for a drink of brilliant green methadone, a synthetic substitute drug used to treat opiate and heroin addicts.

Methadone makes getting up in the morning easier, she says. Less sedative than its illegal opiate cousins, it gives her stability, keeps panic at bay, and takes away the cravings for something worse.

But the 52-year-old Tasman woman knows it's only her latest addiction in a life moulded by substance abuse.

She started with pills and pot when she was 14 before graduating to opiates and methamphetamine.

Drifting around New Zealand's drug-friendly music scene in the 1970s, everyone connected superficially, Melanie says.

She was never sober, nor was anyone she met. Like many others, her main relationship was an intermittent affair with different drugs.

A habit only lasted a week or two at a time.

The addiction to change, though, was persistent. For years she moved constantly, dodging rents, losing friends and scamming doctors for prescriptions.

She and her fellow junkies used "Kiwi ingenuity" to finance their fix, she says.

They visited multiple chemists a day, taking home handbags full of off-the-shelf codeine and cooking it into home bake, a kind of morphine, once the 1980 collapse of the Mr Asia syndicate made heroin hard to find.

It was a closed-off and chaotic time full of lies and devoid of security. Continue reading

Sources

• Article by Adele Redmond in Stuff
• Image: BlueSkies Recovery

She started letting John play different educational games on his iPad. Eventually, he discovered Minecraft, which the technology teacher assured her was "just like electronic Lego." Remembering how much fun she had as a child building and playing with the interlocking plastic blocks, Susan let her son Minecraft his afternoons away.

At first, Susan was quite pleased. John seemed engaged in creative play as he explored the cube-world of the game. She did notice that the game wasn't quite like the Legos that she remembered — after all, she didn't have to kill animals and find rare minerals to survive and get to the next level with her beloved old game. But John did seem to really like playing and the school even had a Minecraft club, so how bad could it be?

Still, Susan couldn't deny she was seeing changes in John. He started getting more and more focused on his game and losing interest in baseball and reading while refusing to do his chores. Some mornings he would wake up and tell her that he could see the cube shapes in his dreams.

Although that concerned her, she thought her son might just be exhibiting an active imagination. As his behavior continued to deteriorate, she tried to take the game away but John threw temper tantrums. His outbursts were so severe that she gave in, still rationalizing to herself over and over again that "it's educational."

Then, one night, she realized that something was seriously wrong.

"I walked into his room to check on him. He was supposed to be sleeping — and I was just so frightened…" Continue reading

Sources

• New York Post article by Dr. Nicholas Kardaras, executive director of The Dunes East Hampton, one of the country's top rehabs, and a former clinical professor at Stony Brook Medicine.
• Image: The Telegraph

We lost the initial hearing but won on appeal in the High Court. Unfortunately we were not ultimately successful in the Court of Appeal.

Pokie machines are the methamphetamine of gambling. They are highly addictive and their destructive influence is wide ranging.

In today's society where young people and adults are glued to an interactive screen of one sort or another, the transition to a pokie screen is flawless and natural. Continue reading

This comes as data shows that millions of middle-aged men drink more than is recommended in new government guidelines - the limit was lowered in January for men from 21 units a week to 14, the same as women.

For some, their relationship with alcohol is such that they decide to stop drinking completely, either for life or for a few months. This can be for a variety of reasons - to tackle more severe problems such as alcoholism or simply for better health.

We spoke to five people about the moment they decided to quit, and how hard it was. Here are their stories.

Steve Craftman, south Wales: I never feel more alone than when I'm with a group of partying drunks

I've had a long relationship with alcohol - but learning I was HIV positive in 1987 made my drinking worse. I thought I wouldn't need my liver much longer because at that time being diagnosed with HIV gave you only a few years to live.

But I just kept on living. Then last year I had to get a liver scan after my doctor noticed some problems. I had been through a particularly rough patch and was drinking heavily: I would consume about 20 units a day.

It was just before the scan that I stopped drinking. I stupidly thought that giving up then would improve the results.

It didn't. The scan confirmed cirrhosis, and I pretended that I could have the occasional drink at an appropriate moment. Despite some fairly major landmarks over the years, there hasn't been an appropriate moment.

On my last drinking day I had the remains of a bottle of Southern Comfort, left over from Christmas, and then finished it off with a bottle of cider. Continue reading

Sources

• The Guardian, from an article written by Guardian readers and Sarah Marsh, social and community editor for Opinion.
• Image: The Telegraph

These are very broad strokes, but the details are equally disturbing and encouraging.

First, the women.

It is difficult, goodness knows, to find a new angle on anniversaries like International Women's Day, but it was startling to find on The Conversation a plea on behalf of female porn directors for fairer access to the market.

The Conversation is an international forum in which academics can popularise their work and is funded by academic institutions.

Its articles can be reproduced under a Creative Commons license, and MercatorNet has done so quite often with articles living up to one or other of the qualities advertised in its tagline, "Academic rigour, journalistic flair".

I suppose that Zahra Zsuzsanna Stardust, the Australian PhD student (and former parliamentary candidate for the Australian Sex Party) who wrote the piece titled "Women in the porn industry need rights and proper pay, not token gestures", displayed a certain academic rigour in that her research into the dark corners of female porn seems quite extensive. Being involved in the business herself must help.

As for flair, one would have to credit her with a bit of that, too, for passing it off as a plea for social justice rather than the promotion of a degrading subculture that it is.

Readers are supposed to feel indignant for the women directors who were asked by the captains - or rather, pirates - of the online porn industry to share their work free on IWD in return for "mass exposure".

Z Z Stardust's exposure of the monopolistic features of the industry that nurture such effrontery is a marvel of Marxist analysis. If the subject matter were not so putrid, it would be hilarious. Continue reading

Sources

• MercatorNet, an article written by Carolyn Moynihan, a New Zealand journalist with a special interest in family issues.
• Image: Restoring the Soul

From the points of view different researchers, the potential for a drug to be addictive can be judged in terms of the harm it causes, the street value of the drug, the extent to which the drug activates the brain's dopamine system, how pleasurable people report the drug to be, the degree to which the drug causes withdrawal symptoms, and how easily a person trying the drug will become hooked.

There are other facets to measuring the addictive potential of a drug, too, and there are even researchers who argue that no drug is always addictive.

Given the varied view of researchers, then, one way of ranking addictive drugs is to ask expert panels. In 2007, David Nutt and his colleagues asked addiction experts to do exactly that - with some interesting findings.

1. HEROIN

Nutt et al's experts ranked heroin as the most addictive drug, giving it a score of 2.5 out of a maximum score of 3. Heroin is an opiate that causes the level of dopamine in the brain's reward system to increase by up to 200 per cent in experimental animals.

In addition to being arguably the most addictive drug, heroin is dangerous, too, because the dose that can cause death is only five times greater than the dose required for a high.

Heroin also has been rated as the second most harmful drug in terms of damage to both users and to society. The market for illegal opiates, including heroin, was estimated to be $68 billion worldwide in 2009.

2. ALCOHOL

Although legal in the US and UK, alcohol was rated as the second most addictive substance by Nutt et al.'s experts (scoring 2.2 out of a maximum of 3).

Alcohol has many effects on the brain, but in laboratory experiments on animals it increased dopamine levels in the brain's reward system by 40-360 per cent - and the more the animals drank the more dopamine levels increased. Continue reading

Source & Image

• Stuff, from an article by Andrew Bowman, Lecturer in Psychology and Neuroscience, University of St Andrews.

That friend handed me two pills, telling me that they would help me get through it.

This was the day I met the love of my life, opiates.

I can remember the feeling I got from taking those two small pills: it was a feeling of complete elation. All of the anxiety that normally consumed me disappeared.

It was as if I was having an out-of-body experience and I somehow morphed into a different person, one who no longer cared about anything. This was a feeling I wanted to feel for the rest of my life. The next day I remember waking up wondering where I could find more of these pills.

When somebody makes the decision to take a drug, they do not intend to become an addict. Still, it wasn't long before I was skimming through the medicine cabinets of every residence I entered to see if they had any narcotic pain medications.

Getting high became more of a priority to me than going to school, and I started leaving after I checked into homeroom. Since I managed to make up all of my missed school assignments, my teachers passed me.

By the end of my senior year, in order to make it through the school day, I would have to stand my textbook up on my desk so I could hide behind it and take pills without being noticed.

When high school ended, finding and using drugs became my main focus. I decided that college would have to wait. Continue reading

• Alisha Choquette is a 2015 graduate of the Community College of Rhode Island where she obtained an associated degree in substance abuse.

The app, named "Victory", is based on a calendar system, where the user can mark with colours the days they were victorious over porn or had a setback.

White means they were victorious, grey means a setback, and green means they went to Confession.

After the setback is logged, the app helps to pinpoint what the trigger was.

Users can choose from various "trigger" options — boredom, loneliness, anger, stress or tiredness.

This is to help self-awareness.

The app includes a section for journaling, and there's a prayer request button that will notify up to three "accountability partners", to pray for the person.

The app is private and requires a four-digit passcode to log in.

It was developed by former Catholic Answers apologist Matt Fradd, youth minister and "Bible Geek" Mark Hart and Lifeteen.

Mr Fradd told the Catholic News Service that one of the reasons the Victory app is helpful is that it enables people to view freedom from porn, not as a destination, but as a daily choice.

"This app enables us to daily track our progress and reflect upon our victories," Mr Fradd said.

Lifeteen's Rachel Penate said the app could well be adapted to help people struggling with any particular sin.

Victory was launched on May 28, and since then it has been downloaded more than 4500 times.

The app is free, and the accompanying book included in the app costs US$1.99.

The developers hope Victory can help bring the addictive and destructive nature of pornography to light and to provide supportive and private assistance to liberate young people who have a porn addiction.

"The hope of this app," said Ms Penate, "is that it will spark real and honest conversations about porn — why it needs to happen to heal from addiction; why it's destructive; and to encourage teens that they are not alone in this fight: That it is OK to struggle."

Sources

• Catholic News Service
• Image: Beyond Cassandra

I am a professional mother of two who grew up associating alcohol with fun. In my early twenties, it's what marked me out as the archetypal party girl, in my early professional life big nights out were par for the course.

After the birth of my first child, wine lifted me from the humdrum and provided a reliable link to the old me, the one unfettered by responsibility. With a drink inside me, I felt flirtatious, free, glamorous and eternally young.

I never drank during the day - I was holding down a full time job - but I now know that I was definitely displaying alcohol-dependent characteristics. Which is why it came to me as no surprise to me to discover this week that educated British women now head a global league table for alcohol abuse.

For anyone with a preconceived notion that the problem lies with the raucous 'girls' night out' brigade, the ones with a taste for alcopops and vodka shots, think again.

• Numbers of young women dying due to alcohol increasing

As the study by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development suggests it's professional women - lawyers, teachers and those working in the finance sector - who are statistically more prone to consuming hazardous amounts of alcohol on a regular basis.

Many may begin heavy drinking when they are young, but it is a habit which continues into middle age, with many women downing hazardous quantities of alcohol at home and often alone.

t is something I can relate too and a problem that I only admitted to having when I woke up in A&E under the stark lighting and disapproving glare of the duty nurse.

By then I had been consuming up to two bottles of wine a night and had blacked out during one of my increasingly regular binges. It was April 2011 and I haven't touched a drop since. Continue reading

• Lucy Rocca in The Telegraph

Lucy Rocca is founder of a website, Soberistas.com. Lucy gave up drinking alcohol and discovered how much better life is without it.

It never ceases to swarm around, mercilessly infecting unsuspecting victims.

A couple of weeks ago I had a good friend of mine confide in me about her and her boyfriend's current battles with long term pornography addictions.

My heart went out to them, as I can truly understand and relate first hand to the pain and shame they are both experiencing. Please pray for them!

My Story
As a young thirteen year old I became hooked on pornography myself, dependent on the pleasure and distraction it provided me from dealing with real life.

All of the insecurities, pain and doubts I carried around with me daily were pushed aside and blocked with the use of pornography.

It became a coping mechanism, my own adopted way of seeking out temporary, false pleasure so I could have a reason to cover up and avoid the real pain that was choking my heart.

I longed for love, and was weighed down with the grief of not being good or pretty enough for society or my peers. For years I allowed myself to become infested with the numerous lies and empty promises of pornography.

I thought I loved and needed it, but deep down I truly hated myself for allowing my brain and body to become tangled up in these soul-sucking fantasies.

It was a web I was caught up in, a trap from which I could not escape.

The worst thing for me was the shame I felt through it all, and if you've ever suffered from a pornography addiction, you'll also understand the strong sense of utter loneliness that engulfs your entire being. Continue reading

• Lindsey Graham in Restless Press

Lindsey is a high school student from Rangiora, New Zealand who attends Villa Maria College in Christchurch.