AM>AM>JK  HI Jane!! I currently work in a residential drug and alcohol
AM>treatment facility and concur on everything you've commented on. I'm
AM>somewhat familiar with the DSM-IV. I have just passed the written
AM>requirement for the MFCC license. I was wondering re: pot masking the sx
AM>of alcohol... where is the research come from? I could certainly use it
AM>with the population that I work with...thanks in advance...
AM> JK>If you
AM>also consider that the use of pot masks the worst symptoms of
AM>JK>alcoholism in the early and middle stages of the disease then drops
AM>the JK>person abruptly into the chronic phase with a very severe
AM>physical JK>reaction, then I can also relate to that.
That is from my own observation of teenagers when I worked for Pierce
County and in other jobs.  I'm finally retired after the last judge sent
someone to anger management who needed chemical dependency treatment.
Before that, I worked in the field or was associated with folks in
recovery for over 25 years.
The young things today take multiple drugs........to hide the symptoms
of use such as the lethargy from the pot.......this will be offset by
either cocaine or an amphetamine to get them up in the morning and
going.  For someone who has been hard hit by the booze and the pot, the
use of either or both will soon send the patient to an emergency room
with an O.D.
Not all of them manage to get into this state, just the ones who are
hard hit. And the only way to find out seems to be to use the drugs.
We also have the occassional hard hit kid such as the Quinlan girl who
went into a comma after a party.  Hard to know just which drugs were
available that night.  Kids sometimes know what they are buying from
pushers and at other times, do not. That makes the cases hard to treat.
We had a film where I used to work showing the adults who became
completely paralyzed from one drug made in illegal labs..........
someone was trying to make a batch of synthetic narcotic.
We can predict which families will have a tendency towards alcoholism.
We cannot predict which families will have a tendency to have severe
reactions from other drugs.
* SLMR 2.1a * Backup not found: (A)bort (R)etry (P)anic 
- JetMail v1.20*6 - Unregistered QWK Mail Door for Spitfire
--- FreeMail 1.10 alpha-3
---------------