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Old 11-20-2012, 07:01 AM
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Dogmamma: Are you sure you've got it right? My doggie friends say that PAWS is "Peculiar Animal Worship Syndrome", a very dangerous chronic condition. Is it somehow related to the "Higher Power"?

W.
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Old 11-20-2012, 07:02 AM
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Originally Posted by MIRecovery View Post
Which comes first? The chicken or the egg?
A medical bill))
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Old 11-20-2012, 07:05 AM
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Originally Posted by wpainterw View Post
Dogmamma: Are you sure you've got it right? My doggie friends say that PAWS is "Peculiar Animal Worship Syndrome", a very dangerous chronic condition. Is it somehow related to the "Higher Power"?

W.
I got it really really bad and as far as I know there is no cure. It is a cronic disease and that is just how my two dogs like it.
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Old 11-20-2012, 08:14 AM
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Originally Posted by MidnightBlue View Post
Hi, all. If you don't mind, I'll join your interesting conversation.
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Please do, Midnight. All are welcome.
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Old 11-20-2012, 08:15 AM
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Originally Posted by wpainterw View Post
Dogmamma: Are you sure you've got it right? My doggie friends say that PAWS is "Peculiar Animal Worship Syndrome", a very dangerous chronic condition. Is it somehow related to the "Higher Power"?

W.
Debate over! We've got the definitive answer!
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Old 11-20-2012, 08:23 AM
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At 18 months of sobriety, my brain is still healing. Call it what you want, it's my experience.
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Old 11-20-2012, 08:40 AM
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I'm sorry I couldn't resist one last post.

I was looking around and found this description of symptoms of another "syndrome".

I'm not saying at all that people experience of these aren't serious, I know they are from personal experience. I just find the labels that pathologize the uncomfortable stages that we go through in healing to be pointless. Western culture wants everything to be a "disorder".

Do these symptoms sound familiar? They aren't PAWS but could be.

1. Re-experiencing symptoms:

Flashbacks—reliving the past over and over, including physical symptoms like a racing heart or sweating
Bad dreams
Frightening thoughts.

Problems in a person’s everyday routine.

2. Avoidance symptoms:

Feeling emotionally numb
Feeling strong guilt, depression, or worry
Losing interest in activities that were enjoyable in the past
Having trouble remembering the dangerous event.


3. Hyperarousal symptoms:

Being easily startled
Feeling tense or “on edge”
Having difficulty sleeping, and/or having angry outbursts.
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Old 11-20-2012, 11:20 AM
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Sothisist the one thing you keep leaving out is .. That PAWS does not come till many months of sobriety. Commonly 6 months to a 1 year of uniterrupted sobriety.

Here is the best link we have found dogmamma

PAWS « Digital Dharma
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Old 11-20-2012, 11:48 AM
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Originally Posted by IndaMiricale View Post
Sothisist the one thing you keep leaving out is .. That PAWS does not come till many months of sobriety. Commonly 6 months to a 1 year of uniterrupted sobriety.

Here is the best link we have found dogmamma

PAWS « Digital Dharma
Thanks, Inda.

Re: Sothisisit's point, the idea is that the same symptoms have been used to define multiple psychiatric problems. Maybe they aren't related to whether or not someone drank or not. The symptoms are conflated with one or more conditions making it impossible to link it to PAWS. If that's true, doesn't that call into question the designation and, therefore, the treatment of the "disorder?"
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Old 11-20-2012, 11:54 AM
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Originally Posted by IndaMiricale View Post
Sothisist the one thing you keep leaving out is .. That PAWS does not come till many months of sobriety. Commonly 6 months to a 1 year of uniterrupted sobriety.

Here is the best link we have found dogmamma

PAWS « Digital Dharma
Thanks for the link. I will go through it more thoroughly tonight.

My point really is that it takes that long (6 months to 1 or even 2 years depending on webpage you go to) for the body to re-calibrate to its original set point. This is the healing process and can take a long long time and then running parallel with that is all the psychological problems that helped lead to using alcohol/drugs in the first place. In my case, it took a good 6 months before I noticed that a lot of emotional problems I had forgotten about come back to the surface now that I wasn't anesthetizing myself. I now have to deal with this. Think of our psyche as an onion that we need to peel away layers.

The only point I'm making is that we don't need to label this experience a "syndrome". That is all. It doesn't help and makes it easier for it to be deemed something to be drugged away by prescription medicine, and give Doctors a whole new billing category when billing the government (as is the case in Canada here) or insurance companies. It also creates a whole new reason for continuing addiction treatment for much longer periods of time. We hand over responsibility to others.

My point in posting the symptoms of post traumatic stress disorder was to show that these experiences are generic. We don't need to label it a specific "withdrawal syndrome". Heck, hypoglycemia has similar results on the body. We all want a magic bullet (we are all addicts, right?) but some things just take time, support, and patience, not to mention work, to get better.

The experience is real but I would argue that to turn experience into pathology when it is in fact a healing process is dangerous.

Off my soap box now, promise.
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Old 11-20-2012, 12:50 PM
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It's not mandatory to believe in PAWs

For me PAWs fit what I was going through, it provided an explanation that reassured me, and the tips and suggestions in the Digital Dharma link really did help me.

I didn't need to continue my search

I'd encourage anyone suffering any kind of problem or issue to look for solutions that make sense to them, but above all, make them solutions that help

D
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Old 11-20-2012, 12:55 PM
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I believe in PAWs because I am constantly cleaning up Paw prints so it must be real
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