Does violence in video games contribute to real life violence? – Part 4

There are some young people in this world, that live in constant chaos. Think of countries that hand juveniles machine guns, and teach them to shoot. Places where video games, are not an option. No, the main contribution of real life violence, is reality itself. If a child in Iraq can kill in cold blood, that is his reality. Behind a screen in a room, for points.

This is a perfect example of lowering our standards, and placing blame. Funny thing is the general public looks for targets, such as ‘gaming’, and television. Instead of taking a long, hard look in to their own backyards. Domestic violence, alcoholism, drug abuse. Child abuse, pornography, exploitation. THESE, are actually key elements of violence.

I lived through each one of these phases, made it, and now write about it. So I happen to know first hand, that if anything, gaming can actually stimulate the mind, and it is helpful with hand eye coordination.True, games can seem rather addicting, and harsh at times.However would I rather my child be drinking or smoking somewhere in a foreign country? Learning to bomb the enemy, I think NO.So if video games contribute to real life violence, I wonder what it could contribute to something like rocket science, or space technology?

Vitamin B5 Deficiency, Alcoholism And Depression

Given the frequency and popularity of alcohol consumption around the world and the fact that alcohol depletes vitamin B5, deficiency of the vitamin may be a lot more common than we thought. In this article, SKinB5 takes a look at the correlation between alcohol consumption, vitamin B5 deficiency and depression.
Symptoms of vitamin B5 deficiency are fatigue, chronic stress, and depression. Vitamin B5 is needed for hormone formation and the uptake of amino acids and the brain chemical acetylcholine, which combine to prevent certain types of depression.
An important function of vitamin B5 is that it aids the body in alcohol detoxification. It is also needed to counteract stress and to maintain a healthy nervous system. A study showed that vitamin B5 speeds up liver detoxification of acetaldehyde after alcohol consumption. This is very important for those who consume excessive alcohol because acetaldehyde appears to be a major chemical in the toxic process that accompanies long term alcohol use. Vitamin B5 is required in increased amounts in liver disease and in those who use alcohol excessively.
Alcoholism and Depression
Biochemical depression has certain symptoms that distinguish it from the depression stemming from negative life events. Heavy drinking is a major contributor to biochemical depression. You are likely to be biologically depressed if:
- You have been depressed for a long time despite changes in your life
- Talk therapy has little or no effect; in fact, psychological probing
- You don’t react to good news
- You awaken very early in the morning and can’t get back to sleep
- You cannot trace the onset of your depression to any event in your life
- Your moods may swing between depression and elation over a period of months in a regular rhythm (this suggests bipolar, or manic-depressive, disorder)
- Heavy drinking makes your depression worse
Depression, like the other emotional problems, often has biochemical roots that stem from the destructive effect of alcohol on the chemistry of the brain. Research has verified the relationship between biochemistry and depression. Autopsies of people who have committed suicide have revealed biochemical disruptions that are unique to suicidal depression.
Vitamin and Mineral Deficiency and Depression
The effect of nutritional deficiencies on brain chemistry can cause depression, anger, listlessness, and paranoia.
One of the most dramatic cases of vitamin and mineral deficiencies involved a man who had been arrested four times for drunken driving but continued to drink daily. He was thirty, divorced, and living alone. He rarely ate more than one meal a day, usually fast food or junk food. He lived on coffee, cigarettes, and beer. Paul confided that he was probably going to lose his sales job because he could no longer motivate himself. He blamed all of his troubles on depression. There were so many aspects of his lifestyle that suggested a real depletion of the natural chemicals he needed to recover from alcoholism and depression.
The man was diagnosed and given B-complex shots, and he remarked that his doctor must have injected him with an amphetamine! The effect of restoring these life-giving substances was dramatic. He also made many lifestyle changes that contributed to his recovery, but one of the most important was the replacement of certain key natural substances that helped relieve his depression.
Vitamin B5 (and B-Complex Vitamins)
Vitamin B5 and the B-complex vitamins are essential to mental and emotional well-being. They cannot be stored in our bodies, so we depend entirely on our daily diet to supply them. B vitamins, particularly vitamin B5 which are easily destroyed in cooking and modern food processing, are destroyed by alcohol, refined sugars, nicotine, and caffeine-the very substances that most alcoholics consume almost to the exclusion of everything else. Small wonder that deficiencies develop.
Here’s a rundown of recent findings about the relationship of B-complex vitamins to depression:
- Vitamin B5 (pantothenic acid): Symptoms of deficiency are fatigue, chronic stress, and depression. Vitamin B5 is needed for hormone formation and the uptake of amino acids and the brain chemical acetylcholine, which combine to prevent certain types of depression.
- Vitamin B (thiamine): Deficiencies trigger depression and irritability and can cause neurological and cardiac disorders among alcoholics.
- Vitamin B2 (riboflavin): In 1982 an article published in the British Journal of Psychiatry reported that every one of 172 successive patients admitted to a British psychiatric hospital for treatment of depression was deficient in B2.
- Vitamin B3 (niacin): Depletion causes anxiety, depression, apprehension, and fatigue.
- Vitamin B6 (pyridoxine): Deficiency can disrupt formation of neurotransmitters. Vitamin B6 is a coenzyme needed for conversion of tryptophan to serotonin and phenylalanine and tyrosine to norepinephrine. I have discussed the relationships of these neurotransmitters to depression earlier in this chapter.
- Vitamin B12: Deficiency will cause depression.
- Folic acid: Deficiency is a common cause of depression.
Vitamin C
Continuing vitamin C deficiency causes chronic depression, fatigue, and vague ill health.
Minerals
Deficiencies in a number of minerals can also cause depression.
- Zinc: Inadequacies result in apathy, lack of appetite, and lethargy. When zinc is low, copper in the body can increase to toxic levels, resulting in paranoia and fearfulness.
- Magnesium: Symptoms of deficiency include confusion, apathy, loss of appetite, weakness, and insomnia.
- Calcium: Depletion affects the central nervous system. Low levels of calcium cause nervousness, apprehension, irritability, and numbness.
- Iron: Depression is often a symptom of chronic iron deficiency. Other symptoms include general weakness, listlessness, exhaustion, lack of appetite, and headaches.
- Manganese: This metal is needed for proper use of the B-complex vitamins and vitamin C. Since it also plays a role in amino-acid formation, a deficiency may contribute to depression stemming from low levels of the neurotransmitters serotonin and norepinephrine. Manganese also helps stabilize blood sugar and prevent hypoglycemic mood swings.
- Potassium: Depletion is frequently associated with depression, fearfulness, weakness, and fatigue. A 1981 study found that depressed patients were more likely than controls to have decreased intracellular potassium. Decreased brain levels of potassium have also been found on autopsies of suicides. You can boost your potassium intake by using one teaspoon of Morton’s Lite-Salt every day.
The Safety of Supplements
Vitamin C and the B-complex vitamins discussed above are all water soluble. This means that they can’t accumulate in your body or be stored for future use. Amounts above and beyond your current nutritional needs are dumped into your urine. As a result, there is no danger of overdose.
Unlike water soluble vitamins, minerals can be stored in your tissues. Therefore, please do not exceed the recommended therapeutic doses, since accumulation of minerals in the body can be dangerous.
SkinB5 contains vitamin B5 and zinc, so whilst treating your acne, it can help prevent alcohol related depression and support mental health.

Alcoholism Marraige

The Damages of Alcoholism Marriage Can Suffer

There are many damages of alcoholism marriage can suffer. A husband or wife can make their spouse’s life quite miserable. Many unions cannot withstand the problems caused by alcoholism. Marriage is not always a strong enough unit to be the match of this insidious disease.

It can begin harmlessly enough. A husband has a bad day at work and has a drink upon arriving home. Or, a wife wants a little pick-me-up, and decides to make it a double shot of alcohol. No matter what the circumstances that precipitate the beginnings of a dependence on alcoholism, marriage can be affected.

After awhile, drinking becomes heavier and the marriage partner begins having trouble at work. They may have trouble meeting quotas, or getting commissions. They may lose out on promotions, or be demoted. They may even be fired if their performance is bad enough. All areas of work can be affected by alcoholism. Marriage can only suffer for it.

Problems at work bring instability to marriage. If one of the partners is not pulling their weight, the finances can become very tricky. To top it all off, the partner who has trouble with alcoholism in the marriage may demand to have control of the money. In their drunken fog, they are unable to make the budget or the checkbook balance anymore.

Much to the marriage partners’ consternation, sexual fulfillment is usually curtailed in a marriage affected by alcoholism. Marriage beds, no matter how good they once were, cannot endure the physical ravages of alcohol on the body.

Many alcoholics return home from work and drink until they stumble off to bed. They barely notice the presence of their spouse. These couples rarely have sex at all. Other couples try to have sex often, but their bodies are not equipped to perform because of the alcoholism. Marriage is difficult to sustain when every attempt at intimacy fails.

When the drinking becomes bad enough, there can be physical and mental abuse that only happens after the advent of alcoholism. Marriage can become a torture to those whose spouses can no longer control their anger and hostility towards the world.

The problem is that the spouse usually bears the brunt of all that anger. It may show up in the way she yells at him, constantly berating him and blaming him. Or, it may be that a husband will actually hit or kick his wife in a display of rage.

No matter how subtle or obvious the abuse is, it is difficult to stop when it is caused by alcoholism. Marriage counseling will probably not be enough help. The alcoholic must learn to face his disease.

Beyond this, the affects of alcoholism on a marriage influence the nonalcoholic spouse’s behavior, too. The nonalcoholic spouse will learn to make excuses for the alcoholic’s behavior, and will even take the blame at times. To cure the marriage, these issues must be addressed as well.

When it comes to alcoholism, marriage is often a casualty. People let the disease get the better of them before they stop and think of what they are doing to their most important relationships. If they could stop the alcoholism before it becomes destructive, their marriages might have a chance.

Should you let your child drink alcohol from your glass? – Part 3

Living in an old station wagon, a friend of mine worked in a machine shop as a part time worker. He had a serious drinking problem that he claimed was the result of being dropped as the recording engineer for a famous band from the seventies that was no longer working. When I asked him when he started drinking, he replied that he had been drinking since the age of five. Apparently, his mother used to slip him some vodka to help him sleep. Ironically, this was a habit that he took with him into adulthood to the present time. He told me he needed the alcohol to help him sleep in his car at night. The way he rationalized the abuse of the alcohol now was that he needed to medicate himself for a good nights sleep. Clearly, a pattern from childhood seems to have evolved in this case, and my friend was the victim of alcoholism which started from his own Mother’s glass at age five.

To add insult to injury, his parents had subsequently disowned him calling him an adult alcoholic. They were typical of many upper middle class families that drank every day with the family happy hour, and continued with dinner wine and then after dinner drinks. Allowing the children to drink wine with dinner or additional vodka in the evening to get them to sleep was part of their parental routine. Keeping in mind that a parent giving one glass of alcohol to a five year old daily could be equated to a bartender giving an adult five shots of tequila daily. That could definitely start a habit, particularly if a person is genetically predisposed for the disease of alcoholism.

Months later, my friend had received some very good news in the midst homelessness and despair. A wealthy uncle who liked him as a child had died and left him with a large inheritance. His family suddenly decided to reinstate him into the family again, and offered him their winter home in Florida to live in until he decided what to do with his new money and life. They say old habits are hard to break, and his desire for daily intoxication was still as strong as ever. The family home was inside a private gated community with a pool and a bar. His family had not only given him the keys to the house, but also a membership card for the club bar. He enjoyed the privilege of membership every day, and was not too concerned about any new life plans other then to get thoroughly drunk every day.

Each day he would drink until closing or until he was thrown out of the bar by gated security. Walking home one night after

Medical complications of alcohol abuse

medical complications of alcohol abuse as written by someone who’s entire family are alcoholics. I have heard of my sister dying by a gunshot. She was drinking with her boyfriend and they were fighting and he was drunk and he shot her.

I have watched my brother die. He survived the operation for the perforated colon-caused by the alcohol-only to have brain-stem damage-caused by the alcohol-and lost the abilily to swallow. His liver was the size of a football, he was yellow with jaundice. The brain-stem damage also made it impossible for him to walk. He made the choice to slowly slip away, aided by morphine. The only things he wanted in the end were beer and cigarettes.

He lived to drink. We figured in the later years, he had “wet brain”. On the wall at the hospital was a poster listing all the effects of alcoholism; he had all of them.

Alcoholism Tests

Alcoholic Blackout – Types of Alcohol Blackouts, How They Work, and the Consequences