Group Meeting

Today we met as a group to discuss the direction we would like to go with our facilities and how to move forward with that.  We discussed how to approach what the facility might need and how might what we have in mind might help them.  JJ is going to contact Chateu Recovery, in addition to the contact he received for Addicts to Athletes and set up a more formal meeting to discuss needs and approaches.  We are also looking at times we can attend a Addicts to Athletes meeting.

Second Agency Contact

This week I spoke with a staff at Chateau Recovery about their use of Addict to Athlete.  Although we have not officially committed to them, we talked about attending an A2A meeting together and further exploring the possibility of our working relationship.  Most likely I'll attend the Tuesday night Murray meeting over our fall break.

Group Meeting

We met as a group last week and discussed a couple of things.  We talked about references for our topic and articles and books we have found.  Matt checked the Addicts to Athletes website for more links to references.  We talked about the possibility of going to an Addicts to Athletes meeting/workout and when they are held.

Further Research Findings

I found two research articles I feel approach this topic nicely:

Read, J.P & Richard A. Brown. (2003). "The Role of Physical Exercise in Alcoholism Treatment and Recovery". Professional Psychology: Research and Practice American Vol. 34, No. 1, 49-56.

and

Vuchowski, M. S. et al. (March 2011). "Aerobic Exercise Training Reduces Cannabis Craving and Use in Non-Treatment Seeking Cannabis-Dependent Adults." PLosOne Vol. 6 Issue 3.

Research Article

I found this article called "Acute effects of self-paced walking on urges to smoke
during temporary smoking abstinence" on Academic Search Premiere. It could certainly give us some information on how exercise helps recovering addicts. Let me know what you think of it!


Here is the link:
http://web.b.ebscohost.com.ezproxy.lib.utah.edu/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?sid=77c67f7e-fdcd-4e5b-9c2c-36a363a053be%40sessionmgr114&vid=4&hid=122

Research

I'm excited about the focus of our macro project!  I love the idea of using exercise to treat addiction.  I started researching this topic this week and found a great study called "Exercise as a novel treatment for drug addiction:  A neurobiological and stage-dependent hypothesis."  A few highlights from the study are that exercise may prevent drug use initiation through interactions with dopamine, that it may prevent relapse through interactions with glutamate, dopamine, and chromatin, and that exercise overall may be a useful tool for treating drug addiction.  Sounds promising!

Agency Contact

I spoke with Ben Pearson, the clinical director at Chateau Recovery, in Midway.  I filled Ben in on some of the details of our assignment to see if they would be interested in working with us.  Ben was optimistic, and suggested other places we might have interest in as well, including Addict II Athlete.  Ben shared a contact with that agency, and provided me with information on their upcoming meetings as well as offering members of our group to attend if we wished.  He asked me to contact him again next week to talk more.

Contacting Organizations

We are working with a couple of agencies currently to try to figure out the best avenue in which we should continue to study the effects of exercise and training on addiction recovery, depression, and anxiety. One of the organizations we are working with us currently is Addict II Athlete. You can access the organizations website here: http://addicttoathlete.org.
In searching for research on this topic we have come across a great book titled: Exercise for Mood and Anxiety: Proven Strategies for Overcoming Depression and Enhanced Well Being by Otto and Smits. 

Progress in the Making

There are great developments in our group project.  I am more excited and convinced as we met today about the direction we are heading.  Matt and JJ did some great work with contacting agencies and we are narrowing in our area of focus, agency, and the solid direction we would like to go.  This week we will work on gathering a little more research to support our argument.

Meet and Greet

Well the JAMCC group is formed and ready to rumble.  On 9/9 we met with one another for about an hour discussing the various topics we could take on for this project and the target group we could work with.  We have decided to target adult addicts, however, have not decided if we want to address inpatient or outpatient.  We would like to explore the importance of exercise/physical activity on the recovery process for addicts and how implementing this concretely in their treatment plan will benefit each individual.