Generally with opiate withdrawal, one doesn’t see loss of sphincter control so much as a diarrhea which the patient can’t differentiate from flatus (farts) and cuts loose with dire consequences. I do concede that bladder spasms can be a problem, with loss of urine. In my practice, I’ve seen more spontaneous ejaculation (well, had it reported to me anyway, thank all that’s holy) during withdrawal than urinary incontinence.
Thanks for the cites!
Happy to serve. Spontaneous ejaculation?! Sounds like something out of William S. Burroughs, in more ways than one.
Just for the hell of it, here’s one more cite:
Theobromine and diuresis (Courtesy of Hershey’s)
Note the careful wording… “Doesn’t stimulate the CNS like caffeine…” Nope-- it stimulates it in a much more pleasant way, gods be praised. 
Oh, and QtM– thanks for doing such a thankless and difficult job.
My understanding is that drug rehab centers allow their patients to smoke because it’s just plain impossible to break people of tobacco at the same time as other addicitions.
Peter Benchley, best known for Jaws, also wrote an utterly forgotten book called Rummies, about an alcoholic put into a rehab center. It’s a funny and devastating book, but there are no sea monsters in it, and so nobody ever bought it. Even so, it’s a horror story: just reading about rehab would put me off ever becoming an addict. And people smoke like chimneys throughout.
I’m probably the only person in the world who doesn’t watch The Sopranos and I don’t know what kind of rehab this Christopher is in. However, it makes sense that a rehab center would confiscate a new patient’s candy bars for reasons other than the strictly medical. I know of one adolescent rehab center that confiscated–at least on a temporary basis–everything patients walked in the door with, including clothes. The first couple days, patients wore hospital scrubs. Gradually patients earned back various privileges, including the power to treat themselves to things like candy bars. Staff members preferred to be the ones controlling anything that could be used as a reward for both disciplinary and therapeutic reasons–or so the theory went. I know they used to search for and confiscate any food at the center that wasn’t authorized by the doctors.
FTR, I haven’t visited this particular treatment facility in many years and don’t know how they work things these days. I mention this because I’m under the impression that trends in this area change a lot over time.
At the hospital where I occasionally work, psych patients do not get caffeine or cigarettes on the unit. When they get outside privileges, they can check out their cigs from the nursing station, or go to the cafeteria or outside for real coffee. All patients who smoke are offered the patch; some take us up on it, and some don’t.
When I worked in a treatment centers, they had a smoking room, and caffene is never banned in any treatment center I am aware of. Go to an NA meeting sometime, see how much coffee and cigs there are. Part of what happens with most addicts is they cross addict to cigs and coffee. Not really a bad trade off, and not something that most treatment centers discourage.
Two other non-clinical possibilities:
Concerns about the possibility of concealed drugs.
The nurse was a thieving b’tch with a sweet tooth.
I haven’t seen The Sopranos since last year.
Hey ho-- off to the binary groups.
It depends on the treatment center whether they allow caffeine and nicotine.
What I was told was that caffeine somehow interacts with various psychotropics, including antidepressants. The centers I’m familiar with (and no, I’ve never been a patient, but I’ve known a LOT of people who have been) that allow caffeine don’t prescribe drugs. And no rehab I’m familiar with will allow food to be brought in from the outside; it’s too easy to smuggle drugs in that way.
As for the smoking, again, it depends on the facility. Some facilities are smoke-free, so they encourage patients to quit while they’re in. Others recognize the fact that patients will go loony if they quit smoking while quitting drinking/drugs and allow them to smoke.
Robin
This would medically co-incide with whatever drug that had a side effect ( for women, I think) that when they yawned they would orgasm.
That’d be one heck of a party. Goggles required.
[hijac]
I’ve read many times that fighter pilots ejaculate when the catapult propels them off the deck, in their A/C of course. Any truth to this, and if so, where do I sign up!
[/hijack]
you can all get the same sort of pleasurable ejaculations as the addict experiences during withdrawal by simply inserting an electric cattle prod into the rectum and setting it off. NOTE that I do not recommend doing this. But the degree of pleasure will be about the same. Not every ejaculation is a happy event.
[Obligatory Forbidden Zone reference]
“The king said he was going to ream us with 18” cattle-prods, and I’m still waiting!"
[/Obligatory Forbidden Zone reference]
GaryM: Not!
Yeah, I’ll stick with the old fashioned kind! Thanks for the image though.