For Love Of Country Military Policewoman www.silvaredigonda.ca

“CHAPTER THIRTY The Sinai The flight to Europe was long and tiring. Again I looked down at the British Isles that I so badly wanted to visit but couldn’t. The timing was wrong. I had taken two pills to help me with the flight. The doctor who prescribed them said I had to be awake. “But I don’t want to be awake if I crash. I want to sleep through it,” I argued. “You need to be awake, in case you crash,” he responded. I walked onto the Boeing 707, at Trenton, after swallowing the pills a half hour before the flight. As I walked along the aisle, one guy said he wanted whatever it was that I was on. The drug was making me feel like I couldn’t care less if we crashed or not. It was magical and I must have had a stupid smile on my face judging from some of the comments I was receiving. I was getting an understanding of what it meant to be “high.” We did not crash and the pills wore off. After an eight hour flight, we landed in Germany and we waited to get onto the Hercules for the remaining trip. We were packed individually in hanging harnesses. We had clear visibility of each other. After another seven hour flight, at about 0415 hrs, we arrived. As we were landing I could see condensation on the ceiling of the plane and hoped that it was okay. There was a tiny opening. No one seemed to react to it so I felt fine. I could not wait to land. It was April Fools’ Day when we found ourselves in the Sinai Desert. We looked around us. The sky was beautiful. The sun, an orange glow, welcomed us. It must have been about 72 degrees. I was surprised at seeing bushes strewn here and there. I had expected only sand, but vegetation of sorts did grow here. But due to my fear of flying I had not slept, and I was beginning to suffer for it. We were lined up outside our plane. Exhausted, we continued to study our surroundings. I felt at ease. It wasn’t as bad as I had anticipated. The area was flat and rocky. It was nice to see some greenery. Excerpt From: Silva Redigonda. “For love of country : military policewoman.” www.silvaredigonda.ca

Men's Conference was interesting

Well I missed the socializing and food but it was interesting. I will be sharing information with you next week. It began with difficulty because Professors from Israel of course could not attend. We did have slides from one but it was difficult to keep up because it was read quite fast. I don't have copies of the slides though some of the Researchers said they would provide them. They were from 10 different countries I believe. I attended the end of a speaker from Capetown, UK, States, Canada (of course), Japan,and I think Sweden. It was a two day conference from about 0900 to 1700 daily with a good lunch break in between. I get a break next week and then the following week I will be attending the American Association of Family Therapy. That exhausted me last year and I am sure it will do the same this year. I find it difficult to sit quietly for three days in a row without the socializing which I enjoy so much. Oh well. I am always eager to keep up with the information that is out there. I shall be providing you with information from the conference beginning next week. Remember that this conference was open to all. Have a safe weekend. Good talk.

New Paths to Recovery (cut and pasted for you to read) from University of Toronto

Every year, thousands of Canadians seek help for addiction. Which treatments work best? By Alison Motluk October 12, 2023 John had been feeling tired for months. He didn’t have any energy or motivation, and he couldn’t keep up with his usual work and family obligations. What seemed to help was a few drinks in the evening. His wife thought he had a problem. So did his doctor, who gave it a fancy label: “alcohol use disorder.” They thought he needed treatment. Actually, “John” doesn’t exist – he is part of a vignette that U of T researchers are using to assess people’s views toward addiction. After reading the vignette, people are asked a series of questions to tease out their beliefs. Is addiction a moral failing? Is it a consequence of trauma? A genetic predisposition? A disease? Samantha Rundle, a recent PhD graduate from U of T’s department of psychology, is interested in the relationship between addiction and stigma. She is also interested in how stigma might act as a barrier to treatment for people like John and whether changing the way we talk about addiction can reduce it. Rundle gave questionnaires to people after they read a vignette similar to the one above. Sometimes John was Jane, sometimes John/Jane had an addiction not to alcohol, but to opioids or gambling. Sometimes John/Jane had no addiction at all, but had diabetes. Rundle asked people to say whether statements such as “once someone has an addiction, they will always have an addiction” or “individuals with addiction lack moral standards” were true. In addition to 755 responses from the general public, she also got them from 109 people who had addictions, to measure self-stigma. She found that in the survey of the public, people were more likely to align with what she calls the “psychological” model of addiction, which attributes addiction to past traumatic experiences, maladaptive coping mechanisms and other psychological deficiencies. People who view addiction through this model, she found, were less likely to stigmatize people with addictions. Those who view addiction through a “moral” model, which attributes addiction to weakness in character and bad choices, were more likely to stigmatize, she found. “My main goal was to identify which models are related to less stigma,” says Rundle. “Maybe the way in which we talk about addictions and the way in which we learn about them and the way that they’re portrayed in the media need to be modified in order to have these people be OK to reach out to treatment programs.” In short, why not create messaging around addiction that reduces stigma, so that more people who need treatment will be willing to get it? There is evidence that treatment can help a person overcome addiction. Some people defy stigma and seek that treatment out. But much is still unknown about exactly how different treatments work and what their effects in the brain really are. U of T researchers are examining those questions, pushing forward our understanding of how addiction works, one piece of the puzzle at a time. According to Statistics Canada, about one in five Canadians will experience an addiction at some time in their life. Data from other sources suggest about three per cent of Canadians will use illegal drugs such as cocaine, ecstasy or heroin in any given year. Canadians using prescription medications such as opioid pain relievers, psychoactive drugs and stimulants also sometimes report problematic use. But alcohol, nicotine and cannabis remain Canada’s most-used problem drugs. Addiction is a burden on the Canadian economy. According to the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH), substance abuse disorders cost about $40 billion annually in additional health care and criminal justice expenses, and lost productivity. The personal cost – in misery, illness and death – is harder to put a number on. Konstantine Zakzanis, a professor in the department of psychology at U of T Scarborough, and Tyler Brown, a master’s student in psychological clinical sciences, are interested in whether the cognitive abilities that are compromised during addiction – things like memory, concentration, decision making, planning and problem-solving – can be restored by treatment and abstinence. Most research addressing this question only looks at a snapshot in time. But Brown (under supervision from Zakzanis), has just launched a longitudinal study, to examine that question over an extended period. He has partnered with a private inpatient treatment facility, the Canadian Centre for Addictions; together they aim to follow at least 85 patients for several months. Testing and interviews when a person first arrives at the centre will establish their baseline. Brown is interested not only in standard measures of cognition, but also the person’s mood, personality characteristics and ability to navigate daily life – things like personal care, shopping, cooking, housekeeping, banking, relationships and vocational activities. He knows that most people with substance use disorders are struggling with more than one substance, and he has embraced that in the study design. The centre’s programs run for 30, 45, 60, 90 or 120 days, and they involve counselling, social support and activities such as yoga, art therapy and group walks. On day 30, all of the study participants, who have given informed consent, will be retested. The same will happen on day 90, even if the people have left the facility, either because their program ended or because they didn’t finish it. After that, a check-in will occur three months post-treatment. Brown says he and Zakzanis want to know what happens to people in the real world. “Are they able to get back to work? Are they able to get back to living independently? Are they able to get back to school, because their cognition is now good enough? That’s important,” says Brown, “not just for the individual, but for their caregivers, their families, their employers.” Some, they know, will run into trouble again and come back into treatment. He wants to continue following them as well. What led to the relapse? What did they end up using? Research Zakzanis has done in the past suggests that how much and how long a person has used drugs is a decent predictor of how well they will recover in terms of cognition. But he speculates that so are traits like resiliency and conscientiousness. “We’re going to be measuring those things along the way,” he says. His view is that when cognition – specifically, the brain’s executive functioning – improves, so does a person’s ability to operate day to day. He likens executive functioning to the conductor of a choir. “You have all these other parts of your brain doing things – processing information, consolidating new memories, perceiving the world around you – meaning they’re all adding music,” he says. “But at the end of the day, it only sounds like music when the conductor can put it all together.” Digital illustration, primarily in blue tones, depicting four street lights, with two people under the nearest light, one with a guiding hand on the back of the other, and a person with their arms held out under the furthest light. Illustration by Gracia Lam If treatment coupled with abstinence can be shown to improve overall cognition, and therefore control over behaviours needed to overcome addiction, that will be a promising finding – indicating there’s hope for long-term meaningful cognitive recovery. If treatment can restore cognitive function, then there is almost certainly more than one way to make that happen. If brain-based mechanisms are underlying the disorder, says Victor Tang, an addiction psychiatrist and clinician scientist at CAMH and an assistant professor in U of T’s department of psychiatry, then therapy, medication and brain stimulation could each be successful in bringing about modifications. “It’s just different entry points into changing the brain,” he says. When people do cognitive behavioural therapy and other forms of talk therapy, they are developing coping mechanisms and personal strategies to figure out how to avoid drug use, he says. The idea is that such therapy changes the way the brain works; it changes cognition itself. But such changes are underpinned by changes in brain circuitry. And as a neuroscientist, Tang is experimenting with techniques to treat the brain more directly. Tang is using electrical or magnetic pulses that stimulate the brain rather than psychological therapy. But in many ways they share the same goal – altering brain function. One technique, called repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation, involves creating an electromagnetic field in a coil, placing the coil next to the part of the brain you want to influence – in this case, the prefrontal cortex – then using it to activate the brain and hopefully cause changes in how the brain functions. Two years ago, scientists in the U.S. and Israel showed that stimulating this region of the brain in this way was effective at helping people quit smoking. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the device for smoking cessation treatment in 2021, and Health Canada did the same in 2022. The smoking study was proof of concept that repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation could be effective in treating addiction, says Tang. But he is mindful that, as he puts it, “a lot of addictions travel with mental illness.” So, Tang will be investigating the treatment’s effectiveness against nicotine addiction in people with various mental health conditions. In these studies, participants will come to CAMH for treatments over a period of three or four weeks. Each session of repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation will be paired with a reminder or “activation” of their cognitive coping skills. Since both the brain stimulation and the reminders are trying to do the same thing – alter the way the brain works – Tang believes the therapy will reinforce the changes introduced by the stimulation. Another study (which Tang is not leading but is working on) will look at addiction alongside depression. Previous research has shown that another kind of non-invasive brain stimulation, known as theta burst stimulation, is effective at treating depression. One of its advantages is that it is much quicker than repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation – just three minutes compared to about 40 minutes – with equally good outcomes. Tang and his colleagues want to know if theta burst stimulation could be effective at treating patients who have both depression and alcohol use disorder. Because the researchers know that cognition is affected by both these conditions, they will examine whether a four-week trial of theta burst stimulation can improve scores on tests of cognition. It works the other way too: cognition affects both addiction and depression. So, they also want to know if depression scores improve and craving symptoms decline. But even if these brain stimulation treatments work in the short term, Tang admits, it is not yet clear if the positive effects will last without some sort of maintenance therapy – another question he would like to explore.

Trudeau speaks against Hamas and those supporting them

Catching up, sick, work and Conferences and the news is depressing of course.

Of course I got sick. However, I feel better every day. I cancelled my live attendance at the Men's Conference tomorrow and Friday but will attend via webinar. I was hoping to attend in person and socialize but it appears I must skip this year. I am also missing out going to St Jacobs, but what the heck. If sick, stay home is my motto. I haven't been to the gym either and I have been binge watching on my days off. Of course I am still working but taking it slow. I am so fortunate that all my work can be done on line. Toronto went from warm temperatures where air conditioning was needed to brrrrr cold where my heat is on in a week. I know that as a Canadian I can go South for six months to the USA and that may be a consideration once Mr Attitude rests in peace. However, he is still verbally active to a point where he appears human and belligerent. However, at 100 years in animal years, he is mine for life as all my pets have been. Actually, he thinks I am his pet and lets me know when he is pissed. It has also been hard watching the news of what is happening in the Middle East and I could not help but cry when I learned what Hamas has done to babies. It is so unfortunate that innocent people on both sides will die during this war. What was also difficult was watching protests happening in my city which is so disrespectful. I even sent an email to our Mayor indicating that unsanctioned protests that take over our city streets should have hefty fines and billed for the services of the police and any other costs incurred. She did ask for anyone who had ideas to let her know. You see we have a deficit and need to find money. I have been thinking of my own time in the Middle East. So what I shall be doing as I post pages of my book, For Love of Country Military Policewome is skip my order in the chapters and move to the Chapter of the Middle East. Writing this book was writing my biography. I had to be careful writing this book and not write anything that I shouldn't be writing. I don't want to face jail time for leaking anything I shouldn't. My Chief assured me I was safe. Since publishing this book, every once in a while someone I served with contacts me to tell me he agrees with what I wrote and memories are stirred for that person. At book sales Jewish men normally come to buy a copy when they see it. One woman not in the military told me she cried reading my book. Of course there are always those who hate the military. One woman actually hissed at me (where was Mr Attitude and Holy Terror?). Another woman told me that women should give life and not kill - Wow. What I believe is that we need a strong military to ensure and maintain democracy. We are being faced with so many challenges. I remember reading about a Soviet Defector many years ago. He had come to Canada and eventually went to the States. What he said that unless a person has a knife against his throat he (or she)does not acknowledge or see a threat. I resonated with that phrase at the time and see it more in action today with the threat of the consequences of global warming, COVID and other diseases, and acts and attempted take overs of countries. The sad part is also that civilians are killed more now than ever before as our weapons become more sophisticated. Can you imagine walking around with so much hate? We need to have a wakeup call and not wait until a knife is at our throat to see the dangers. We cannot be oblivious of it. Anyhow, this is all I am going to write about regarding wars and terrorists for awhile. For now take care of yourselves where ever you may live. I will write about what I glean from the conference. I had already planned what sessions to attend if I was attending in person and have no idea how it is going to work virtually. As for you, try to find balance in your life. If you are grieving, allow yourself to do so. Each person has their own way of grieving and if that person comes to you, allow them to grieve their way. LIsten to them and don''t feel you need to advise them or contradict them. Sometimes all a person needs is a person they can trust to confide in. Take care.

An email from Dr Bennet, Minister in my riding to her constituents - Contact numbers for Canadians in Israel

Dear Silva, Today I am reaching out to you to affirm and declare that we unequivocally stand with Israel and condemn the terrorist actions committed by Hamas over the weekend. Now is the time to stand with Israel and affirm its right to defend its sovereignty, its security and its people. My heart and thoughts are with all Israeli people at this time. We are appalled at the rallies that are happening to celebrate and justify the murder and horrific attacks on innocent civilians by Hamas terrorists. The Palestinian people deserve better. The terrorism must stop, the violence is absolutely unacceptable. As a little girl, I remember singing Shalom Chaverim. I knew it was about wishing friends peace. Until my first trip to Israel in 1998, I think I took living in peace for granted. I chaired the Canada-Israel Parliamentary Friendship Group for five years. I have been to Israel eight times. I led a delegation of Parliamentarians during the 2nd Intifada, I was part of the MPs in the summer of 2014 during the Gaza war. From the bomb shelters in schools, the iron dome, to all young people doing military service, the threat of attacks and violence was always palpable. On Monday evening in Mel Lastman Square, I stood in solidary together with my fellow MPs in the moving vigil for Israel Expressions, with prayers & singing Hatikvah led by Rabbi Splansky of Holy Blossom Temple. It moved us all. This recent attack on Israel reinforces the need to support Israel’s ability to defend its borders and the necessity of addressing the terrorism of Hamas and its risk to the region and the world. Shalom Chaverim My heart is with everyone affected by the horrific attacks. Carolyn   Canadian officials in Ottawa and in our missions in Tel Aviv and Ramallah are working around the clock to provide emergency consular assistance to Canadians in these difficult times. For emergency consular assistance, Canadians can contact Global Affairs Canada’s 24/7 Emergency Watch and Response Centre: By calling +1 613-996-8885  By text message at +1 613-686-3658  Via WhatsApp at +1 613-909-8881  Via Telegram at Canada Emergency Abroad Via Signal at +1 613-909-8087 By e-mail at sos@international.gc.ca A message from the PM Our Prime Minister has made it very clear - Canada stands with Israel, and we unequivocally condemn Hamas' attack. To read his full statement visit: https://www.pm.gc.ca/en/news/statements/2023/10/08/statement-prime-minister-trudeau-attacks-against-israel or watch the videos below.

Happy Thanksgiving

Today is Thanksgiving Day in Canada. When I woke up this morning I thought of all that I have and am thankful for. I thought I would share. I am thankful for who I am. I am thankful for my faith in God, a good God and not a nasty one. I am thankful for having only one country bordering mine and that the USA is not trying to invade me or kill me. I am thankful for a good neighbour whose values of peace and democracy I share. I am thankful for living in a country where I can say whatever I want, do whatever I want, dress however I like and for being provided the opportunities for growth. I am grateful for all that I have. I am grateful for serving my country and always having careers where I could help my country, my people and all people. I am grateful for being able to live a life where I have good food to eat, a roof over my head, and a healthcare system that has kept me healthy. I am grateful for all the opportunities I have been given, even those I have rejected. I am thankful for the freedom to be able to do all this. I am grateful for learning how men should love women from the way I saw my father love my mother. He adored her. I am grateful for each friend that I have had and still have. I am grateful to all who love me and will love me. I am grateful for all the pets I have ever had. I am grateful for the choices I am able to make. I am grateful for the choice to be single or married and to change my mind if I choose to. I am grateful for all that I have experienced because it has made me. I love myself and I love all of humanity good and bad and I am grateful that I can. I am grateful for so much. I have had wonderful friends and mentors and still have friends from my childhood. I am grateful for each breath that I take and shall never take it for granted. I love life so much. I am thankful that I can still help people in my work. I am not so thankful that I have difficulty suffering fools, but hey, no one's perfect. Thank you God and country and everyone I know who enhances my life. What are you thankful for? No matter what you may be going through at this moment or day in your life, try to step back and think of one thing you are thankful for. What do you think?