Addicted in America: Skyrocketing sales of Oxy and Percocet (Associated Press)

The new book, Dosed: Introducing America’s first psychotropic generation (Salon.com excerpt)

The demand curve for drunks: Vegas anesthesiologist launches mobile IV service (Hangover Heaven)

Up to $500 per detox treatment: “As if we do not know that the proprietary blend is salt water and a few vitamins” (Science 2.0)

Privileged Hollywood celeb on promo tour for new ABC show bans questions about her looks: “There is so much wounding going on . . . it’s just contributing to the pain.” (TheDailyBeast.com)

Ashley Judd tells nation what pleases her ego on ABC’s Good Morning America:

New York’s Mayor Bloomberg on Trayvon: Florida and dozens of states have essentially passed “license to commit murder” laws (Politico.com)

New York Times versus X Videos.com: Porn site serves 10 times more web pages than America’s newspaper of record (Bloomberg News/Businessweek)

Soul’s Code slideshow: The Pain-Body Index

SPECIAL TO SOUL’S CODE: BY TONY SAMARA —  Expansion moves beyond an idea, it is the shared experience that the cosmos celebrates through this beautiful song that I call the song of angels. As the cosmos sings and you sing back to it, there is a sense of peace and understanding that manifests more deeply than just words.

Meditation is one of the most important things to practice anytime there is turmoil or chaos. Meditation is a very helpful and important part of daily activity, like eating, and sleeping. Meditation is good to be included as part of  everyone’s daily life.

A psychologist who grew up in California and now lives in Germany, reports a peak experience she had in Japan

BY CATHERINE ANN LOMBARD — Are peak experiences so rare to the average American? Such a shame. The late, great Italian psychiatrist — and victim of Mussolini’s regime — Roberto Assagioli called them transpersonal experiences.

Call them what you want: Peak experiences have informed me and my life for many years. Perhaps one of the earliest and strongest occurred in 1987 while I was living in Japan. After graduating from UC Berkeley, I moved to Fukuyama, about 400 miles south of Tokyo to teach English.

Before leaving, my brother gave me the name and address of Takashi, a friend of his from business school who lived in Tokyo. Soon after settling in, I contacted Takashi and introduced myself. He replied with the suggestion that I meet him in Kyoto where he was planning a business trip. During the weekend, he would have time to accompany me through the ancient capital city.

Zen snow in Sanzen-in, Kyoto

I happily agreed to this idea. Kyoto is renown for its numerous temples and shrines. Surrounded by mountains and graced with bamboo gardens and philosopher paths, Kyoto seems to hold the essence of Japan. With a guiding hand, I hoped to touch this essence.

When I left for our rendezvous, it was early February, a blustery cold month, that the Japanese calendar marked as the beginning of spring.

Takeshi, a gentle-voiced Japanese with high cheek bones and a wide smile, met me at the train station. He wore a grey trench coat, standard attire for an international banker, and his jet black hair was flecked with grey, as if he had accidentally splattered himself while painting a room white.

The next morning, when I opened the frosted windows of my hotel room, I could hear the coo of morning doves mingled with the soothing trickle of a waterfall. It was a cold winter day, and we first visited the dimly lit temple halls of Sanjusangen-do where 1001 serene Kannon figures lined the wooden floors.

Later that afternoon, fat snowflakes swirled around us while we strolled through an ancient tea garden in the nearby hills. I stood spellbound in front of a plum tree that was in bloom. Swollen pink blossoms undauntedly fluttered in the snow.

The kanji sutra

The next day, we caught a bus north of Kyoto to Sanzen-in, a renowned temple re-built in 860 A.D., tucked away in the mountains. Upon arriving, we found the snow piled high, the sky deep blue, and the air biting.

We entered the temple, and robed monks led us, along with other visitors, to a room with low tables. Sitting at the tables, we were given the day’s sutra written on hand-made, cream-colored paper. The monk then invited us to meditate and trace the kanji sutra.

On the same piece of paper, we also were asked to write down a personal goal.  At the end of each day, the monks collected these papers and burnt them with incense.  My mind felt cleared after tracing the sutra, as I waited for a goal to enter my heart.  Finally, I wrote “To grow wise with age,” and Takeshi drew the kanji for peace, the character depicting a stalk of rice next to a mouth—everyone satiated in all ways.

Takeshi then walked over to a shoji door. The mulberry paper meticulously covered its cross-lattice bamboo frame and seemed alive with sunlight. “San…ni…ichi.  Three…two…one.”

He counted backwards and then slid the door open.

At that moment, I lost all consciousness

I was stunned. The garden beyond the door was unworldly in its beauty.  At that moment, I lost all consciousness of self and became one with everything, one with light. The manicured pine trees and carefully placed stones seemed captive in snow, frozen in time. Incandecsent colors of green, blue and orange flickered in my mind’s eye. I felt like I had finally, breathlessly arrived in Japan.

Regaining consciousness, I found myself moved to tears. For only a split-second, I had transcended time and space and momentarily encountered a limitless universe, yet I felt I had been gone for days. A monk’s voice floated towards me in a soothing rush of monosyllables. The air tasted sweet and cold. A stream of melted waters ran beneath the snow.

Takeshi offered me his arm, and we stepped into the temple’s garden. Pine trees occasionally shook piles of snow off their boughs onto our heads, as if to mock our awkward human-ness.

Since that time, I have indeed aged. As for growing wise, that remains to be seen. But one thing is certain, this brief glimpse of the invisible through the visible reverberates through my soul today.

Catherine Ann Lombard is a psychologist and work-place counselor who specializes in the emerging discipline of psychosynthesis. Catherine’s essays, poetry, and news articles have been published in the 11 countries and 4 continents where she has lived. Her current home is in a small town near the German-Dutch border.

Read her first column for Soul’s Code: How I learned ‘surrender’ in my German garden

The new rage are naughty e-books for mothers in America: The Story of O . . . 2.0 (Maureen Dowd)

HBO’s follow-up to Sex and the City: Recession-era erotica is a mess (New York Times)

They hold the whole 2012 in their hands: Introducing Swingles! (Slate)

From the archives: Where sex meets spirituality (Soul’s Code)

The fittest FLOTUS since Jackie Kennedy: Michelle challenges Ellen to push-ups *

Yo, Canada: Ontario decriminalizes brothels

Not Dorothy Stratten the Playmate: Michele Obama commissions the U.S.S. Dorothy Stratton, named after a pre-feminist captain in the U.S. Coast Guard during WWII

* “FLOTUS” is the U.S. Secret Service abbreviation for “First Lady Of the United States”

MARGARET  COCHRAN — The Enneagram grew out of the teachings of the great Sufi mystic, G. I. Gurdjieff, whose memoir of early 20th-Century pilgrimages, Meetings with Remarkable Men, became a landmark movie in spiritual cinema. But today we care more about the Enneagram than the movie because it is an amazing tool for developing self-awareness.

The Enneagram helps us to realize what motivates us, and how to better understand the sometimes confusing behavior of our friends, family and co-workers — and possibly the most confusing person of all, yourself!

Have you ever looked at the people you know and work with, and wondered why they behave the way they do? Why one person would give you the shirt off their back if you needed it, and another would argue about the importance of needing to wear a shirt? Why would yet another type of person be chronically over-committed and habitually complaining about it, and yet persist in cramming still more things into their already overflowing calendar? What do these very different kinds of people want, and how can they be reached?

The answer to these questions can be found in the nine points, or personality types, in the Enneagram.

The 9 basic types

1. The Perfectionist
2. The Giver
3. The Achiever
4. The Romantic
5. The Observer
6. The Doubter
7. The Dreamer
8. The Leader
9. The Diplomat

To determine your Enneagram type you simply need to read the descriptions of each one, and select the number that best describes you and your behavioral style. For a quick and easy reference guide to help you get started I refer you to my website.

As you explore this system, know that we each possess all nine types of Enneagram energy within us. However, there is one ‘home’ point in which we spend the majority of our ‘psychological time’.

The Enneagram is traditionally displayed as a diagram that takes the form of a clock face with the number ‘nine’ in the customary twelve o’clock position, the number ‘one’ in the customary one o’clock position and with the numbers two through eight spread out evenly in clockwise order around the circle. There are intersecting lines inside the circle that actually form a nine pointed geometric figure, or an enneagram, hence the name.

Which ‘wing’ are you?

These lines direct the Enneagram user to the interconnectedness of the various points such as the ‘wings’, which are the numbers on either side of your ‘home’ point. They also indicate the ‘heart point’ and the ‘stress point’, which are the places where people’s energies go when they are cathected in something, or someone, for better or worse.

Let’s profile point ‘One’, The Perfectionist, as an example of the Enneagram matrix at work.

‘Ones’ have extremely high expectations and very specific ideas and ideals about what’s right and what’s not. With such exacting standards they are not at all shy about telling those around them how they are ‘doing it wrong’. ‘Ones’ have a powerful internal critic — and as hard as they can be on ‘us,’ it’s nothing compared to the demands that they make of themselves.

‘Ones’ have ‘wings’ of Nine, The Mediator, and Two, The Giver.

As a result, ‘Ones’ want to help others ‘do it right’ — and at the same time they may find that they have difficulty letting go of unused objects, prioritizing tasks and knowing exactly who ‘they’ are. The ‘heart’ point of ‘One’ is Seven, The Dreamer, so when they interact with someone or something that is important to them they want to have fun!

The ‘stress’ point of a ‘One’ is Four, The Romantic. So when a ‘One’ is unhappy, they are intensely, dramatically and over-the-top unhappy!

Do you know a “One’ in your life?

Nine harmonic talking points for the UN

Understanding why people behave as they do goes a long way to averting misunderstandings and promoting compassion. If you can laugh about your disparate ‘habits of attention’ and find ways to productively interact with any psychologically-healthy individual, no matter how different your ‘styles’ of reaction and expression may be, this kind of empathy can seal a business deal, cement a friendship, sensitively shape your parenting style and foment your most intimate relationships.

Margaret Cochran is a transpersonal psychologist and licensed social worker with more than 30 years of clinical experience. She has a joint-practice with her partner, medical doctor David J. Waggoner, MD, at the Saratoga Family Health Center, where she takes a whole-person approach to mental health and wellness.

She is also the host of two radio shows: Wisdom, Love and Magic and A Mental Health Moment. This is her second column for Soul’s Code.