many teens were using the Internet as a tool for exploring questions of personal identity, successfully building their own future lives using what they discover on the Web

 

The risk of youth wasting huge amounts of time on social networks like Facebook and Twitter as well as the shared videos of YouTube is well known, but a Tel Aviv University researcher claims that these resources can actually promote psychological development. Prof. Moshe Israelashvili of TAU’s Jaime and Joan Constantiner School of Education, with his master’s degree student Taejin Kim and colleague Dr. Gabriel Bukobza, studied 278 teenage girls and boys from schools throughout the country. They found that many teens were using the Internet as a tool for exploring questions of personal identity, successfully building their own future lives using what they discover on the Web. The study, published in the Journal of Adolescence, encourages parents and educators to look at engagement with the online world as beneficial for teens. Social networking, Israelashvili says, is a positive example of Internet use: “Facebook use is not in the same category as gambling or gaming,” he insists, and as a result researchers should redefine the characteristics of the disorder called “Internet addiction” in adolescents. The teens were asked to rate themselves in terms of Internet use, ego clarification and self-understanding and how well they related to their peer groups. The researchers discovered there was a negative correlation between Internet overuse and the teens' levels of ego development and clarity of self-perception. This, he said, is an indication that some Internet use is destructive and isolating while some is informative and serves a socializing function. These results show that the current understanding of adolescent Internet addiction demands redefinition. Psychiatrists now classify an “Internet addict” as a person who spends more than 38 hours on the Internet every week. But it’s the quality, not the quantity that matters, argues Israelashvili. The researchers determined that many teens who participated in the study met the psychiatric standard of “Internet addiction” but were actually using the Internet as a tool to aid in their journey of self-discovery. There are two different kinds of teenage Web addicts, he continued. The first group is composed of adolescents who really are addicted, misusing the Internet with things like online gaming and gambling or pornographic websites, isolating themselves from the world around them. The second can be defined as “self-clarification seekers” whose use of the Internet helps them comprehensively define their own identities and place in the world. They tend to use the Internet for social networking and information gathering, such as on news sites or Twitter. Parents and educators should change the conversations they have with teens about Internet use, the researchers urge. The Web is a big part of our modern lifestyle, and both adults and children are spending more time there. As a result, what is important is how that time is used. Students must learn to use the Internet in a healthy way – as a source of knowledge about themselves in relation to their peers around the world, recommends Israelashvili. If parents still don't like the amount of time their teens are spending in front of the computer, they should consider becoming an information resource for their adolescent children, encouraging a healthy flow of conversation in the household itself. “Too many parents are too preoccupied,” the researcher says. “They demand high academic achievements and place less importance on teaching their children how to face the world.” Teens won't give up the Internet, but they may spend less time online if family interactions meet some of the same needs. “By the time teens reach the age of 18 or 19 they enter a new phase of life called ‘emerging adulthood,’ in which they take the lessons of their adolescence and implement them to build a more independent life. If they have spent their teenage years worrying only about their academic performance or gaming, they won't be able to manage well during their emerging adulthood and might have difficulties in making personal decisions and relating well to the world around them,” he concludes.

prescription painkiller addiction

 

 Painkillers in Maine: A cure that came with a curse Maine’s out-of-control pill habit is among the worst in the nation, and all of us bear the costs of its abuse. By John Richardson jrichardson@mainetoday.com Staff Writer First of six parts click image to enlarge A pharmacist counts out Vicodin pills at a pharmacy in Portland last week. Maine was one of the first states to see an explosion of painkiller addiction and it remains among the worst states in the nation for pill abuse. The human and societal costs associated with the epidemic – almost 1,400 Maine people have died from pharmaceutical drug overdoses in the past decade and thousands more need treatment for addiction – are staggering, experts say. Gregory Rec/Staff Photographer click image to enlarge . Ten years ago, Maine’s former U.S. attorney called prescription pain-pill abuse “the greatest criminal problem and possibly the greatest social problem facing Maine.” The problem, as it turns out, was just getting started. Maine was one of the first states to witness the explosion of prescription painkiller addiction, and its pill habit, still out of control, is among the worst in the nation. The damage continues to pile up. Nearly 1,400 Mainers have died from pharmaceutical drug overdoses in the past decade. And all residents bear the costs of the abuse. They pay for the pills, police the crime and care for and treat the addicts. Substance abuse in Maine is now estimated to cost $1.18 billion a year, or $900 for every man, woman and child, and much of that comes from misuse of prescription drugs. “It’s extraordinary how deep this epidemic has gone,” said Dr. Mark Publicker, an addiction specialist in Westbrook. “It was eating its way through the culture, and it was diagnosed too late.” Now human and social costs are at historic highs, leading to a renewed urgency to fight back. • Overdose deaths from pharmaceuticals in Maine set a new record in 2009 – 165 – and for the first time exceeded the number of Mainers killed in motor vehicle accidents. One hundred and sixty-two Mainers died from the drugs in 2010, the second-highest year on record. • Pill abuse continues to rise among teens, according to experts. Nearly one in four high school seniors in 2009  – 23.6 percent – said they have used prescription drugs that were not prescribed to them. • A record number of Maine babies – 572 – were born last year to mothers who were known to have used painkillers or other drugs during pregnancy, more than triple the number in 2005. Most of the babies experienced painful opiate withdrawal and spent their first two weeks in the hospital. • Crimes driven by pill addiction – especially pharmacy robberies and home invasions – are becoming more common and more dangerous, according to police statewide. These crimes have turned county jails into busy detox centers. • Prescription pain pill addicts are seeking treatment in record numbers – nearly 4,000 last year. Maine has more people per capita in state-funded treatment than any other state, eight times the national average, according to federal and state data. After a decade of efforts to contain the abuse, Maine’s Legislature and the Attorney General’s Office are among those calling for a more aggressive, coordinated response. A seven-year-old effort to track opiate prescriptions statewide, for example, has never been put to full use because of limited resources and participation. “I think there’s enough fault to go around for everybody,” said Jay McCloskey, who sounded the alarm as Maine’s U.S. attorney a decade ago and is now in private practice. FERTILE GROUND The 10-year toll and Maine’s inability to contain the epidemic come as little surprise to those who have experienced addiction. “It just really quickly takes control. And then it takes and takes,” said Daryl Blums, a 27-year-old recovering addict from the Sanford area. Painkiller abuse is the side effect of powerful new pain relievers introduced more than a decade ago. Drug makers targeted Maine physicians with promises that the pills were safe and effective. And doctors who took an oath to relieve suffering felt they could no longer allow pain to go untreated, at least not without violating their oath and losing patients. Maine’s fishermen, loggers and other physical laborers provided plenty of demand for the new pain medications, and the prescriptions flowed. Maine has been a consistent leader in the prescribing of narcotic painkillers such as oxycodone. Teens and others quickly figured out how to crush the pills and snort the powder to get the full euphoric rush of the synthetic opiates, which are as powerful and addictive as heroin and morphine. As a rural state at the end of the distribution network, Maine didn’t have a lot of experience with hard drugs such as heroin and cocaine. But now, here was a drug delivered to every community in pure, pharmaceutical-grade, precisely measured doses. Experienced drug users loved the pills because they could trust them to work. The inexperienced considered them safer than street drugs. And there was a ready appetite for the pills, especially among teens and among adults wanting to wash away depression or escape the stress of unemployment and financial insecurity. Police, meanwhile, were all but powerless to keep the pills out of the wrong hands. “Drugs used to come from foreign countries and people would smuggle them in,” said Penobscot County Sheriff Glenn Ross. “Today, they are in the medicine cabinets of our homes.” HIGHLY ADDICTIVE At first, prescription opiates – also called opioids – give a warm, on-top-of-the-world feeling, users say. Pretty soon you need larger amounts to get high. Then one day you feel like you have a horrible flu – pain, vomiting, sweats and chills – and you realize it’s because you missed a dose. Opiate receptors in your brain, spine and intestines have gone into a kind of shock. Opiate withdrawal doesn’t kill you, but addicts say you wish it would. “You don’t have a care in the world when you’re on it. And when you can’t get it, it’s the worst experience in the world,” said Chuck Lawson, a recovering addict in Portland. Some addicts say it took them as little as two weeks of regular use to get hooked. The extreme highs and lows physically change an addict’s brain. Getting the next dose becomes the first thing – and sometimes the only thing – on an addict’s mind. Some addicts, chasing the high and trying to avoid withdrawal, mix painkillers with Xanax or other anti-anxiety pills or dissolve the pills and inject them directly into their veins. Both push addicts closer to a potentially fatal overdose. “Once you got past a certain point, there is no going back,” said 31-year-old Nicole Martin, a recovering addict who injected the drugs and used heroin when she couldn’t get pills. “Anything you say you haven’t done yet, you will do eventually.” WIDELY AVAILABLE Finding the drugs is rarely a problem, addicts say. Users share them, buy them, steal them, forge prescriptions for them and, if desperate enough, trade sex for them. Some go out of state to get the drugs, including to Florida’s so-called “pill mills” – clinics that offer painkiller prescriptions for cash. Many addicts get prescriptions from their local doctors – sometimes for real pain and often not. Some are even bold enough to file false police reports of pill theft so they can convince their doctors to give them more. Those with their own prescriptions get their pills on the cheap – MaineCare and private insurance cover most of the cost. And they quickly learn they can sell their pills for as much as $30 to $100 apiece depending on the type and strength. Addicts buying their pills on the street can spend $100 to $400 a day to feed their habits. That gets very expensive, said Blake Carver of Portland. Carver, now 24, was a teenager when he started breaking into houses looking for money to buy “Oxys,” he said. And he always cleaned out the medicine cabinets in the homes he robbed. “Even if there wasn’t something I wanted, I knew somebody who would,” he said. ‘NO FAMILY IS IMMUNE’ The epidemic has affected Mainers of all ages and backgrounds – middle schoolers and senior citizens, clam diggers and doctors. “No family is immune from this particular issue,” said Troy Morton, chief deputy of the Penobscot County Sheriff’s Office.  “They are the youngest of kids, in their early teens, and people in their 70s. They are the poorest of the poor and the richest. There are no boundaries.” Abuse often starts among teens, who don’t understand the danger and are more vulnerable to addiction. Addiction, meanwhile, is most common among young adults who were in their teens when the pills first flooded into Maine communities. Thirteen percent of Mainers age 18 to 25 said they abused painkillers in the past year, according to the 2009 National Survey on Drug Use and Health, the most recent available. The rate is 6 percent of 12- to 17-year-olds and 4.7 percent of all Mainers over 12 – a total of 52,000 people. The overall cost of painkiller abuse in Maine is not known. Through taxes, health insurance premiums and higher medical costs, Mainers are helping to supply the pills, pay for emergency room visits, investigate crimes, lock addicts in jails and provide the treatments to help them get sober. Opiate addiction treatment alone costs Maine taxpayers millions of dollars a year. The state spends about $12 million a year on substance abuse treatment programs, not including its share of MaineCare coverage for treatment services. Painkiller addiction accounts for about one-third of substance abuse treatment admissions. However, every dollar spent on treatment saves as much as $12 in medical care and crime-related costs, according to Maine’s Office of Substance Abuse. Opiate abuse – including both heroin and prescription painkillers – was responsible for 30,451 emergency and outpatient hospital visits in Maine in 2008, a 28 percent increase from the year before, according to a May report. Pharmacies have banklike security, with surveillance cameras and tracking devices, and still get robbed repeatedly in some cases. County jails and state prisons are straining financially to hold and care for all the addicts arrested for drug-related crimes. RENEWED URGENCY State government, the medical community, law enforcement, drug makers and others have all taken action to try to contain the problem. There are new prescribing guidelines, tamper-proof prescription sheets, overdose prevention campaigns and collection drives for unused drugs. Experts say many of the efforts have helped keep the abuse from doing even more damage. But frustration is clearly peaking after a decade of watching the problem steadily worsen. “It just seems that if we’re leading the way with this problem, we ought to show some leadership in dealing with it,” said Rep. Jon Hinck, D-Portland. Hinck proposed a bill in the Legislature earlier this year that would have established new rules for doctors, including a requirement that they check patients’ medication records before prescribing them painkillers. The proposal failed, but lawmakers instead created a study group that is due to propose policy changes by Dec. 1. McCloskey, the former U.S. attorney, said the state and federal governments have not devoted enough resources to educating kids about the dangers of abuse. “It hasn’t been a priority,” he said. McCloskey, meanwhile, took criticism himself after leaving the federal government in 2001 and working as a consultant for the maker of OxyContin. McCloskey still maintains the pharmaceutical industry is not to blame for the abuse. “If we don’t reduce the demand for drugs we’ll never be successful.” Most now agree that pill abuse is so entrenched in Maine’s culture it will take more than doctors or state agencies or police alone to control it. “People want to point a finger. Let’s blame the pharmaceutical companies. Let’s blame the physicians. Let’s blame the druggies. (Some) people still think it’s a problem of will power,” said Marcella Sorg, a forensic anthropologist at the University of Maine’s Margaret Chase Smith Policy Center. “The reason we haven’t been able to tackle it is because it’s so darn complicated.” Maine Attorney General William Schneider has invited leaders in government, law enforcement, medicine, education and addiction treatment to attend a one-day summit Oct. 25 and come up with a coordinated action plan. “It’s staggering,” Schneider said. “I don’t think it’s going to be solved by any one particular tactic, but I think if we choose several different tactics we can make a difference.” Those who have experienced addiction first-hand have no easy answers, either. The pills are too easy to get and too powerful, said James Cox, a 31-year-old recovering addict in Jonesboro. “I don’t think they’ll ever get rid of it,” he said.

Justin Townes Earle looks back at year of recovery

 

In the days following Justin Townes Earle's arrest last September in Indianapolis, he slipped so deeply into a cocaine psychosis it began to change his personality. Gone was the brash, cocksure young singer-songwriter who against the steep odds of addiction and a tough upbringing had transformed himself into a true artist with the critical acclaim to prove it. In its place was a 150-pound wraith haunting the East Village in New York City with an overriding paranoia brought on by an eight-ball of cocaine and a half-gallon of vodka every day. The continuous binges were destroying his talent and making his intense live shows occasionally forgettable. They were destroying his friendships one by one. Nearly six years of sobriety, all gone during an increasingly tight downward spiral over a year's time. Earle fixated on an erroneous news report that said he hit a woman while destroying his dressing room in an Indianapolis club. For a man raised by a single mother, the idea he would hit a woman was devastating. It prompted a five-day bender. "I'd just be walking down the streets in Manhattan thinking everybody was looking at me," Earle said. "I thought everybody knew about what happened and it absolutely was just crushing me. I remember vaguely calling my publicist at the time — I fired my manager not long before that had happened, and my publicist and my booking agent were the only people still working for me — and just hysterically crying and saying I just didn't want to do this anymore. I didn't want to tour any more. I didn't want to make records." Not long after, Earle entered formal treatment for the 13th time. In the 10 months since he completed rehab, the 29-year-old son of country rebel Steve Earle has experienced a series of highs and lows he shared in several interviews. He's slipped back into heroin use and rallied, turning to a new treatment that seems to have helped him settle into a healthier routine. He's been hailed as a new voice for his generation and targeted by cruel attempts at gallows humor. He split with his old girlfriend and started a new relationship that's brought him back to his hometown. Today he's on the "marijuana maintenance plan" and enjoying the benefits of anti-addiction drug Soboxone. He's exercising and feels as fit as he ever has. He's touring much of the fall and is preparing to record his fifth record, a significant step that has Earle pointed directly into the future. "And I'm as content as I've ever been," Earle said. "Which doesn't mean I'm content, but I'm as content as I've ever been. I'm still always going to be a little bit discontent because I'm a little bit crazy and I'll always want more than I have. That's what keeps me going. That's what keeps me driven to keep on doing what I'm doing." Perhaps it's that drive that's kept him alive so long. ___ Sometimes, Justin Townes Earle is amazed he's still above ground. Images flashed through his head as he sat backstage at The Mercy Lounge last November, staring out a window at bejeweled luxury high rises. The Nashville he's looking at doesn't much resemble the lazy town with the seedy side he grew up in during a nearly feral, often lonely and always confusing childhood. At the same time, some things look very much the same. "I remember when you'd look out this window and there wasn't (expletive) anything there," he said. "It was a rail yard. Well, hell you can still buy crack on 8th Avenue." A few weeks out of rehab, Earle admits his mind is often on drugs. He catches himself falling prey to the classic addict behavior of daydreaming about scoring. "I feel good now, but at least once a day I come up with some kind of hare-brained scheme to get high and get away with it," he said with a laugh.

Food addiction, although controversial, has recently gained attention in scientific literature and comes under the realm of atypical eating disorders.

Are you addicted to food? (Thinkstock photos/Getty Images)

We all over-eat occasionally. However, a food addict eats too much food and wrong kinds of food all the time. It may be associated with an obsessive/compulsive relationship to food - where an individual indulges in frequent episodes of uncontrolled eating, else experiences anxiety if he is unable to do so. However, this may have serious health implications in due course. 
Nutritionist and obesity consultant Naini Setalvad says, "Food addiction basically means a person eats uncontrollably, for reasons besideshunger. One reason for this is the neurobiological imbalances in the levels of the chemical, serotonin. Once its levels drop in the body, a person feels low and needs to eat again. This leads to overeating, which in turn leads to feelings of guilt, depression, mood swings, weight gain and a reinforcement of low self-esteem. Because of this, a person looks to food for comfort and the vicious cycle continues." 
How can one overcome it? "One way is by breaking the cycle. If it is a severe case, then psychological treatment must be accompanied with a healthy food plan. Replace addictive foods with healthy ones, which also boost the mood and serotonin levels. Stick to whole grains, fresh fruits, nuts, seeds and make vegetables a habit. Also, drink lots of water. These foods not only comfort a person, but also take away the 'guilt' factor. You can eat three mangoes and not worry about the amount of fat you have eaten, since there is none. 

However, the natural sugar in mangoes perks a person and makes him feel better," says Setalvad. If you are addicted to food, it's time to take an honest look at your life and make a commitment to loving yourself. 

Addiction Recovery:

Addiction Recovery: Many of us have wasted a lot of time doing that and it doesn't work. You can easily see why.

We usually conclude the period of meditation with a prayer that we be shown all through the day what our next step is to be, that we be given whatever we need to take care of such problems. We ask especially for freedom from self-will, and are careful to make no request for ourselves only. We may ask for ourselves, however, if others will be helped. We are careful never to pray for our own selfish ends. Many of us have wasted a lot of time doing that and it doesn't work. You can easily see why.

Addiction Recovery: age of miracles is still with us. Our own recovery proves that!

 

age of miracles is still with us.  Our own recovery proves that!

Addiction Recovery

 

However mean your life is, meet it and live it: do not shun it and call it hard names. Cultivate poverty like a garden herb, like sage. Do not trouble your- self much to get new things, whether clothes or friends. Things do not change, we change. Sell your clothes and keep your thoughts. God will see that you do want society.

Indonesian hypnotherapist unlocking minds of terrorists

Mardigu Wowiek Prasantyo's working day is filled with the bread and butter of any hypnotherapist: people quitting smoking, estranged couples, those attempting to lose weight or combat phobias. But, from time to time, the 45-year-old hypnotist has been asked to see an altogether different client, some of Indonesia's most hardened terrorists.

''The police found their techniques were not always effective,'' he says at his consulting rooms in South Jakarta. ''Sometimes they need a second or third opinion, other ways of interviewing.''

''You can use two techniques. Making people deeply relaxed, putting them in a trance. The other technique is what's called waking hypnosis,'' says the US-trained hypnotherapist.


It is the latter that Mr Mardigu deployed in interrogations and, like all hypnosis, it required the detainee to be congenial, if not a willing participant.

Mr Mardigu's advantage was that in the late 1990s he was a member of Jemaah Tabligh, a fundamentalist Islamic group that avows peaceful engagement but has seen terrorists pass through its ranks on their way to others with a violent credo.

''I knew some of these people before they became terrorists,'' says Mr Mardigu. ''I knew how to talk their language.''

Mr Mardigu interviewed Abu Dujana after his arrest in 2007. Abu Dujana was then head of Jemaah Islamiah, the terrorist group behind the Bali bombings, the attacks of the Marriott Hotel and Australian embassy.

Dressed in pious Islamic garb, Mr Mardigu mined Abu Dujana for ''emotional data'', patiently discussing jihad, his love of Islam, his mother and father.

''Once you break through, it's easy,'' says Mr Mardigu. ''He would simply tell you something when he remembered it … He told us everything. Where the weapons and ammunition was, their plans, the structure of the organisation and its membership.''

He stresses he always worked ''unofficially'' with other police and was one member of a team.

While sources have said Indonesian police use hypnosis techniques, the police declined to confirm the practice.

''The application of hypnotherapy is unofficial,'' said one senior anti-terrorism officer, who asked not to be identified. ''We only use it to get clues that will be used to get evidence or proof. It is the evidence that will be taken to court.''

Certainly, it is true that Abu Dujana spilled the beans to police. Mr Mardigu says he has since trained members of the Indonesian police and delivered seminars for the military.

He has not been without his critics, including Islamic clerics. When he set up his practice in 1991, he was widely denounced as a practitioner of black magic.

Accompanying doctors to Aceh following the 2004 tsunami to assist with pain management, Mr Mardigu ran into difficulties with religious leaders. ''They said what I was doing was heretical and I had to go.''

A Muslim, he later made a presentation on hypnotherapy to Indonesia's leading Islamic doctrine body, the Majelis Ulama Indonesia. ''The MUI declared it's not haram [forbidden] and it's not halal [permissible],'' he says. ''I guess it's in the middle, and that's fine by me.''

 

Alcohol-related illness and injury rates are at their highest in Lancashire and Merseyside,

Alcohol-related illness and injury rates are at their highest in Lancashire and Merseyside, according to latest findings from a health body.

The North West Public Health Observatory figures show Blackpool has the highest rates of chronic liver disease in England.

It revealed Liverpool came top for the numbers of alcohol-related conditions treated in hospital.

Across England such admissions have increased by 879 a day since 2006.

'National problem'
The observatory based in Liverpool John Moores University based their findings on updating the 2011 Local Alcohol Profiles for England (LAPE), first released in May.

The profiles contain 25 alcohol-related indicators for every local authority and 22 for every primary care trust in England.

Annual rates for alcohol-related hospital admission in Liverpool are 3,114 per 100,000 compared to 849 per 100,000 in the Isle of Wight.

In Blackpool, the findings showed the number of deaths from chronic liver disease were 46 per 100,000 men and 21 per 100,000 women, compared with the lowest rates in the City of London and in West Somerset where nobody died of liver disease.

Professor Mark Bellis, director of the observatory said: "The scale of damage revealed by these profiles shows alcohol is a problem for everyone in England.

"Even those families not directly affected by alcohol-related health problems, violence or abuse still pay towards the billions in taxes for the policing, health services and social support required to tackle this national problem."

For decades, scientists have been predicting that, one day, the same process that powers the sun will give us virtually unlimited cheap, clean electricity. Are they wrong

A star is born. And, less than a second later, it dies. On a drab science park just outside the Oxfordshire village of Culham, some of the world's leading physicists stare at a monitor to review a video of their wondrous, yet fleeting, creation.

"Not too bad. That was quite a clean one," observes starmaker-in-chief Professor Steve Cowley. Just a few metres away from his control room, a "mini star" not much larger than a family car has just burned, momentarily bright, at temperatures approaching 23 million degrees centigrade inside a 70-tonne steel vessel.

Cowley sips his coffee. "OK, when do we go again?"

Last year, when asked to name the most pressing scientific challenge facing humanity, Professors Stephen Hawking and Brian Cox both gave the same answer: producing electricity from fusion energy. The prize, they said, is enormous: a near-limitless, pollution-free, cheap source of energy that would power human development for many centuries to come. Cox is so passionate about the urgent need for fusion power that he stated that it should be scientists such as Cowley who are revered in our culture – not footballers or pop stars – because they are "literally going to save the world". It is a "moral duty" to commercialise this technology as fast as possible, he said. Without it, our species will be in "very deep trouble indeed" by the end of this century.

If only it were that simple. Fusion energy – in essence, recreating and harnessing here on earth the process that powers the sun – has been the goal of physicists around the world for more than half a century. And yet it is perpetually described as "30 years away". No matter how much research is done and money is spent attempting to commercialise this "saviour" technology, it always appears to be stuck at least a generation away.

Cowley hears and feels these frustrations every day. As the director of the Culham Centre for Fusion Energy, he has spent his working life trying to shorten this exasperating delay. Fusion energy is already a scientific challenge arguably more arduous than any other we face, but recent events have only piled on further pressure: international climate-change negotiations have stalled; targets to ramp up renewable energy production seem hopelessly unrealistic; and the Fukushima disaster has cast a large shadow over the future of fusion's nuclear cousin, fission energy, with both Germany and Italy stating that, owing to safety concerns, they now intend to turn their back on a source of energy which has been providing electricity since the 1950s.

But today Cowley seems upbeat, chipper even. After an 18-month shutdown to retile the interior of the largest of the centre's two "tokamaks" – ring doughnut-shaped chambers where the fusion reaction takes place – he is bullish about the progress being made by the 1,000 scientists and engineers based at Culham.

"By 2014-15, we will be setting new records here. We hope to reach break-even point in five years. That will be a huge psychological moment."

Cowley is referring to the moment of parity when the amount of energy they extract from a tokamak equals the amount of energy they put into it. At present, the best-ever "shot" – as the scientists refer to each fusion reaction attempt – came in 1997 when, for just two seconds, the JET (Joint European Torus) tokamak at Culham achieved 16MW of fusion power from an input of 25MW. For fusion to be commercially viable, however, it will need to provide a near-constant tenfold power gain.

So, what are the barriers preventing this great leap forward?

"We could produce net electricity right now, but the costs would be huge," says Cowley. "The barrier is finding a material than can withstand the neutron bombardment inside the tokamak. We could also just say damn to the cost of the electricity required to demonstrate this. But we don't want to do something that cannot be shown to be commercially viable. What's the point?"

At the heart of a star, fusion occurs when hydrogen atoms fuse together under extreme heat and pressure to create a denser helium atom releasing, in the process, colossal amounts of energy. But on Earth, scientists have to try and replicate a star's intense gravitational pressure with an artificial magnetic field that requires huge amounts of electricity to create – so much that the National Grid must tell Culham when it is OK for them to run a shot. (Namely, not in the middle of Coronation Street or a big football match.)

The fusion reaction occurs when the fuel (two types, or isotopes, of hydrogen known as deuterium and tritium) combines to form a super-hot plasma which produces, alongside the helium, neutrons which have a huge amount of kinetic energy. The goal of plasma physicists such as Cowell is to harness the release of these neutrons and use their abundant energy to drive conventional turbines to generate electricity. The JET tokamak has been shut down for the past 18 months while the interior has been stripped of its 4,500 carbon tiles and replaced with new tiles made from beryllium and tungsten. The hope is that these new tiles will be far more "neutron resilient", allowing for shots to be conducted for longer periods and at much higher temperatures.

Over lunch at the staff canteen, Francesco Romanelli, the Italian director of the European Fusion Development Agreement, the European agency that funds JET, explains why the new tiles are so crucial: "We now understand how a plasma works. We have demonstrated with JET that we can contain the reactants; we reach temperatures 20 times hotter than the sun's core and we produce an intense magnetic field, 1,000 times that of Earth's normal magnetic field. But the main problem we face is plasma turbulence. To compensate for this loss, we have to add more heat and energy. So we are always looking for materials that can withstand these extraordinary conditions inside the tokamak."

Last year, bulldozers began clearing land 60km north-east of Marseille in southern France. By 2019, it is hoped that the world's largest and most advanced experimental tokamak will be switched on. The €15bn International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) is being funded by an unprecedented international coalition, including the EU, the US, China, India, South Korea and Russia. Everything learned at Culham will be fed into improving the design and performance of ITER which, it is hoped, will demonstrate the commercial viability of fusion by producing a tenfold power gain of 500MW during shots lasting up to an hour.

But ITER's projected costs are already rocketing, and politicians across Europe have expressed concern, demanding that budgets be capped. Fusion energy also has its environmental detractors. When the ITER project was announced in 2005, Greenpeace said it "deplored" the project, arguing that the money could be better spent building offshore wind turbines. "Advocates of fusion research predict that the first commercial fusion electricity might be delivered in 50-80 years from now," said Jan Vande Putte, Greenpeace International's nuclear campaigner. "But most likely, it will lead to a dead end, as the technical barriers to be overcome are enormous." Meanwhile, there is criticism from some plasma physicists that the design of ITER is wrong and alternative designs might produce better results for much less money.

Romanelli rejects this analysis. We simply must make this investment, he says: "The prize on offer is too tantalising to ignore. Fusion doesn't produce greenhouse gases, it is intrinsically safe and it leaves no burden on future generations. The primary reaction does not produce nuclear material, only helium. There's a limited problem in that you produce neutrons, but this only makes the reactor chamber itself radioactive. Within 100 years, you could recycle the chamber so there's no need for geological-timescale storage as there is with the waste from fission energy. And the fuel is virtually unlimited. All you need is lithium and hydrogen. Sea water alone could fuel current human consumption levels for 30 million years."

Another major positive promised by fusion, says Romanelli, is that reactors would be so safe that they could be located amid urban centres where the power is most needed. "A tsunami, earthquake or bomb could hit a fusion reactor and the problems caused would only ever be structural. With fission, you have to release the energy if there's a problem, whereas fusion shuts down instantly if disrupted."

If fusion offers such glorious bounty, it prompts the question – given, say, our concerns over climate change and the global political instability caused by the pursuit of oil – why the world isn't concentrating much harder on delivering it as fast as possible. Yes, €15bn is a lot of money to be spending building ITER. But, by comparison, the global cosmetics and perfume industry is worth some $170bn a year. And, in 2010, the US's military budget was $663bn. If the motivation was there, the global community could find the money to fund 10 rival fusion projects to fast-track the process of finding the optimum design. So, why haven't we seen a Manhattan Project-style push for fusion such as we did during the second world war when it was deemed by the allied forces that they must beat the Nazis in the race to build the first atomic bomb?

"People – and particularly politicians – still remember fission's early claims that it would produce electricity that was 'too cheap to meter'," says Cowley. For most people, fusion is the realm of science fiction and it is hard to convince them that it should be a strategic priority, he says. "We scientists have to be honest, too: we thought it would be easy to crack fusion. But there's no other comparable challenge. There is no model for this technology. The first flying devices looked like birds because those early inventors looked to nature for solutions. But we don't have a model in nature to look to. The sun is not a good model for fusion here on earth. We're having to start from the very beginning."

Cowley says a Manhattan Project for fusion would, of course, greatly speed up its delivery. "ITER will cost around €15bn, but that is not expensive when you consider the prize. At present, all we can hope for is, if oil prices are still high in 2015 and we pull off a big shot demonstrating parity of power, this gets us the international attention – and therefore the funding – we need to really push on. JET was first funded and built during the 1970s due to the oil crisis. That is not a coincidence: there has always been a direct correlation between investment in fusion and the price of oil. Interestingly, though, China is now putting a lot of money into fusion."

This raises another big question: who will stand to benefit financially from its commercialisation? "The global energy market is worth $5-6 trillion a year: somebody will make a lot of money out of this," says Cowley, who predicts that once ITER provides a demonstration model for a fusion reactor all the major countries involved will then attempt to build their own version. "We handed our advantage away with fission. We really don't want to make the same mistake again." One area where the UK already has an edge, says Cowley, is making the very specialised steels required for next-generation tokomaks.

It's hard not to look at the potential of fusion and scream: "We need this right now!" But Cowley says we still face a 30-year wait for the magic day when we flick a switch and electricity generated from fusion flows from the socket. "After ITER, we will then have to build a demonstration plant. We hope to have that built by 2040. This is why there needs to be, in my mind, a 10-fold increase in fission power by 2050. We still need fission because it is a bridging technology until fusion becomes commercial. By 2100, fusion could be producing 20-25% of all our energy." (Romanelli's outlook is a little more optimistic: he believes fusion will be providing 50% of the world's energy by 2100.)

What Cowley is admitting, though, is that as long as fusion research remains underfunded (a term he doesn't utter, but the implication is there) then it will never save humanity from climate change, oil wars and the poverty and underdevelopment caused by ever-higher energy costs. As if to prove his point, he admits that on occasion he has even turned to eBay to buy spare parts for the smaller UK-owned tokamak at Colham which is known as Mast (Mega Amp Spherical Tokamak).

But such things do not deter him from pushing forward as best he can, he stresses. He is first and foremost a plasma physicist.

"Saving the planet is a nice thing to do," he laughs. "Doing something that no one else has ever done is attractive, too. But, ultimately, this is fascinating. I work at the best fusion laboratory in the world, where we conduct day-to-day physics with an incredibly high level of intellectual activity. Every night on the train home I prefer to do a calculation rather than a sudoku. I try to work out things such as how a 200-million-degree-celsius plasma behaves in a magnetic field. Such things are critically important for the future of our world, but they're bloody good fun, too."