The US government cannot force tobacco firms to put large graphic health warnings on cigarette packages, an appeals court in Washington has ruled.

It said the government's plan undermined free speech in America.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) had wanted to put nine pictures of dead and diseased smokers to convey the dangers of cigarettes.

But tobacco firms had argued that the images went beyond factual information and into anti-smoking advocacy.

The ruling comes as a number of other countries have ordered similar pictures to be placed on all cigarette packets.

Australia has gone a step further, banning even tobacco company logos from the cartons.

'Significant vindication'

The US Court of Appeals affirmed an earlier lower court ruling in a 2-1 decision.

It said the case raised "novel questions about the scope of the government's authority to force the manufacturer of a product to go beyond making purely factual and accurate commercial disclosures and undermine its own economic interest".

The court said that in this case it was "by making every single pack of cigarettes in the country a mini billboard for the government's anti-smoking message".

It added that the FDA "has not provided a shred of evidence" that the images would directly advance its policy aimed at reducing the number of smokers in America.

The verdict was welcomed by tobacco companies, with Lorrilard Tobacco's describing it as "a significant vindication of First Amendment principles".

The FDA has so far made no public comment on whether it intends to appeal against the ruling in the US Supreme Court.

Those who engaged in binge drinking tend to belong to so-called high-status groups: wealthy, white, male and active in fraternity life. And those who did not belong to the high-status groups could achieve similar levels of social acceptance through the act of binge drinking. In fact, the study results suggest that students engaged in the heavy drinking practice to elevate their social status amongst peers rather than to alleviate depression or anxiety.

"The present study offers another insight into the nature of a seemingly intractable social problem," the study released on Monday reads. "It is our hope that by drawing attention to the important social motivations underlying binge drinking, institutional administrators and public health professionals will be able to design and implement programs for students that take into account the full range of reasons that students binge drink."

The Washington Post reports that the study's co-author and Colgate University associate professor Carolyn Hsu presented some of the findings during the American Sociological Association gathering in Denver last week.

Interestingly, the study results compiled from surveying 1,600 college students also continues to support past evidence suggesting that binge drinking leads to a number of problems affecting the mind and body, including alcoholism, violence, poor grades and risky sexual behavior.

"I would guess it has to do with feeling like you belong and whether or not you're doing what a 'real' college student does," Hsu told LiveScience. "It seems to be more about certain groups getting to define what that looks like."

Binge drinking was defined as consuming more than four drinks in one occasion for women and more than five drinks for men. Sixty-four percent of respondents said they had engaged in the practice, compared with 36 percent who said they had not.

Those statistics differ from similar evidence gathered by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The CDC's statistics measure binge drinking in the same quantity but limit the consumption period to two hours or fewer. Its results also found that the majority of binge drinkers (70 percent) were over the age of 26. The CDC has also found that 90 percent of alcohol consumed by people under the age of 21 is done in the form of binge drinking, compared with 75 percent among all U.S. adults.

The first key of mindful communication, according to Chapman (2012), is having amindful presence. This means having an open mind, awake body and a tender heart. When you have a mindful presence, you give up expectations, stories about yourself and others, and acting on emotions.

You are fully in the present moment; your communication isn’t focused on the “me” and what the “me” needs, but the we.

Mindful listening is the second key to mindful communication. Mindful listening is about encouraging the other person. This means looking through the masks and pretense and seeing the value in the person and the strengths he or she possesses. It’s looking past the human frailties and flaws that we all have to see the authentic person and the truth in what that person is attempting to say.

Mindful speech, the third key, is about gentleness. Speaking gently means being effective in what you say. It’s about speaking in a way that you can be hard. To be gentle with our speech means being aware of when our own insecurities and fears are aroused to the point we are acting out of fear rather than acceptance.

Practicing self-compassion for our fear, envy, jealousy and self-doubts is more effective than focusing on others as being a threat or attempting to change them. When you use gentle speech, you are communicating acceptance to the other person and saying what is true, not an interpretation or an exaggeration or a minimization.

The key to mindful relationships is unconditional friendliness. Unconditional friendliness means accepting the ebb and flow of relationships. Sometimes you meet new friends, sometimes friends move on, sometimes there is joy and sometimes there is pain. Sometimes you’ll feel lonely, sometimes you’ll feel cherished and connected, and then you’ll feel lonely again.

Unconditional friendliness means that your acceptance of others is not dependent on them staying with you or agreeing with you. You don’t cling to relationships to avoid loss.

Mindful responsiveness is like playfulness.  Playfulness is the openness that you can have when you let go of preconceived ideas and strategies. It’s like creating something new. Imagine two skilled dancers who alternatively lead each other in creating a new dance in every interaction, never doing the same complete dance over and over. They respond in the moment to the message sent by the other. There are no rules or expectations and yet they both bring skillful behavior.

Mindful communication requires practice. If you choose to practice the keys, you might choose to focus on one at a time. Being willing to regulate your emotions is a prerequisite to mindful communication and mindfulness of your emotions is necessary for emotion regulation.

Mindfulness is a core skill for the emotionally sensitive.

References

Chapman, Susan Gillis. The Five Keys to Mindful Communication:  Using Deep Listening and Mindful Speech to Strengthen Relationships, Heal Conflicts and Acceomplish Your Goals. Boston: Shambhala, 2012.

The documentary Russell Brand: Addiction to Recovery resulted in an immediate boost in donations and inspired the managing director of Bury St Edmunds based Chevington Finance and Leasing to offer the charity £106,000 over three years.

Why do most spouses and partners react to the discovery of sexual addiction with such a sense of total devastation?  Sexual betrayal is an emotional blow that can be harder to deal with than anything, even death.  Most therapists who deal with partners of sex addicts now see the partner as experiencing severe trauma and PTSD symptoms, at least in the initial period post-discovery.  This suggests a theoretical framework that can help us understand the partner’s recovery  process as it proceeds.

The usual tools for dealing with hardship seem to fail us

Our usual arsenal of tools for transcending heartbreak and loss seems to break down in the face of the discovery of sexually addictive behavior in a loved one.  For example:

We try:

Practicing detachment by reminding ourselves that the betrayal is not about us, and going to support groups and 12-step meetings, letting go of comparing ourselves to the addict’s other sexual interest.  But detachment seems to keep slipping through our fingers and we feel a mix of strong emotions.

We try:

Educating ourselves about the disease by reading and learning about the roots of sex addiction in the early childhood attachment issues, by learning that sexual addiction is not a deliberate attempt to hurt us.  But still feelings of anger and blame seem to hang around forever.

We try:

Meditation, prayer or other spiritual practice to help us realize that we did not cause the problem and we cannot cure it, and to let go of outcomes.  This will work perfectly for some things; the job we didn’t get, the flooding in the basement, but in sex addiction disclosure there is something so totally unacceptable that we want to tighten our grip.

All of the above tools are very important in a partner’s recovery  and should be practiced even when their efficacy seems limited. But why is sexual addiction so much harder to deal with?

Some reasons why sexual betrayal is different

Here are some factors that “up the ante” in sexual betrayal.

• The personal closeness you have to the person who has been deceiving you, the person you saw as your support system
• The abandonment  by the most important person in your life (death is easier to accept because it is something that can’t be helped)
• The blow to your sense of reality

The last of these, the way sexual betrayal messes with your reality is one of the most powerful factors.  Sexual addiction is often so extreme and so out of character that it calls into question all your assumptions about “normal” life.

Surviving sexual betrayal as a grief process

I tend to think of surviving sexual betrayal as a grief process because I think it is the most useful way to look at it.  I believe that seeing it this way will give you permission to take better care of yourself and to make allowances for your own healing.

• Grief is a process that follows its own course.  It is also a process that is very different for different people depending on your own personal make up.

• Sexual betrayal is a loss and therefore must be grieved.  It is a loss of the relationship that you thought you had and produces the same pain and abandonment as other losses.

• Recovery from sexual betrayal seems to follow the familiarstages of grief.

The initial stage of denial often takes the form of believing the addict’s false promises or trying to set up a quick cure.  In other words the belief that things could be patched up and go back to “normal” is a form of denial.

The bargaining, anger and depression stages of grief are also clearly identifiable.  For example, self blame, feeling that you somehow failed, is a form of bargaining.  It allows you to hold onto a feeling that you can control the situation.

The grief process is one that must be allowed to occur.  Feelings must be experienced and emotions expelled in order to move through the process.  There is no way to make it pleasant, but it will eventually lead to acceptance and a new and better relationship life.

Breaking Free of the Co-dependency Trap presents a groundbreaking developmental road map to guide readers away from their co-dependent behaviors and toward a life of wholeness and fulfillment.UK Citizens

This is the book that offers a different perspective on codependency and is strongly recommended by Dream Warrior Recovery as part of a solution based recovery. This bestselling book, now in a revised edition, radically challenges the prevailing medical definition of co-dependency as a permanent, progressive, and incurable addiction. Rather, the authors identify it as the result of developmental traumas that interfered with the infant-parent bonding relationship during the first year of life.US Citizens

Drawing on decades of clinical experience, Barry and Janae Weinhold correlate the developmental causes of co-dependency with relationship problems later in life, such as establishing and maintaining boundaries, clinging and dependent behaviors, people pleasing, and difficulty achieving success in the world. Then they focus on healing co-dependency, providing compelling case histories and practical activities to help readers heal early trauma and transform themselves and their primary relationships.

Major depression or chronic stress can cause the loss of brain volume, a condition that contributes to both emotional and cognitive impairment. Now a team of researchers led by Yale scientists has discovered one reason why this occurs -- a single genetic switch that triggers loss of brain connections in humans and depression in animal models. The findings, reported in the Aug. 12 issue of the journal Nature Medicine, show that the genetic switch known as a transcription factor represses the expression of several genes that are necessary for the formation of synaptic connections between brain cells, which in turn could contribute to loss of brain mass in the prefrontal cortex. "We wanted to test the idea that stress causes a loss of brain synapses in humans," said senior author Ronald Duman, the Elizabeth Mears and House Jameson Professor of Psychiatry and professor of neurobiology and of pharmacology. "We show that circuits normally involved in emotion, as well as cognition, are disrupted when this single transcription factor is activated." The research team analyzed tissue of depressed and non-depressed patients donated from a brain bank and looked for different patterns of gene activation. The brains of patients who had been depressed exhibited lower levels of expression in genes that are required for the function and structure of brain synapses. Lead author and postdoctoral researcher H.J. Kang discovered that at least five of these genes could be regulated by a single transcription factor called GATA1. When the transcription factor was activated, rodents exhibited depressive-like symptoms, suggesting GATA1 plays a role not only in the loss of connections between neurons but also in symptoms of depression. Duman theorizes that genetic variations in GATA1 may one day help identify people at high risk for major depression or sensitivity to stress. "We hope that by enhancing synaptic connections, either with novel medications or behavioral therapy, we can develop more effective antidepressant therapies," Duman said. The study was funded by the National Institutes of Health and the Connecticut Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services.

 Suzanne stops drinking alcohol, then gains 40 pounds in three months, replacing booze with compulsive eating. People with co-occurring addictions struggle with multiple addictions at the same time—for instance, Eric smokes pot morning, noon, and night, and also plays video games for eight to ten hours each day.

Cross and co-occurring disorders are especially common with sex addicts. In one survey of male sex addicts, 87 percent of respondents reported that they regularly abused either addictive substances or other addictive behaviors. Considerable anecdotal evidence suggests that for a majority of sex addicts with a co-occurring addiction the secondary drug of choice is crystal methamphetamine. Sex addicts also use cocaine, crack cocaine, and almost any other stimulant—but crystal meth is usually cheaper and more readily available.

Consider Brad, a married, 38-year-old lawyer:

I grew up in a painful, empty, abusive middle-class home where work was a much bigger priority than home for my smart, funny, angry, alcoholic father. Whenever my brothers or I got in trouble, Dad would whip off his belt before asking questions, especially when he was drinking. And he drank a lot.

I learned early on how to look good, how to lie and manipulate my way out of trouble, and most of all how to stay under the radar. I left home as soon as I could and got into a good college, followed by law school. Law school is when I first tried meth, initially to help me stay awake and study. It worked, too, because I graduated cum laude. Immediately after law school I married Grace and took a job with a well-regarded firm.

What Grace and my new firm didn’t know (because no one did) was that I was living a double life. In early adolescence I would sneak booze from my Dad’s stash, and I spent most evenings alone in my room getting buzzed while perusing and masturbating to Playboy. This became a pattern I used to relax and sleep, and it continued into adult life.

By my twenties, Internet porn and “dating” websites replaced magazines and videos, and crystal meth became my substance of choice. By the time I made junior partner at 29 (the youngest ever at my firm) I had established an escalating pattern of telling Grace that I was “going out of town for work,” which really meant holing up in some hotel with a big baggie of meth, getting high, and masturbating to porn until the drugs ran out. Eventually I replaced the porn with prostitutes—especially those women willing to come to my room meth in hand.

Our son Jamie was about three years old when a routine medical exam revealed that Grace had a long-standing, undiscovered STD. That’s how she found out about my cheating. I convinced everyone around me that the problem was drugs (related to the past), that the sex only happened when I was high (mostly true), and didn’t happen very often (a total lie).

To appease Grace I entered a high-end drug and alcohol treatment center. In six weeks of intensive (and expensive) treatment no one ever asked about my lifelong pairing of substances and sexual acting out. And I never volunteered that information, either. I left there chemically sober, but without a clue about handling all the sexual problems and related secrets that I continued to keep.

I didn’t realize that I was a drug and sex addict until one of my inevitable meth relapses (all related to sex) landed me (along with my professional license) in jail for doing drugs with prostitutes. It was only when facing the loss of my marriage and career that I became willing to address both of my addictions.

What is Crystal Meth?

Crystal meth (crystalized methamphetamine) is a synthetic version of adrenaline, a naturally occurring hormone the body produces in small amounts when reacting to immediate stress. Adrenaline increases energy and alertness when we need a short burst to escape immediate danger.

The main difference between crystal meth and adrenaline is adrenaline clears out of our systems quickly, whereas methamphetamine sticks around for six to eight hours. Known on the street as meth, crystal, crank, tweak, speed, ice, ice cream, Tina, tweedy, etc., methamphetamine is sold legally (with a prescription) in tablet form as Desoxyn—FDA approved for the treatment of ADHD and obesity.

More often, though, it’s cooked in makeshift labs and sold illegally as a powder or rock. The powder form can be snorted, smoked, eaten, or dissolved and injected; the rock form is usually smoked. Meth binges are known as “tweaking.” When tweaked, addicts stay awake for days or even weeks at a time. Sometimes episodes don’t end until the user is arrested or hospitalized for psychotic behavior, or the user’s body is no longer able to function and “crashes” of its own accord.

Often called “the sex drug,” meth is the preferred “party favor” for anonymous Internet and smart-phone hookups. Like all stimulants, meth use evokes profound feelings of euphoria, intensity, and power in the user, along with the drive to obsessively do whatever activity that person wishes to engage in, including having sex.

In fact, users say the drug allows them to be sexual for an entire day with or without orgasm—even two or three days—without sleeping, eating, or coming down, especially when Viagra or Cialis is along for the ride.

One recovering meth and sex addict in treatment at the Sexual Recovery Institute in Los Angeles stated, “When I do crystal meth, the sex just goes on forever.”

Another noted, “There’s no love, no caring, no emotion involved. I don’t care who they are, or even what their names are. I just want sex, sex and more sex.”

Crack May Be Whack, but Meth…

Crystal meth is undoubtedly among the most troublesome illicit drugs currently en vogue, and for sex addicts the dangers extend beyond the usual problems associated with crystal meth abuse. First and foremost, when a user is intoxicated and disinhibited by a stimulant as powerful as meth, safe sex practices are out the window—especially for individuals accustomed to having multiple anonymous partners for hours at a time.

Because of this, the risk of contracting or transmitting HIV, hepatitis, and other STDs increases significantly. Moreover, meth use combined with sex often leads to abuse of other drugs—for instance, to counteract “crystal dick” (meth induced impotence) many men take Viagra, Cialis, or another erectile dysfunction treatment. And meth users of both genders often rely on sleeping pills, nighttime cold medicines, pot, and other “downers” to come off their high and get some sleep because meth can keep users awake for days—long after the enjoyable effects have worn off.

Furthermore, ingesting meth (or any other stimulant) causes the user’s brain to release large amounts of dopamine, a neurotransmitter associated with feelings of pleasure. Over time, repeated meth use (especially when that use is bolstered by the “natural” high of sex) both depletes the body’s stores of dopamine and destroys the wiring of dopamine receptors.

Eventually meth addicts are unable to experience any simple human pleasure without being high—a condition known as anhedonia. Not surprisingly, sex-meth addicts often report having a very difficult time enjoying healthy intimacy and healthy sexual activity once sober. For these individuals it can take a year or more for the brain’s dopamine levels to normalize. Occasionally, this sexual/intimacy-related anhedonia can be semi-permanent.

And of course sex-meth addicts also experience the usual problems associated directly with meth addiction. Anhedonia, described above, results in an ever deepening cycle of use and depression, and an increasing unwillingness to participate in life. Relationships disintegrate, jobs are lost. Children of crashing meth addicts are left to fend for themselves for days on end. When tweaking, meth addicts generally exhibit poor judgment and engage in dangerous, hyperactive behavior. Many commit petty or violent crimes.

Long-time users often develop symptoms of psychosis including paranoia, aggression, hallucinations and delusions. Meth addicts may experience serious physical health problems such as anorexia, convulsions, stroke, and cardiac collapse, any of which can be fatal. They may also develop “meth mouth,” a condition of severe tooth decay and tooth loss caused by the constant dry mouth and teeth grinding associated with stimulant drug use.

Meth dries out the skin as well, leading many addicts to believe they are infested with “meth lice,” causing them to frantically scratch their face, arms, and legs with their fingernails—a behavior known as “picking.” Picking sometimes results in serious self-inflicted wounds and infection.

Treatment for Cross or Co-Occurring Meth and Sex Addiction

Drug and alcohol addictions are critical problems which nearly always have to be eliminated before the issues underlying behavioral and fantasy-based addictions such as sex can be addressed. After all, drugs and alcohol are disinhibiting. They weaken a person’s judgment to the point where that person cannot remain committed to other boundaries he or she may have previously set, such as not having certain kinds of sex.

Unless the individual abusing drugs and/or alcohol gets sober from those substances, it is unlikely that he or she will be able to eliminate problematic sexual behavior for very long. It is also important that treatment specialists help sex-meth addicts understand that sex in the future will not be nearly as intense or exciting as what they’re used to. The sex-meth addict will need adjust his or her expectations regarding the “rewards” of sexual activity, otherwise that person is likely to be disappointed and return to the addictive behaviors, both chemical and sexual, in an attempt to recreate past pleasures.

An exception to the rule of “getting chemically sober first” applies to sex-meth addicts who have so fused drug and sex addiction that they cannot remain chemically sober because of their sexual acting out, and they cannot remain sexually sober because of their substance abuse. For these individuals, relapse with one addiction nearly always leads to quick relapse with the other. In such cases, substance abuse and sexual acting out need to be dealt with at the same time in order to stay sober on either front.

 The Northern Ireland Prison Service must be "cannier" in targeting illicit drugs, the new director general has said. Sue McAllister said the service needs to build up its intelligence about illegal substances through better relations between warders and inmates. Prison Ombudsman Pauline McCabe has urged the authorities to do more to tackle the problem after the death of Aaron Hogg, 21, who hanged himself in his Maghaberry Prison cell in May last year after taking a cocktail of drugs. One solicitor has claimed the high security jail was awash with narcotics. Ms McAllister said: "With finite resources we need to be a bit cannier about where we target. "There is a place for random testing and it is a good deterrent but equally we probably should get better at building a rich picture of intelligence trends through knowing what is going on in our jails so that we can target areas for testing." The 51-year-old mother of two is the first woman to hold the most senior position in the Northern Ireland Prison Service. She took up post at the beginning of this month and will be paid an annual salary of £100,000, replacing Colin McConnell, who left to become head of the Scottish Prison Service. Mrs McAllister's last posting was at Onley Prison in Northamptonshire, where she worked on public sector bids to run prisons operated by the private sector. She retired just under a year ago but decided to return to Northern Ireland. She has 25 years` experience in the prison service, including as a governor of a prison and a young offenders' centre. She was part of a review team which produced a highly critical report on the Northern Ireland Prison Service after the suicide of Colin Bell. Mr Bell killed himself in Maghaberry in July 2008 while on suicide watch.

On July 1st, 2001, Portugal decriminalized every imaginable drug, from marijuana, to cocaine, to heroin. Some thought Lisbon would become a drug tourist haven, others predicted usage rates among youths to surge. Eleven years later, it turns out they were both wrong. Over a decade has passed since Portugal changed its philosophy from labeling drug users as criminals to labeling them as people affected by a disease. This time lapse has allowed statistics to develop and in time, has made Portugal an example to follow.  First, some clarification. Portugal's move to decriminalize does not mean people can carry around, use, and sell drugs free from police interference. That would be legalization. Rather, all drugs are "decriminalized," meaning drug possession, distribution, and use is still illegal. While distribution and trafficking is still a criminal offense, possession and use is moved out of criminal courts and into a special court where each offender's unique  situation is judged by legal experts, psychologists, and social workers. Treatment and further action is decided in these courts, where addicts and drug use is treated as a public health service rather than referring it to the justice system (like the U.S.), reports Fox News. The resulting effect: a drastic reduction in addicts, with Portuguese officials and reports highlighting that this number, at 100,000 before the new policy was enacted, has been halved in the following ten years. Portugal's drug usage rates are now among the lowest of EU member states, according to the same report.  One more outcome: a lot less sick people. Drug related diseases including STDs and overdoses have been reduced even more than usage rates, which experts believe is the result of the government offering treatment with no threat of legal ramifications to addicts. While this policy is by no means news, the statistics and figures, which take years to develop and subsequently depict the effects of the change, seem to be worth noting. In a country like America, which may take the philosophy of criminalization a bit far (more than half of America's federal inmates are in prison on drug convictions), other alternatives must, and to a small degree, are being discussed. For policymakers or people simply interested in this topic, cases like Portugal are a great place to start.

When she stood on the doorstep of her Belgravia townhouse shortly after her arrest for carrying a cocktail of Class A drugs into the US embassy in her handbag, Eva Rausing appeared dishevelled but contrite. In a statement, she said: "I have made a serious mistake, which I very much regret... I hope in due course to get back on track and become the person I truly want to be." It was a brave and doubtless heartfelt declaration of intent in a life already, by 2008, punctuated by narcotics binges and visits to rehabilitation centres for the then 44-year-old socialite who sought to give purpose and structure to a life of conspicuous privilege and bottomless wealth by philanthropy. Together with her Tetra Pak heir husband, Mrs Rausing, who had four children, regained a veneer of if not respectability then at least understanding in the four years after being charged with drug offences as they attended glittering parties, fundraising balls and provided multi-million pound patronage to addiction charities. While figures including Prince Charles argued that Eva should be given a "second chance", others were less impressed. Sir Ian Blair, the former Metropolitan Police Commissioner, made it known that he saw the decision to drop charges against the couple after £2,000 of crack cocaine was found at their home in return for a conditional caution, as amounting to one law for the rich and another for those who aren't. Yesterday the extent to which the public persona of the recovering and repentant addict was the flip side of a still-tarnished coin was becoming clear as police continued to investigate Mrs Rausing's death and pieced together the events that preceded the arrest on Monday of her husband, Hans K Rausing, driving erratically in south London while his wife's body lay in their home. Friends of the couple said that their attempts to leave behind their drug abuse were hampered by the coterie of "elite" dealers who continued to surround them even as they checked out of rehab clinics and recovered some of the strength required to overcome addiction. Pictures of the pair taken in recent weeks underlined the extent to which the warning bells were once more ringing. Her hair long and unkempt and carrying a bottle of mouthwash used to treat gum disease, Mrs Rausing looked far from the woman pictured in a emerald necklace next to her clean-shaven husband at a society ball in 2004. Mr Rausing, stooped and unshaven in an ill-fitting jacket, has been seen walking along the streets of Chelsea clutching a pouch of rolling tobacco, a shadow of the glossy-haired figure of a few years ago who stands to inherit a share of his father's £4bn fortune.The role played by crack, cocaine and heroin – all found in the couple's home in 2008 – in the events of this week remains to be ascertained. But in the past it seems the Rausings had access to a "closed market" of drugs, a network of high-end dealers offering the sort of discretion required by super-wealthy users at the sort of prices that the super-wealthy are willing to pay. The Independent understands that central London and other monied corners of the country are serviced by a number of well-connected dealers, often considered friends as much as pushers, who source high-purity drugs, delivered in a manner guaranteed not to attract unwarranted interest. The grim arabesque of addiction and cure that followed Mrs Rausing in the final years of her life belied deeper issues and inter-dependency with her husband. Mr Rausing reportedly once refused to enter a rehab clinic in Thailand because it meant he could not be with his wife, whom he had met during addiction treatment in the 1980s. In 2010, Mrs Rausing turned her paranoia on his family – his father Hans, who lives frugally on the family estate in Sussex with his wife Marita, and his sisters, Lisbet, a scientist, and Sigrid, owner of the literary magazine Granta. She wrote in an email: "I feel his family has acted dishonourably towards him." The Rausings and Eva's own family, whose efforts to help the couple turn around their lives are known to have been extensive and unceasing, have only been able to look on in despair.

Hans Kristian Rausing may have lived with the body of his wife for more than a week in their £50 million Belgravia home. The London Evening Standard reported that Eva Rausing is believed to have died at least a week before her body was discovered by police and that investigators were now examining CCTV to establish comings and goings at the couple’s six story mansion in Cadogan Place. Police are waiting to question Mr Rausing in connection with concealing Eva’s body but the heir to the £4.5 billion TetraPak food packaging fortune, and one of Britain’s richest men, remains in a secure hospital after being admitted for treatment last night. The body of 48-year-old Eva, a friend of Prince Charles, was discovered in an upstairs bedroom when police went to search the couple’s home after Mr. Rausing was arrested on suspicion of possession of Class A drugs on Monday. A post-mortem failed to establish a formal cause of death and police await the result of toxicology tests, although it is believed Mrs Rausing died of a drugs overdose. Although Mr Rausing stands to inherit a multi-billion pound fortune from his 86-year-old father Hans, the couple are reported to have lived in “a twilight world of addiction”. Mr Rausing was initially stopped for driving erratically in south London on Monday and subsequently arrested on suspicion of possession of Class A drugs. Scotland Yard confirmed Mr Rausing remained under arrest but said he had been transferred to hospital for treatment. His condition is not thought to be life-threatening and is believed to be related to drugs. Mrs Rausing is the daughter of wealthy Pepsi executive Tom Kemeny. In 2008 she was arrested after trying to smuggle crack cocaine and heroin into a party at the US Embassy in London. More drugs were found in her Renault Clio car and at the couple’s home, but prosecutors later dropped charges in favour of conditional cautions. The Standard reported that the couple were seen walking the streets around their home in May, but neighbours said they were reclusive. Mr Rausing was often seen wearing a baseball hat and clutching a pack of tobacco. One insider told the Standard: “It appears they lived chaotic lifestyles, people did not hear from them from one week to the next.”