EVERY ONE IS UNIQUE – May 22, 2024 – The decision to get sober is a profoundly personal one. These 13 celebs went public about their sobriety and the reasoning behind it. Please note: This list includes celebrities who said they got sober because of addiction, as well as those who said they did so as a lifestyle choice. CONTINUE@BuzzFeed
Author: Leonard Buschel
NO MOLSON – May 20, 2024 – Mathews doesn’t stay in touch with his family because of the “toxic” atmosphere. His brother, an addict, died recently. Mathews posted to his social media that he didn’t know his brother like a brother. The saving grace for Mathews is his wife of 20 years, Janet.”My wife busted down the door, slapped the knife out of my hand and said ‘How could you?’ My wife said, ‘Why don’t you start a sobriety podcast?’” Mathews was interested but struggled to find people willing to break anonymity to discuss addiction. In Barrie, Mathews found…
METH IS A MYTH – May 22, 2024 – The silent epidemic of methamphetamine addiction in the LGBTQ+ community has reached a breaking point, leaving countless lives shattered in its wake. In response to this growing crisis, Mr Lamm hosted the ChemSex Crisis Summit March 14-15 in West Hollywood, CA. The event was held to bring professionals together to confront uncomfortable truths about addiction and exploitation… “I knew the data inside and out — I just never thought I’d become one of those grim statistics myself,” he recounts ruefully. His journey from a rising star in the world of…
VIDEO – HANDLE WITH CAUTION – May 23, 2024 – Dr. Keith Green, co-chair of the task force and the Executive Director of the Chicago Black Gay Men’s Caucus, joined ABC7 to talk about the campaign. He explained what the Chicago Methamphetamine Task Force is and why it was started, the purpose of the new harm reduction campaign and why it focuses on the Black gay and bisexual community. The full interview can be viewed in the video player above. Narcan and fentanyl test strips can be easily accessed across the city to help prevent overdoes. More information can…
PROBABLY – May 22, 2024 – At the heart of many of these claims is dopamine, a molecule that surges in the brain when people take some addictive drugs. But while dopamine has become a buzzword relating to anything rewarding – from sugar to social media likes – its role in addiction is incompletely understood. It was once thought that dopamine itself causes pleasure, but we now think it is really a signal that the brain should pay more attention to an unexpected event. And, perhaps surprisingly, there is no universally agreed definition of addiction. Rather than focusing on…
AUDIO – MAKING FENTANYL WORSE – May 24, 2024 – Medetomidine a chemical long used by veterinarians, is now turning up in the street drug supply and triggering a new wave of overdoses. BRENDAN HART: Some of our emergency medicine doctors stopped me in the hallway and said something funny is going on with the overdoses. MANN: Working in emergency rooms, Hart, too, began seeing a spike of fentanyl overdoses with dangerous new symptoms. HART: Patients are coming in with very low heart rates, as low as in the 20s. A normal heart rate is 60 to 100, so…
SOMETIMES ETERNITY – May 22, 2024 – “Fentanyl and meth, we do like five [pills] each a day,” Holly Wall and Brandon Kennedy said. “It numbs you. It numbs your pain.” Getting high is as easy as smoking one pill, and the addiction is cheap. “It’s like 75 cents; two dollars at the most,” they said. Getting back on track is possible. Robert is a veteran who spent a decade addicted to pain killers and selling drugs in Tucson. People suggested to me to try rehab, and I pushed them off, saying it’s not the way I do it,”…
OR THINK LIKE A NORMY – May, 23, 2024 – The release of Cleopatra and Frankenstein was five years in the making. Coco Mellors started writing it while studying for a prestigious MFA in Fiction at New York University, working as a fashion copywriter by day and struggling with alcoholism and partying hard by night. Having gotten sober at 26 she finished her book, and sold it following a long string of 30 rejections from publishers. After being delayed by lockdown, it made its way into the world. And now with book two, she is busier than she’s ever…
VIDEO/AUDIO – SWEET SMELL OF SUCCESS – May 23, 2024 – May is Mental Health Awareness Month and a Franklin woman is sharing her story to give others hope. After hitting rock bottom, she got the help she needed to beat her drug addiction. In this episode of Open Record, Investigator Bryan Polcyn invites FOX6 reporter Ashley Sears on to share Christina’s story. Ashley explains how Rogers Behavioral Health got Christina back on the path to sober living and how Christina is able to now pay it forward to so many at the facility. CONTINUE@Fox6
DRUG WAR CONTINUES – May 21, 2024 – Probation Officer Carter was hot on Emma’s heels. Early on August 16, 2023, according to Onslow County Superior Court filings, he waited outside her house in Hubert, a suburb to the east of Jacksonville, until she left home that morning. Then, the officer followed her to the clinic. Carter was alone, and was not supposed to “engage” Emma by himself. So after he observed her enter the facility, he called for back-up from the local police. Officer Kent, of Jacksonville Police Department, soon arrived to provide assistance, according to testimony Kent…
HEARTLESS PLAN – May 22, 2024 – Investigations found those payment denials were based on an algorithm’s predictions, unbeknownst to patients, and UnitedHealth’s employees were advised not to stray from those calculations — forcing extremely sick and injured patients to pay for care out of their own pockets or return home even if they couldn’t walk or go to the bathroom independently. As the class action case has ramped up, a flurry of changes have unfolded at NaviHealth, the company that monitors care and implements the algorithm. Its longtime CEO, Harrison Frist, the son of former Senate Majority leader…
GETTING TO THE POINT – May 23, 2024 – According to Barr, my emotions had a similar composition as a radiator (bear with me); I was radiating rage and the pressure needed to be released, and this, he said, is what acupuncture can apparently offer. Otherwise, this heat leads to cravings, like chocolate or sex, or in my case booze. Barr divulged that acupuncture can help “calibrate the organ’s function, to help invigorate it to do its job more efficiently. You’re encouraging the blood flow through the liver, so you’ll help disperse the heat”. Basically, it helps rebalance. I’d…
THE GOLDEN STATE – May 22, 2024 – Quinn Coburn knows the lifestyle well. He has used meth most of his adult life, and has done five stints in jail for dealing marijuana, methamphetamine, and heroin. Now 56, he wants to get sober for good, and he says an experimental program through Medi-Cal, California’s Medicaid program, which covers low-income people, is helping. As part of an innovative approach called “contingency management,” Coburn pees in a cup and gets paid for it — as long as the sample is clean of stimulants. In the coming fiscal year, the state is…
SO MUCH MONEY IN ADDICTION – May 23, 2024 – The World Health Organization (WHO) and STOP, a global tobacco industry watchdog, are launching today “Hooking the next generation,” a report highlighting how the tobacco and nicotine industry designs products, implements marketing campaigns and works to shape policy environments to help them addict the world’s youth. This comes just ahead of World No Tobacco Day marked on 31 May, where WHO is amplifying the voices of young people who are calling on governments to protect them from being targets of the tobacco and nicotine industry. The report shows that…
SILK PILLOWS HELP? – May 15, 2024 – We spend around one-third of our lives asleep. In the average lifespan, this roughly amounts to 25 years! While most people can recollect fragments of their dream life, very few can consciously live in their dreams the way they live in the waking state. But what if there was a way … May 15, 2024 – We spend around one-third of our lives asleep. In the average lifespan, this roughly amounts to 25 years! While most people can recollect fragments of their dream life, very few can consciously live in their dreams the way they live in…
THE BIGGEST DEAD HEAD – May 27, 2024 – “Bill Walton was truly one of a kind, NBA commissioner Adam Silver said in a statement. “As a cherished member of the NBA family for 50 years, Bill will be deeply missed by all those who came to know and love him.” “Bill Walton was truly one of a kind, NBA commissioner Adam Silver said in a statement. “As a cherished member of the NBA family for 50 years, Bill will be deeply missed by all those who came to know and love him.” An American original, Walton led a remarkable life…
IS THAT GOOD OR BAD? – May 21, 2024 – The popularity of meditation, mindfulness, yoga, and similar practices has surged due to their potential health benefits. However, the experiences and effects of these practices, particularly the altered states of consciousness they can induce, remain underexplored. To achieve this, they developed a detailed questionnaire in collaboration with a team of experts in psychiatry, neuroscience, meditation, and survey design. The survey was designed to capture the diverse range of experiences associated with these practices and their impact on well-being. he study involved 3,135 adults from the United States and the…
AUDIO – THE SONG BIRD SINGS – May 20, 2024 – “I don’t mean to be self-deprecating when I say this, but I never really understood why people gave me so much credit as a musician,” McDonald says. “I really am just, more or less, a songwriter who plays a little bit of piano.” “More than anything, I think what people who suffer from addiction share universally is that we’re kind of hiding from ourselves. Back then, we were playing basement parties, birthday parties for girls we knew in the eighth grade. And then we graduated to fraternity parties,…
TOO SOON – May 22, 2024 – Born in 1994, Park Bo Ram gained popularity at a young age with her exceptional singing ability … No other possible causes of death, apart from acute alcohol poisoning. However, it was confirmed that the deceased had poor health due to liver and fatty liver disease at the time of death. After gaining much love from the public, she made her official debut in the music industry in 2014 with the song ‘Pretty’. It reached 19th place on the annual music charts that year. She released many songs and participated in activities…
MORE WAS REVEALED – May 21, 2024 – Peter McCarthy, 51, was found to have violated the Fair Housing Act after a five-day federal trial in Boston, said Acting United States Attorney Joshua S. Levy. Seven of his victims will receive $3.8 million in damages. McCarthy owned and operates Steps of Solutions, Inc. The U.S. Attorney’s Office filed the complaint against McCarthy in 2021, alleging that he offered reduced or forgiven rent in exchange for sexual favors. He was also accused of making unwelcome sexual comments and advances, requesting nude photos in exchange for forgiving rent, and retaliating against…
JUST TOO SAD – May 23, 2024 – The Boca Raton rehab center known as “Boca Circle Rehabilitation” is facing a wrongful death and negligence lawsuit filed in Palm Beach County. The just-filed lawsuit alleges that workers at Boca Circle are so untrained and incompetent that they disregarded doctor instructions and let a patient fall, then deteriorate and then die. During EVA POSNER’s residency at BOCA CIRCLE REHABILITATION CENTER, the staff and employees failed to develop an adequate care plan and properly monitor and supervise the care and treatment provided to EVA POSNER in order to prevent her from…
TREATMENT INDUSTRY UNDER THE MICROSCOPE – May 20, 2024 – Actress Cara Santana (Daughter of the Bride) will make her directorial debut with The Shuffle, a documentary on the corruption of the addiction treatment industry. The Shuffle follows what she says is a $43B-a-year con that’s proliferated in the U.S. through the brokering and trafficking of … “Sober for 20 years, I started noticing the disturbing trend of patient brokering in the rehabilitation industry which was ripe for insurance fraud, but what I uncovered was a massive $43B a year con,” Santana told Deadline. “After developing the story for…
DEFINITION OF SOBER? – May 24, 2024 – Admitting that he knows his kind of sobriety isn’t for everyone, he went on: “I know that I have friends that don’t do that. I have friends that are in the program that are totally against any kind of mind-altering anything. But he said “without marijuana, he’d be “drinking codeine, popping Xanax and snorting cocaine again, but a world with weed, I’ll be alright”. Admitting that he knows his kind of sobriety isn’t for everyone, he continued: “I know that I have friends that don’t do that. I have friends that…
AUDIO – LOSING OUR CHILDREN – May 22, 2024 – The trend has shocked many pediatricians, who say they feel unprepared to provide counseling on opioid addiction. Across the country, fentanyl has largely fueled a more than doubling of overdose deaths among children ages 12 to 17 since the start of the pandemic … Fatal overdoses in D.C., Maryland and Virginia are in keeping with the national increase in opioid fatalities, which until recently primarily claimed the lives of adults. In 2022, 45 teens succumbed to opioids locally, a number roughly equal to the previous three years combined, data…
A COUNTRY GONE MAD – May 23. 2024 – In the past 6 years, nearly 6,000 lives have been lost. The death rate from 2018 to 2022 was nearly double that of any other large city, and higher than nearly all of Appalachia during the prescription pill crisis, the Midwest during the height of rural meth labs or New York during the crack epidemic. A decade ago, 700 fewer people here were being killed by drugs each year. And when fatalities began to rise from the synthetic opioid fentanyl, so potent that even minuscule doses are deadly, Baltimore’s initial…
THE OC SHUFFLE? – May 23, 2024 – Santa Ana resident Luis Guerrero, 53, was arrested on Thursday morning and will face an arraignment hearing in the afternoon. According to the office of U.S. Attorney Martin Estrada, Guerrero conspired to pay $37,000 to two “body brokers” in the form of illegal kickbacks. The body brokers would then refer people struggling with addiction to Guerrero, who would attempt to sign them up for treatment at his Orange County-based facility, prosecutors said. Guerrero had a monthly patient intake quota as a condition for his employment at the facility as a patient…
AND HIS OSCAR? – May 23, 2024 – British actor Gary Oldman, who plays a washed-up alcoholic writer in new Cannes film “Parthenope”, said he is celebrating 27 years sober. Oldman appears briefly as famed novelist John Cheever, who in real life struggled with severe alcoholism — a part that Oldman said was not much of a stretch. I just celebrated 27 years of sobriety,” he said, to applause. “My wife actually found a quote where (Cheever) says, ‘My shaking hand reaches for the phone to ring Alcoholics Anonymous, and instead it remains at the whiskey, the gin, the…
THE TURTLE WON – May 23, 2024 – Started by the American Tortoise Rescue, the first World Turtle Day was observed on May 23, 2000. For more than 30 years, the organization has helped rehome turtles and tortoises, animals that inhabit every continent—except Antarctica—with the United States boasting the greatest number of turtle species. From small spotted turtles that practically fit in your hand to the giant tortoises of the Galápagos Islands, turtles have been fascinating us for eons. The green sea turtle, for example, has been around for 100 million years and plays an important part in maintaining…
ALL IN THE FAMILY – May 21, 2024 – Billy Horschel shared a powerful message on social media Tuesday in honor of his wife’s eight-year sobriety journey in hopes of encouraging others in a similar situation to reach out for help. The eight-time PGA Tour winner posted a video celebrating his wife Brittany’s milestone but also took the opportunity to raise awareness about the struggles of addiction. “I know there’s a lot of people out there struggling with addiction, and you can’t see the light at the end of the tunnel, you don’t think you can get sober,…
“There are no faster or firmer friendships than those formed between people who love the same books.” – Irving Stone, b. San Francisco 1903 – d. Los Angeles 1989