Author: Leonard Buschel

ARTISTS SAVE LIVES – July 17, 2023 – Nan Goldin’s photography is a lesson in capturing life; its raw brutality and beautiful banality. Best known for her celebrated slideshows, Goldin’s work documents humanity as a spectrum in which little is off limits. Recently, she has used her influence in art to confront power and accountability in the US opioid crisis, and is recognised in the Wallpaper* USA 300. Addiction is a complex beast. It can masquerade as cure, ally or pleasure, but often results in pain. Artist Nan Goldin knows about addiction; she’s been inside it, witnessed it, and documented…

SHOW ME THE SOBRIETY – July 16, 2023 – Steinberg began college at UCLA then transferred to Cal after one year. He served as student body president, graduated in 1970 and earned his law degree from Berkeley in ’73. Two years later— almost by accident — he began his journey as one of the first sports super agents. He went on to transform the industry, negotiating record-setting contracts for his clients while also insisting they give back to causes that matter to them through philanthropy and their time. The man had a vision: He’d show clients that image mattered, that…

SID GETS SOBER – IMAGINE – July 10, 2023 – Gary Oldman stayed away from alcohol when he realised he would “die” as a result of his drinking. The 65-year-old “Slow Horses” actor – who quit booze more than 25 years ago – admitted he used to “get upset” his career would hinder his time hitting the bottle and used to prioritise his habit over everything else in his life. “Even though my father left when I was very young, I still had that blueprint. I hadn’t had his influence since I was seven, yet I was still doing…

VIDEO – PINNING ADDICTION –   July 15, 2023 – That’s where Rob Nucci comes in. He’s the head coach at Raritan High School where the Rockets are two-time defending sectional champions. He doubles as president of Hazlet’s Hope Network – a non-profit in the Bayshore that helps connect victims of substance abuse with professional recovery. Youth, girls and varsity wrestlers from Raritan, Middletown North, Keansburg and Matawan all joined forces Friday to wrestle and fundraise for Hazlet’s Hope Network and their growing footprint in the Bayshore section of Monmouth County. WATCH@JerseySportsZone

AUDIO – IT’S COMPLICATED – July 12, 2023 – Sacramento County Sheriff Jim Cooper on Wednesday announced the results of a recent homeless outreach effort and called for robust funding to address serious problems that prevent unhoused people from receiving or accepting help. Over five days in May, sheriff’s deputies went to areas throughout the county including homeless encampments to speak to people experiencing homelessness. The deputies spoke with 198 homeless people. They said only one person accepted their offer of services to help them get off the streets. “My job is public safety, number one,” Cooper said during a…

“I just try to keep healthy more so than trying to be thin.” – Margot Robbie

BAD HABITS – July 9, 2023 – What holds us back from recovery? Externals or things outside ourselves — such as being in a certain place — can slow recovery. Our own internal thoughts and addiction desires can also lead to relapse. Say you’re trying to stop smoking. An external influence could be a pack of cigarettes and a lighter in a handy place. Internal stumbling blocks could be justifying thoughts of why you should have a cigarette — you really want it, or it’s no use trying to quit or smoking is your only reward. These feelings are…

EUPHORIC MEMORY FILE CABINET – July 12, 2023 – The world is fast-paced and extremely geared towards telling us how to live, think, act, and what to value. Photography allows us to be totally free. We can share our view of the world and display what we feel is important with the simple click of a shutter and a nicely written caption. Photography is a practice that provides a pressure release, where our feelings, perspectives, and emotions can be out in the open allowing us to be a step closer to being truly understood by ourselves and others. When practicing…

VIDEO – CHANGE CAN HAPPEN –   July 10, 2023 – What I’ve learned now is that drinking problems are on a spectrum. Drinking was causing a lot of problems in my life. It was causing financial stress, relationship stress, mental health stress, and physical health stress. It was affecting so many parts of my life. I wasn’t spending a huge amount of money on drinking because I worked in bars and clubs, so most of what I was drinking was on the house. One night, when I was 26, I went out and, because I drank so much, I…

VIDEO – THAT IS THE QUESTION –   July 11, 2023 – Tom Holland reevaluated his relationship with alcohol after he was struggling to abstain from drinking for a month. “I was definitely addicted to alcohol, not shying away from that at all,” the actor, 27, revealed on the July 10 episode of “On Purpose with Jay Shetty.” “The Crowded Room” star challenged himself to “dry January” in 2022, giving up alcohol after a boozy holiday season. During that month, Holland said, “All I could think about was having a drink … I was waking up thinking about it. I…

SAD BUT TRUE – July 10, 2023 – The diagnosis of borderline personality disorder is a contested construct that many researchers and clinicians believe should be eliminated from the DSM and ICD. The vast majority of people diagnosed with BPD are women who have experienced significant trauma, most commonly sexual assault, and the diagnosis has been accused of “blaming the victim” for their response to abuse or at least medicalizing the result of trauma. Both clinicians and the general publicmay use the diagnosis to dismiss and invalidate the person’s experiences, leading to poorer quality medical and psychiatric care. Although BPD…

NOT AN EASY TIME – July 12, 2023 – A second study in JAMA Network Open also showed that mental health visits to EDs across the United States decreased less than non-mental health visits during the pandemic, showing mental health patients had less flexible needs even during public health emergencies. The study was based on weekly tallies of mental health and non-mental health ED visits at 10 major US city regions. Prepandemic baseline levels were established from 2019 data, and time trends of these patterns were examined in the corresponding weeks of 2020 and 2021. The mean total number of…

BOOMERS STILL BONGING? – July 9, 2023 – Until a few years ago, even as the opioid epidemic raged, health providers and researchers paid limited attention to drug use by older adults; concerns focused on the younger, working-age victims who were hardest hit. But as baby boomers have turned 65, the age at which they typically qualify for Medicare, substance use disorders among the older population have climbed steeply. “Cohorts have habits around drug and alcohol use that they carry through life,” said Keith Humphreys, a psychologist and addiction researcher at the Stanford University School of Medicine. Aging boomers…

HEALTHY COPING IS THE GOAL – July 13, 2023 – Alli returned to Everton this summer after spending last season on loan at Turkish side Besiktas, where he made 15 appearances in all competitions. However, when told he needed another surgery, he said he could feel a negative cycle beginning again and decided to seek help. “I think with things like that, you can’t be told to go there, I think you have to know, and you have to make the decision yourself, otherwise it’s not going to work. To be honest, I was caught in a bad cycle.…

ONE DIRECTION AT A TIME – July 11, 2023 – Payne, 29, said he has “more of a grip on life” now that he’s taken time for himself after becoming “somebody who I didn’t really recognize anymore.” MORE: Liam Payne says continuing with One Direction ‘would have killed me’ “It’s good to be in this position,” he said. “I definitely don’t need those things anymore. The party’s over.” The “Strip That Down” singer said he’s “trying to get to know this new guy” and is channeling his energy into being a better dad for his 6-year-old son, Bear. READ@GMA

AUDIO – SYSTEM FAILURE? –   July 13, 2023 – Reporter Craig Monger on “News & Views” with Joey Clark as they discuss the attempt by sober living residents to lure young girls into their facility, and their apparent complete lack of supervision. LISTEN@1819News

VIDEO – FELLOWSHIP NEEDS TO CONTINUE –   July 12, 2023 – “A little over four years ago, I hit rock bottom in my life on pretty much every level you can imagine and realized I needed help,” she said. A meeting held at the club called “New Beginners” gave her a new beginning. “People sit there and say that there is magic in these rooms,” she said. The Gratitude Club hosts about 50 recovery meetings from several organizations seven days a week. Some even in Spanish. Their mission remains to help people recover and regain their lives. But now…

AUDIO – .05% – July 15, 2024 – Ian has a long history of working in the restaurant industry of 15 years, where drinking is socially acceptable. From studying wine and spirits Ian found a job where he could taste and sell wine daily which led to a lot of justification of his alcoholism. Both Ian and his wife made the decision to quit drinking as of Halloween 2019. After having their son – hangovers, late nights, and all the other events associated with daily drinking started to be less attractive. After getting sober and relying on coffee, tea,…

MOVIES MATTER – July 13, 2023 – The movie will premier Saturday at 6 p.m. at The Maryland Theatre, 21 S. Potomac St., Hagerstown. It will later be offered on streaming services. Residents in recovery and those who have overcome addiction will join Washington County Health Department, local and state officials and law enforcement officers on screen, alongside Stephen Hill, bestselling author, recovery coach and attorney who advocates for treatment over incarceration for those caught up in the plight of substance abuse. Hill is a national speaker on substance use prevention and mental health awareness and founder of Speak Sobriety,…

HE DID IT GOD’S WAY – July 13, 2023 – For his purpose in life, he chose to inspire others, and it’s like he says, “Most of my followers are not drug addicts. They’re just people who want a better life.” His remarkable narrative, often shared through various social media platforms and podcasts has garnered a dedicated fan base, predominantly comprised of women who find solace and motivation in his words. But what sets Rafati apart from the typical business owner or self-help guru is his authenticity and relatability. “I’m pretty opinionated and unapologetically myself,” he says. It’s the…

THANK YOU DONALD RUMSFELD – July 13, 2023 – The International Agency for Research on Cancer, or I.A.R.C., said it based its conclusion that aspartame was a possible carcinogen on limited evidence from three observational studies of humans that the agency said linked consumption of artificially sweetened beverages to an increase in cases of liver cancer — at levels far below a dozen cans a day. It cautioned that the results could potentially be skewed toward the profile of people who drink higher amounts of diet drinks and called for further study. Still, people who consume high amounts of aspartame should consider…

READ BOOKS – July 12, 2023 – “I dream of a world where writers are obliged by law to keep their identity secret and use pseudonyms,” he wrote in the 1986 essay, “The Art of the Novel.” Kundera used the sentence to respond to questions put to him in 2011 by Le Monde des Livres, agreeing to an “interview” via responses from his works. “The Unbearable Lightness of Being,’’ Kundera’s best-known novel, opens wrenchingly with Soviet tanks rolling through Prague, the Czech capital that was the author’s home until he moved to France in 1975. Weaving together themes of love…

VIDEO – MUSICAL INTERLUDE –   July 2, 2023 – Fall Out Boy // With Lyrics  WATCH@YouTube

TOUCHING – July 7, 2023 – However, being in wrestling for over 20 years means there are bound to be ups and downs in their career.  Matt Hardy has faced some adversity of his own throughout his career, but Jeff has also had some real struggles with substance abuse for the latter part of his career. In December 2021 during a WWE house show while in a tag match, Jeff was not his normal self.  He left the match and walked to the back.  WWE believed that he was under the influence of an unknown substance and sent him home…

STARDOM’S LIGHT – July 13, 2023 – Nam Taehyun confesses to his drug addiction past, his current debt, and his check-in to rehabilitation in an in-depth interview with KBS. KBS held an interview with Nam Taehyun for a segment in their program In Depth 60 Minutes. During this segment, they spoke with Nam Taehyun about his struggles with drug addiction, debt, and rehabilitation. While working in the entertainment industry, Nam Taehyun talked about how he had to take diet pills, which were also classified as narcotics. He also spoke about how he had to take sleeping pills due to…

NOT Leprosy – July 11, 2023 – WASHINGTON — Federal officials on Tuesday called for more testing and research on xylazine, the powerful animal sedative that’s spreading through the nation’s illicit drug supply, but they stopped short of recommending new restrictions on the veterinary medication. A six-point plan from the White House’s drug control office aims to scale up testing, treatment and efforts to intercept illegal shipments of xylazine, which is being mixed into fentanyl and other illicit opioids. The White House declared xylazine-laced fentanyl an “emerging threat” in April and called for a national strategy to combat its…

ALCOHOL IS A DRUG – July 13, 2023 – Mississippi saw a 159 percent increase in alcohol-related deaths, the nation’s biggest leap, along with a 10 percent rise in apparent consumption. In Delaware, consumption increased the most, by 25 percent, while alcohol-related deaths rose 73 percent. George F. Koob, director of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA), said the traumas of the pandemic — the fear of covid-19 infection, job losses, social isolation — added to the stresses that were already spurring people to drink. “The pandemic just made it worse,” Koob said. Experts point to a…

VIDEO – WHERE PISSING CAN SAVE YOUR LIFE –   July 11, 2023 – Public restrooms are important for all members of the community and help make public spaces accessible to all. Like many U.S. cities, Philadelphia doesn’t have enough public restrooms to meet the demand. The need for public restrooms in Philadelphia has been addressed with portable restrooms in key areas. The goal of this public restroom pilot is to provide a permanent, well-maintained option that is more attractive to a broad group of people – including families, tourists, businesses, and underserved individuals. The City’s five-year budget includes funding for…

THE CITY BUY THE BINDLE – July 10, 2023 – Dervin Amado Arteaga Ervir, a 15-year-old boy from the Honduran village of El Escano de Tepale, had just parted ways with his father when he joined other young Honduran migrants selling drugs at Seventh and Mission streets in San Francisco. It was a little after 6 p.m. on July 18, 2021, when a driver in a white Chevrolet Malibu rolled up and called out to him. As Dervin approached the vehicle, the driver pulled out a gun and demanded the cash in the teenager’s backpack. The boy handed over the…

NOTHING WRONG WITH THAT – July 9, 2023 – But addiction is not governed by commonsense, reason or logic. It is a compulsive, self-destructive disease. Addicts who can’t use in a safe environment will play Russian roulette in the street with an increasingly dangerous and unpredictable drug supply, tainted by synthetic fentanyl and xylazine, or “tranq,” a flesh-rotting animal sedative. These two drugs enable suppliers to boost profits by cheaply making drugs more potent and enduring. They also greatly increase the risks of fatal overdose. Today, addicts, and even low-level dealers, often don’t know what’s in the powder and pills…