TO TELEVISION – Nov. 26, 2022 – From harmless tipple to devastating turmoil, Lisa Greenberg knows how easy it is to fall into the grip of alcohol addiction. The wife of Todd Greenberg, one of Australia’s best known sport bosses, almost died when drinking took over her life. Now she wants to be a cautionary tale about its dangers. “It is such a strong disease that I could see nothing beyond the next drink. Because I was nothing without it,” Lisa told 60 Minutes. [email protected]
Author: Leonard Buschel
A ROSE BY ANY OTHER NAME STILL HAS THORNS – Nov. 29, 2022 – When our clients use these words to identify themselves or their behaviors, we typically pause the conversation to explore what they mean because there is nothing to be learned from us accepting the label. We do this knowing that many people find connection when self-identifying as an addict/alcoholic and find immense comfort in being part of a community that relates to these words. In the context of the 12-step community, identifying as an addict or alcoholic can be a powerful act. However, it is always…
AUDIO – A HERO ONCE MORE – Nov. 2022 – He recently talked to host Joy Sutton on “Addiction Talk” about how he ended up hitting rock bottom and how he managed to get treatment and recovery. First of all, Weiss explained that he doesn’t like to look at pictures of himself when he was at his lowest. He said, “It’s hard to look at. It’s hard to see those images.” He added, “When I see them, they kind of shock me still.” You might be wondering how it would be possible for Weiss to be surprised at what he…
PITY THE LOVED ONES LEFT BEHIND – Nov. 30, 2022 – Drug overdose deaths more than tripled among people age 65 and older during the past two decades while deaths from alcohol abuse increased more than 18% from 2019 to 2020, according to data published Wednesday by the National Center for Health Statistics. More than 800,000 seniors suffered from drug addiction and 2.7 million suffered from alcohol addiction in 2020. Click@CNBC
NIXON WAS GUILTY – Nov. 22, 2022 – Both strongly advocate for a more rational approach to how we treat substance use in the U.S. “To throw money at going after the supply side and building up criminal justice, it’s appalling. It didn’t work, it hasn’t worked. Drugs are still there,” Bergman told Salon. “People are still dying. We need a compassionate, tolerant, science-based approach to this issue.” Bergman is the executive director and co-founder of A New PATH (Parents for Addiction Treatment and Healing), a non-profit organization that works to reduce the stigma associated with substance use disorders…
VIDEO – HELP EVERYONE MORE – Nov. 29, 2022 – From the moment I started drinking, I was a blackout drinker, which means I would drink until I would forget and wake up the next morning, not know what happened, not remember the night before, and that started to get really scary when that continued after college and into my professional life,” she said. Phelps said she drank to fill a void and would often end up in dysfunctional relationships. “It wasn’t until somebody came to me and said, ‘I think you have a problem.’ And, at that point, I…
BOOMERS MATTER – Dec. 2, 2022 – Most people don’t think about grandma or grandpa having an addiction problem. Most of the concern and lament over the SUD epidemic centers around young people and lives lost “too soon” to overdose. But the reality is, anyone lost to addiction or overdose is lost too soon, and we must ensure every person—regardless of age—has the resources they need to get well and live their best, healthiest life as long as possible. Unfortunately, we’re failing our seniors when it comes to SUD. Nearly 1.1 million Medicare beneficiaries are diagnosed with opioid use disorder,…
AUDIO – WHITE POWDER DEVIL – Dec. 3, 2022 – She was on a neighbor’s back deck, sipping wine and smoking cigarettes. Lauren admired her neighbor, another military wife, who displayed such boundless energy, raising two teenagers in a spotless house, well-known for her volunteer work. “I don’t understand how you do it,” Lauren told her. The woman led Lauren into the kitchen and poured a small pile of methamphetamine powder onto the countertop. With a credit card and a practiced hand, she arranged the drug into lines. Lauren, 24 years old, took a drinking straw cut short at…
POOR MAN’S COKE? – Nov. 30, 2022 – National Meth Awareness Day is observed to educate more people about the dangers of meth abuse and its impacts on many American families and communities. It also stresses the important message that help is available to those who need it. “National Methamphetamine Awareness Day is a coordinated effort not only to reach potential meth users with a message of prevention, but also to educate current users about the programs available to them,” noted the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA). Click@IBTimes
VIDEO – FAMILY MATTERS – Dec.1, 2022 – Noah Cyrus Talks Debut Album “The Hardest Part”, Addiction, Losing Her Grandma & Billy Ray Cyrus… Click@YouTube
BOYS TO MEN – Nov. 30, 2022 – Robert was aware of what his father was doing from a very young age and explained: “I always knew what was going on in that basement”. He started using when he was eight years old, together with his father: “We altered our consciousness with substances”. “I was just playing a game of wanting to appease myself or stay high, before I accepted the fact that things had gotten out of control,” said Robert. Honestly, and more than anything, I look back on it and think ‘that’s awesome that that’s where a…
PAINT FASTER – Nov. 29, 2022 – In the age of social media, online shopping and unlimited streaming, we have a constant stream of content readily available to us in various formats. Pornhub. Twitter, Shein, YouTube, Tiktok; stimulation is consistently at our fingertips. It’s not like we haven’t heard this argument before, that too much time on our phones is bad for us. But this is not the argument I am making. Truthfully, I think social media is not an inherently bad thing, it has the capacity to connect people and allows for expression. I don’t think all porn…
THE WORLD HAS GONE TO POT – Nov. 28, 2022 – Other states, such as Florida and Pennsylvania, have legalized cannabis for medicinal purposes. The Gallup analysis buttresses a recent study by Temple University researchers published in the journal Addictive Behaviors. “Following recreational legalization: adolescent and young adult past-month cannabis use prevalence increased,” the study said. The researchers warned about an increase in addictive pot smoking or “cannabis use disorder” that was going untreated. “Among young adults, an association of higher cannabis use prevalence with lower CUD treatment admissions emerged,” the study said. Opponents of marijuana legalization said their…
SOCIAL DILEMMA DEATH – Nov. 29, 2022 – The game had a name: the blackout challenge. Kids around the world were choking themselves with household items until they blacked out, filming the adrenaline rush they got regaining consciousness and then posting the videos on social media. It’s a modern incarnation of choking dares that have been around for decades, only now they’re being delivered to children by powerful social media algorithms and reaching those too young to fully grasp the risk. There was no press coverage of Arriani’s death, and TikTok didn’t learn about it for months. But the company…
VIDEO – GOD LOVES DOCUMENTARIES – Nov. 29, 2022 – In his father’s underground western Greaser’s Palace, a seven-year-old Robert Downey Jr plays, in his own words, “a boy who got his neck slit by God”. This, perhaps, explains a lot. Downey Jr grew up on Robert Downey Sr’s film sets in the 70s and 80s, amid what he calls “a cacophony of creativity”, at the heart of the counterculture cinema scene fuelled by “cigarettes and weed and booze”. He slept in a cot wedged against an editing desk, got taken to see X-rated films such as La Grande Bouffe…
MORE TIME FOR THE SERENITY PRAYER – Dec. 3, 2022 – Linda said the purpose of all meetings is for members to share their experience, strength and hope with each other so they may solve their common problem and help others to recover from alcoholism. “Anonymity is important to maintain the principles of the AA program, so it is not represented by or associated with any individual members, and to protect the individual member also,” she said. Linda recalled that on Jan. 9, 2014, her husband requested “one of those we need to talk, talks.” “I had slurred my…
IT’S NOT A DISASTER MOVIE! – Nov. 28, 2022 – The federal government says the highly addictive and lethal synthetic drug has quickly become the deadliest drug in the nation. While help is available, it is outpaced by the magnitude of misery on the streets. Homeless addicts in Los Angeles can be seen sprawled on sidewalks or passed out in alleys. Others peddle tiny doses and puffs of smoke to the desperate seeking their next high. [email protected]
VIDEO – THE TRUTH SHALL SET YOUS (Philly accent) FREE – Dec. 1, 2022 – “Our American Family” shines a light on how a family battled and overcame substance use disorder for one year. Click@Yahoo
AUDIO – WHERE DOES IT END? – Dec. 2, 2022 – In a nation that suffered more than 107,000 drug overdose deaths in 2021 alone, there are many Greenvilles — places where the powerful opioid fentanyl and other drugs have produced clusters of overdose deaths, or picked off victims one at a time. Here, drugs worked their way inexorably through a group of friends, year after year, for nearly a decade. In one family, loss piled upon tragic loss until almost no one was left. The deaths shattered families and shook the worldview of parents who believed the drug…
THE BUZZ THAT LASTS A LIFETIME – Nov. 24, 2022 – While cannabis is usually looked at as a drug that’s meant to chill you out, smoking it regularly can have the opposite effect. The Professor explained that there is data showing a chronic smoker’s anxiety can increase over time if they continue with their smoking habit. He said this also applies to cannabis strains that are meant to reduce your anxiety and peaks in anxiety can also happen when you’re not high. Andrew Huberman then went on to say that the initial anxiety relief that cannabis can bring will…
VIDEO – BIG PHARMA BIG HAPPY – Nov. 30, 2022 – The central Iowa clinic, owned by the nonprofit agency Primary Health Care, has offered buprenorphine since 2016. “We were kind of a unicorn in this part of the state,” Storjohann said, but that’s changing. Unlike methadone, the traditional medication to wean people off heroin or other opioids, buprenorphine can be prescribed at primary care clinics and dispensed at neighborhood pharmacies. Federal and state authorities have encouraged more front-line health care professionals to prescribe Suboxone and other medications containing buprenorphine for patients trying to overcome opioid addiction. Federal regulators have…
Hospice Hustle – Dec. 5, 2022 – At AseraCare, a national chain where Marsha Farmer worked, she solicited recruits regardless of whether they were near death. She canvassed birthday parties at housing projects and went door to door promoting the program to loggers and textile workers. Click@NewYorker
“I paint with my fingers to turn my pain into a beautiful creation.” – Aida Murad
SHE HAD TO HAVE IT – Nov. 21, 2022 – “One of the bravest things you can do,” she writes, “is slay those dragons and finally change an awful cycle in which you’ve found yourself stuck. For me, it was to stop drinking.” She calls saying goodbye to booze “one of the most liberating things in my journey of life” and she said it has allowed her “to finally become free of the torture of guilt and dysfunction.” “During the holidays, when we spend so much energy trying to measure up to the picture-perfect standards set by the Norman…
JUST ANOTHER JERRY’S KIDS – Nov. 21, 2022 – Still, in the nearly 30 years since Garcia’s death, Weir, who recently turned 75, has taken on the task of shepherding the Grateful Dead’s music and the fan base into the 21st century — just on his own terms and in his own way. With John Mayer, as well as original drummers Bill Kreutzmann and Mickey Hart, he leads Dead & Company, the stadium-filling group that picks up where the Grateful Dead left off in 1995 in terms of psychedelic bombast and extensive group improvisation. In 2018, Weir founded Wolf…
IT GETS BETTER AND BETTER – Nov. 23, 2022 – Asked if he went to rehab for alcohol abuse or if he just quit cold turkey, Hughes said: “I did [go to rehab]. Let’s just say I had one too many cocktails on Christmas Day 1991, and I found myself in the ER room one more time. And I realized that I had a choice — to go back out and do it again or go into [rehab. And] I went to treatment in Rancho Mirage in 1992. I had a few relapses in the mid-1990s, and in 1997…
VIDEO – MISSED BY MILLIONS – Nov. 21, 2022 – Sordid Lives writer Del Shores emceed the event, echoing that thought as he reflected on a decades-long friendship with Jordan. “I loved seeing the fame,” Shores said. “I loved seeing him get what he deserved — that the whole world saw what we saw so many years ago.” [email protected]
MERCI BEAUCOUP MONSIEUR LAPOINTE – Nov. 18, 2022 – Jean Lapointe, the beloved Quebec singer, actor and comedian who was later appointed to the Senate, has died at age 86. The foundation he created announced Friday his death from health complications at a Montreal palliative care home, surrounded by loved ones. Born in Price, a village in the Lower St-Lawrence region, Lapointe began his career as a teenager at a Quebec City radio station. In 1955, he founded the Jerolas with Jerome Lemay. The popular duo mixed music, humour and imitations, leading them to performances on The Ed Sullivan Show…
RUNNING UP THE HILL, TO MAKE A DEAL WITH GOD – Nov. 21, 2022 – She struggled after treatments in early 2017, each time returning to the drug. Her troubles spiraled out of control – more arrests, homelessness and prostitution, she said. In June 2017, she resigned as a public defender and within weeks was facing possession charges. That fall, she flew to California in a delusional search for Lady Gaga and became homeless there for a year, when she wasn’t in jail . She returned to Spokane around November 2018, after promising relatives she’d do treatment again. She…
EVERY DAY IS SPECIAL – Nov. 20, 2022 – The mother of one, who is living life to the fullest after completing a 30-day recovery program at a Sydney clinic earlier this year, added that ‘mental health is a big part of looking after myself today, as well as physical exercise’. ‘It was really exciting to go back and do the Neighbours finale but just acting in general, I’m really excited to see what opportunities present themselves.’ She said she was committed to ‘looking after myself and enjoying what I have in life’. Jodi also spoke enthusiastically of her ambassador…