VIDEO ONLY – ONE DAY AT A TIME – Nov. 21, 2022 – One recovering addict shares her story of struggle and triumph as she celebrates one year sober. [email protected]
Author: Leonard Buschel
COMPASSION IS THE KEY – Nov. 25, 2022 – Show them how much you love them and also help them with the aspects of their life they are neglecting because of their condition. If you find that your own mental health is compromised by being there for a loved one who is going through substance dependence, try your best not to make them feel responsible. The last thing you want to do is make them feel they are a burden on you. Instead, be compassionate to yourself, confide in a friend you trust, or seek professional help. If you have…
I DON’T HAVE EXPENSIVE HANGOVERS – Nov. 26, 2022 – It’s easy to diss Heineken 0.0, the ubiquitous alcohol-free beer that now accounts for 20% of the market, but, for many, it’s the first step towards sobriety. Although it might lack the character of its competitors, the raison d’être of lager has never been to deliver huge amounts of flavour — simply a cold and refreshing glassful. There are so many stories about people not realising that they’re drinking Heineken 0.0 rather than regular Heineken that they can’t all be apocryphal. Once they realise that ‘low and no’ isn’t…
BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY – NOV. 25, 2022 – Soon the trip starts: images of the solar system punctuated by clips of my younger self laughing, then a bizarre internal reel made up of Jesus Christ, an alien and an image of a bush – seemingly the one from which the medicine derived. These eventually give way to a pounding narrative of negative thoughts known as a “mind-purge”. After more than 12 hours in the clinic bed – of which six fly by in a flash – I am unhooked from the machinery and the headphones that have been…
WHEN WORK CAN HEAL – Nov. 26, 2022 – The subtext of The Shining is well known to be an allegory for King’s own battle with alcoholism, and Doctor Sleep is, above all, a story about recovery and sobriety — both for its protagonist and for the author himself. Flanagan was keenly aware of this when he was creating the movie, embracing the significance for both King and the movie’s star, Ewan McGregor, who broke big in the industry playing a heroin addict in 1996’s Trainspotting. “[Ewan] knew what the journey felt like. He wasn’t alone — there were a…
THERE IS ART IN SOBRIETY – Nov. 26, 2022 – The most compelling piece in the exhibition is also where Lawrence says he never wants to find himself again. “That’s ‘Pre Contemplation,’” Lawrence said. “That’s addiction right there — a nightmare.” The piece is haunting and the eyes in the portrait exude pain. At the other end is “Maintenance,” a work that shows a man confident and happy. Lawrence said he has known the man in that portrait for six years. “I’ve never seen him high, drunk or anything,” Lawrence said. That’s where he would like to see himself,…
AND HUMANITY – Nov. 21, 2022 – Opioid use disorder is a chronic life-threatening disease that people contract through exposure to opioids, either illicit or prescribed by a physician. In recognition of this, in 2016 the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention pointed out the risks of overprescribing and the need to limit opioid prescriptions to three days for acute pain. Many healthcare professionals who have entered practice in recent decades will identify with episodes of the Hulu series “Dopesick,” which tells the story of the dark years before the dangers of opioids were understood. Overprescription of opioids has…
LEARNING THE HARD “WEIGH.” – Nov. 25, 2022 – An Australia primary school is under fire for weighing young students in front of their peers before the kids were publicly ranked based on their number on the scale. Butterfly Foundation, an organization that supports those with eating disorders, said it recently received a disturbing message from a concerned parent whose friend’s 10-year-old daughter was weighed during class on a set of scales the teacher brought into the classroom, 7News.com reported. The students were forced to weigh themselves, write their names and weights on the board, then were ranked from…
AUDIO – MORE LIKE A LOVE LETTER – Nov. 22, 2022 – The lyrics to the song chronicle Kelley’s struggles with alcohol, from the way he depended upon it to be able to perform, to how it gave him “courage” the night he met his wife, Cassie. “You helped me make her laugh/’Til you helped me make her cry,” he sings. “You started out a friend/Turned into something else.” The song concludes with an apparent victory over his addiction, as Kelley sings: “’Cause you took me high/You put up a good fight/But look who’s standing now/Had to almost lose it…
DRAMATIC INSIGHTS – Nov. 23, 2022 – Everything suppressed rises to the surface. Everything you’ve ever pushed down, ignored, batted away, held off facing, comes to party. It’s now your job to scrutinize these pain-phantoms as they present themselves. You are being given a chance to exorcise them for good. What remains in their wake is an entirely new understanding of the world. It’s like a yearlong gut-punch, but somehow, doubled over, you are beginning to smile. I quit alcohol because I cannot control my alcohol use, and I no longer want to be defined by that fact. Over…
VIDEO – A WHIFF OF NORMAL VIDEO – Nov. 24, 2022 – In an extended interview, acclaimed physician and author Dr. Gabor Maté discusses his new book, “The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness, and Healing in a Toxic Culture.” “The very values of a society are traumatizing for a lot of people,” says Maté, who argues in his book that “psychological trauma, woundedness, underlies much of what we call disease.” He says healing requires a reconnection between the mind and the body, which can be achieved through cultivating a sense of community, meaning, belonging and purpose. Maté also discusses…
THE TASTE OF A SLOW DEATH – Nov. 25, 2022 – Highly processed foods meet the same criteria as tobacco for addiction, and labeling them as such might benefit public health, according to a new US study that proposes a set of criteria to assess the addictive potential of some foods. The research suggests that healthcare professionals are taking steps towards framing food addiction as a clinical entity in its own right; it currently lacks validated treatment protocols and recognition as a clinical diagnosis. Meanwhile, other data, reported by researchers last week at the Diabetes Professional Care (DPC) 2022 conference…
“THE BUZZ WASN’T WORTH IT” – Nov. 2022 – A few times during that pregnancy, Battaglia drank a full glass of wine. At least once, she had two. It was “definitely enough to feel the effects,” she said. Still, she carried the pregnancy to term and delivered a healthy baby boy in 2017. It wasn’t until about six months postpartum that she noticed some unusual behaviors in her son that doctors implied could be related to alcohol use in pregnancy. [email protected]
THE LITTLEST ONES – Nov. 25, 2022 – The finding stems from an analysis of data from 21,905 pregnant women in what’s dubbed the ECHO program (Environmental Influences on Child Health Outcomes), a federally funded effort to investigate the effects of early life exposures on several key areas of child health. The new study found opioid use in pregnancy was more prevalent in white individuals. It was also more common in women with a history of depression and multiple substance use. Most of the prenatal opioid use was connected to a prescription drug. “Previous studies have not adequately described people…
TEVA, JUST DOING THE DEVIL’S WORK – Nov. 22, 2022 – Teva and AbbVie did not admit wrongdoing. The two companies said that as part of the settlements, they have resolved a dispute between them over responsibility for claims stemming from generic opioid business that Allergan sold to Teva in 2016. The sprawling litigation over opioids, which began in 2017, has yielded more than $40 billion in settlements with drugmakers, distributors and pharmacy chains. State and local authorities have said they will use the money to combat the opioid crisis, which according to federal government data has caused nearly 650,000…
TO SLEEP PERCHANCE TO DREAM – Nov. 24, 2022 – Researchers found young people using benzodiazepines for common sleep conditions .. “Given the frequent co-use of benzodiazepines with other substances, it is important MORE at ECONOMIC TIMES… Click@HealthWorld
IT COULD BE EXERCISING TOO – Nov. 21, 2022 – A team from the University of California recruited 277 participants with moderate to severe osteoarthritis in their knee and who had taken NSAIDs for at least a year. They also analyzed data on 793 participants who suffered from the condition but did not take the medication. All had MRI scans of the affected knee at the start of the study and again after four years, with images analyzed for signs of inflammation. Results revealed there appeared to be no long-term benefit of taking NSAIDs. Joint inflammation and the quality of…
VIDEO – IS THAT POSSIBLE? – Nov. 26, 2022 – If there is a cure for addiction … a Los Angeles philanthropist, Nancy Davis, is hoping to find it. She co-founded the non-profit Cure Addiction Now (CAN) with her late son Jason Davis. FOX 11 delivers breaking news, live events, undercover investigations, police chases, true crime files, business news, celebrities and entertainment on Good Day LA (GDLA) and local stories from Los Angeles, Long Beach, Pasadena and across the nation… [email protected]
DEATH BY MISTAKES – Nov. 14, 2022 – The drug combination put him at the center of a deepening complication in the nation’s overdose crisis. The pairing of meth, which can also cause psychosis and erratic, risky behavior, and opioids such as fentanyl, of which even small doses can prove fatal, is among the nation’s fastest-rising causes of overdose deaths. One in five of the total fatal overdoses last year involved an opioid and a psychostimulant, a drug class dominated by meth, preliminary federal data show. A decade earlier, about 2% of drug deaths involved such combinations. Sometimes meth users…
VIDEO – ICE CREAM YOU SCREAM, WE ALL… – Nov. 24, 2022 – WELL, FOR ANYONE WHO HAS EVER STRUGGLED WITH ADDICTION OR SOBRIETY, YOU KNOW, THE HOLIDAYS CAN BE A TOUGH TIME YEAR. BUT TONIGHT WE WANT TO SHARE WITH YOU A SUCCESS STORY, HOW ONE MAN WENT FROM BEING A HEROIN ADDICT TO RUNNING A THRIVING BUSINESS. THAT’S RIGHT. SAM CARUSO HAS AN AMAZING TESTIMONIAL STRUGGLE, BEATING THE ODDS, REDEMPTION, ACCESS AND WE TALKED ABOUT IT ALL IN THIS LOUSY. CREAMY FATTY. IT IS A TREAT FOR YOUR TONGUE A FULL, FAT, FULL FLAVOR, DECADENT ICE CREAM WITH…
“Love words, agonize over sentences. And pay attention to the world.” – Susan Sontag, Born: 1933, NY – Died: 2004, NY
DARWINIAN MEDICINE? – Nov. 14, 2022 – The first name that came to my mind was Sigmund Freud. To me, his most important idea wasn’t the Oedipus complex (which nobody believes in anyway), infant sexuality, or the death drive. Rather, it was the idea, which drove his life’s work, that each form of what he called ‘madness’ has a special function, just like fever or calluses. Specifically, he saw that its goal is to help us satisfy unconscious wishes – but in a disguised form. According to him, a young woman’s compulsive need to arrange and rearrange the pillows on…
WALKING AND CHEWING GUM – Nov. 19, 2022 – As with most psychiatric conditions, A.D.H.D. symptoms can range in type and severity. And many of them “are behaviors everyone experiences at some point or another,” said Joel Nigg, a professor of psychiatry at Oregon Health & Science University. The key to diagnosing the condition, however, requires “determining that it’s serious, it’s extreme” and it’s interfering with people’s lives, he said. It’s also critical that the symptoms have been present since childhood. Those nuances can be lost on social media, experts say. In fact, one study published earlier this year found…
LUNGS—YOU ONLY HAVE TWO – Nov. 17, 2022 – Over 3 million people in the United States have been diagnosed with the potentially deadly disease despite it being one of the most preventable respiratory illnesses, according to the American Lung Association. Researchers from the Department of Radiology at Ottawa Hospital found that 75% of the people in the study who smoked marijuana, potentially alongside tobacco, had developed emphysema, while just 67% of the tobacco-only smokers showed signs of the disease. Only 5% of complete nonsmokers were diagnosed. Furthermore, they saw that paraseptal emphysema, a specific subtype of the disease that…
BEWARE THE MYSTIC CONSCIOUSNESS? – NOV. 16, 2022 – An international team of scientists says they have examined the adverse health effects associated with the trendy South American plant-based psychedelic drink ayahuasca, according to a new study. Surveying over 10,000 people from more than 50 countries, researchers found that ayahuasca users reported exceptionally high rates of adverse physical and psychological health effects while on the drug. However, these negative effects were rarely severe, and nearly 90% of users considered them “completely or somewhat part of a positive growth process.” CLICK FOR MORE
IT’S ALL IN YOUR HEAD – Nov. 8, 2022 – “I worry that patients who are really struggling, especially now, when rates of depression are higher than ever, are going to hear this and get the idea that these drugs don’t work,” he said, referring to some of the skeptics’ claims. “That’s not true. They do work.” Predicting who will improve on antidepressants and who won’t is virtually impossible. Attempts to use genetic screening to forecast a person’s potential treatment response haven’t panned out. Those tests provide information on how efficiently the body metabolizes the drug, but Dr. Sanacora said…
AUDIO – EVEN RIGHT UNDER YOUR NOSE – Nov. 15, 2022 – “What’s important is how do we accommodate and address the issues folks are facing,” Birmingham said. “We have an organization that supports the working professionals: the counselors, the prevention specialists. We provide a lot of training.” From his roots in Kansas City, Kansas, and during years of police work in Arkansas, Birmingham consistently found that addiction exists everywhere, in big cities, in suburbia, in rural America. It is also common for addicts to have nowhere to go except jail for treatment, such as it is. In his…
UNEQUAL CARE – Dec. 1, 2022 – The reasons for this dramatic change come down to racial inequities. Research shows that Black people have a harder time getting into treatment programs than white people do, and Black people are less likely to be prescribed the gold standard medications for substance use therapy. “If you are a Black person and have an opioid use disorder, you are likely to receive treatment five years later than if you’re a white person,” says Nora D. Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse at the National Institutes of Health. “Treatments are…
UN-DRUG STORE – Nov. 15, 2022 – Nationwide, other solutions to reduce overdose deaths are being tested at the state and local levels. In late 2021, New York City opened the country’s first legal supervised injection site, where people who use drugs can do so in a clean environment with medical staff on hand to administer naloxone or other medications if necessary. Similar sites have been considered in Colorado and Massachusetts. California Governor Gavin Newsomrecently vetoed a similar effort in his state. CLICK FOR MORE
BEING TOUGH ON THE FRONT LINES – Nov. 16, 2022 – Norton works for the Hornbuckle Foundation, which provides peer support to participants in the SAFER Opportunities Initiative. SAFER provides short-term shelter in the hotel for people in Arapahoe County who are homeless and have mental health or substance use disorders. Peer support specialists are themselves in recovery and are employed to help others. As billions of dollars in opioid settlement funds roll out to states and localities, local leaders are deciding what to do with the money. Supporting and training peer specialists, whose certification requirements vary by state, are…