BUMMER – Oct. 6, 2022 – The authors then assessed the association between antidepressant use and four different morbidities: diabetes, hypertension, coronary heart disease (CHD), and cerebrovascular disease (CV), and two different mortality outcomes, including cardiovascular disease (CVD) and all-cause mortality. Each morbidity was then assessed utilizing Cox’s proportional hazard model (a regression model commonly used to understand the association between the survival time of patients and one or more predictor variables). The authors highlight that the experience of the symptoms commonly understood as “depression” is strongly associated with “health risk behaviors” or “cofounders,” such as obesity, smoking, and lack…
Author: Leonard Buschel
AUDIO – MORE THAN ONCE! – Oct. 9, 2022 – BEBINGER: This is Liz Tadie. She helped launch a different approach for Marie and other patients at Salem Hospital. That day, when Marie said, please don’t make me go, her doctor called Tadie, a nurse practitioner certified in addiction medicine. Tadie prescribed buprenorphine, a medication that’s helping Marie manage her addiction to opioids. After leaving the hospital, Marie continued to see Tadie for treatment and support. MARIE: That I wasn’t going to be left alone, like, that I wasn’t going to have to call a dealer ever again, like, that…
SUMMER IS OVER? – Oct. 12, 2022 – But seasonal affective disorder can happen at any time, in any season. And right now, as we transition away from summer and settle into our new fall routines, many people will notice that they’re feeling a bit more anxious or melancholy than they did a month ago. “This time of year, when the days become shorter, you can already start to develop some of the symptoms of the seasonal pattern of depression — even if it doesn’t rise to the level of a medical diagnosis,” Dr. Eric Golden, a psychiatrist at…
WHY NOT BE HEALTHY – Oct. 10, 2022 – Medical Journal, men who frequently eat ultra-processed foods are at a 29 percent increased risk of developing colorectal cancer, compared with men who eat this type of food less frequently. To determine how diet influenced colorectal cancer risk, the researchers behind the study—a group of scientists from Harvard University and Tufts University—reviewed questionnaire responses from over 200,000 individuals. The data were collected every four years over the course of 25 years, giving insights into the subjects’ long-term dietary habits and food frequency patterns. The team then classified those responses into…
SOBRIETY IS SO CREATIVE – Oct. 14, 2022 – The couple — who tied the knot in June 2017 — announced that they were expecting their second child in June, when O’Brien shared a photo of her cradling her belly while on a trip to Puglia, Italy. The How I Met Your Father star jokingly asked, “Is mine or no?” in the comments. Since Max’s birth, Peck has frequently gushed about the toddler on social media. “If life is a simulation, kids are certainly the best part,” the Amanda Show alum wrote via Instagram in December 2021, alongside a photo…
IT’S THE HERO’S JOURNEY! – Oct. 14, 2022 – “I overdosed on drugs. I took heroin laced with fentanyl,” the 38-year-old Idaho Falls man says. “I was dead.” Exactly how long he was dead is unclear. To this day, Mahan has no idea. The next thing he remembers is lying in a hospital bed in Idaho Falls. “I woke up, and I had a tube in my throat, and I had burns on my chest from the defibrillation paddles,” Mahan says. He thinks they used Narcan as well, which is a medication used to treat opioid overdoses. Fentanyl is…
RECOVERY SAVES LIVES – Oct. 13, 2022 – Growing up, I always appeared ‘normal,’ but I never really felt secure or accepted. My father was an alcoholic and my mother was the daughter of an alcoholic who died from the disease before I was even born. They split early on, and my time with my father became few and far between, always leaving me to wonder why he chose alcohol over me. My mother eventually remarried to a man I began to call ‘dad,’ but he was soon out of the picture as well. We were abandoned once again. I…
VIDEO – A LITTLE TOO LATE – Oct. 11, 2022 – In an interview with Johnny Carson, Pryor spoke about his sobriety. He said: “I haven’t had drugs in a long time now. And it’s the first time that I’m really trying to do something about it to stay off it now. I’ve been off a long time now, and it’s wearing off. Do you know how your body builds up a residue? Well, I got about thirty years of residue. So I’ll be high another two years.” Asked whether he felt better sober, Pryor replied: “I do. I feel…
FIGHT FOR FREEDOM – Oct. 14, 2022 – The topic of “We Can Be Heroes” is vitally relevant to Genesee County, where there were 184 reported overdose deaths in 2020, and 155 overdose deaths between May 2021 and April 2022, according to Michigan’s Overdose Data to Action Dashboard. Genesee County has the third highest rate of opioid deaths in the state, behind Wayne and Macomb counties, according to the site. During their early acquaintance, Duerr was up and down with addiction, still “struggling pretty hard,” Ramsdell said. “He’d be at the gym four or five months, he’d take a fight,…
GREED GREED GREED – Oct. 12, 2022 – The opioid epidemic may have fallen out of the daily headlines, but it continues its deadly rampage in New Jersey, Brewer said. More than 3,100 people died of drug overdoses last year, with another 2,237 so far this year, state datashows. Another 75,000 people have been saved in New Jersey since 2017 with the overdose-reversing drug naloxone, the data shows. “Many more remain trapped in the cycle of addiction, desperate for help in breaking their dependence on pills, alcohol and other illegal substances,” Brewer said. “But all too often, addicted individuals and…
THE WORLD IS WEARING A WIRE – Oct. 14, 2022 – On Oct. 3, DEA agents interviewed Ratanaprasatporn at her home and asked the doctor to explain why she allegedly issued nine oxycodone prescriptions for a patient who had died, after the date of his death, according to a detention memo filed by prosecutors. In another instance, she allegedly vouched to an undercover DEA agent that she had issued prescriptions for oxycodone to six patients who all had “back pain.” Following the interview, in phone calls intercepted by law enforcement, Ratanaprasatporn and Smith, her office manager, can be heard…
MONEY MONEY MONEY – Oct. 12, 2022 – At a hearing in Trenton to highlight the flaws in the addiction rehabilitation industry, commission investigators testified about their work and what they found as they looked into practices dating back to 2018. The allegations ranged from extensively billing insurance companies to skirting laws regarding patient brokering. “Some manipulate drug tests or keep patients in the most intensive level of treatment — even if no longer necessary — for prolonged periods,” SCI Chair Tiffany Williams Brewer said. “The result here is that despite advertised claims that they’re in the business to help…
VIDEO – SOCIETY’S CHILD – Oct. 14, 2022 – This is helpful. I’ve never made the connection between societal (in US, etc) expectations related to individualism and the how they facility capitalism and vice versa. This discussion is shedding light on how, the neo-liberal/capitalist emphasis on the individual (as opposed a community/collective orientation) affects us interpersonally, socially and psychologically. This is really clear when you look at the way our American psyche seems to increasingly celebrate cruelty, dishonesty and vengeance. Considering this, a million examples come to mind: parenting of course, but also how we marry, divorce, support a draconian…
STOP THE MADNESS – Oct. 13, 2022 – Now opium derivatives, like heroin, are once again the actual opium of the people. People use heroin and fentanyl analogues to escape oppression temporarily. Black Panther Michael Cetewayo Tabor documented in “Capitalism Plus Dope Equals Genocide” that heroin was cut and sold to Black people in the internal colonies of the U.S. in the 1960s because it offered the youth an illusion of escape from their conditions of neoslavery. Now, in 2022 the chickens have come home to roost, as Malcolm X said. White people have experienced the tragedy, the loss,…
FASCISM? – Oct. 11, 2022 – But the technology thesis hasn’t performed well under critical examination, as the Times package notes. What possible reason could there be for American young people to be particularly unhappy in the 2020s? It’s hard to see the forest for all the low-hanging fruit: There’s the pandemic that has trapped kids inside with their families, a recipe for unhappiness all around if ever there was one; the rise of right-wing political extremism and rapid advance of various hate groups; and global warming, the imminent end of the world as we know it. When it’s framed…
BE CAREFUL BRAINS ARE FRAGILE – Oct. 10, 2022 – It is well-known that smoking marijuana can negatively affect the brain,” Dr. Mitchell emphasizes. For example, studies have shown that it can impair memory and learning and reduce reaction time. Recent research has also suggested that smoking marijuana may be linked to problems with brain development. One study found that people who smoked marijuana regularly during adolescence were more likely than non-users to experience a decrease in the size of the hippocampus, a region of the brain critical for memory and learning. Frequent marijuana use was associated with reduced…
WHERE ARE WE TO, WHERE ARE WE EVER TO GO – Oct. 6, 2022 – Minneapolis, MN – On Oct. 6, 2022, the City of Minneapolis evicted three encampments of unhoused people, leaving over 100 people displaced without tents and blankets as a cold front swept the region. SWAT teams forced residents of the Near North, Van White, and Cedar-Franklin encampments to leave their tents as city workers bulldozed and threw away their belongings. … Hundreds of people are unhoused on any given night in Minneapolis and the city’s shelters have not been the solution for everyone. Some unhoused…
VIDEO – NO MATCHES NEEDED – Oct. 6, 2022 – About 2.55 million middle and high school students in the US currently use e-cigarettes, researchers say, based on responses to a survey conducted earlier this year. Researchers from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the US Food and Drug Administration looked at responses from the 2022 National Youth Tobacco Survey, conducted between January 18 and May 31. They found that 14.1% of high school students and 3.3% of middle school students reported using e-cigarettes within the previous 30 days. Of those, 42.3% reported using them frequently, and…
VIDEO – CURIOSITY CURED THE CAT – Oct. 13, 2022 – Sober curious often involves rethinking alcohol consumption. That often results in reducing the amount of alcohol consumed or abstaining completely. “If you see the little problems popping up in your life from casual drinking here and there, and you say hey I want to try and see if I can do this without drinking at all, this is your opportunity to kind of confront those things and give it a shot,” said Lassiter. Through more open and honest conversations about alcohol use, many realized even their casual drinking had…
IT’S WORTH IT – Oct. 8, 2022 – She said: “I don’t think people talk about it (loneliness) enough when attached to sobriety. Like imagine, you know, it’s almost like a grieving period. “You mourn the people you can’t hang out with. The situations you can’t be part of. It’s just endless, you know? “There are things that you just in no way can relate to any more because you are so far from them. Or just mentally and chemically you’re not there. It is a bit lonely sometimes. more@BelfastTelegraph
FILM REVIEW – Oct. 8, 2022 – James isn’t happy to see her. Nobody’s happy to see Leslie. Leslie is an alcoholic who’ll do any other substance within reach. She can’t borrow from anyone anymore because she owes everyone money. She’s ruled by her urges and appetites, so she doesn’t even pause to consider the rules and norms she’s breaking in order to satisfy them. Sometimes she’ll muster whatever confidence she has left and go into a bar or roadhouse looking to catch a man’s and eye and get him to take her home. It’s not the sex she’s…
“Better to be busy than to be busy worrying.” – Angela Lansbury, Oct. 16, 1925, London – Oct. 11, 2022, Los Angeles
VIDEO – MRS. LOVETT’S REAL MEAT PIES – Oct. 11, 2022 – For all her stage success, Ms. Lansbury would capture the biggest audience of her career in 1984, when she was cast as the mystery writer and amateur sleuth Jessica Fletcher on the CBS series “Murder, She Wrote.” It was widely believed that the series, whose protagonist was a bicycle-riding widow living in a small town in Maine, had little chance against sexier competition like the action crime drama “Knight Rider” on NBC. The conventional wisdom was that advertisers would not go after the older audience the show was…
VIDEO – AMERICAN ROYALTY ABOVE THE LAW – Oct. 7, 2022 – Worse, the Sacklers are billionaires whose name adorns dozens of international art museums, including some that feature Goldin’s own work—a fact that motivated Goldin to stage a 2018 protest at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Temple of Dendur wing that involved throwing pill bottles into the water and chanting “Sacklers lie! People die!” That moment, as well as subsequent actions taken at the Guggenheim Museum and the Louvre, is captured first-hand by Poitras in All the Beauty and the Bloodshed. Concurrently, the director flashes back to Goldin’s past.…
BLOOD MONEY REJECTED – Oct. 1, 2022 – The Victoria and Albert Museum has bowed to growing pressure to rename key areas of its Kensington site, the Observer has learned, as it drops controversial ties with the Sackler family, benefactors descended from the American makers of addictive opioid prescription drugs. This weekend the signs that directed V&A visitors to the Sackler Centre for Arts Education, and to the £2m tiled “Sackler Courtyard” on Exhibition Road, have gone, as the museum finally jettisons its damaging association with the opioid drug market. The move marks another victory for the campaign group Sackler…
YOUR HIGHER POWER WANTS YOU TO BUY TICKETS – Aug. 8, 2022 – That first meeting was tense, to say the least. Rossetto, now 84, remembered Borovitz as “a very large man who interrogated me.” She recalled him saying, “What does this bleeding heart, liberal, social worker broad know about what convicts need?” Borovitz, 70, remembers it differently. “I introduced myself, welcomed her, and she got defensive, snobby and bitchy right away. I just kept saying, ‘We just want to tell you what we need,'” Borovitz recalled. Rossetto replied, according to him, “Well if you’re so smart, when you get…
HEALTHY EXCITEMENT – Oct. 7, 2022 – “I share this kind of stuff to inspire people who are on the journey that I’ve been on. It’s to smash that myth, actually a life without alcohol is not worse – you’re not the boring one. You can become the most interesting person that you know! Sometimes, people need someone to stand against that tidal wave of negativity. That’s a big part of it for me. And also, it’s good fun as well!” He continues: “One of the things I’ve learnt about myself on this journey is that I need to have…
VIDEO – AFTER YOUR MEETING… – Oct. 4, 2022 – We’ve waxed lyrical here at DMARGE about staying ripped in your 50s, but Virgin Group founder Richard Branson just proved you can indeed stay ripped in your 70s too, with a scorching workout anyone can try. The British billionaire with flamboyant hair recently took to LinkedIn to share a video of himself working out to promote his Virgin Active chain of gyms. Captioning the post, “Give it your all, whether your all is a marathon or just a 10 minute workout. It all counts,” beardy Branson can be seen pushing…
VIDEO – BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY – Oct. 5, 2022 – One of the voucher recipients is Kevin Whittaker, 44. He’s been using class-A drugs since his late 30s. He said: “I’ll see what shop I’m passing at the time and see what I can get with the money. It’s £20 for nothing.” The former salesman said he was “tired of the lifestyle” of taking drugs. “It’s getting me nowhere and it’s causing me problems,” he said. “Nobody likes getting up in the morning and wondering where the next £20 is coming from. “It’s just a constant chase.” more@BBC
THEY GAMBLE BIG – Oct. 9, 2022 – Around 100 million people consume illicit drugs such as cocaine or heroin in India – this revelation was made by the Narcotics Control Bureau DDG (Operations) Sanjay Kumar Singh in an interview to Moneycontrol in June 2022. These are just the reported numbers; the actual estimates are significantly higher. Moreover, the country is seeing a rise in drug seizures ever since the pandemic struck – 343 kg of heroin was confiscated in 2020, 1052 kg in 2021, and 331 kg had been seized until May 2022. So why do people get…