BUT SO TALENTED – Sept. 11, 2022 – At the Cape Cod Symposium on Addictive Disorders, Tanya L. Gouveia, MS, MPA, LCDP-II, LADC-I, who runs Addiction Recovery Counseling and serves as an adjunct professor at Bristol Community College in North Dartmouth, Massachusetts, presented a session on cannabis use disorder education, prevention, and clinical issues. Ahead of her presentation, Gouveia spoke with Addiction Professional by email to discuss how cannabis impacts patients’ ability to sustain recovery, ethical and liability implications for providers who work with cannabis use disorder patients, and best practices for discussing cannabis use with patients in a…
Author: Leonard Buschel
DO TRY THIS AT HOME – Sept. 12, 2022 – While the study has limitations, the findings appear to illuminate how ketamine could offer more than just brief relief to people whose depression is resistant to other medications. For many of the clinic’s patients who spoke to The Post, the drug’s achievements have been life-changing. A retired hospital technician wondered about the career he could have had if he had been able to look people in the eyes during conversations, which he can now. A teenage boy cracked jokes with his mother. Anthony, who said he never goes for…
AUDIO – REALITY DOESN’T BITE – Sept. 12, 2022 – The popularity of low- and non-alcoholic drinks has risen worldwide, accelerated by the pandemic, which led many people to be more health conscious. The global market value for the segment rose to just under $10 billion in 2021 from $7.8 billion in 2018, according to researcher IWSR. The effect has been especially pronounced in Japan, where the population is shrinking and younger people drink far less than in previous decades. Just 7.8% of Japanese people in their 20s were regular drinkers in 2019 compared with 20.3% of that age group…
HUFF OF DEATH – Sept. 10, 2022 – “The results of medical examinations have confirmed that Darius’s death was an accident caused by chloroethane, which is used to treat pain and that tragically lead to respiratory arrest,” a statement read. “Darius was suffering from chronic neck pain following a car accident in 2010. “We would like to thank everyone for their love and kindness, and ask that the family’s privacy is maintained during this difficult time.” Chloroethane, also known as ethyl chloride, is used as a topical anaesthetic for injections and minor surgery, and can also be found in other…
IT’S COMPLICATED – Sept. 12, 2022 – Yet, the insanity defense has been used in numerous trials involving school or community shootings. Found incompetent to stand trial or guilty but “mentally ill,” perpetrators can be sent temporarily or long-term to a psychiatric facility to be forcibly drugged until they are deemed competent to stand trial or can be released. In one such case, the cost to the state was close to $350,000 spent on psychiatric treatment. CCHR says that psychiatrists ignore the studies linking psychotropic drugs to violence, yet psychiatric hospitalization and prison mental health services rely upon these…
THE TRUTH HURTS – Sept. 12, 2022 – Substance use disorders often accompany other mental illnesses. Half of people with a substance use disorder have another mental illness at some point, and vice-versa. For many people, drug and alcohol problems begin as self-medication: using substances to cope with temporary stress or to manage symptoms of chronic mental health problems they may not even know they have. Substance use, particularly alcohol, can be a socially accepted way of dealing with negative emotions. Surveys show alcohol use rose during the COVID-19 pandemic, including increased use by stressed parents. Research has also tied…
CAME TO BELIEVE – Sept. 13, 2022 – We all have value; we all have worth; we all have something to contribute, and we don’t want to hang onto that,” Clemmer said. “…When I can give back, it just works.” It works for those he’s helping and for his own sobriety, too, a journey pulling him up from the depths of alcohol and drug abuse that started in his teenage years after seeing his dad and uncle struggle with addiction. When Clemmer came home high on marijuana as a teenager, his dad — who had eventually found religion and gotten…
CUT DOWN AND STAY THAT WAY – Sept. 14, 2022 – For those experiencing alcohol-related functional impairment and other adverse consequences, recovery is often marked by the fulfillment of basic needs, enhancements in social support and spirituality, and improvements in physical and mental health, quality of life, and other dimensions of well-being. Continued improvement in these domains may, in turn, promote sustained recovery. With input from key recovery stakeholders, such as researchers, clinicians, and recovery specialists, NIAAA developed this definition to provide a framework for advancing recovery research and the treatment of AUD. This definition extends prior ones by incorporating…
OVERSHARING? – Sept. 12, 2022 – A lot has changed for Lala over the past year. Besides welcoming her first child — one-year-old daughter Ocean — she went through a public breakup with movie producer Randall Emmett whose cheating scandal tore their family apart. The two are currently going through a custody battle. Lala told RadarOnline.com that if it wasn’t for her sobriety, she doesn’t know if she would have made it through. more@RadarOnline
YOUTH QUAKE – Sept. 14, 2022 – “If your child is diagnosed with a substance use disorder, there’s hope for recovery. It includes evidence-based counseling, family treatment, recovering peer groups, medication or pharmacotherapy and sober social plus educational activities. In addition, there are outside recovery supports like AA or SMART recovery with compassionate people who have similar lived experiences,” said Brumder-Ross. Stevie is proof that healing is possible. “The other side of addiction is often an unbelievably uplifting beautiful place because people who have gone through this disease end up with a lot of empathy for others who are…
EDUCATE BETTER! – Sept. 14, 2022 – Earlier in the day, the Los Angeles Fire Department responded to separate calls reporting possible overdoses of two teens in the area of Lexington Park, a few blocks from Bernstein High and a cluster of other schools, according to police. “It is believed that the overdose victims are students of Bernstein and local high schools,” a police statement said. One of the victims was a 17-year-old student at nearby Hollywood High School, said Los Angeles Unified School District Superintendent Alberto Carvalho. Including the latest victims, there have been a total of six…
VIDEO – LETHAL AMOUNTS – HOLLYWOOD, CA – Sept. 15, 2022 – The younger boy, who lives with his grandmother, allegedly sold a pill to two 15-year-old girls on the Bernstein campus, causing both of them to overdose. more@ABC7
METH KILLS…OTHERS – Sept. 11, 2022 – The chief of James Smith Cree Nation and other Indigenous leaders are calling on the provincial and federal governments to fund on-reserve addiction treatment centres following the horrific stabbing rampage on the Saskatchewan First Nation and neighbouring town of Weldon. “We’ve got to protect our community, fight against drugs and alcohol,” James Smith Chief Wally Burns told reporters at a news conference Thursday. Rob Head, chief of the Peter Chapman Band — one of three nations that make up James Smith Cree Nation — told CBC News some of his own family…
GREED IS NOT GOOD – Sept. 12, 2022 – U.S. Attorney Damian Williams said: “Purificacion Cristobal prescribed powerful medications to patients, some of whom had no medical need for them and were likely selling them, thereby contributing to the flow of highly potent drugs into the black markets of New York. We trust medical professionals to responsibly handle potentially harmful drugs, and this Office will not turn a blind eye to those professionals who break that trust.” As proven at trial, Purificacion Cristobal, a licensed nurse practitioner purporting to specialize in psychiatry, operated a clinic on Westchester Avenue in the…
ONLY IF YOU INGEST IT – Sept. 16, 2022 – Deaths linked to drugs are on the rise. In their report issued Sept. 16, Jessica Korona-Bailey and colleagues said that “four times as many nitazene-involved overdoses were identified in Tennessee in 2021 than in 2020, and this number could be underestimated because of low testing frequency.” Overall, deaths in Tennessee known to be linked to the synthetic opioids rose from 10 in 2020 to 42 one year later, with a majority of those killed being young males (average age 40). What’s worse, naloxone—the antidote injection that can save the…
VIDEO – WORTH THE WEIGHT – Sept. 13, 2022 – The private, deep-rooted significance powerlifting assumed in her life perhaps goes some way to explaining Walcott’s success in the sport. In July, she broke the World Raw Powerlifting Federation (WRPF) record for the heaviest cumulative lift for bench/squat and press, registering a total of 1,620.4 pounds in the squat, bench press and deadlift at the American Pro competition in Virginia. In the same competition, Walcott broke her own WRPF deadlift record with a weight of 639 pounds. Put into perspective, that’s roughly the weight of a Dexter cow or…
VIDEO – CATASTROPHE IN ACTION – Sept. 13, 2022 – The commissioner said this is a scene playing out all over New York and across the country. She believes it is going to take every family in every neighborhood, in every community to work together to beat this deadly epidemic. It’s about open conversations and education. The commissioner said there have been historic investments to help people. Now the plan is to expand street outreach and mobile medication units. A $10 million boost from the federal government will go toward developing mobile medication units throughout the state and expanding street…
IT AIN’T VALIUM, HOWEVER… – Sept. 6, 2022 – On TikTok, the hashtag #melatoninaddict has racked up more than a million views, with people swapping stories about craving the supplement, or being unable to sleep without it. People on Reddit forums fret over how to stop taking melatonin after years of nightly use. Eric Brost, 33, started taking melatonin when he was in graduate school and was struggling to fall asleep. Over the five years that followed, he yo-yoed between doses, trying to taper to half a pill at a time before going back to one each night, or on…
UNIQUELY ECLECTIC – Sept. 14, 2022 – “There’s something about being 4 months sober where everything starts to get really really real. Too real,” she shared. “It was like all the shit I had been ignoring for years now was following me around in plain sight, instead of watching me from behind a dumpster.” In hysterics over her newfound reality, Wolf called fellow musician Jared “Solomonophobic” Solomon and clung desperately to what she knew: her tried and true method of making music. “I freestyled the chorus about thirty seconds after walking through the door,” the singer recalled. In a…
“WHAT IS LOVE…BABY DON’T HURT ME” – Sept. 16, 2022 – Love addiction is not a formal diagnosis. It is related to other clinical diagnoses under the spectrum of behavioral addictions, impulse control disorders, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and mood disorders. Disorders that love addiction is related to include: Substance use disordersAlcohol use disorderBinge eating disorderGambling disorder Researchers explain love addiction is related to these other disorders because they have similar cycles of emotional highs and lows, longing, and the extreme behaviors that can come as a result. Criteria for love addiction were defined in 2018 and include: Compulsive and uncontrollable desire…
“A story should have a beginning, a middle and an end, but not necessarily in that order.” – Jean-Luc Godard (Dec. 3, 1930 – Sept. 13, 2022)
SOLITUDE MEANS FORTITUDE – Sept. 8, 2022 – “I was trying to find someone for 10 years, and for 10 years I couldn’t,” Silver, 40, said. Then she had an epiphany. “I was completely feeding into what dating culture wanted,” Silver said. “I was going to keep swiping my adulthood away, paying more and more money trying to find someone because I believed the lie that my partner was hiding in there somewhere.” After “a decade of bullshit,” Silver said she woke up. “I saw how good it felt to set myself free and start looking at my singlehood from…
VIDEO – HAPPY IT DID – Sept. 8, 2022 – “I remember when I first got sober and all the shit was out of my system, I remember just being, like, really happy and everything was f***ing new to me again,” Eminem said about the album. “It was the first album and the first time that I had fun recording in a long time.” Relapse was Eminem’s first time in the studio since his 2007 overdose on pills. The rapper almost died due to his addiction to Vicodin and Valium. “It was like the first time I started having fun…
VIDEO – COMPASSION IN ACTION – Sept 6, 2022 – Depman moved to Vermont in 2007, as addiction treatment was starting to evolve. Before the move, he had seen the beginning of such changes while working as an emergency room physician in urban New Haven, Conn., he explains in a phone interview. “When I started working at CVMC, like anywhere else, when someone came in struggling with addiction, we would basically settle them down, potentially with a sedative, to get them over the acute symptoms,” he recalls. “Yes, if someone was seriously withdrawing from alcohol, they would get admitted to…
BILL W. WAS A PIONEER – Sept. 8, 2022 – LSD-assisted therapy could provide benefits to patients struggling with anxiety disorders, according to new research published in Biological Psychiatry. The findings suggest that the psychedelic drug can produce notable reductions of anxiety and comorbid depression symptoms. LSD-assisted therapy involves the controlled administration of lysergic acid diethylamide under the guidance of a trained therapist. Although LSD is best known as a recreational drug, some research suggests that it can have powerful therapeutic effects in a wide range of psychiatric conditions when combined with psychotherapy. The findings from the new research…
SUMMER OF LOVE THERAPY CONTINUES – Sept. 10, 2022 – The measure, resolution #220896, concerns entheogenic plants, another term for psychoactive plants, or plants that can induce changes in perception and mood. It calls for San Francisco police to give investigation and arrests related to use of such substances “the lowest priority.” This category of drug includes psilocybin, or so-called “magic” mushrooms, and peyote, which are controlled as what’s known as “Schedule 1” substances by the United States Drug Enforcement Administration. (Ayahuasca isn’t technically in this category, but its active component, DMT, is.) Those drugs are defined by the DEA…
IT WORKS IF YOU WORK IT – Sept. 7, 2022 – AA was founded in 1935 by two white men who were members of a Christian revivalist group, Bill Wilson and Bob Smith – a Wall Street analyst and a surgeon, respectively – and boasts an estimated 1.5 million members in North America. The efficacy of the program has long been the subject of debate among researchers, with the first critical research starting in the 1980s. There are many different ways to measure the success of sobriety: how long a person remains abstinent, how much they manage to cut back…
VIDEO – IT’S ALL ABOUT LOSSES – Sept. 8, 2022 – After losing her husband to accidental overdose, Cheryl shares his journey through active addiction, road to recovery and his final battle lost to overdose. By exposing the horrific realities of the opioid epidemic, her mission is to raise awareness and educate on how the opioid epidemic is not only ripping families apart emotionally but also financially by diminishing careers and draining financial assets… more@YouTube
AUDIO – RELATIONAL REPAIR KIT – Sept. 9, 2022 – “I am very happy to let you know about my new book Sociometrics, which clearly outlines my experiential/embodied approach to healing cPTSD, through accessing the social engagement system in service of relational repair. Based on my years of training and experience in psychodrama, sociometry and group therapy, RTR-Sociometrics takes the guesswork out of working with relational trauma. These experiential, psycho-educational processes and role plays feel safe to conduct and participate in; group members learn about how symptoms and hard to manage feelings manifest for them as they simultaneously engage…
ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE – Sept. 9, 2022 – In addition to mental exercises, there are also a number of lifestyle changes that can help to manage bipolar disorder. Some lifestyle changes that may be helpful include the following:6 Sticking to a routine: Creating a daily routine and sticking to it can help to stabilize your moods. Try to wake up and go to bed at the same time each day, eat regular meals, and schedule regular times for exercise and relaxation. Eating a balanced diet: Eating a healthy, balanced diet can help to improve your overall mood and energy…