VIDEO – AND YOU GET YOUR FEELINGS BACK – April 29, 2022 – “He was texting me and making me laugh and we were texting back and forth and making each other laugh very, very hard,” recalled Coulier. “The last thing I said to him was ‘Have a great show tonight.’ That was my last real connection with Bob.” Continuing, Coulier told Hall that he’s grateful for his sobriety at this particular time in his life. “I thought to myself after those three lives were gone, I would’ve never been able to feel all of that if I was drinking…
Author: Leonard Buschel
Al-ANON ANYONE? – April 29, 2022 – Leslie and Harington married in 2018 and welcomed a baby boy in 2021. He checked into a wellness retreat in 2019 “to work on some personal issues,” according to his representative. Leslie, who rocketed to fame starring in “Downton Abbey” and alongside Harington in “Game of Thrones,” said she “is doing well” when it comes to her husband’s addiction, while adding they are “several years into his sobriety.” She also said she has grown to understand addiction through Al-Anon, the support group for friends and family of alcoholics, but noted that Harington…
TRY EVERYTHING – April 28, 2022 – Medications for OUD treatment, such as methadone (Methadose), buprenorphine (Subutex), and buprenorphine-naloxone (Suboxone), help reduce opioid withdrawal symptoms. However, stigma associated with OUD can prevent people from accessing addiction treatment services. These also introduce legal and logistical challenges to obtaining the medications. And while some medications for OUD reduce opioid withdrawal symptoms, getting through this phase of the treatment remains challenging. These and other factors might lead a person to pursue other treatments. Research into the effectiveness of cannabis for opioid withdrawal is inconsistent. But studies that focus specifically on CBD for this…
AUDIO – IN HER SHOES – April 26, 2022 – It’s hard to see you have a problem when nobody around sees it. That was the experience of Khadi Oluwatoyin, the founder of Sober Black Girls Club. Growing up, Oluwatoyin excelled academically, a point of pride for both Oluwatoyin and her parents. Her family didn’t drink or keep alcohol in the house, and Oluwatoyin distinctly remembers her first time drinking. Her father and brother had just dropped her off at college, and she decided to get drunk with some other students. “It was just amazing,” Oluwatoyin tells Katie in…
VIDEO – WHEN SNACK FOODS KILL – April 26, 2022 – “I just hit a total breaking point,” she told the talk show’s co-host Willow Smith. “I was self-medicating with Xanax and I was drinking. And I have a lot of alcoholism and drug addiction in my family.” She continued, “I had a night where I went way too far with drinking and taking pills because I couldn’t even go to bed at night.” Ireland, whose dad is Alec Baldwin, went on to share how she pushed her loved ones away, saying, “I had isolated all of my real…
AUDIO – GET LOST ADDICTS – April 28, 2022 – Army veteran Mark Stevenson, with help from students at Yale Law School, is suing Army Secretary Christine Wormuth in federal court in Connecticut, seeking to force the military branch to upgrade the discharge statuses of himself and other veterans who were given less-than-honorable discharges because of misconduct related to their substance abuse disorders. The lawsuit is similar to previous ones filed by Yale’s Veterans Legal Services Clinic on behalf of former military members with post-traumatic stress disorder and other mental health issues who were denied honorable discharges because of…
NO PILLS FOR YOU! – April 27, 2022 – Online mental-health companies Done and Cerebral have grown quickly since they were founded in 2019 and serve tens of thousands of patients between them. Both companies charge patients monthly subscription fees to manage their prescriptions, rates that are higher than what they pay nurse practitioners to manage the patients. They reinvest profits in advertising on Instagram, TikTok, and Google to attract new patients. Some Cerebral clinicians have similarly had their prescriptions blocked or delayed for Adderall and other controlled substances, including benzodiazepines used to treat anxiety, due to pharmacists’ concerns about…
VIDEO – ADDICTING YOUTH FOR PROFIT and LOSS – April 27, 2022 – “I promised for the rest of my life, I would change the killer of addiction, everywhere I can and anyway I can,” the professor of oral and maxillofacial surgery said before a large crowd of faculty and students. Adam Abubaker was 21 years old when he died of a heroin overdose in September 2014. His father believes minor surgery to repair a football injury just one year earlier, led to his son’s struggle with prescription opioids and eventually heroin. Despite spending 10 months in recovery, the…
VIDEO – The X-GENERATION – April 23, 2022 – American adolescence is undergoing a drastic change. Three decades ago, the gravest public health threats to teenagers in the United States came from binge drinking, drunken driving, teenage pregnancy and smoking. These have since fallen sharply, replaced by a new public health concern: soaring rates of mental health disorders. In 2019, 13 percent of adolescents reported having a major depressive episode, a 60 percent increase from 2007. Emergency room visits by children and adolescents in that period also rose sharply for anxiety, mood disorders and self-harm. And for people ages 10…
SCROLLING NOT STROLLING – April 29, 2022 – Experts have been studying the effects of smartphones on parents for almost as long as we’ve had phones to distract us from our kids. And the evidence, according to several studies over about a decade, certainly suggests that phones really do have the potential to make us worse parents. Not only are we less likely to pay attention to our kids’ physical safety when we’re tapping and scrolling, we can also miss their emotional cues and the kinds of quality interactions especially important for younger kids’ development. Before we all throw our…
INSOMNIA, ADDICTION, DEPRESSION, OH MY – April 28, 2022 – Therapists, such as Aaron Sternlicht of New York, say they are seeing an influx of people seeking help for crypto addiction, though treatment is available for only a privileged few. Sternlicht and his wife, Lin, a husband-and-wife therapist team in New York who treat cryptocurrency addiction, said they have seen a roughly 40 percent rise in people from all over the world calling to get their crypto-tailored therapy services. Their services cost $2,500 for a consultation and $25,000 for a 45-day therapy treatment plan that is more intensive than…
VIDEO ONLY – TERRY CREWS HONESTLY IN RECOVERY – April 27, 2022 – Terry explained the stunning impact his addiction had on his marriage, life style and self-esteem. “After my work out I would watch porn from 10am to 11pm…When day turns into night and your still watching … I knew I had a problem.” He reflected that guilt over not being able to stop led to shame which led to further dependence on pornography to drown out the shame and guilt; a vicious cycle common to any addiction. more@YouTube
LISTENING TO CRIMINALS – April 29, 2022 – A remarkable piece of narrative reporting and a sweeping family saga, New Yorker writer Patrick Radden Keefe’s award-winning book about the Sackler family and its role in America’s opioid crisis begins with the seemingly heart-warming tale of three Brooklyn brothers realising the dreams of their immigrant parents by becoming doctors. The Sacklers went on to become one of the richest families in the US – they have an estimated fortune of $14bn – known for their philanthropy and feted for their donations to art galleries, universities and medical institutes. more@TheGuardian
WATCH WHAT YOU THINK – April 28, 2022 – Perhaps the most famous expectation effect is the placebo response, in which positive beliefs about a treatment can relieve patients’ symptoms and accelerate recovery. As Thomas Jefferson noted in 1807: “One of the most successful physicians I have ever known has assured me that he used more bread pills, drops of colored water, and powders of hickory ashes, than of all other medicines put together.” Jefferson called this a “pious fraud.” The benefits of placebos are not just subjective. The brain can release endogenous opioids when we believe that we are…
VIDEO ONLY – EVIL ON THE SMALL SCREEN – April 27, 2022 – “When we found him, his phone was still on-still in his hand”, explained CJ Dawleys’ mother. She continued, “He was so addicted to his phone that the last moments of his life was about posting on social media.” CJ was 17 when he died by suicide, his parents are suing Instagram, Facebook and Snapchat. more@YouTube
SOBRIETY IS BIRTHING – April 26, 2022 – The photographer and director Autumn de Wilde, responsible for the album’s artwork and Welch’s new music videos, was instrumental in creating Florence’s new liberated world. “She is an electric genius,” de Wilde says of Welch. “I started to feel like the record she was making was very honest, very raw and modern, but also rich with otherworldly fantasy. I wanted to create a visual escape-hatch into an ancient fairy tale.” The pandemic was looming when Welch started working with producer Jack Antonoff in New York, having just finished a gruelling tour for…
“The one thing that can solve most of our problems is dancing.” —Happy Birthday, James Brown (May 3, 1933 – Dec. 25, 2006)
BOOK REVIEW: IN SEARCH OF MADNESS – April 17, 2022 – A word of caution for those approaching Professor Brendan Kelly’s latest book, In Search of Madness. If your self-esteem has recently taken a pummelling, do not attempt to read his mini-biography on the back book jacket where his numerous academic degrees and doctorates are listed. The psychiatrist is also a researcher with hundreds of peer-reviewed publications to his credit, as well as a prolific author. You may have heard one of his regular contributions on daytime radio and, if you didn’t catch the name, thought to yourself “who is…
DON’T FORGET YOUR GRAPEVINE – April 18. 2022 – What felt like her unchangeable future proved not just changeable but also hopeful. That PBS moment sparked something within Hong. In 2013, two years after watching that segment on Thailand, Hong hit rock bottom. “Alcohol and drugs will rob you of everything,” Hong says. “It’s an eventuality.” For Hong, it took the loss of her two children—her parents took them under their supervision—and a brutally honest conversation with her mother to see reality. Enough was enough. “I detoxed alone,” she says. “That was really impactful for me because I found myself…
VIDEO – 12 WOODEN STEPS – April 19, 2022 – “It’s kind of amazing how many times I’ve heard the story that [addiction] led them to woodworking,” Hardin said. One tool Hardin still keeps in his shop today is his Lufkin Ultralok 12, a tape measure his grandfather gave him, along with a bag of other tools, when he got his first apartment. “Unfortunately, I can’t use it anymore,” Hardin said as he rubs the tape measure back and forth between his hands. “I’m just afraid to completely destroy it. I would say this was my introduction to woodworking.…
A DECADE WELL SPENT – April 19, 2022 – ‘10 yrs ago today I took my last alcoholic drink. Not a sherry trifle since and it’s been the best decision I ever made. It changed my life and the lives of everyone I love and who loves me.’ She went on: ‘I self medicated for years and the memory of those times haunt me. Guilt and shame are very different. Guilt is something most of us have. Especially mothers. ‘Shame is another animal. It took me years to overcome and I still have nightmares that take me days to recover…
VIDEO – FROM SAUCE TO SPORTS – April 19, 2022 – For him, sobriety is a daily process. “Fourteen years, three months, and three days,” Dodd says. “I was 48 when I got sober.” Dodd shares his elite level marathon knowledge to a new generation. “I qualified as an 18 year old for the Boston Marathon, which is extremely rare,” Dodd says. “And then ran it as a 19 year old. Milwaukee Lakefront Marathon I ran two hours and 19 minutes, and 38 seconds, which is my personal best time. For those that might not know, that’s under 5…
FAMILY TIES – April 20, 2022 – By 24, Lisa was no longer in a relationship and started drinking more. The drinks allowed her to forget about her ex-boyfriend and feel free of any thoughts that would bring her down. It was at that point that she committed to a relationship with alcohol. Not long after, she was introduced to crack. Her mom, whom she was living with at the time, saw that Lisa had a problem and suggested a detox program. 1993 was when Lisa entered her first recovery program and was introduced to Samaritan Inns, a D.C.-based nonprofit…
LET THE HEALING BEGIN – April 19, 2022 – In 2010, there were about 21,000 overdoses involving opioids in the U.S. By 2020, that number had ballooned to 68,630. And during the isolating, stressful, and financially devastating COVID-19 pandemic, almost every U.S. state reported “a spike or increase in overdose deaths or other problems” related to opioids, according to the American Medical Association. The opioid crisis has been with us for decades because pharmaceutical companies aggressively and untruthfully marketed these pain relievers to the medical community as a relatively safe option with a low risk of addiction and abuse.…
HOW LONG DID THAT LAST? – April 20, 2022 – Before I share how my “No Marijuana March” went, let me make a couple things clear: I love weed (still do), and I am certainly not condemning anyone who partakes in daily weed use. The taboos around marijuana are heavily racialized, as are the laws. This has made it difficult for many Black people, especially women, to speak openly about marijuana use for fear of being judged more harshly than our white counterparts. There are plenty of benefits to using marijuana in its various forms; if it helps you,…
THE MUSE NEVER LEFT HIM – April 18, 2022 – Keith Urban says he’s “lucky” that his music and creativity remain unaffected by his sobriety now 15 years later. He told the Sunday Times, “I’m glad it didn’t change anything about my music. I wrote plenty of hit songs while drunk. I wrote plenty sober. I feel lucky it hasn’t defined my creativity.” Keith entered rehab for the second time in his life while newly married to Nicole Kidman at her insistence during an intervention. He ultimately realized he “had to find a different way to be in the world,”…
THE ROAD TO SOBRIETY – April 20, 2022 – The Buddhists say the odds of being born a human is the same as if there was a single round life preserver floating in the Pacific Ocean and every 100 years a porpoise popped his snout out of the ocean and happened to pierce the space in the life preserver. Those are the odds of being born a human on planet Earth. If you were one of those lucky individuals who could reign in the excess when the masks came off and the world reopened, as it is written in the Big…
WHO CAN TELL? – April 21, 2022 – Suicides and drug overdoses can happen in clusters when people become desensitized to death, says Connery, who’s also the clinical director of McLean Hospital’s Division of Alcohol, Drugs and Addiction in Belmont, MA. For example, when someone dies by suicide, it increases the risk that their peers will do the same thing because of exposure to it. This is especially true when other members of the group are faced with similar stressors like war, community violence, poverty, and exclusion. Accurate real-time surveillance data would help identify people at risk, Connery says.…
VIDEO – WWJD – April 19, 2022 – “The state successfully argued that early termination could not be considered until resolving the alleged probation violation. Judge Souto then heard testimony from multiple witnesses, reviewed materials gathered from Teen Challenge, and then ruled that HEVIA had violated the conditions of her probation. However, HEVIA was afforded the opportunity by both the state and court to continue her probation and complete drug treatment at another facility. HEVIA refused, stating she would prefer to end her probation by serving time in jail.” In a hearing on April 6, the pastor and another employee…
MIDNIGHT IN AMERICA? – April 22, 2022 – A source told Mid-Hudson News that the students were reported to be suffering from a reaction to a drug that they had ingested. Poughkeepsie City School District Superintendent Dr. Eric Rosser told Mid-Hudson News that “The district is investigating an isolated incident in which three students required medical attention after ingesting a substance.” Rosser noted that PMS staff and district officials are working with the families of the affected students as part of the investigation. more@MidHudsonNews