PAIN & GRIEF – April 16, 2022 – Her dad’s addiction “spiraled” after her mom’s death. She lived with her dad and grandmother until she was five years old, and then her dad moved to Arizona; she continued to live with her grandmother in New Hampshire. Her dad moved back to New Hampshire when Guillemette was in high school and spent a year and a half in rehab. During this time, she spoke on the phone with him once a week but didn’t see him in person. When he got out of rehab, he was doing “really really well, better…
Author: Leonard Buschel
SOBRIETY HAS NO BORDERS – April 14, 2022 – Founder of Laqakhaza Iphara Recovery Movement, Emmanuel Msomi, celebrated his NPO’s (non-profitable organization’s) birthday and his seven years of sobriety. “You can live a clean and drug/alcohol free life too,” said Msomi. “You just need the right mindset and must be willing to cooperate because we don’t have time for time wasters as we are very busy trying to help those who want to help themselves.” more@SouthCoastHerald
IT WAS AN INSIDE JOB – April 13, 2022 – Dr. Smith, who this year was promoted to senior partner, did not respond to phone calls or emails seeking comment. One former McKinsey consultant familiar with his work said Dr. Smith’s assignment at the F.D.A. was “very high-level project management” and could not have helped Purdue. The former consultant spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was subject to a nondisclosure agreement. For nearly a century, McKinsey has taken on clients in the same industries, with internal rules meant to prevent trade secrets from leaking to competitors. As McKinsey…
MORE THAN NINE LIVES – April 11, 2022 – It was just really bad I was literally going missing for days. “I wasn’t able to do any work and I wasn’t a functioning human at all, so something had to give. Janet was also asked why it’s vital for her to share her story with fans, after regular posting on TikTok and starring in a BBC documentary titled Janet Devlin: Young, Female and Addiction. “I used to have to look up to Russel Brand, who I love, but he was a 40-year-old man.” Despite being thrust into the spotlight as…
VIDEO – STEPS TO RECOVERY – April 13, 2022 – Weir said she first began experiencing anxiety and panic attacks when she was just 19, shortly after her parents divorced. She went through ‘what was effectively a nervous breakdown’, yet had no idea what anxiety was because it wasn’t commonly discussed at the time. Weir said she turned to alcohol to cope and soon became ‘reliant on booze’, before eventually being forced to address her problem after ‘one messy night too far’. She has since learned to manage her addiction with the help of AA and counselling. ‘I feel…
NOT ENOUGH, BUT THEY’RE TRYING – April 14, 2022 – The drug has been the subject of a number of legislative efforts at both the state and national level. Last year, the U.S. House of Representatives passed HR 2364, also known as the “Synthetic Opioid Danger Awareness Act,” which is awaiting action in the Senate. It calls for efforts to raise awareness of opioid dangers and availability of substance abuse and mental health services. Another House bill, the Stop Fentanyl Act of 2021 was introduced last fall and has been assigned to committee. Earlier this year, California lawmakers introduced…
ITS A LOT TO THINK ABOUT – Why it matters – In recent decades, mental disorders have become increasingly prevalent in the United States and around the world, particularly in young adults and adolescents. Even before the pandemic, 1 in 5 Americans suffered from a mental disorder. The most comprehensive study to date examining the worldwide prevalence of mental disorders projected that 55 percent of Americans will meet criteria for at least one mental disorder over the course of their lifetime. Notably, that study — which was conducted 15 years ago — examined diagnosable disorders. But the prevalence of lifetime experience of clinically meaningful symptoms…
GOD SPEED – April 10, 2022 – A cottage outside Floyd, Virginia, is a tranquil stage-set for Ellen Isaacs to wage one of the longest-running wars of the opioid epidemic: the battle to hold OxyContin-maker Purdue Pharma, its owners and executives, to just account. It’s battle that Isaacs, a former mortgage fraud expert at Citigroup, has been fighting since she and her son Ryan became dependent on OxyContin, Purdue Pharma’s “non-addictive” painkiller that has played a central role in an epidemic that has cost 500,000 lives over two decades. Isaacs is one of just two individuals holding out against…
IS PRISON PUNISHMENT? – April 14, 2022 – U.S. District Judge Christina A. Snyder said Thursday in downtown Los Angeles that the sentencing decision was difficult because she had to balance the good Buck did in his life with “horrific crimes” that she called “more than just an accident.” Gemelle Moore, 26, was found dead of an overdose in Buck’s apartment in July 2017. Less than two years later, in January 2019, Timothy Dean was found dead in the same residence. Prosecutors said after Buck’s conviction that he “exploited the wealth and power balance” between the men and himself.…
TOO MUCH WEIGHT TO CARRY – April 15, 2022 – To Rand, that meant meeting the strict military standards for weight and body fat percentages. At the same time, she was coping with a sexual assault that happened while she was in college. She says the assault affected her eating habits. “You just want to obsess over something other than fear and panic or sadness and guilt,” she says. “So you try to place this moral high ground on food and fitness.” People like Rand, who develop harmful eating habits during their service, have not received much attention from the…
VIDEO – THERAPY FOR ONE AND ALL – April 12, 2022 – Even celebrities aren’t immune to mental health struggles. From The Rock to Jon Hamm to Prince Harry, here are seven famous men who have kept it real about depression. more@FlipBoard
VIDEO – LISTEN AND LEARN – April 7, 2022 – Sam Quinones is a journalist, storyteller, former Los Angeles Times reporter, and author of three acclaimed books of narrative nonfiction. He is the acclaimed author of “Dreamland: The True Tale of America’s Opiate Epidemic.” His career as a journalist has spanned almost 30 years. He lived for 10 years as a freelance writer in Mexico, where he wrote his first two books. In 2004, he returned to the United States to work for the L.A. Times, covering immigration, drug trafficking, neighborhood stories, and gangs. In 2014, he resigned from…
NPR TELLS THE STORY – April 12, 2022 – “So many of our young people are so busy being taught to not use drugs that when they are exposed to them or they’re surrounded by it, they actually have very little information to go off of to keep themselves or their friends safe around the decisions they make surrounding drugs,” says Vakharia. Vakharia and her colleagues have developed a school curriculum called Safety First, which teaches youth about the risks of drug use and how to identify signs of an overdose and how to address it. Pilot studies of this…
AND COSTS LESS THAN A FUNERAL – April 9, 2022 – This new strategy called “contingency management” is similar to several other successful drug prevention programs that use drug testing to confirm qualification for receiving valued incentives, such as continued employment or continued participation in a favored activity, such as school sports. It’s also used in drug courts to qualify for official expungement of a permanent record of drug-related illegal activities. Although often opposed under the influence of lucrative addictive-substance industries, drug testing has been approved by the courts and widely used for decades. The technology has improved to where…
MEDIA OVERDOSE DEATH – April 12, 2022 – The suit, shared with Gizmodo and filed on behalf of Wisconsin teen Christopher J. Dawley by the Social Media Victim Law Center, seeks to hold the two companies accountable for contributing to what it describes as a“burgeoning mental health crisis” in children and teenagers in the U.S. The suit claims Dawley’s January 2015 death by suicide was caused, in part, by his addiction to the “unreasonably dangerous and defective social media products” created by Meta, the parent company of Instagram and Facebook, and Snap Inc, owner of Snapchat. Snap did not…
VIDEO – YOU CAN BE TOO THIN – April 12, 2022 – In the carefully curated Bravo universe, thinness is considered a laudable moral success, and the Real Housewives franchise is ground zero for linking it to aspirational beauty and wealth. The women in these shows don’t shy away from talking about the work they put into their appearances, from glam squads to personal trainers and plastic surgery. But the exorbitantly high beauty standards of being a Real Housewives cast member aren’t met just by healthy eating, staying active, and the occasional surgical intervention. With The Real Housewives of New…
GERALD WHO? – April 15, 2022 – Once back home in Michigan, Ford married and divorced one of her local suitors. To this day, she remains one of only two divorcée first ladies. (Florence Harding beat her to being the first.) Ford’s memoirs suggest that her first husband may have been an alcoholic, and he slipped into a diabetic coma just as she was on the verge of serving him divorce papers. When he recovered, a full two years later, she called it quits. According to Lisa McCubbins’ biography of Ford, she’d later call that chapter in her life the…
“If someone else is paying for it, food just tastes a lot better.” —Gilbert Gottfried
ARE YOU TALKING TO ME? – April 5, 2022 – The use of cell phones has become an integral part of society. While cell phones have many benefits, many people have developed what some researchers consider an addiction to their phones that can have negative effects on well-being. According to some research, roughly 27.9% of young adults are addicted to their cell phones. more@VeryWellHealth
SUMMER HOUSE STAR – April 5, 2022 – Given his sobriety, it may seem shocking that Carl Radke’s jobs include appearing on the crazy partying show that is “Summer House” as well as working as the Vice President of Sales for the hard teas and canned cocktails company Loverboy, per LinkedIn. But that is merely a testament to just how committed he is to his journey. The 37-year-old has always made a point to speak candidly about his sobriety, telling Entertainment Tonight how difficult it is to be surrounded by all the partying on “Summer House” and how he…
VIDEO – MERRY MARIACHI – April 2, 2022 – Christine Varela Mayer, PhD, is the owner of Los Patios and a licensed chemical dependency counselor. Varela Mayer is also the CEO of Blue Heron Recovery, a rehabilitation and recovery service provider at the Los Patios campus. Los Patios is an alcohol-free campus and is also home to public restaurants, a yoga studio, shops and a medical clinic. “We’ve only been in Los Patios for a year,” Varela Mayer said. “We opened up the outpatient treatment center in March of last year.” She dreamed up the idea of Sober Fiesta, where…
TIME TO QUIT? – April 7, 2022 – Less than a week earlier, on March 4, 21 individuals overdosed — 3 of whom died — at a homeless shelter in downtown Austin Texas, after ingesting crack-cocaine and methamphetamine laced with fentanyl. Back in January on the 28th, 10 individuals overdosed — 9 of which died — all on the same city block in Washington D.C. after ingesting crack-cocaine laced with fentanyl. “It was sirens all day long, all night,” a 68-year-old Washington D.C. female resident told Washington Post reporters when she heard about the overdoses in January. “This is usually…
AUDIO – SILENCE IS GOLDEN – April 4, 2022 – Using alcohol as that escape became the reality for many Americans during the COVID-19 pandemic. According to the U.S. National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, alcohol sales skyrocketed by 20% to 40% nationwide. But for Madison, the pandemic provided a vital reset button. During the shutdown, he was able to assess how drinking affected his life. He said booze led him to make bad decisions, from drunken driving to altercations that put him behind bars multiple times. “I haven’t been to jail in about 10 years, but all…
VIDEO – GRATEFUL EVERY DAY – April 6, 2022 – Ryan Christoff said he had known that his daughter “smoked a little weed” occasionally, but had no idea that the sophomore had actually been secretly experimenting with a long list of drugs. “Cocaine, Xanax, Ketamine once. Acid, Shrooms, Adderall,” said Sofia Christoff. “So just pills. Just like everything I could get my hands on.” During that year, she was suspended from school and her grades fell. “I felt stupid that I should have known,” said Ryan Christoff. “I just didn’t think she was doing that.” Sergeant David Cohen of…
HARD SCIENCE – April 5, 2022 – I studied at the University of Pennsylvania for undergrad in the early 2000s before going to Rockefeller University for a PhD in Molecular Biology. I was drawn back to Penn because, not only was it my alma mater, but it was the home of innovative and thought-provoking neuroscience and epigenetics research and the principal scientists leading discovery in the field. It was a place that fostered my love of investigation. There were people on faculty like one of my mentors, Ted Abel, PhD, a former professor of Biology at Penn and now…
VIDEO – DRINKING FROM HER WHEELCHAIR – April 6, 2022 – “I was raised to believe I could keep up with everyone else. And for the first time in my life, I wasn’t able to keep up with my peers. And that sent me in a spiral.” She was hospitalized for suicidal thoughts and even attempted suicide. Then she started to drink. “Because of my disability, my muscles are really tight and spastic muscles, and when I drink those muscles, they relax. And it was a wonderful feeling that I spent my whole life tight and all of a…
ONLY MURDERERS DRIVE DRUNK – April 8, 2022 – A Rialto driver who killed three people during a high-speed crash in Irvine has been sentenced to 30-years-to-life in prison after admitting to causing the DUI-fueled, two-car collision not far from the UC Irvine campus. Jeremy Wayne Greenwood pleaded guilty last week to three second-degree murder counts, as well as a pair of DUI charges, and admitted to a sentencing enhancement for causing great bodily injury in connection with the July 1, 2017 crash on Harvard Avenue at Michelson Drive. Greenwood, now 35, was accused of driving his 2015 Infiniti Q50…
IT WASN’T THE BUTLER AFTER ALL – April 7, 2022 – Clifton police stated they were first contacted by CLSM when the retirement home suspected the former employee of stealing drugs reserved for their residents. Ashley Kay Bidwell, 43, a former nurse with CLSM has been charged with injury to the elderly, state jail felony, and diversion of a controlled substance. She has since been fired. CEO and President of CLSM Rodney Rueter said they have been cooperating with the Clifton police. In their own press release, Rueter said Bidwell managed to pass the Texas Department of Public Safety’s…
THE ULTIMATE DEFEAT – April 7, 2022 – The newly published book, “We Got This, Kids,” is Andy’s story told in his own words. It provides his innermost thoughts about his life choices, his alcoholism, his sobriety, all told in real time. Andy was excited about completing this project and hoped that if it helped only one person it was well worth his efforts. At the time of his death, the memoir was partially finished. Close with his brother and sister, he sent them his journal entries as he wrote them. “He had been sending his real writing to us…
VIDEO – STRONG MEDICINE – April 7, 2022 – Officials say that after Kim was forced to resign in March of 2017 from the medical practice where he was employed due to concerns over his prescribing practices, he operated his own clinic in Tabor City from October 2017 to June 28, 2018. “Kim unlawfully and improperly prescribed opioids and other controlled substances to ‘patients’ who paid $200 cash at each appointment,” a U.S. Department of Justice news release states. “The investigation revealed that Kim often failed to meet the basic standards of legitimate medical care. Kim wrote controlled substance…