IT STARTS RIGHT NOW – Mar. 18, 2022 – How long would it be, I wondered, until they would be repeating some version of this refrain? Just moments before, I had listened to a whole different storyline unfold. Two girls, each around 10 years old, were sitting near me on a rock ledge out in the water. One friend was tearfully telling the other that there was a girl at school who was calling her “fat and ugly.” The listening friend was outraged and indignant. “She’s so mean! Ooooo…oh, I, uhh! She’s gonna be sassy? Well, then when I…
Author: Leonard Buschel
AND ALCOHOL MAY TRIGGER ALCOHOLISM – Mar. 18, 2022 – “In this first study of patients randomized to obtain medical marijuana cards, we learned there can be negative consequences to using cannabis for medical purposes. People with pain, anxiety or depression symptoms failed to report any improvements, though those with insomnia experienced improved sleep.” Particularly disturbing to Gilman was the fact individuals with symptoms of anxiety or depression — the most common conditions for which medical cannabis is sought — were most vulnerable to developing cannabis use disorder. CUD symptoms include the need for more cannabis to overcome drug tolerance…
VIDEO – SOBRIETY AIN’T NO “PULP FICTION” – Mar. 18, 2022 – Jackson was addicted to crack cocaine during in the early years of his marriage and career. He said his addiction defined relationships with his family and it emotionally separated them even when he was physically present. “I had basically moved into the basement of our brownstone,” he said. “I was like the troll in the basement, and every now and then I’d come upstairs and hover around to do something. I was addicted and being crazy.” “I’d sit there and smoke crack while I listened to the…
VIDEO – SO CAN ONE LINE – March 18, 2022 – “In less than 12 months (in 2021), DPS crime labs took in 500 submissions of fentanyl. DPS also seized in one year, 288 million lethal doses of fentanyl in Texas,” said Texas DPS Trooper Jason Taylor. Taylor said fentanyl is an indiscriminate killer, which is coming into Texas at an alarming rate as dealers use it to counterfeit pills. The pills contain toxic levels, and are killing Texans. “Texas DPS has troopers seizing the substances roadside. Special agents are conducting long-term investigations. Many of those are assigned to HIDTA…
WHO’S LAUGHING NOW? – March 18, 2022 – “I didn’t know what to do with myself,” Griffin admitted. “I was just such a crazy workaholic, and all of a sudden, I had this time on my hands, and then I was depressed, and things just weren’t looking up. It just came to a point where I was convinced that I had a good run on this planet and now it’s time for me to go,” she went on. “It’s been good. I’ve done a lot of great stuff and so you know, it gets pretty crazy.” Griffin first opened…
ADDICTION IS BIG BUSINESS – Mar. 18, 2022 – David Sarabia had already sold two startups by age 26 and was sitting on enough money to never have to work another day in his life. He moved from Southern California to New York City and began to indulge in all the luxuries his newly minted millionaire status conveyed. Then it all went sideways, and his life quickly unraveled. “I became a massive cocaine addict,” Sarabia said. “It started off just casual partying, but that escalated to pretty much anything I could get my hands on.” At one particularly low point,…
VIDEO – CLEAN LIVIN’ – (register for free to read full article) Mar. 18, 2022 – Speaking to The i, Doherty said: “Once lockdown happened, it was a nightmare trying to get back [to the UK]. Plus, I had a driving ban, and I was on probation anyway. And also, I was f***ed physically. All these things pointed me towards giving it a go and making a clean break. So I did it, and just stuck to it. “It was a big, big switch,” he continued. “It took me a long time to get my head around, just the idea…
NO MATTER WHAT – March 16, 2022 – “He was totally against taking opiates because he had been sober for decades,” the source also said. Hurt’s friend told the Daily Mail that the actor sought out alternative treatments because of his sobriety. “And he had been doing really well for so long,” the friend said. “He even did a couple of movies in between all of this.” Hurt, who won his best actor Oscar for the 1985 film “Kiss of the Spider Woman, died at his Portland, Oregon home, surrounded by his family. His oldest son, Alexander Hurt, told the…
TAKE A STAND, AND THEN STAND THERE – March 16, 2022 – Many people start to feel off-balance when they’re dealing with too many worries or responsibilities. Again, let’s consider the example from earlier; it’s relatively common for someone to lose control over their work-life balance. They’re spending too many of their day-to-day hours on work without giving themselves adequate time to relax and wind down. This cycle can trap anyone in a near-constant state of tension and disarray. They might even begin neglecting their own health. But work is far from the only responsibility that can lead a person’s…
AND SHE DID IT – March 13, 2022 – She added that, as a mother to two daughters — Isabella, 5, and Sophia, 3, whom she shares with husband Brendan Rooney — there were times she felt alone despite being surrounded by others. “You can still feel very isolated even if you have a lot of people around you because it’s your responsibility as a parent to love your children and to keep them kids as long as possible. I really believe that. If everyone knows me from talking about being a child actor, I want my kids to…
VIDEO – WITH DREAMS – March 13, 2022 – Here’s a way to stop your mind from repetitively listing all the things you need to do (or haven’t done), but it only works if you do it before you hit the sack. “Don’t worry in bed. Schedule a ‘worry time’ — a period of time outside of the bedroom, outside of sleep, to worry about the things that naturally creep in your mind at night,” said sleep specialist Dr. Raj Dasgupta, an assistant professor of clinical medicine at the Keck School of Medicine at the University of Southern California. “Write…
PAGING DR. TIKTOK – Mar. 13, 2022 – Combined with other social media posts and sketchy Google search results, the proliferation of drug ads on TikTok can convince kids to diagnose themselves with conditions they may not actually have, according to University of Colorado psychiatrist Dr. C. Neill Epperson. “I hear parents say, you know, my kid comes to me and says, ‘I think I have ADHD, PTSD, bipolar disorder, etc’… they’re like, where is my kid getting this?” Epperson told The Post. “‘Where are these diagnoses coming from when I haven’t taken my child to a mental healthcare…
WAIT FOR NETFLIX – March 15, 2022 – The film’s eponymous protagonist, Leslie (Andrea Riseborough), became a household name in her small Texas town when she won the lottery. That fame quickly turned to notoriety when she spent much of that cash to fuel her alcohol problem. The film takes place in the years that follow, after she left her teenage son and started living on the streets. We begin with an emotionally fraught reunion with her now-adult son (Owen Teague), which ends when he discovers she has been drinking again. Over the course of her journey that follows, a…
CELEBRITIES 12th STEP TOO! – March 16, 2022 – “My experience is that when you feel you are alone, that’s a very scary feeling,” Curtis said about her decision to reach out to Stanfield in 2021 to support his sobriety. “So what I was trying to say to him was, ‘You are not alone. And if I can be a source of comfort or understanding, then I hope you will allow me to do that.’” Stanfield took Curtis up on her offer and the two starting having text exchanges more regularly. “She asked me, ‘How old are you?’” Stanfield said…
DON’T PUT YOURSELF DOWN – MARCH, 2022 – Researchers studied 10 locations around the country, and found xylazine was involved in 6.7% of overdose deaths in 2020, compared with 0.36% in 2015. Almost all xylazine overdoses also involved fentanyl, STAT reports. Experts say they are concerned that xylazine – a sedative – can increase the risk of a fatal overdose when combined with fentanyl because it can worsen the slowed breathing that opioids cause. Xylazine also may make it more difficult to reverse overdoses using the opioid overdose antidote naloxone. Study author Joseph Friedman of UCLA told STAT that…
DON’T DRINK – March 14, 2022 – The No. 1 rule, according to Ginger Blair, LMSW and Certified Addictions Counselor with more than 40 years of experience in behavioral medicine, is this: Plan, plan, plan. “Communicate with your travel partners ahead of time about your parameters and boundaries,” she says. Blair recommends working out codewords and agreements. My wife and I have a code we call Green Light, Yellow Light, Red Light when we’re out in situations where others are drinking: Green means good, yellow means I’m reaching my limit, and red means let’s go. That leads to the next…
BEWARE THE FROG YOU KISS – March 20, 2022 – Riding the wave of greater mainstream acceptance of psychedelics for treating mental disorders and addiction, a fast-growing retreat industry is touting the potential of the toad’s secretions. People pay anywhere from $250 for a ceremony in the East Texas woods to $8,500 for a more gilded beachfront setting in Tulum, Mexico, to consume the venom. But in a sign of the unintended consequences of the psychedelic resurgence, scientists are warning that the scramble by users to obtain the toads — involving poaching, over-harvesting and illegal trafficking in arid expanses straddling…
BELIEVE IN SCIENCE – March 15, 2022 – Mice forced to drink water laced with cocaine and alcohol were found to ignore their spiked options in favor of plain water after receiving a skin graft of altered human cells. “The relapse rate is extremely high in the untreated mouse population, where it’s extremely low in the treated population because they have less of the craving,” Ryan Meyers, an MBA candidate at the University of Chicago, told the Chicago Tribune. “They’re not necessarily going to actually look for it.” In humans, a small piece of harvested skin would be grown to…
THAT’S A LOT OF P.T.O. – March 17, 2022 – Heavy alcohol use is associated with missing work, but the scope of that relationship has not been well understood. Now, based on survey data from more than 110,000 U.S. adults with full-time jobs, researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have quantified the extent of the problem. Among U.S. adults working full time, an estimated 9% — almost 11 million full-time workers — met the diagnostic criteria for alcohol use disorder, a medical condition characterized by an impaired ability to stop or control alcohol use despite adverse…
“Silence is the last thing the world will ever hear from me.” —Marlee Matlin
REST IN PEACE – March 8, 2022 – Denial was dangerous for Winehouse because it interfered with her ability to accept the help she needed to meet a challenge she could not overcome on her own. Pride certainly got in her way. She “didn’t wanna have ta” face her alcoholism fully and go to treatment. Virtually no one wants to need treatment. Unfortunately, alcoholics too often turn the realistic need to enter rehab into a battle between themselves and anyone who is urging treatment. This leads to a prideful stance to maintain a distorted sense of power by not letting…
VIDEO – TOO F*#KING TRAGIC – March 7, 2022 – This weekend we lost the fight for my daughter’s life against depression , trauma , PTSD and drug addiction that we have been fighting since we got her back from America through emergency repatriation DFAT but broken . She fought hard against her demons as we all did side by side next to her and picking up the broken pieces over and over again but she could not fight any more and we lost her. As her dad I am proud of her beyond words as she is my…
SKIN AND BONERS – Mar. 9, 2022 – With the help of mental health professionals, Euphoria’s Chloe Cherry has recovered from an eating disorder, but it’s something she’s not sure she would have developed if it wasn’t for her time in the porn industry. Cherry, 24, explained on the Call Her Daddy podcast that she had never thought of herself as fat until that was something “an agent in pornography” told her. “It all started when this agent that I had when I was porn said to my face that I was fat,” she recalled to host Alex Cooper.…
BEING DRUNK AIN’T A CRIME – March 8, 2022 – The twice-daily breath tests are administered by Teton County Sheriff’s Department deputies between 6 a.m. and 7 a.m. each morning and from 9 p.m. to 10 p.m. nightly. Teton County offers remote testing for those who can’t arrive in person for their breath tests. The program operates in five counties: Teton, Sheridan, Campbell, Fremont and Sweetwater. Rules for implementation can vary by county. Any failed test or late arrival in Teton County leads to immediate arrest. Participants go to jail until a hearing is scheduled in front of Teton County…
SEINFELD’S PARALLEL UNIVERSE – March 9, 2022 – The policy, to be announced by Gov. Kathy Hochul on Thursday, is part of a concerted push to assure that early business owners in the state’s projected billion-dollar marijuana industry will be members of communities that have been affected by the nation’s decades-long war on drugs. In favoring those with marijuana convictions and prepping their businesses for turnkey sales, New York appears to be trying to avoid pitfalls encountered in some other states, which have seen designated “social equity” applicants and other mom-and-pop marijuana businesses struggle with issues like lack of…
IN OUR DREAMS? – March 7, 2022 – Drug addiction involves changes in the brain, and those changes are in brain circuits that we use for everyday life—for seeking food and shelter, procreating our species, avoiding things that are aversive and painful, and so on. When drugs initially tap into those systems, they make you feel really good. And then there’s payback. There’s no free ride in the brain. When you overwork the feeling-good circuits, then you engage the feeling-bad circuits—what you would call, in common parlance, a hangover. And hangovers can also evolve into withdrawal syndromes, or protracted withdrawal…
RETURN TO AMISH STAR – March 9, 2022 – “I remember feeling very weird and that was my last [conscious] thought. Half an hour later I woke up surrounded by paramedics … I was suddenly hit with memories of what happened when I was dead. Yes, dead,” she shared on Facebook. “They had to Narcan me twice to bring me back.” The reality star said her survival was a miracle, pointing out, “They only had two Narcan on them; had I needed another, I wouldn’t be here.” Sabrina said the frightening experience shook her to her “core” and “forced…
NOT REGRET THE PAST NOR WITH TO SHUT THE DOOR ON IT – Mar. 9, 2022 – Born and raised in New York City, Peck began performing stand-up comedy as an adolescent before a breakout role on Nickelodeon’s The Amanda Showled to Drake & Josh. “I spent most of my life dying to be typical but I grew up with a single mom, I was overweight and I was a musical theater kid who really had no social status,” says Peck, who recalls being teased relentlessly because of his size. “Comedy was my natural defense mechanism.”But eventually, the actor,…
AUDIO – WOMAN ON THE BEAM – March 9, 2022 – Millions of Americans have a drinking problem. According to the 2019 National Survey on Drug Use and Health nearly 15 million Americans, ages 12 and older, had an alcohol use disorder. There is evidence that alcohol consumption has increased during the pandemic and we know that alcohol use among women has increased dramatically in recent years. Women now drink as much as men. Approximately 95,000 Americans die of alcohol-related causes every year and, of course, alcohol abuse causes many serious problems for those who live with it and for…
VIDEO – THAT’S RIGHT, THE WOMEN ARE SMARTER – March 10, 2022 – NBC 5’s Christian Farr talked to two Chicago area authors who are sharing their inspirational stories through their new books detailing their fight against drug addiction. more@NBCChicago