HE GOES AGAINST THE GRAIN – July 22, 2021 – Krasner contends that his suit could generate more money for the city. The new complaint from Krasner focuses on the settlement agreement with the three major U.S. drug distributors — including Conshohocken-based AmerisourceBergen — in which they’d pay up to $21 billion combined to resolve thousands of lawsuits filed nationwide. The companies, accused of failing to flag suspicious orders of prescription opioids, have denied wrongdoing. Shapiro was part of a small, bipartisan group of state attorneys general involved in negotiating the deal that was announced Wednesday. States now have…
Author: Leonard Buschel
WANNA SMOKE A BOWL? – July 26, 2021 – The proportion of schizophrenia cases linked with problematic use of marijuana has increased over the past 25 years, according to a new study from Denmark. In 1995, 2% of schizophrenia diagnoses in the country were associated with cannabis use disorder. In 2000, it increased to around 4%. Since 2010, that figure increased to 8%, the study found. “I think it is highly important to use both our study and other studies to highlight and emphasize that cannabis use is not harmless,” said Carsten Hjorthøj, an associate professor at the Copenhagen Research…
EVERYONE CAN DO IT – July 28, 2021 – Appearance on The Lateish Show with Mo Gilligan, one person wrote, “Worried about you Lily. I feel like we’ve grown up together and I’ve never see you this thin.” Judging someone’s appearance, especially in a public forum, is out of line even if concern really is the motivation behind it. Plus, as Lily wrote back, “You’ve never seen me two years completely sober, not smoking and exercising every day.” Lily’s whole aura seems to exude contentment and joy lately, and we love that for her. Congrats to the queen of…
THREE POINT VENTE – July 10, 2021 – “There was a point where it was just waiting for the train to crash,” Baker told The Times. “You know how that goes. Like people get into situations like mine where they lose this and they lose that. The next natural story is, ‘Vin Baker, boom. Something’s happened.’ He is a preacher’s son from a small shoreline Connecticut town who was formally introduced to the basketball world in a 1992 Sports Illustrated profile titled “America’s Best Kept Secret.” In the accompanying photo, Baker is flashing a huge smile in his red University…
MAY THE TASK FORCE BE WITH YOU – August 1, 2021 – James Kigar, who co-owned a substance abuse treatment center in Boynton Beach, is fighting 119 felony charges, each count punishable by up to five years in state prison. The 60-year-old Boca Raton man denies the allegations that he “bought patients by paying kickbacks to sober homes.”” more@SunSentinel
LOVE MAKES THE WORLD GO ‘ROUND – July 23, 2021) Restricting the drug supply: One reason people get addicted to drugs is that they have access to them in the first place, via prescription (OxyContin and other painkillers) or on the streets (also prescription drugs, but heroin or fentanyl too). So one part of the solution could be efforts to reduce access to drugs, including reductions in opioid prescriptions, law enforcement efforts to break up and take down drug markets, trade policy, border control measures, and international cooperation. This is not enough to vanquish drugs forever. But a study on…
FALLING OUT OF LINE AND INTO THE DRINK – July 21, 2021 – “He said that there was a suicide attempt involved in that blackout,” Kreitz said on the podcasts. “I had no memory of it, which is really what scared me. Almost losing my life was a big wake-up call for me.” He had suicidal thoughts in the past only when he drank, but never acted on them before that moment. Kreitz said his struggle with alcohol isn’t tied to a traumatic event in combat. His first sip of alcohol was when he was 16, and he blacked out.…
BECAUSE THEIR MOUTH IS FULL? – July 21, 2021 – It’s long been debated in science whether or not food falls under the category of addiction. While food addiction is not formally in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (5th Edition: DSM-5), researchers say it does fall under the category of a substance abuse disorder & behavioral addiction. This is different from a craving, which can be defined as an intense desire for something. But in a study by researchers in the department of psychology at the University of Michigan, scientists say there is such a thing…
NOW YOU CAN PLAY WITH NEEDLES ON THE BOARDWALK – July 22, 2021 – Tibbitt has been so incensed about this supposed syringe “litter”—which the closure of Oasis would, of course, only increase—that he took state officials on a trip to collect his haul earlier in the week. It has been a disappointing and stressful summer for harm reductionists in the Garden State. In early June, Harney, the SJAA lead, was surprised to discover that City Council members were considering repealing the ordinance that allows Atlantic City’s SSP to legally operate. She then thought that she had uncovered a…
WATCH – SCREAMING FOR SOBRIETY – July 29, 2021 – While in conversation with AARP The Magazine, the Freaky Friday actor spoke about her journey towards sobriety which took her 22 years to reach. “I’ve been sober 22 years, off of an alcohol and pain pill addiction,” she said, adding that the “process of being a sober person puts you in the one day at a time mentality.” “Try to stay out of the future and try to forget the past, because it’s over and you can’t do anything about it anyway. Try to live a present life,” she said. …
WHO GOT TO WHOM? – July 27, 2021 – The deficiencies cited in the inspections of the state’s roughly 800 licensed treatment centers actually are violations of state regulations. They come in a wide variety of areas that include “client rights” and “confidentiality” and “fire safety.” Comparing numbers of code violations center-to-center could be vitally important, as the state struggles with a surging drug crisis. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said overdose deaths in Pennsylvania jumped to 5,172 last year from 4,444 in 2019, an increase of 16%. Many families have spent tens of thousands of dollars…
HUNGER AND A COLD DEATH – July 28, 2021 – “During the pandemic, they wouldn’t let us leave the house, you couldn’t go see your family — you couldn’t do anything, really,” he said. “I’m on methadone, and they took me to my clinic and back. Couldn’t go to [Narcotics Anonymous] meetings — that’s a good support system.” Still, he said, life on the street had become even more unbearable than those challenges. “All those problems you face being homeless — not knowing where your next meal is going to be, whether you’ll be sick or well. There’s worse things…
I WILL GO TO REHAB, YES YES YES – July 26, 2021 – “A lot of my addiction was very isolated and on my own, so it’s been nice to be around women who are also in the same position as me and we really do come together and support each other.” The house has communal spaces where women take part in music, yoga and art therapy and daily check-ins where they can share their thoughts on how recovery is going. It also has a number of self-contained flats with their own cooking and living spaces so that the…
WATCH – ONE SWING AT A TIME – July 29, 2021 – Orton organizes weekly play for the group. They often golf at River Oaks in Sandy as well as other courses in Salt Lake, Davis, and Utah counties. “We’ve got more people participating this year than we ever have,” Orton said. Each week, Orton mixes up the groups so golfers get a chance to meet new people in all stages of sobriety, find mentors, and establish a support system. “I think the key to long term recovery, long term success and recovery, is all about community,” said Dylan…
“I don’t have to attend every argument I am invited to.” —Dorothy Parker
A PARALLEL UNIVERSE? – July 28, 2021 – Ten years ago, or even five, an athlete of Simone Biles’s stature might have been reluctant to say that she struggled with pressure, much less to have withdrawn in the middle of an Olympiccompetition. “People might have labeled an athlete mentally weak,” Hillary Cauthen, a clinical sports psychologist in Austin, Texas, said on Tuesday, hours after Biles, the greatest gymnast in history, hadbowed out of the women’s team event at the Tokyo Games, and one day before she said she would also skip the all-around individual competition. But a shift in cultural…
WATCH – WORKING TO MAKE THINGS BETTER – July 24, 2021 – “We had a high increase in relapse because our meetings were shut down,” she said. During the height of the pandemic, the report documented nearly 1,400 accidental overdose deaths caused by methamphetamines. “That means an average of just about four people died every single day from an overdose of meth,” said Barbara Ferrer, director of LA County’s Department of Public Health. “White and Latinx populations are the two most common groups involved in meth overdose deaths,” said Dr. Gary Tsai, division director of the Substance Abuse Prevention…
WATCH – NOW THAT’S A DISEASE! – July 17, 2021 – White is not an outlier. The number of Americans being treated for severe liver disease from alcohol increased during the pandemic, experts told NBC News. “What we’ve seen during Covid-19 is really a dramatic increase in hospital admissions for alcohol-associated liver disease,” said Dr. Brian Lee, an assistant professor of clinical medicine and a liver transplant specialist at the Keck School of Medicine at the University of Southern California. “Because of things like lockdowns or being stressed out at home, people started to drink more, didn’t realize that they…
BEWARE THE FANCY COCKTAILS – JULY 16, 2021 – There are a few biological pathways that lead from alcohol consumption to a cancer diagnosis, according to the study. Ethanol, the form of alcohol present in beer, wine and liquor, breaks down to form a known carcinogen called acetaldehyde, which damages DNA and interferes with cells’ ability to repair the damage. Alcohol can also increase levels of hormones, including estrogen. Hormones signal cells to grow and divide. With more cell division, there are more opportunities for cancer to develop. Alcohol also reduces the body’s ability to absorb certain cancer-protective nutrients,…
SHE’S GOT IT ALL – July 20, 2021 – “We are so proud of you Christy! You were always a role model to me since the 2000s!” one person commented. “One month sober today! Thank you for sharing this,” another inspired fan wrote. “Didn’t know you struggle with sobriety. Proud of you and hope you continue winning,” someone said. The former Disney star opened up about her past struggles with drinking and depression in 2018. “While many witnessed my costar Shia LaBeouf struggle publicly, I have largely suffered in silence,” Romano, who began acting at age 6, wrote in a…
EVERYONE IS SUSCEPTIBLE – July 20, 2021 – It was touring with Soundgarden in 2017 though that Chris tragically took his own life. He was found unconscious in his hotel room in Michigan while on tour with the band in the early hours of May 18 2017, and medics were unable to revive him. Following his passing, Chris’ widow Vicky explained that she believed “something was very off” in the situation surrounding his passing, as he had been sober for many years and certain substances were found in his body by the autopsy. She said: “When we spoke after…
TO BE SOBER…OR NOT TO BE SOBER – July 19, 2021 – Lala Kent slammed Demi Lovato’s “California sober” lifestyle — whose adherents drink and smoke weed in moderation — as “extremely offensive.” “I don’t like to judge, but I actually think that that’s super offensive,” the “Vanderpump Rules” star said on David Yontef’s “Behind the Velvet Rope” podcast Monday. “There are people out there who work their ass off to never take themselves out of reality and to never place themselves in an altered state.” Kent — who has been sober since October 2018 — added that there are…
NO VACCINE FOR THIS EPIDEMIC – July 20, 2021 – If you had told me at any point in the last ten years while my brother, Jeremy, was battling his opioid addiction, that it would end in a St. Louis hospital listening to the beeping of machines, learning terms like anoxic brain injury and diabetes insipidus while a transplant team discussed organ donation, I would have insisted you were mistaken. I would have told you there was no way he would be brain dead by 30 years old. This was the reality, though. On November 11, 2020, I got…
WATCH – BOOK REVIEW: QUITTER: A MEMOIR – July 20, 2021 – With the pandemic came isolation and with isolation came, for some, a greater desire to consume alcohol. Author and journalist Erica C. Barnett joins New Day NW to talk about her book “Quitter” (available here) and the pandemic’s impact on those who struggle with addiction or are in recovery. In her late twenties, her addiction became inescapable. Volatile relationships, blackouts, and unsuccessful stints in detox defined her life, with the bottles she hid throughout her apartment and offices acting as both her tormentors and closest friends. By the time she was in her…
GRIEF IS THE COMMON DENOMINATOR – July 19, 2021- Her death was first announced by Cole’s sister Elite Noel, who shared the news on Instagram, describing her passing as “the worst pain ever … to see my mama in a body bag on her birthday! My heart so f—- broke.” The singer-songwriter has yet to make a public statement regarding her mother’s passing. Cole was adopted at a young age and raised by family friends, according to reports. Her relationship with her biological parents was mostly dysfunctional until her burgeoning music career paved the way for the family to…
WRITTEN WITH STRENGTH – July 21, 2021 – As Suvari tells PEOPLE, that was also an act — an effort to hide the truth about the trauma she’d been living through. In her new memoir The Great Peace: A Memoir, excerpted in this week’s PEOPLE, “Between the ages of twelve and twenty, I was the victim of repeated sexual abuse.” It began in the sixth grade when she was raped by a friend of one of her older brothers, whom she refers to as “KJ” in the book. At the time she was feeling a bit lost, “the new…
WATCH – NARCAN TO THE RESCUE – July 20, 2021 – Five children between the ages of 2 and 10 were found inside a Sylvan Beach home Tuesday morning after police and firefighters responded to an overdose call. State Police responded to the reported drug overdose at 2700 Marina Drive Lot 22 around 2:30 a.m. MORE: Head-on crash leaves one dead and hospitalizes two others in the Town of Lysander. A 26-year-old man, a 46-year-old woman and a 34-year-old man were found unresponsive outside the home, and a 53-year-old man was found unresponsive on a couch inside. more@CNYCentral
BEING OF SERVICE TO THE END – July 20, 2021 – Grace Elizabeth “Bette” Hurst Simmons was born on September 19, 1928, in Evanston, Illinois. She was the daughter of Gordon and Dorothy Hurst and raised in San Jose, California. With a taste for adventure and a worldly curiosity, Bette became a Pan American airline stewardess in her early twenties. After marrying the Pan Am pilot turned business entrepreneur Warren Lewis Simmons and having three children, she settled in Belvedere, California. She was a devoted member of her community, where she raised her boys and watched her grandchildren and…
A SLAP ON THE WRIST AND NO ONE GOES TO JAIL – July 21, 2021 – The agreement, announced Wednesday, lays the framework for billions of dollars to begin flowing into communities across the country for addiction treatment, prevention services and other steep expenses from the epidemic. The deal comes as Overdose deaths from opioids hit a record high in 2020. more@NewYorkTimes
BEWARE OF LICKING ENVELOPES – July 21, 2021 – U.S. Customs and Border Protections (CBP) officers at the Chicago International Mail Branch (IMF) have seen a lot of prescription pills come through the mail – while some are legal, many are not. From January 1 to June 30, officers have seized 14,021 unapproved prescriptions more@CPB