Author: Leonard Buschel

PRICE? – 2021 – Although related, opioids and opiates are not exactly the same thing. They are part of the same class of drugs, but there are some key differences in how they’re created and how they interact with your brain and body. Opiates are substances naturally derived from a poppy plant. Specifically, opiates come from opium, the white liquid extracted from the poppy plant, Papaver somniferum. Opiates have been grown and processed for thousands of years for medicinal use. These naturally derived active molecules interact with opioid receptors in your brain, which results in pain relief and calming…

Little eJimmy, eBritany, eBobby, eJennifer – July 13, 2021 – “The take-home message is that it’s best to abstain from e-cigarettes while you’re pregnant, if you can,” said lead researcher Annette Regan, an assistant professor at the University of California, Los Angeles. The dangers of smoking during pregnancy are well known, and include increased risks of preterm birth, low birth weight and sudden infant death syndrome. The question is whether e-cigarettes can carry similar hazards. The battery-powered devices work by heating a liquid, which creates a “vapor” that is inhaled. That allows users to avoid tobacco smoke, but they are…

SALESMEN AND LIES AND SALESWOMEN TOO – July 19, 2021 – ALEX GIBNEY: Purdue didn’t have any evidence that the drug was safe, so the company obtained the help of a medical officer at FDA. DR. ANDREW KOLODNY: This is the first time I’ve ever seen this. This isn’t just unethical. I think this could be illegal. PATRICK RADDEN KEEFE: Hundreds and hundreds of sales reps go out and meet with doctors and say, “The FDA approved this.” ALEX GIBNEY: Big Pharma celebrated its marketing muscle, using parties to lure doctors to write scripts. UNIDENTIFIED: This was a new drug cartel. They were drug dealers wearing suits and lab coats. ALEX GIBNEY: Basically, “Here’s some money. Write…

A DOGGONE HAPPY ENDING – July 12, 2021 – Several weeks ago, Brayden Morton was working in his home office when he heard a commotion coming from his gated backyard. He peered out the window to check on his dog Darla, who was lounging on the back deck just minutes before. To his horror, she was gone. He offered a reward of about $4,000 to anyone who could return her home safely or provide information regarding her whereabouts. Morton decided to include the financial incentive — to which a friend contributed an additional $2,000 — because “this is my…

WATCH – AN OFFER THEY CAN’T REFUSE – July 16, 2021 – We have no tolerance for drugs or alcohol — I mean, like, immediate leaving,” Franzese said. Indianapolis has become home. He has a routine and friends. He’s a guy who pulls a guy out from a behind a Panera dumpster and gives him some place to stay and talks to people about HIV and AIDS and goes to high schools and tells them to stay out of trouble. That’s the guy I know,” Lisa Gilbreath said. Reporter Zak Keefer finished his article on John. It went on to…

LISTEN – COLOR BLIND CONSPIRACY? – July 12, 2021 – Craig Elazer struggled all his life with anxiety, a feeling of fear and nervousness. He was never treated for it. So, at a very young age, he started taking drugs and depended on them to calm himself. The addiction, or drug dependency, led him to homelessness and time in prison. Last September, his sister, Michelle Branch, found her 56-year-old brother dead in a poor neighborhood in north St. Louis. She looked down at his body, saying, “Society failed him. And I had a sense that he’d finally been set free.”…

WATCH OUT – CRAWLING OUT OF PAIN – July 14, 2021 – “For us, it’s cool — really cool — because we’re maybe a few people doing that,” Nguyen said. The team is poring over various computer-generated models with a program called Rosetta and microscopes to see how to change the protein into a new drug. So far, the results are eye-opening just like the spiders they’re testing. “It’s already showing promise to be as potent as morphine but without the side effects of opioids,” Yarov-Yarovoy said. This local portion of a National Institutes of Health initiative could take some…

WATCH – NOTHING DEFENSIVE ABOUT THE STEPS – July 16, 2021 – “For me, that’s just like a little reminder … Without my sobriety, I wouldn’t be here right now.” Crosby, selected in the fourth round of the 2019 NFL draft out of Eastern Michigan, poured all his energy into producing a solid rookie campaign. He finished the season with 10 sacks. Then, the season ended. The downtime came. Parties ensued. Drinking persisted. Crosby said he woke one day and realized he could no longer stumble through life. If he was going to pursue his dream of becoming a Pro…

SAFER THAN CIGARETTES? – July 16, 2021 – “In British Columbia, we have a long-standing overdose crisis,” Nyx told Newsweek. “That crisis is actually caused by the failure of the regime of prohibition. A hundred years after all these laws have been imposed, we noticed that there was the production of a very volatile drug market, where drugs have become very unpredictable. “Folks who are using them have been dying in massive numbers, there’s been 20,000 deaths in the last five years. When they go and buy drugs, they do not know what the contents of those drugs are,” she…

“I worry that the person who thought up Muzak may be thinking up something else.” —Lily Tomlin

DEATH, DEATH AND MORE DEATH – July 14, 2021 – Ten states are predicted to have at least a 40% rise in drug overdose deaths from the previous 12-month span, according to the CDC: Vermont, Kentucky, South Carolina, West Virginia, Louisiana, California, Tennessee, Nebraska, Arkansas and Virginia. Volkow, whose agency is part of the National Institutes of Health, calls the data “chilling.” It’s another sign, she said, that both the COVID-19 pandemic and the opioid crisis are whipsawing the country with deadly effects. “This has been an incredibly uncertain and stressful time for many people, and we are seeing an…

FISCALLY SOLVENT BUT MORALLY BANKRUPT – July 9, 2021 – How did the U.S. get into this mess? Massive and rapid deinstitutionalization of people with mental health issues began in the late 1950s for several reasons: partly because effective antipsychotics had been discovered; partly as a humanitarian response to the horrors of the overcrowded “snake pit” state psychiatric hospitals; partly as a cost-cutting method (since mental health was often the biggest and most tempting item in state budgets). The “new approach to mental illness” that President John F. Kennedy called for in a 1963 speech, which resulted in his signing…

CARON STAYS CONSISTENT – July 2021 – Oliver Picher: You each took very different paths to get to your role today. What do you think is the common thread between your two paths? Let’s start with you, Doug. Doug TiemanI would start with purposefulness. Becoming CEO of a significant nonprofit treatment center became a goal of mine in my early 30s, and I really began to develop a plan to get there. Knowing something about Brad’s career since I had a hand in it and was able to watch from the sidelines, I saw a similar purposefulness and planning…

WITHOUT THEIR PANTS ON? –  July 1, 2021 – To get sober, AA teaches people an alcoholic must abandon his or her own ego and self-will and adopt a new mode of living which encourages them to connect with a spiritual higher power and think and act in a way that helps others. AA classifies alcoholism as a disease that involves mental obsession over alcohol as well as a physical allergy that triggers a “phenomenon of craving” that kicks in viciously once one sip is ingested. If one can begin to adopt a new way of life through working the…

TIME TO TAKE THE BUS – July 2, 2021 – Court records said Dr. Abraham would even increase the strength of the medicine despite medical paperwork categorizing one patient as “completely normal,” according to the DOJ. Dr. Abraham’s clinical office was a cash-only business charging patients $400 per visit. Investigators traced his financials to multiple high-end vehicles he purchased and hundreds of thousands of dollars. Those vehicles included: a 2020 Acura NSX, a 2020 Porsche GT4, a 2021 Toyota Supra, a 2020 Chevrolet Corvette, a 2020 Aston Martin, a 2020 Nissan 370Z, a 2020 Chevrolet Camaro, two 2020 Ford…

ADDICTION IS NOT A DEATH SENTENCE – July 2, 2021 – That is when she entered the Bedford County Family Treatment Docket. “I call it my Saturday night epiphany,” Sweigar said. “This has got to change, because I’m literally going nowhere.” The program is one of four across the state specifically for parents dealing with addiction. “It’s a more stringent, more hardcore type program that people seem to find success in when they haven’t found success in other places,” Family Services Manager Tomi Turner said. Turner describes it as a five-phase program that takes about 12 to 18 months. Patients…

13th STEPPING AS A CAREER MOVE? – July 6, 2021 – Hinge didn’t help McLeod find his soulmate — he ultimately married the college girlfriend he was heartbroken over after they reconnected. But the app is now reportedly used by millions. (Hinge declined to reveal its number of daily or monthly active users.) In its growth, Hinge caught the eye of Match Group, which owns some of the biggest dating apps including Tinder. In 2019, Match Group announced that it fully acquired Hinge for an undisclosed amount. “I think a lot of times, success is born out of just…

BOOK REVIEW: ADDICTION IN THE FAMILY – July 10, 2021 – Dr. Louise Stanger is an Ivy League Award winner (2019 Interventionist of the Year from DB Resources in London and McLean Hospital – an affiliate of Harvard), educated social worker, popular author, internationally renowned clinician, interventionist and speaker and an expert on mental health, addiction, process disorders and chronic pain. She is the founder of All About Interventions and is an authentically kind, warm and compassionate person. Addiction in the Family is Dr. Stanger’s fifth book. Her practical, hopeful, and family centric approach provides compassionate guidance that teaches the…

BOOK REVIEW: THE DROP – July 7, 2021 – Then came this: “That many surfers have struggled with drug addiction will probably come as no surprise.” If, like me, you’ve read more books about, say, the origins of the War of 1812 than you have about surfing, this fact likely will come as a considerable surprise, akin to suddenly discovering that America’s Cup winners are notorious for their love of shooting smack. But the evidence is in, and Ziolkowski provides a merciless roll call of surfing’s top-tier, style-setting giants dying of overdoses, getting shot in botched coke deals, being pinched…

WITH 12 STEPS – JULY 6, 2021 – Ron’s gold track pants make a swishing sound as he walks toward me, his right hand outstretched. Tall and skinny with the impeccable posture my mother would love, he’s probably in his late twenties. He yawns and apologizes for yawning while leading me through a maze of hallways to a small room with a twin bed, a chair with initials carved into the seat, a tall dresser—and no door. “Call it a way station,” he says, gesturing from the threshold like he’s revealing a prize on a game show. “As long…

WATCH – METHADONE OR DIE! – July 9, 2021 – “It was working. It was working great, I was able to go to work every day and not be sick. I was able to be productive, like, you know I had hope,” said another client named Jason. It’s unclear who forced the clinic to close or why. Jason said that employees told clients that the D.E.A. forced the medical facility to close. News 4 reached out to the St. Louis office of the D.E.A. and a spokesperson said it wasn’t their agency. News 4 also reached out to the Missouri…

LET MY PEOPLE GO…IN – July 9, 2021 – Many venue owners are, simply, refusing to follow the science for the sake of reassuring their skeptical primary audiences. For example, before COVID, a meeting I regularly attend took place in a senior citizens’ center. Now, that gathering takes place in the parking lot, a clunky-at-best setup considering the group’s size and, of course, dependence on fair weather. We’ve gone from freezing in February to frying in July. Given what we now know about how COVID spreads, the risk to the venue’s core constituency — seniors — in allowing that…

BURNING DOWN THE HOUSE –    July 11, 2021 – The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has stated climate change “may weigh heavily on mental health in the general population and those already struggling with mental health disorders.” Other drastic weather patterns like rising temperatures, droughts and natural disasters combined with socio economic stresses could also have a toll on certain people since some communities rely heavily on agriculture, a report published by the CDC says. According to another report by the American Health Public Association, 25-50% of people exposed to extreme weather disasters are at risk of adverse…

IT’S ALL IN DA’ NAME –  July 3, 2021 – Royce Da 5’9 recently opened up about his battle with alcoholism and his subsequent recovery, during an interview with HipHopDX. Royce says it was in the company of Dr. Dre when he first began drinking. “It was just so many years of just — excuse my language— fucking up,” Royce told the outlet while reflecting on the dark time in this life. He explained: “Just doing bad stuff, doing, making really bad decisions, having myself in situations that quite honestly I just felt like I was better than. It’s just…

EVERYBODY LOVE SOBRIETY – July 11, 2021 – Captioning the video “a lot to celebrate this month. #3years,” Heaton concluded by asking her 190,000 followers to reach out to her if they have experienced something similar. “And you know, message me if any of your are thinking about doing that, any of you are doing that now and need some encouragement, or anything at all,” Heaton said. “Have a great day.” In the comments section, several followers chimed in with their own journeys to quit drinking, ranging from some people counting days to others celebrating decades of sobriety. Last year,…

NONE OF US WOULD BE – July 9, 2021 – “Memaw is not on the road anymore and that’s grief for her and a grief for us and a grief for the fans,” said the 44-year-old. “But she’s still so witty and so very talented, and today, I stand in the power that she has given me.” “To go from getting arrested in the projects and weighing 82 lbs. and selling my body for drugs to now making a record and having people respect me and to stand on the stage with my little boys in the wings watching…

WATCH – ONLY POOR PEOPLE DIE IN WAR –    July 4, 2021 – “The fact that we have criminalized some of these things and used punishment as a form of dealing with it goes along with the stigmatized idea that substance use disorders and addiction are a moral choice,” Chandler said. “What we actually know from many years of science is that substance use disorders are involved in a fundamental change within the brain, and within neural circuitry.” Some experts, like Dr. Kevin Fiscella, a professor at the University of Rochester Medical Center, predict that the number of drug…

HEALING AND HOPE – July 6, 2021 – “Last year I thought of all these moms that I know and all the kids that died from addiction — I said let’s put a book together and we’ll dedicate a chapter to our kids,” she said. Greene reached out to several moms, who reached out to several more in addition to several sisters of survivors. When all the women got together, they came up with the name “Messengers on Missions” (M.O.M.S.) and the book “Ripples: Effects of Addiction” came to fruition. The book contains stories from mostly local families that have…

TWEET NOTHINGS – July 7, 2017 – The simplest definition of an addiction is a habit that you can’t quit, even though it poses obvious danger. How many people have lost their jobs over ill-considered tweets? How can a wry observation, unexamined and fired off during an adrenaline high, possibly be worth the risk? It’s madness. God knows my heroes wouldn’t have gone down this road. Surely Joan Didion has confronted her share of aggravations (cucumber slices not adhering to tea sandwiches; Lynn Nesbit calling during NewsHour; latest Celine sunnies too big for tiny, exquisite face). But would she ever…

MASS MURDERERS ON PARADE – July 8, 2021 – Roger Brunelle Jr, president of the International Union of painters and Allied Trades, District Council 35 in Boston, lost his 26 year old son Brent Hastings to an overdose in 2016. He said his son became addicted after he was prescribed painkillers for an injury. Brunelle became emotional during the press conference and said the deal is a victory for others. “Today I’m not standing here to celebrate a victory because for our families there can be no victory. However, excuse me, what’s happening here today is going a long way…