Author: Leonard Buschel

WATCH – FOREVER GRIEF – May 6, 2021 – She said she has struggled with her own mental health and addiction issues and said more resources need to be made available to help both adults and kids struggling with substance abuse. “She grew up way too fast and I wish I could have helped more but unfortunately, I tried my best but given my circumstances and my problems, and the fact that I haven’t gotten help for my problems my whole life, it really didn’t give me the ability to help her,” Londono said. The BC Coroners Service is still…

AND NO MORE SUNRISE DESPERATION – May 4, 2021 – What was your sex life like before you got sober? TAWNY: My sex life was very performative. It was for the other person. I had fun and it felt good—don’t get me wrong—but I was more concerned with pleasing the other person than figuring out what I actually wanted. What were your initial conceptions about what sober sex was going to be like? TAWNY: I thought sobriety was going to be the worst thing ever. I thought, ‘I’m not going to have any friends. I’m never going to date again.…

WATCH – CHEERLEADERS FOR SOBRIETY – May 6, 2021 – Max Hyde- 2 days agoAs an opioid addict of 10 years, I survived Covid by finally getting clean. Got some Kratom from a local head shop, used that lightly instead of taking opiates, and eventually weened myself off of the Kratom. I’ve been an addict since I was a child so if I can do it, you can too… Adrian G 2 days ago I almost became an alcoholic during covid. No job, very little drive and confidence. I hope to return to a fully functioning and hopeful human being…

MUSICAL EXPRESSION – May 7, 2021 – Lerner enrolled in the Frost School of Music at the University of Miami to study hip-hop. But college brought its own pressure, and Lerner began to self-medicate, turning to alcohol and marijuana. After a wisdom tooth extraction, he developed an addiction to oxycodone, and then to cocaine and heroin. At the same time, Joshua Sherman, a physician based in Vermont, was working with addicts and speaking out about the opioid addiction problem. In October 2018, Sherman, who also owned Old Mill Road, a Vermont-based media company, was building a recording studio in Arlington.…

WATCH – WHAT WAS THEIR FAVORITE TV SHOW? – May 6, 2021 – Craig Johnson, chief deputy sheriff at the Wise County Sheriff’s Office, told Newsweek in a Thursday email that the investigation is “on-going” and that authorities couldn’t provide further information at this time. “As far as the Melton’s church attendance I’m not certain which church they attended. There are two churches [within] walking distance of their home, and several more only a very short drive away,” Johnson added. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said last month that drug overdose deaths have surged during the coronavirus…

FAKE IT ’TIL YOU MAKE IT – May 05, 2021 -When I tell people I have an anxiety disorder and ADHD, I still often wonder if they believe me. While society as a whole has taken some important first steps toward destigmatizing mental health disorders, a greater willingness to speak openly about neurodivergence has also opened the door for critics who speculate that these disorders are over-diagnosed or that some people are self-diagnosing as a way to pathologize normal feelings of insecurity, angst, or lack of focus. And some have been accused of falsely claiming anxiety or some other mood…

GREED KILLS, GREED KILLED – May 6, 2021 – Before Richard Sackler—father of David Sackler, who’s married to Joss—became president of Purdue Pharma, he played a central role in the company’s launch of OxyContin in 1995. In 2019, New York attorney general Letitia James described the drug as the “taproot” of the health crisis. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, nearly 500,000 people have died from an overdose involving an opioid between 1999 and 2019. For years prior, beginning with Richard’s father, Raymond, and uncles Arthur and Mortimer, the Sacklers occupied a simultaneously prominent and mysterious position:…

SOBRIETY IS A GIRL’S BEST FRIEND – May 2, 2021- But when she was 26 years old, a phone call with her father made her realize the “living hell” she had put her family through. That’s when she decided to reach out for help. Liller’s story is one in a widespread opioid crisis that has gripped the US since the late 1990s. Since 1999 the number of drug overdose deaths has quadrupled, with nearly 500,000 people dying from an overdose involving an opioid between 1999 and 2019, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. An estimated 1.6…

“I don’t do drugs, I am drugs.” —Salvador Dali, Born May11, 1904

WATCH – MODERN DAY SOPRANOS –  Watch on May 10 – Exploring the origins, extent, and fallout of one of the most devastating public health tragedies of our time, with half a million deaths from overdoses this century alone, the film reveals that America’s opioid epidemic is not a public health crisis that came out of nowhere. With the help of whistleblowers, newly leaked documents, exclusive interviews, sobering testimony from victims of opioid addiction, and access to behind-the-scenes investigations, Gibney’s exposé posits that drug companies are in fact largely responsible for manufacturing the very crisis they profit from, to…

by Ahbra Kaye Yesterday, May 4th, the Addiction/Recovery eBulletin had the opportunity to be part of a groundbreaking, well, groundbreaking. The Betty Ford Center in Rancho Mirage begins construction of a $30 million addition that will add 66 beds and create a new Day Pavilion for IOP and family groups. The construction will begin next week and is expected to take four years to complete. The two-hour car drive from headquarters in Studio City to Rancho Mirage was especially poignant for AREB publisher/editor, Leonard Buschel an alumnus of Betty Ford. “The BFC campus provided me with an atmosphere where I…

CANADA DOES IT FOR FREE –  April 29, 2021 – Naloxone is not a new drug. It was first patented in 1961 as a medication to reverse the common side effect of constipation in patients prescribed opioids, but was approved by the Food and Drug Administration for overdose reversal in 1971. The original patent expired long ago, so today the generic version only costs around $20. But new delivery systems—like the auto-injector and the nasal spray—have allowed for new patents, of which there are currently seven, with the auto-injector and nasal spray not due to expire until 2035. In effect,…

MEDIA: FILM REVIEW – April 28, 2021 – What sets “Four Good Days” apart from the many other films of its ilk are Close and Kunis, who sharpen and elevate its well-worn contours with vivid performances that are honest and grounded. These are characters you can connect to, on both sides of the equation. A new drug therapy — the “opioid antagonist” Naltrexone, which promises to block the effect of opiates with a monthly shot, taking away the high that feeds addiction — beckons. There’s only one catch: Molly can’t start taking it until her system is completely free of…

STICK WITH THE WAFERS –  April 28, 2021 – “Parents establish norms around drinking in childhood and adolescence and their attitudes and behaviour can influence their offspring’s use. What our study has shown is that parenting style – either warm or controlling – could be a far more important, and controllable factor, in people’s propensity for alcohol problems later in life than whether they allow their adolescent’s access to alcohol or whether they drink or not,” he says. “Alcohol misuse is a preventable source of social physical and psychological harm that typically starts in adolescence. So this is a critical…

OR MAKE AN EGG –  April 27, 2021 – “Adding our 3-minute treatment protocol to the list of growing solutions available to our provider partners expands the platform nature of this life-changing technology,” Hadar Levy, Senior Vice President and General Manager of BrainsWay, said to the press. “Many patients and providers can benefit from significantly shorter treatment sessions, and our theta burst protocol can provide these patients with another option to manage their treatment resistant depression.”1 In their application to the FDA, BrainsWay submitted safety and efficacy data from a study that enrolled 146 participants with MDD who received either…

WATCH – AMERICAN DEATH MARCH – April 26, 2021 – “I really don’t see our workload going down significantly for 2021,” added Dr. Jim Caruso, the chief medical examiner in Denver. “The first couple of months of 2021 look just like 2020. The numbers are there. We’re still seeing these fentanyl-laced pills at the scenes.” According to the CDC data, places like Florida, Louisiana, Kentucky, West Virginia, and Washington D.C. have all seen their overdose numbers rise by more than 40 percent in 2020. The only state that has not seen its numbers rise over the course of the last…

LISTEN – ERASING STIGMA WITH ART – April 28, 2021 – VOLKOW: I’m a painter myself. And I was struck by the intensity of his images. HAMILTON: When the scientist and the artist finally met, they found they had a lot in common. STOEHR: We are coming at this problem from the same place. HAMILTON: Both are determined to change society’s view of addiction, Volkow with science, Stoehr with art. Stoehr says he wants his paintings to provoke the sort of conversations that people began having about HIV/AIDS decades ago. STOEHR: You had writers and artists and playwrights and poets…

WATCH – SKETCH NOT SKETCHY – April 27, 2021 – The staff at the Walker Center said their focus this month is on spreading awareness and reducing the stigma associated with alcohol addiction. They offer outpatient treatment in Twin Falls and inpatient treatment in Gooding for drug and alcohol addiction. The center said they have seen an exponential increase in alcohol use during the COVID-19 pandemic. We have our highest level that I can remember in being here in the last 6 and a half or 7 years being referred to a residential or hospitalization for their alcohol use,” said…

LISTEN – LET THE HEALING BEGIN – April 27, 2021 – “Some physicians actually don’t want to prescribe it because they don’t want to go to the extra burden of doing the training,” says Dr. Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse. “So this will increase the number of people that can be treated. And buprenorphine is probably one of the most effective ways that we have for preventing people from overdosing from all of the opioids that are out there in the black market, which are actually quite dangerous.” More medical practitioners are being allowed to…

MORE IS BEING REVEALED – April 15, 2021 – The central theme of attachment theory is that caregivers who were nurturing, responsive, and available to the needs of their child allowed them to feel secure, thus creating a secure attachment style. However, children whose needs were not met consistently, or ever, go on to develop one of the three insecure styles of attachment. Additionally, Bowlby believed that the way children bonded with their primary caregivers in childhood continued through life and impacted future relationships. As children grow, they begin to form bonds with their caregivers. Rudolph Schaffer and Peggy Emerson…

WATCH – JUST SAY WOOF! – April 28, 2021 – A former police dog in Australia has rocked TikTok with the reminder that law enforcement is never off duty after the pup’s concerned reaction to hearing the word “cocaine” went viral. Davey Rutherford recently lit up the internet by rattling off a shopping list to his German shepherd Dante in a quick clip – and filmed the dog’s reaction to the name of the drug. “Just kidding,” Rutherford joked, captioning the clip “Sniffer dog knows English.” The footage, first posted in March, has since been viewed over 2.6 million times…

NO MORE FENTANYL!!! – April 29, 2021 – The addiction researcher Carl Hart argues against the distinction between hard and soft drugs. Hart, who was one of the first Black scientists to attain tenure at Columbia, cut a charismatic figure. He had an easy authority in talking about the human and pharmacological experience of drug use, describing it in a way that turned an audience’s expectations on its head. Recounting the Rat Park experiments of the seventies, which allowed rats to press a lever for a drug, Hart explained that rats raised and kept in isolation consumed greater quantities of…

MEDIA: BOOK REVIEW – April 30, 2021 – So many of her family members — her parents and her children, a brother and former husbands in particular — were addicted to drugs and alcohol, as she was, and were in and out of prisons, rehab centers and other institutions. One husband, a biker who spent three years in prison for a crime that is not specified, made methamphetamine in a lab, stabbed a driver in a road rage incident and was so terrifying that Lillian escaped from the house without telling him where she was going, even though she was…

WATCH – MILLION DOLLAR FAMILY – April 30, 2021 – Eklund also thanked MDLNY for allowing him to be his most vulnerable. “The miscarriages, having the kids, getting married … all of these things leading up to even this season where I’m also sharing personal stuff, those are risky and very kind of scary things to share with cameras,” Eklund explained. “The more I’ve shared, the more vulnerable I’ve been, the more I’ve grown from it. So I’m very grateful to the process, to the show, to the producers and to the network for allowing me to be me, and…

WATCH – REALITY UNWRAPPED – April 29, 2021 – After 2020, like many others, she’s found benefits of slowing down as well. “I now realize that pausing is important, to take a moment to reflect and know that my perception of how I see things to be and reality aren’t always the same. Sobriety has given me the gift of pause and clarity.” During the Season 15 premiere of the hit Bravo show, Windham-Burke admitted, “I don’t know if it’s divine intervention. I don’t know. But for the first time in my life, I can say, ‘My name is Braunwyn…

WATCH – CAN A PICKLE EVER BE A CUCUMBER AGAIN? –  April 27, 2021- “I don’t know why my nervous breakdown happened at the end of the lockdown, I made it all the way through, everything was great, and my life was perfect,” she told the outlet. “I’m that girl that when everything is going great, I need to f— it up a little and make everything a little bit worse in my life.” Despite the relapse, the former Fashion Police star is keeping her head up and learning from the experience. “This is something I am going to battle…

STICK WITH THE WINNERS! – May 4, 2021 – Bobbi-Jo Reed is a person in long-term recovery with 25 years of continuous sobriety. She has provided safe, transitional housing for thousands of individuals over the past 19 years. Her passion in life is helping those suffering with substance use disorders. She is the Founder and CEO of Healing House, Inc. in Northeast Kansas City, MO; the ministry currently houses 200 adults and 30 children. She is Chair of the Kansas City Recovery Coalition, member of the Missouri-Division of Behavioral Health State Advisory Council, a Mental Health First Aid instructor, Trauma…

INNOCENT UNTIL PROVEN GUILTY AS SIN – May 1, 2021 – Why is the trial in West Virginia? A year and a half later, Cabell County, which filed its lawsuit in 2017, will argue that the drug distributors failed to refuse and report suspicious orders as the county was inundated with opioids. From 2006 to 2014, there were more than 81 million prescription hydrocodone and oxycodone pills distributed in the county, enough for 94 pills per year for every man, woman and child. The epidemic fueled by the influx of pain pills has devastated families, spiked crime rates and strained…

GOVERNMENT OFFICIAL FOR SALE — May 2, 2021 – Purdue Pharma’s sale of OxyContin, a formulation of the narcotic oxycodone that was said to slow down the release of the strong painkiller when taken as prescribed, has been associated with the rise of the opioid crisis, according to a trillion-dollar lawsuit filed by nearly all US states. OxyContin was the “most prescribed brand name narcotic medication” for treating moderate to severe pain by 2001, according to a report by the US Government Accountability Office. Deaths from prescription opioid overdose quadrupled between 1999 to 2019, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recorded 247,000 deaths…

ONLY SEVEN? – April 29, 2021 – As children of entitled parents grow up and imitate their parents’ behavior, they may have difficulty finding or keeping jobs. “They have not been taught that hard work begets privileges, so they are not accustomed to having to earn things,” said Becky Stuempfig, a licensed marriage and family therapist. “They may be reluctant to get jobs or attempt to cut corners in the workplace. They may struggle with holding down stable employment because they often do not live up to expectations and believe they simply deserve a paycheck without putting forth the effort…