30 years of extra innings – July 30. 2020 – John also shared photos of a cake shaped like the number 30, a 30-year recovery chip and a table filled with cards from friends and family. The latter photo was accompanied by the caption: “Reflecting on the most magical day having celebrated my 30th Sobriety Birthday. So many lovely cards, flowers and chips from my sons, David, friends in the Program, staff at the office and in our homes. I’m truly a blessed man.” John has been open about his struggles with drug and alcohol abuse — as well as…
Author: Leonard Buschel
TRAGIC! – July 19, 2020 – “I had never even heard of alcoholic ketoacidosis until she died. We’re not sure how much she had been drinking that weekend, but she was not an alcoholic,” he said, according to The Mirror. “She had not eaten enough and it had triggered an acid in her stomach. “It was just so sudden – she didn’t even go to hospital, but had gone out into her garden and passed away there.” According to medical textbook MSD Manual, alcoholic ketoacidosis can cause vomiting, abdominal pain and nausea. “Typically, an alcohol binge leads to vomiting and…
Devastated Nation – July 24, 2020 – His athletic frame became bloated and heavy; his sunny disposition turned lethargic and mean. When he was unable to maintain his law practice, clients left. Although he was admitted to the bar in four states, his licenses expired. His salary trickled down to nothing. The state came after him for back taxes. His wife eventually left, saying he was a liability to their children. Our family life dissolved into a nightmarish cycle of rehabs and relapses. My parents finally cut off monetary support when they found him unconscious in their living room, fresh…
Is anywhere safe from Fentanyl? – July 20, 2020 – Meanwhile, the South, as defined by the US Census standard, is faring better than the Midwest. Out of the 12 Midwestern states, all of them saw increases in overdose deaths except Michigan and Missouri, which each had rates of decrease below 10 percent. The Midwest suffered the nation’s starkest rate increases. South Dakota experienced a 54.4 percent rate increase in overdose deaths, the most severe in the US, while North Dakota’s rate increase came in second place at 31 percent. Efforts there to stem harms that can result from drug…
Four more years! – July 20, 2020 – In 2019, the 42-year-old opened up about his historical past with substance abuse throughout a Q&A, saying (through E! Information): “I wasn’t actually an enormous partier, I didn’t have my first drink till I used to be 17 or 18. And I didn’t smoke pot till I used to be across the identical age.” I engaged these issues comparatively usually in my twenties, I believe,” the “American Horror Story” star mentioned through the discuss with Dr. Judith Grisel, a psychologist who focuses on habit. “It wasn’t till, curiously, that I achieved a…
Found the right match! Sobriety! – July 20, 2020 – These are not the types of things that a person could marshal on their behalf if they hadn’t really taken the steps to turn their life around … tangible evidence, concrete steps that he’s taken. He’s had goals, he’s achieved those goals, he’s moved onto new goals, and moved forward. “His number one goal is supporting his daughter, and tied into that is maintaining sobriety,” says Lynskey. Lynskey also presented to Judge Wilson the assertion that, although Hanson pleaded guilty to setting the fire, the act was not defined by…
WATCH – It ain’t easy – July 22, 2020 – The frustrations of home schooling her daughter while keeping up with her job as an associate dean in marketing at the University of Pennsylvania, and dealing with the pandemic have been stressful enough. But trying to do it all while staying sober has been a herculean task. “Third grade math is too much for me. That was my crying this week,” said Urban, who recently moved in with her fiancé. Her drinking intensified in her late 20s when she became a mother, had a mortgage and took on more senior…
LISTEN – Free Music – July 22, 2020 – “Seventeen years of sobriety happened because I took one step towards God that night in going to that Bible study,” Mattson said. “What I really want the listener to know is that the grace of God is so big that no matter how ridiculous your first step or whatever step you’re about to take towards God is, He meets us right there.” Mattson explained that after he attended the Bible study that night, he got high, and thus some, when hearing his story may not understand the significance of that first…
Cautionary Tale – July 23, 2020 – He told his wife Brooke what had happened and they both decided to move forward and continue Keith’s road to recovery. For twenty-eight days, Keith didn’t have an ounce of alcohol. Unfortunately, things took a dark turn when all of life’s responsibilities caved back down onto him. “I was drinking twelve, fifteen drinks a day, around my kids, pouring vodka into cans of sparkling water,” he said. “I was good at smuggling it in and lying.” If Keith would have had it his way, his alcohol use would have continued as long as…
WATCH – Bottoming out in NYC – July 23, 2020 – Viewers of the show were in awe of Terri as she spoke openly about how she had abused drink and prescription drugs while working in New York. After watching the author, one viewer commented on Twitter: “great interview on @loosewomen just now. I’m in awe of anyone who can speak about their experiences with such strength and positivity. Best part was hearing you say that you *knew* you’d be an amazing mum” “That’s great, Terri. I’m reading your book at the moment. As someone who has/had issues with…
Give it to them! – July 22, 2020 – Nearly 71,000 Americans died of drug overdoses last year, a new record driven in part by fentanyl and other illegal opioids. State and local officials have been handing out naloxone to police, first responders and families of people with a history of drug addiction in an attempt to reverse the multi-decade wave of opioid overdoses. Critics of the practice argue that giving it to pain patients does not address the growing share of fatal overdoses caused by illicit opioids. Opioid medications can be addictive and dangerous even when used under doctors’…
Making a Point – July 24, 2020 – By Ryan Hampton. Before coronavirus, America already faced record numbers of deaths from a different epidemic. Over 350 people died every day from an illness just as deadly as COVID-19. This disease, which is more widespread than any flu, hides in plain sight in one third of all American households. It affects 27 million people, every day. It’s substance use disorder, and it’s killing Americans at record rates. In spite of these overwhelming numbers, policy makers cannibalize recovery funding to plug holes in our fractured health system. The stigma of addiction…
WATCH – Idle hands are the devil’s playthings – July 23, 2020 – “In the meetings, I’m involved in we’re getting new people every week,” said a member. And it’s not just those who’ve lost jobs who are struggling. A reported 10 percent increase has been noticed since the pandemic in people calling for help. The pressures of the pandemic are pushing more and more people towards substance abuse. “Whether you’re dealing with a financial issue, or maybe isolation, or loneliness,” said Sutton. “We know that a lot of people are turning to substances, particularly alcohol as the number…
A Family That Heals Together… – July 26, 2020 – “When I was finally told prison or treatment, I picked treatment and learned my manipulations were no longer going to work for me. As I sobbed about the unfairness of it all, I found God and began a personal journey of redemption,” Randolph said. “When I got out of treatment, I got my son back from my parents and started learning to live life as a productive member of society.” After seven years of sobriety, Jen married Ben and together they used their life experiences to forge an occupation…
Movin’ on up – July 24, 2020 – The city has been using hotels — which have mostly been closed or at reduced capacity during the crisis — as temporary homeless shelters for the last few months, because many city shelters are too crowded to allow people to safely socially distance. Among the local hotels that have been used as shelters are the Belnord Hotel and the Hotel Belleclaire. Rosenthal and Project Renewal say that The Lucerne will have 50 staff members and there will be 18 security guards and two supervisors on duty at each shift, “pending final budget…
WATCH – Health is Wealth – July 23, 2020 – No one is perfect when it comes to their health, but some unhealthy habits are much worse than others. And some habits that start out small can lead to an unhealthy lifestyle—or worse. In this post, we’ll look at 5 of the worst things you can do to your body. Are there any unhealthy habits on this list that you need to break? Sitting Too Much Americans sit now more than any other time in history, with the average office worker sitting 15 hours a day. Even if you…
Full-court press – July 22, 2020 – With her petition, Young Williams’ goal is to bring attention to the disparities in treatment for people of color fighting addiction and to fund the growing need. She says, “Substance abuse doesn’t discriminate by age, gender or race, so why is it that rehabs and treatment centers are seldomly black-owned and have little representation of people of color?” Studies consistently show that minorities with opioid use disorders remain at a disadvantage when it comes to accessing appropriate treatment. A 2018 National Survey on Drug Use and Health shows that 6.9% of African Americans…
And she has a sponsor – July 24, 2020 – Lala Kent acknowledged that she hadn’t discussed the matter with her followers in some time. The 29-year-old first revealed that she was an alcoholic in March of 2019, according to Page Six. The actress had a difficult time after her dad passed away in 2018 and drank a great deal. “It’s important for me to say that this is a disease that can only be self diagnosed. No one got me sober… I got me sober. I made the choice to work hard every day to not pick up…
War on drugs kills three more – July 26, 2020 – A missing Forney mother found deceased in Farmers Branch on Thursday most likely died of an overdose and her two children subsequently perished due to a heat stroke after being left in their car seats in the back of their vehicle for more than a day according to law enforcement officials and the family. Natalie Chambers, 31, was reported missing by family members to the Kaufman County Sheriff’s Office (KCSO) late Wednesday afternoon after she and her two daughters, 4-year-old Izabel and 2-year-old Elise, never arrived at playdate in…
Drugs do not discriminate – July 23, 2020 – In continued observance of National Minority Mental Health Awareness Month, Recovery Unplugged Treatment Centers is examining and addressing the unique factors that lead to and sustain substance abuse in minority communities, as well as the barriers to treatment that they experience. As the country continues to grapple with racial and ethnic tension in multiple areas of everyday life, this tension is exemplified through glaring and persistent disparities in the addiction and recovery landscapes: SAMHSA’s 2018 National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH) estimates that 1.1 million Hispanic/Latino youth used…
He’s got a point! – July 22, 2020 – Kral and Pete Davidson, at the University of California, San Diego, have studied the illegal site for five years and this week published their findings in The New England Journal of Medicine. There have been more than 10,000 injections at the site, whose location is a fiercely guarded secret, and dozens of overdoses — but zero deaths. The findings mirror the results of studies of legal safe-consumption sites in Europe, Canada and Australia. Efforts to open safe-injection sites in at least a dozen U.S. cities have been blocked by U.S. Justice…
He Lives! – July 22, 2020 – Recently on Twitter, Mark Morton shared the details of his previous alcohol and opiate addictions and called out to his followers who were also struggling with addictions of the sort. Apparently, at some point in his 30 years of addiction, Mark gave up on his life and accepted that he was going to die. However, later, he asked for help from those who were also recovering from addiction, which led him back to life again. In his tweet, Mark addressed to his fans and followers who were in the same situation with him…
Hands Off! – July 23, 2020 – Since pornography has moved from physical goods like video cassettes and magazines to digital media shared online, people no longer need to visit a store and speak with a salesperson to access pornography. Additionally, much of the pornographic content available online is freely available. This allows people to find new pornography on a basically limitless basis as more content is uploaded to the internet. Recent technological advances have also made it easier for people to discretely view pornography. For example, whereas previously keeping a computer in the common areas of a family home…
Science friction? – July 23, 2020 – This mechanism also underlies drug addiction and is the reason why hanging out in an environment or with people associated with memories of drug use often leads to relapse. How our brains create this strong association, however, is less clear. Now, new research by Professor Ami Citri and Ph.D. student Anna Terem at Hebrew University of Jerusalem (HU)’s Edmond and Lily Safra Center for Brain Sciences and the Alexander Silberman Institute of Life Science, shows that a relatively obscure brain region known as the claustrum plays a significant role in making these…
WATCH – Everything! – July 20, 2020 – “Why are some drugs legal and others illegal? … if you ask how and why this distinction got made, what you realize when you look at the history is it has almost nothing to do with the relative risks of these drugs and almost everything to do with who used and who was perceived to use these drugs,” says Ethan Nadelmann. In this video, Maia Szalavitz, public policy and addiction journalist; Carl Hart, professor of neuroscience and psychology at Columbia University; Ethan Nadelmann, founder of the Drug Policy Alliance; and Harvard University…
An exciting vision of you! – July 25, 2020 – When AA was founded in 1935 there was no provision for women, let alone women of colour. The universal efficacy of methods drawn from the experiences of white men, with limited scientific backing, have long been called into question, but until recently alternatives have been hard to find. The AA vision of sobriety couldn’t have been further from the truth for me. Sobriety isn’t about sacrifice – the lucidity I’m able to bring to my important moments now intensifies their brightness and hue. I discovered sobriety because I found something…
Too much sake – July 24, 2020 – Before the story tackles such complexities, the tone is light and jaunty, with Romany-style accordion music playing as we meet 8-year-old Saki Tadoroko (Tamaki Shiratori). You can practically hear the laugh track as Saki and little sister Fumi (Yume Morita) find their dad unconscious on the kitchen floor and matter-of-factly call out, “Mommy, daddy’s dead.” It looks like a well-worn routine when their mother, Saeko (Rie Tomosaka), enters the picture and all three females in the Tadoroko household drag him down the hallway. Patriarch Toshifumi Tadoroko (Kiyohiko Shibukawa) is an average working…
“The world is not comprehensible, but it is embraceable: through the embracing of one of its beings.” —Martin Buber
Savage Capitalism Prevails – July 22, 2020 – The billionaire Sacklers who own Purdue Pharma, maker of the OxyContin painkiller that helped fuel America’s opioid epidemic, are among America’s richest families. The July 30 deadline for filing claims in Purdue’s bankruptcy proceedings potentially implicates not just claims against Purdue, but also claims against the Sacklers. The Sacklers may yet again benefit from expansive powers that bankruptcy courts exercise in complex cases. So far, the bankruptcy court has granted injunctions stopping proceedings in several hundred lawsuits charging that Sackler family members directed the aggressive marketing campaign that led to millions of…
Virtual Hugs? – July 15, 2020 – “It’s a good idea because it helps reach people who have challenges getting treatment,” said Scott Rasmus, executive director of the Butler County Mental Health & Addiction Recovery Services Board. “Right now, the majority of our clients, between three-quarters to 80%, are being treated through telehealth.” Those challenges include transportation to obtain treatment as well as coronavirus COVID-19 fears of contracting the potentially deadly virus en route to or at the treatment location, he said. Rasmus said it can be helpful to the client and the therapist, who might also have concerns about…