WATCH – Making the world a better place… – July 13, 2020 – Professional advice: “The automotive industry, motorsports specifically, is still primarily dominated by men, especially when it comes to leadership positions. The key to success for a young woman wanting to break into this industry is to diversify your skill set to include not only coordination and execution, but to seek key positions that actively contribute to the bottom line and financial gain of the company.” Lesson learned in 2020: “I have learned that effective communication and passion for the product will motivate your employees far greater than…
Author: Leonard Buschel
An inside job – July 13, 2020 – An investigation by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) Rhode Island Task Force determined that using his prison call account and the accounts of others, Gomes frequently called his mother directing her to establish conference calls with Moore and Price. During the conference calls, Gomes directed Ellis, Moore and/or Price to sell crack cocaine to others. According to information presented to the court, Ellis allegedly kept a small portion of the proceeds from the sales for herself and deposited the rest of the money into Gomes’ ACI prison account,…
Druggists do it legally – July 16, 2020 – CVS also agreed to distribute a memo to its pharmacists in the state, highlighting a law that requires them to take action if working conditions in their pharmacies could lead to problems safely filling prescriptions. The memo is to make clear that they are not to face retaliation for documenting and reporting such issues. In a statement, a CVS spokesman said the company agreed to the terms to “avoid the time and expense of a protracted hearing process and to foster a positive working relationship” with the Oklahoma State Board of…
QUITTER: A Memoir of Drinking, Relapse, and Recovery – July 7, 2020 – There are many ways to recover from alcoholism, a key message of “Quitter: A Memoir of Drinking, Relapse, and Recovery,” and even more ways to write about it. Barnett’s account of her climb from hipster wino to memoirist emphasizes the relapse stage. Her challenge was to transform the chaos of a chronic, relapsing brain disease into literature without wearing her reader out. One can stomach only so many descriptions of warm hair-of-the-dog chardonnay. Like many addicted people, Barnett grew up with a high level of what researchers…
WATCH – Home Sweet Homes – July 17, 2020 – Shannon Little Light is the first resident of the Red Woman House, Calgary’s first recovery home for Indigenous Women. “I was couch surfing. I had no home. If I didn’t have anywhere to go it was always my parents’ house and their house was just packed. So there was basically no room for me,” she said. “I didn’t feel like I was getting anywhere in my life.” Little Light is now five months sober. “When I moved in here, I laid on the couch,” she said with a laugh “I…
CVS open 24/7 – July 17, 2020 – To the surprise of many, prescription drug addiction is spiking during this period alongside the use of illegal drugs and alcohol. Looking beyond common misconceptions around drug addiction reveals why. A harmful taboo In its own way, addiction to illegal drugs or alcohol comes with a level of understanding from others. We grow up knowing that drugs and alcohol can be addictive and we’ve seen portrayals of addicted adults in the UK. Whether someone drinking to the point of alcoholism or a person consuming party drugs excessively on nights out, there is…
Still works if you work it – July 17, 2020 – “It’s like no matter where you go – there you are,” Megan said. “And that is why A.A. has meetings worldwide.” Scott had a suicidal breakdown and was drinking to blackout two to three times a week. He has been in numerous treatment centers. When one center included A.A. meetings is when he found “the therapy” he is still practicing today. Scott has been sober for four months and uses spiritual and physical exercise in conjunction with A.A. sponsorship. “There wasn’t this much alcoholism 150 years ago. We are…
Addicted Doc – July 15, 2020 – Hughes, who works at Nebraska Foot and Ankle, has written 63 prescriptions for 4,300 pills for Digilio over the last two years, which drug investigators believe was overprescribing, the sheriff said. After reviewing subpoenaed documents, surveillance and information from confidential informants, investigators allege Hughes wrote the prescriptions to Digilio, who would fill them at a pharmacy before selling the doctor the majority of pills, Wagner said. On Tuesday, deputies watched Digilio pick up a prescription at a local pharmacy, then drive to meet up with Hughes in south Lincoln. Each was arrested during…
Love and Loss – July 15, 2020 – Ian explained how both addiction and grief require a person to work through fear and anxiety. He refers to the unanswered questions that he had after his wife died as well as the feelings of abandonment. Ian turned to sport and wanted to be alone yet his experience of recovering from alcoholism helped him to connect with his emotions and gain support from close friends. Shortly after Vikki died, Ian’s cancer got worse and he wondered about declining treatment. He said: “Vikki was gone … what else was there? And I was…
WATCH – Too Young! – July 19, 2020 – An Annapolis couple thought by sending their daughter to Florida, she would get help from a mental health program, and later, enter a drug treatment program. But now they’re grieving her death and questioning if more could have been done to save her. Jade Kothe, 20, was an alumna of Baltimore School for the Arts and Annapolis High School who aspired to open her own dance studio. She died June 28 in West Palm Beach. She had been living there to receive treatment, according to her mother, Lana Kothe, a fashion…
Walking the walk, coast to coast – July 19, 2020 – People celebrate milestones differently. My wife and I took a cruise to Alaska to commemorate 30 years of marriage. Others do outlandish things while some prefer to keep things quiet and allow self-gratification to be their reward. But Greg Nance has a massive plan to recognize his 3,000 days of being sober – that’s more than eight years. On March 16 of this year, Greg hit this milestone, and he has a big bash planned. But due to the coronavirus, it won’t be until next year. And that’s okay…
Stick with the Winners! – July 14 – Laura Robbins has been active for many years as a speaker and school trustee, and is credited for creating The Buckley School’s nationally recognized committee on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. Her recent articles in the Huffington Post on the subjects of race, recovery and divorce have garnered her world-wide acclaim. She is a 2018 LA Moth StorySlam winner and host of the popular podcast, The Only One In The Room, which is available on all podcast platforms. In 2019, Laura was named the weekly, US contributor for the Italian Newsmagazine, The Daily…
Jailhouse Rock – July 21, 2020 – By John Lavitt When Cliff Brodsky, a successful music producer and songwriter, first met now-imprisoned rehab mogul Christopher Bathum at a 12-Step meeting in 2011, he did not realize he was coming face-to-face with a monster. Indeed, Bathum, a practicing psychotherapist and published author, had a way of charming everyone. With a seemingly model SoCal family of a former actress wife and three lovely daughters, Bathum easily sucked smart and successful people in recovery into his web of lies and deceit. Like so many others, Cliff Brodsky became entangled. Nobody realized that Bathum,…
Easy Money – July 13, 2020 – Universal Health Services, a for-profit public company which runs about 30 psychiatric facilities involved in the settlement, did not admit to any wrongdoing in agreeing to settle. “UHS was eager to resolve this matter to avoid future distractions and the high costs of litigation,” the Pennsylvania-based company said in a statement to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. The company also said it “unequivocally disputes any allegation that it engaged in wrongdoing of any kind. “Investigations of this nature are an unfortunate reality facing the healthcare and hospital provider industry” because they rely so much on…
Zoom Gloom – July 16, 2020 – With Alcoholics Anonymous moving online, gyms closing and support networks being socially distanced, sobriety during lockdown has been harder than normal for many. As we emerge from isolation, writer Danny Vikram Bell describes what it’s been like staying sober during a global pandemic and how he’s still getting through it. The world has never faced anything quite like the coronavirus pandemic. The mysterious ‘flu-like’ illness that appeared in China at the end of 2019 had, by the end of March 2020, put half of the world’s population under some form of lockdown. For…
WATCH – Only Human – July 16, 2020 – But if statements like this are all you’re hearing from your friends and family, that excess of positivity can be, well, negative. This kind of encouragement and self-talk is so common that mental health experts have a name for it: toxic positivity. “Toxic positivity is the idea that we should focus only on positive emotions and the positive aspects of life,” said Heather Monroe, a clinical social worker and director of program development at Newport Institute. “It’s the belief that if we ignore difficult emotions and the parts of our life…
The Heart And Other Monsters – July 17, 2020 -The voice speaking above serves as a narrator throughout her sister’s ghastly descent into the hellacious pit of drug addiction is that of Los Angeles-based author Rose Andersen. Her memoir “The Hearts and Other Monsters,” which she worked on while getting her MFA at CalArts Creative Writing program, is quite like a diary with each successive journal entry becoming increasingly more macabre as sister Sarah’s journey into darkness becomes ever more pronounced. Most people become addicted to opioids as a result of a legitimate prescription from a doctor for pain. A…
Hate is a family disease – July 15, 2020 – After being taken to a field and told to “run,” he instead proceeded to kneel on the ground with his hands up. That didn’t stop a police officer from beating him to the ground with his baton to “teach him a lesson,” but it did mean that my father lived through an experience that so many Black boys and men don’t. Over the past several weeks, we’ve witnessed a national dialogue about racism against Black people in America unlike I’ve ever seen. That, coupled with hearing my Dad share his…
WATCH – Park Bench to Park Avenue – July 15, 2020 – Brown shares his raw journey out of homelessness in a book titled “From Park Bench to Park Avenue.” The park bench refers to the many years of homelessness. The Park Avenue is symbolic, referring to the feelings that come with triumph, resilience, recovery, stability, and success. By his own account, Brown was born into dysfunction. He’s never met his father. When he was nine years old he found his mother on the floor of their living room in Ohio after she’d been shot. He fell into drugs at…
Death Wish? – JULY 16, 2020 – The budget cuts — many spurred by state budget shortfalls wrought by the economic consequences of the coronavirus pandemic — will hit behavioral health services when they are needed most, addiction treatment advocates told STAT. At least 35 states have reported increases in opioid mortality rates. Relapses, overdoses, and the use of dangerous and unfamiliar synthetic drugs are also on the rise. Treatment facilities have had to cut capacity to adhere to social distancing requirements — increasing demand for the fewer spots available and squeezing facilities’ budgets at the same time. “It was…
Just Be Careful – JULY 13, 2020 – “Most telehealth practitioners do not receive formal information security and privacy training,” said Leming Zhou, a professor of health informatics at the University of Pittsburgh. “It is very difficult for them to follow very technical guidelines” to safeguard information collected during these visits. Zhou said, however, that the security issues are solvable and that patients and doctors should not have to choose between privacy and the increased convenience of telemedicine. He and other researchers developed a questionnaire to help telehealth providers assess the security of the software they use. It prompts them…
NPR LISTEN – Loving Pills – July 17, 2020 – DR. GERY GUY: There’s still three times the amount of opioids being prescribed as there was in 1999, and there’s also substantial variation across the country. MANN: You may live in a part of the U.S. where clinicians now use opioids rarely. But you may live in a part of the country – like Pratt County, Kan., or Norton City, Va. – where opioid prescribing hasn’t come down at all. GUY: Eleven percent of counties still prescribed enough opioids for every person living in the county to have one. MANN:…
EMPTY: A Memoir by Susan Burton – June 23, 2020 – “In many ways,” she writes, “my adolescence was typical. Prototypical, even. I was an awkward middle-schooler who transformed herself with the help of Seventeen magazine. I was a teenage girl in a public high school at the end of the 20th century, at the edge of the Great Plains. I stood in bleachers at Friday night football games. I read Sylvia Plath and wrote furiously in my journal. I took the SAT and drank wine coolers. I learned to smoke cigarettes on a weekday afternoon in a wood-paneled car.”…
“Anchor the eternity of love in your own souland embed this planet with goodness.”—John LewisFeb. 21, 1940 – July 17, 2020
From slime, to time – 53 years in State rehab – JULY 14, 2020 – Bathum was convicted in February 2018 of 31 counts, including forcible rape, sexual penetration by a foreign object, forcible oral copulation, sexual exploitation and offering controlled substances, including methamphetamine and heroin.Jurors acquitted Bathum, now 58, of a dozen other charges and deadlocked on three remaining counts. “Each one is a drug addict,” Deputy District Attorney Reinhold Mueller said of Bathum’s victims at the outset of the trial. Some of the women suffered from shame and hopelessness, and Bathum exploited the fact that they had “shared…
We care because we love him! – July 8, 2020 – Depp told the court: “I was quite addicted to these roxycodone [sic] due to a stunt injury on a film in London. He previously told the court he went through a painful detox process to kick his addiction to oxycodone, which is a highly addictive opiate painkiller. Asked if needed help remembering incidents, Depp replied: “I would say that for someone who has been quite self destructive for the majority of my life I ended up quite lucky that my brain still functions quite well.’ more@Mirror
WATCH – Talking with, not at… – June 22, 2020 – “Without Vanessa translating for me for the last 18 years, I mean, we would not be together,” the “What About Us” singer revealed. “We just wouldn’t because we are not taught as kids how to have relationships, how to get along with people,” she added. “I mean, what’s happening in our country right now is a perfect example of that. We don’t know how to love each other, we don’t know how to get along, we don’t know how to communicate.” There are moments where I look at [Hart]…
Sober showers from now on… – July 9, 2020 – She wrote on her blog, DrunkMummySoberMummy: “As I closed the curtains, a sudden flashback leapt at me from my blackout, an image of stumbling around in the bathroom with my bra shoved down around my waist, demanding my husband hand the baby over.” tVictoria remembers being “covered in vomit”, as her husband told her to “get in the bath”. She sat in the empty tub as her husband desperately tried to put their son to sleep with a bottle of milk instead…. more@TheSun
Streaking Nnot Streaming – July 10, 2020 – Detectives watched one man in quick succession walk into and out of a room at the Travel Lodge, before scurrying across the highway, according to police. When the investigators approached him, he allegedly drew something from his pocked and discarded it on the ground. Police said the object was a bottle that contained what they believe to be PCP. When detectives searched the hotel room with the warrant, they found more PCP and a stash of nearly 300 grams of drugs, which have been sent to a lab for identification. Nearby was…
And blintzes too… – July 8, 2020 – Currently, meetings, classes, and events take place through the Zoom video conferencing app. With support from the Clinton Foundation, Schusterman, along with other rabbis and interfaith leaders, address the opioid crisis in the community. Prior to COVID-19, training was also offered so loved ones of addicts could learn to administer Narcan, the nasal mist medication that rapidly reverses heroin or opioid overdose, restoring normal respiration to people whose breathing has slowed or stopped. more@AtlantaJewishTimes