Success – November 30, 2019 – For Chris Marshall, it’s a piece of her. A token to her sobriety, as she looks to years of success ahead. “Hippy Do-Da is here to stay. I don’t see myself wanting to do anything else,” Chris Marshall said. “I will continue to make jewelry until my hands no longer allow me to. I love what I do. It’s not always easy, but it’s so fulfilling in so many ways. I can’t picture doing anything else, ever.” To learn more about Hippy Do-Da creations, you can visit their Facebook or Instagram. Full Story @WISTV
Author: Leonard Buschel
Obituary – NOVEMBER 30, 2019 – Art, music and academics were important in her family — her father taught math and Latin — but after meeting her husband at MCAD, she dropped out and had three kids. In 1970 her husband died unexpectedly, leaving her with no job and bills to pay. Her son, Mark Mathews, said that like her father she was a natural teacher and dove deeply into her own yoga practice, teaching classes in her basement, and then teaching at Metropolitan State University. “She had a lot of energy and would really pursue what was meaningful to…
MEDIA: Overlook Hotel Revisited – NOVEMBER 30, 2019 – Kubrick’s film is iconic for a reason. Wonderful central performances by Jack Nicholson and Shelley Duvall anchor a series of indelible images that stick with the viewer long after watching: A river of blood spilling out from an elevator, ghostly twins alternately dead and alive, an axeman lumbering through the halls of an abandoned but reanimated hotel. The film is so chilling that even at its climax, the viewer is more likely to still feel dread rather than catharsis … Ewan McGregor as Dan Torrance could seem to be cynical stunt-casting,…
Movies Are Magic – 11/30/2019 – While in rehab for drug addiction, theBlue October singer was desperately asking for a “simple” sign from above one day when he noticed a lone wasp trying desperately to make its way into a can that had the words “Wasp Killer” written in bold white letters on it. “Why the hell would you want to get into that wasp can when you’ve seen millions of your homies die from that s–t?” asked Furstenfeld. It was that simple. He, too, kept returning to the one thing that was destroying him and everyone around him: drugs…
Love Is the Answer – DECEMBER 02, 2019 – A Better Life Recovery, a leading addiction treatment provider and owner of A Mission for Michael, an intensive mental health facility, announced it has named Tim Ryan and Jennifer Gimenez as the facility’s official Recovery Activists to oversee client relations, business development and national advocacy efforts. “We are proud to announce that Jennifer and Tim have joined our incredibly dedicated staff at A Better Life Recovery,” says Co-Founder, Jeff Robbins. “Their boundless efforts to educate and help others who suffer from the disease of addiction is something we strongly support at…
Happy Down Under – Dec. 1, 2019 – “I love what I did, but once I sobered up, I felt like I’m worthy of a bit more. I always thought someone was going to come rescue me,” Samantha said. “But no-one is. No man. No amount of money. It has to come from within.” Samantha … has written two books and is a regular news.com.au columnist – has now shifted her focus to counselling for relationships and substance abuse. “It’s really scary because when I was Samantha, I was making great money and now it’s not coming in,” she said.…
Stick with the Winners! – Issa Ibrahim finds meaning and purpose as an artist, musician, writer, filmmaker, activist, 25-year artist-in-residence at Creedmoor Psychiatric Center’s Living Museum, and now as a member of Fountain House Gallery. Author of the memoir The Hospital Always Wins, published in 2016, Issa has been featured on German Public Television, an HBO documentary, and an Edward R. Murrow and Third Coast award winning NPR audio story. Knocking down the icon has been a major theme for Issa since his teenage years, influenced in the late 1970s by punk rock. Q. If you are in recovery, what was…
OPINION: Dear Orthopedic Surgeon, – November 28, 2019 – I’m not overly sensitive to pain. On the contrary, I’m that patient who didn’t go to the orthopedist months ago, when my left knee first started aching and throbbing. I kept exercising, assuming I had early-onset arthritis because of all those marathons. I didn’t even go when I felt an egg-sized lump in the back of my knee. (For the curious: A Baker’s cyst, named for William Morrant Baker, the 19th-century British surgeon who first described it, is one of your body’s responses to a knee injury.) The pain isn’t unbearable,…
Is that percodan on your breath? – November 26, 2019 – Davis, along with Dr. Nicholas Kenyon at UC Davis Health and a team of researchers, developed a less-invasive way to monitor a patient’s drug use by collecting their breath in a small specialized machine. “We collect breath in a liquid format in this device and we chill it and then we collect it as a liquid and run it through a mass spectrometer to measure what’s in there,” Kenyon said. What’s in there is a wealth of information that doctors, law enforcement, even patients and their family members could…
Dreams Deferred, Dreams Denied – December 2, 2019 – To understand both the scope and the devastating consequences of what is now a public health crisis, we talked to dozens of members of the Class of 2000. Many opened up to us about struggles with addiction, whether their own or their relatives’. They told us about the years lost to getting high and in cycling in and out of jail, prison and rehab. They mourned the three classmates whose addictions killed them. In all of the interviews, one thing was clear: Opioids have spared relatively no one in Scioto County;…
Pills For Every Problem – Dec. 2, 2019 – Baclofen, meanwhile, is a muscle relaxant and antispasmodic medication used to treat spasms, pain, and stiffness, including in those with spinal and central nervous system disorders. It is also given to people with lower back pain, “despite evidence of adverse effects without long term benefit,” the scientists wrote. Regular use has been linked to dependency and withdrawal, and overdose of the drug to respiratory depression, seizures, and heart problems. The study did not include data on baclofen prescription rates, but the researchers said use has been rising. Suicidal thoughts are among…
Bottled Up Stress? – Nov. 26, 2019 – Overall, most age groups of both genders saw increases in binge drinking from 2006 to 2018, with the unhealthy behavior still more common among men than women. The researchers looked at data from the National Health Interview Survey from 2006 to 2018, which included information on 239,944 adults ages 18 to 55. Responses were broken down by gender and three age groups: 18 to 29, 30 to 44, and 45 to 55. In the two older groups, researchers saw increases in binge drinking across the board. For example, among women 30 to…
More or Less? – November 26, 2019- Opioids took away his anxiety, his inhibitions, his depression. And they were easy to get. “I just started breaking into houses,” Braun says. “I found it amazing how trusting people were in leaving windows open and doors unlocked, and I found a lot of prescriptions.” Vicodin, OxyContin, tramadol. The drugs were everywhere. At the time, more than a decade ago, doctors and dentists were writing lots of prescriptions — even to Braun. “I didn’t need 20 Vicodin when I got my wisdom teeth out,” he says. “So I just saved them.” Full Story…
Simon Says… – Nov. 29, 2019 – The study finds parental marijuana use is associated with increased risk of marijuana and tobacco use, and opioid misuse by children. Researcher Bertha Madras says states like Michigan might keep this in mind when structuring cannabis education programs. “Once you set the platform for exploring substances, you create a mindset that is willing to delve into the others as well as the primary one or the one you initiated,” Madras said. “Pediatricians should be asking if parents are using at home and just to educate parents that this could confer risk in fostering…
The Quiet Killer – November 29, 2019 -The researchers analyzed causes of death for people aged 25 and older in the two decades since 1997, and found that 2017 had the highest rates of death from ALD, at 13.1 per 100,000 deaths in men and 5.6 per 100,000 in women. That compares to 1999 ALD mortality rates of 10.6 per 100,000 in men and 3.3 per 100,000 in women. Mortality rates and recent increases in ALD diagnoses were particularly pronounced among middle-aged adults, Native Americans and non-Hispanic whites, the researchers report in the American Journal of Gastroenterology. For example, compared…
iPanic attacks our young – November 29, 2019 – The youngsters also cannot control the amount of time they spend on the phone. The study warns that such addictions have “serious consequences” for mental health. The research, published in BMC Psychiatry, analysed 41 studies involving 42,000 young people in an investigation into “problematic smartphone usage”. The study found 23% had behaviour that was consistent with an addiction – such as anxiety over not being able to use their phone, not being able to moderate the time spent and using mobiles so much that it was detrimental to other activities. Full…
High On Propriety – November 23, 2019 – I hit rock bottom. I was homeless on and off for 20 years. I used to think the world owed me but then I’d still wake up homeless and hungry. I became addicted to class A drugs. I hung around with people I shouldn’t have. I was beaten up and held hostage for four hours. I was convinced I was going to die. I thought of my children and so I prayed and reached out to the universe. I ended up in hospital and explained to the doctors that I had a…
Gone Too Soon – November 26, 2019 – About a third of the estimated 33,000 “excess deaths” that the study says occurred since 2010 were in just four states: Ohio, Pennsylvania, Kentucky and Indiana — the first two of which are critical swing states in presidential elections. The state with the biggest percentage rise in death rates among working-age people in this decade — 23.3 percent — is New Hampshire, the first primary state. “It’s supposed to be going down, as it is in other countries,” said the lead author of the report, Steven H. Woolf, director emeritus of the…
Faces of Addiction – November 29, 2019 – Among them is Jen Elizabeth, 42 and from the city of Temecula in California, who was brought up surrounded by addiction and suffered sexual abuse as a child. She began drinking alcohol when she was 12, later moving onto heroin use, and spent 13 years in and out of homelessness. “At that point in my life I didn’t care about myself or my life at all,” she said. “I had never faced my sexual abuse or the abuse I suffered in my home,” she said. “I thought I was worthless, dirty and…
It Takes Balls – December 1, 2019 – The researchers added: “Sustained marijuana use may increase the risk for testicular cancer.” They estimated that long-term users of cannabis were 36 per cent more likely to be diagnosed with the potentially-fatal condition. This was compared to similar males who did not use the drug. It has been suggested by some groups campaigning for cannabis to be legalised in the UK that it can help fight cancer. As well as smoking cannabis, other known risk factors include having undescended testicles or a family history of the disease. According to the NHS: “Typical…
Stay safe no matter what… – December 2, 2019 – Buprenorphine, which won FDA approval in 2002 to combat opioid addiction, is dispensed to almost one million individuals annually. However, an estimated 50% to 80% of patients discontinue the treatment within several weeks or months, and there is no consensus about how long patients should continue taking the medication although expert consensus supports indefinite use. Further, many insurance plans limit treatment with buprenorphine to six months or require approvals to be reauthorized every year, and patients who are at risk for incarceration are frequently deprived of buprenorphine treatment while awaiting…
Will it do any good? – Dec. 1, 2019 – “I don’t sell any more.” Until recently, much of the illicit fentanyl that found its way to the United States came like this: easily ordered online from a source in China and seamlessly shipped by international delivery companies, including the United States Postal Service. Fentanyl sourced from China accounted for 97 percent of the drug seized from international mail services by United States law enforcement in both the 2016 and 2017 fiscal years, according to the Drug Enforcement Administration. Now, China’s Communist government is taking steps to stop the flood,…
“The remedy is in our hearts and equally, in the heart of the animals, we call the Universe.” —Nikola Tesla
WRITING DOWN THE BONES – November 27, 2019 – Gratitude is an emotion that expresses appreciation and thankfulness. Keeping a gratitude journal to write down your experiences and feelings can be good for your health physically and mentally. Journaling can also help your healing process or aid your journey in recovery. Studies have shown that the feeling of gratitude or thankfulness helps people release negative emotions and allows our brains to produce dopamine. Dopamine is a hormone that makes us feel happier. Here are other benefits of journaling about our thankfulness:• Aids positive mindset• Better sleep habits• Decreased anxiety• Helps…
Being The Best You! – Nov 19, 2019 – Pentkowski could have picked any sober home in northeast Ohio, but he chose the B. Riley House. “Being in a house that was 24/7 recovery and being that it’s an LGBT house made me feel more comfortable,” Pentkowski said. The B. Riley House is only one of two LGBTQIA+ sober houses in the entire country. Not only does that allow residents to be themselves, it sometimes helps them become themselves. “When I came in here I was Melissa Pentkowski. Now I’m the person I was meant to be but I’m also…
Shop ’Til You Go Broke – November 22, 2019 – 122 patients who had sought treatment for compulsive shopping and found 33.6 per cent showed signs of an addiction to online shopping. Researchers linked it to more acute levels of anxiety and depression. “Patients with BSD (buying shopping disorder) buy more consumer goods than they can afford. The excessive purchasing is primarily used to regulate emotions, for example to get pleasure (or) relief from negative feelings. Parallels are being drawn between BSD and gaming disorder, which was classified in 2018 by the World Health Organisation. Dr Cyrus Abbasian, Consultant Psychiatrist…
One Snap at a Time – Nov. 20, 2019 – Most of the things that I did with that partner wouldn’t seem that kinky to someone into fetish, but it was all new to me. My partner loved rope and showed me enough to whet my thirst for knowledge. I fell in love with Shibari, Japanese rope bondage. It’s methodical and beautiful. Ropes are tied, checked, re-tied. You must be careful not to compress nerve bundles. Because there is some risk of injury, rope play requires deep communication skills. You have to learn both to speak your needs verbally and…
Good News – 11/21/2019 – There will offer be formal trainings on to administer the Naloxone, which usually comes as a nasal spray. “Most workplaces are already equipped with fire extinguishers and AEDs. We hope this pilot project will inspire more employers to build life-saving naloxone into the way they prepare for emergencies and create safe spaces for employees and customers alike,” Hargunani says. “Together, we can tackle this critical challenge in our communities.” As part of the campaign, OHA will send 8,000 naloxone cases to businesses across Oregon. The case will include gloves, a rescue breathing mask, antiseptic wipes…
As sharp as ever… – NOVEMBER 20, 2019 – Way before actor & businessman Danny Trejo played a role in some 250 TV shows and movies and went on to found the Trejo Tacos chain … he was a drug addict and prison inmate. He’s taking his story of overcoming addiction to the California Community Opioid Conference in 2019 but before that–he tells his story to In Depth in an emotional interview. Full Story @KNX1070Radio
Ohmmm – November 20, 2019 – It was my love of not meditating that actually led to me pitching this story in order to force a deadline on myself. I know it’s good for me, my therapist has told me it will be good for me, but it’s not until I have to do it for #content that I can make myself make the space for it. That said, it is a confusing world to step into for the first time. I went into this assuming there are several types of meditation from different traditions and religions, so wanted to…