Sad But True – Jan. 9, 2019, – The coffee giant is exploring remedies after employees expressed fears about being pricked by uncapped needles and experiencing related health risks. Starbucks is testing solutions, including installing sharps-disposal boxes, using heavier-duty trash bags to prevent needle pokes, and removing trash cans from certain bathrooms. “These societal issues affect us all and can sometimes place our partners (employees) in scary situations, which is why we have protocols and resources in place to ensure our partners are out of harm’s way,” Starbucks representative Reggie Borges told Business Insider. Full Story @ BusinessInsider.com
Author: Leonard Buschel
MayB, MayBEE Knot?! – January 14, 2019 – It’s hard to study a substance that until very recently has been almost universally illegal. And the few studies we do have were done mostly in the nineteen-eighties and nineties, when cannabis was not nearly as potent as it is now. Are users smoking less, to compensate for the drug’s new potency? Or simply getting more stoned, more quickly? Is high-potency cannabis more of a problem for younger users or for older ones? Full Story @ NewYorker.com
You mean like Suboxone? – January 10, 2019 – It’s the weirdest, grossest drug,” comedian Margaret Cho said. On the other hand, Chris Bell, the filmmaker who made “Leaf of Faith,” said that kratom helped him kick his opioid habit. He finds talk of kratom’s addictive quality overblown. “Coffee is very addictive. Sugar is highly, highly addictive — Mr. Bell is a former competitive powerlifter who used opioids because of the wear and tear on his body.) Full Story @ NYTimes.com
Treatments works … when you want it to… – 01/06/2019 – Police departments work out arrangements with drug treatment providers in advance to ensure care is available around the clock. They then drive addicts seeking help to the front door of a treatment facility and ensure in advance that insurance questions or the ability to pay are not obstacles. Police in Lake County have placed 516 people into treatment since June 1, 2016, said Mundelein Police Chief Eric J. Guenther, who hopes that the program will continue to expand across the county. “It’s far exceeding where people thought we would…
Nowhere Near Beer – January 9, 2019 – Non-alcoholic beer accounts for less than 1 percent of the total U.S. beer market, according to Heineken. Historically, most big brewers have played in the non-alcoholic segment with lower-profile brands, such as O’Doul’s from Anheuser-Busch InBev. But that dynamic is slowly shifting … Rather than simply removing alcohol from regular Heineken, the brewer made 0.0 from scratch as it sought a formula that tastes and smells as close to regular beer as possible. We see large numbers of younger consumers not drinking alcohol at all and a continuing trend towards wellness and…
Depends on the property – Jan. 11, 2019 – But opposition may be unfounded, a study distributed this week by National Bureau for Economic Research found: Substance-abuse disorder centers do not negatively affect property values in areas where they set up shop, the report by researchers at the University of New Mexico and Temple University concluded. “For most people purchasing a home is the largest financial investment they are going to make in their lives and the most important financial asset they have,” Catherine MacLean, a lead researcher on the paper, said. “So we believe people’s concerns about decreasing property…
Playing with Fire – January 10, 2019 – Researchers at Michigan State University … gave 71 people the Iowa Gambling Task, which psychologists say identifies the differences in decision-making among healthy people and substance abusers. When playing the computer simulation of a card game, people who reported they overindulged in Facebook made big gambles at a higher rate. They played the game the exact way drug addicts typically do, while people who reported less time on social media made better decisions. Full Story @ WashingtonPost.com
A Book Should Be Well Digested – Dec. 17, 2018 – Writing from Britain, Dr. Ben Goldacre echoes Angell’s concerns, charging in “Bad Pharma” that the worst misbehavior in the pharmaceutical industry actually occurs not when prescription drugs are being burnished for market, but far earlier in their development. Lackluster compounds are evaluated in ways guaranteed to make them look good, Goldacre writes, then prettied up even further with distorted claims of efficacy. While “bad behavior in marketing departments is unpleasant,” he concludes, the real scientific outrage and the big public danger lie in uniformly dubious practices of drug development.…
Thin White Line – January 10, 2019 – She went on to say that many people never really understood how she could eat and still be so thin. The 25-year-old then dished the dirt on the entire, glamorous influencer industry, claiming she’s not the only “influencer” that follows the same diet. “I need to be careful what I’m saying here, but in the influencer industry, everyone loves the baggie,” she told fans.“That is how most physiques are maintained … that’s how my physique was maintained.” Full Story @ FoxNews.com
Keep Coming Back – January 12, 2019 – Sizemore has faced a very public battle with drug addiction and run-ins with the police. But in May 2017 he told the Daily Mail.com that he was “fit, healthy and approaching 4 years sobriety.” The actor told how he hit rock bottom when forced to squat for two years in a building with no electricity or running water, whiling away the days smoking crystal meth. Full Story @ DailyMail.co.uk
TRIGGER WARNING: Drug use – December 18, 2018 – Now Rogers, 53, was back in his bedroom at the hot, dark house on R Street SE. Sitting in a worn swivel chair, he cued a Rob Thomas song on his cellphone and bent over his cooker and syringe. The heroin — a tan powder sold for $10 a bag — simmered into a cloudy liquid with the amber hue of ginger ale. Palliative or poison: He would know soon enough. Full Story @ WashingtonPost.com
More Than the 12 Steps – Jan. 7, 2019 – Judy Crane has over 3 decades of experience working in both residential and out-patient settings. She earned her B.A. at Rutgers, M.A. from New York Institute of Technology and is a Certified Addiction Professional in Florida, Certified Sex Addiction Therapist, a Certified Hypnotist, EMDR and a specialist for healing trauma and PTSD. Judy Crane’s presentation and seminars on PTSD and sexual trauma resolution are known throughout the country. Full Story @ ICAAD.com
DEAD SEA SCROLLING – Jan. 11, 2019 – Social media addiction, also known as internet addiction disorder, is not currently classed as a specific disorder. In the most up-to-date Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), it is simply listed as a “condition for further study.” Further studies into the phenomenon are being carried out and the most recent one suggests that psychologists and psychiatrists should be watching out for signs of excessive social media use in patients… Full Story @ Bustle.com
Passing More Than Their Urine Tests – January 12, 2019 – Rochester Public Schools created the APEX program during the 2016-17 school year. It offers students battling addiction education plans aimed at filling credit gaps while limiting social influencers and temptations to relapse. The school, housed in the Alternative Learning Center also offers showers, laundry facilities and a food shelf also are located on-site to meet other potential needs of the at-risk students. Full Story @ PostBulletin.com
Heroin Isn’t Chic – January 10, 2019 – “I feel if I try either,” she shared, “I’m going to be dead really soon.” By the time she was 12, Barrymore was a cocaine addict. She was in and out of rehab in her early teenage years and was even institutionalized following a suicide attempt. Full Story @ PageSix.com
Who gets that contract? – January 10, 2019 – This month, the Department of Labor finished soliciting feedback on a proposed federal rule, that would encourage states to conduct blanket drug testing for those seeking unemployment insurance. Current law already denies unemployment benefits to people terminated for drug use … Broad drug testing programs for unemployment benefits is bad policy … State funding for unemployment insurance is at an all-time low and that drug testing is an expensive endeavor that produces negligible results. Full Story @ ACLU.org
One Jigger, One Jail Cell – Jan. 13, 2019 – “We want to feel like we’re really being strict on drunk drivers,” said Republican state Sen. Van Wanggaard, chairman of the Senate judiciary committee and an opponent of criminalizing first offense. “But it’s not about punishing that person that made that poor choice. It’s about directing them to make good choices.” Wisconsin’s love affair with booze dates to statehood. Milwaukee has served as home to some of the country’s biggest brewers, including Pabst, Schlitz, Miller and Blatz. The Princeton Review in 2017 rated the University of Wisconsin-Madison as the school…
Songs in the Key of AA – JANUARY 11, 2019 – If you’re stepping into 2019 sober: congratulations! And to those who are considering reducing their consumption this year, congratulations to you, too! Taking steps toward sobriety is huge. Making a commitment to rid substances from your life isn’t easy; even the introspection required to really understand your situation can be emotionally trying, if not debilitating. But the benefits, of course, outweigh the struggle. Sobriety could change your life in the best way possible. (It has for me.) Full Story @ Nylon.com
Defense, Defense, Defense – Jan. 9, 2019 – A Connecticut judge has dismissed lawsuits against Purdue Pharma and other drug makers brought by 37 cities and towns in the state that blame the companies for the opioid crisis and sought to recoup millions of dollars spent responding to the crisis. Full Story @ WTNH.com
No More Blackouts – January 9, 2019 – Brolin, 50, went on to describe the complete memory blackout and the effort to piece together what happened, then calling a friend to get the lowdown. It’s a vivid recollection that hopefully will encourage others to kick alcohol addiction… Full Story @ HuffingtonPost.com
This is Your Brain on Drugs – January 11, 2019 – “Beginning in the 1980s, we started doing brain imaging, and we developed cues that were associated with drug use,” he said. His finding helped explain the hallmarks of addiction: how people almost always relapse, and keep using drugs despite the often devastating personal costs. The work provided a scientific basis for calling addiction a brain disease. Scientists continue to build on this discovery to better understand the complicated — and sometimes unexpected — ways that addiction affects the brain. Full Story @ WHYY.org
Dying to Ease the Pain – January 10, 2019 – “Overdose and suicide are being treated as separate problems, but there is overlap in the causes that are driving increases in both,” … An op-ed published in The New England Journal of Medicine in April, for example, estimated that as many as 30 percent of opioid overdoses may be suicides rather than unintentional deaths. Intent can be so ambiguous that even some people who survive a drug overdose can’t resolve whether their O.D. was planned or unplanned. Full Story @ HuffPost.com
Sexting and Netflix and Beer, Oh My! – January 10, 2019 – The broadening of the term {addiction} was often viewed in medical circles as lazy appropriation; however, neuroscience has now largely accepted that it is the same brain chemical, dopamine, driving these irrepressible cravings. What’s more, our 21st-century world is so heavily baited with cues and stimuli – from stealthy marketing to junk food, not to mention the nagging lure of online life – that it appears to be rigging our dopamine systems to become “hypersensitised”. Full Story @ TheGuardian.com
Carpe per diem – Jan. 7, 2019 – These are very broadly defined and often prompted in a school setting. These can lead to subsequent extended-stays in U.S. based facilities owned by Acadia, and other for-profit providers. However, specifically, from this site-level director’s point-of-view; “They’re warehousing children, because they get $650 per day from the state” Now, in terms of Acadia’s U.K. operations (the large majority acquired in 2016, branded as The Priory Group), I previously reported on allegations of abuse of the NHS provisions that have led to involuntary seclusion of autistic children and adults. Providers can collect nearly 4X…
Disease of Addiction Causes Pig Nose – December 26, 2018 – Earlier this month, Lange tested positive for cocaine while serving four years’ probation for heroin possession. He was spared a jail sentence for violating probation. When the court received the results of the drug test, the comedian — who has been extremely open about his past drug use — didn’t deny that he did cocaine. “I wouldn’t be arrogant enough to come in here after using cocaine for two days,” he said during the New Jersey hearing. “It’s in my system and it shouldn’t be.” A rep for Lang…
Money For Something – Dec.27, 2018 – That the vast majority (82%) said their loved one experienced adverse financial effects due to their substance abuse disorder may not surprise you. But these specifics may: 65% said the person borrowed and/or asked for money from them; 48% said he or she depleted their savings and 11% cited a filing for bankruptcy. A person addicted to cocaine or heroin can spend over $10,000 a year to support the habit; rehab facilities can cost $30,000 a month. Full Story @ Forbes.com
Drowning In Cash – December 31, 2018 – “Our next battle is to get the documents that are being produced made available to the public instead of everything being filed under confidentiality agreements so we can get the facts out,” said Joe Rice, an attorney representing local governments suing the drug industry. Some of that internal information could be explosive, changing the way America views the opioid crisis. We know already that in the 1990s there was growing pressure in the health care industry to treat pain more aggressively. Purdue Pharma created a game-changing, long-acting opioid called Oxycontin. The company…
From Reefer to Reps – Jan. 4, 2019 – “I was smoking well over a pack of cigarettes a day,” he said. “I was snorting several hundred milligrams of OxyContin every day. A regular meal for me would be going to a pizza shop, getting a foot-long cheesesteak and a couple slices of pizza.” … “I was the unhealthiest person you could possibly think of,” Bopst continued. “Never exercised. Never ran. Never cared, you know, what I looked like. I mean, deep down, I did. But I felt so hopeless about myself and had no self-confidence and I didn’t even…
Solution in Your Pocket? – Jan. 4, 2019 – AA Speakers With this app, you’ll get access to plenty of Alcoholics Anonymous speakers that can share their experiences. This will provide you with lots of motivation and inspiration to get you through your days. You can also go to this website to find help with detox, drug addiction information and more. Stay On Point With a Sobriety App If you’d like to stay sober for the long-term, it’s important to set yourself up with the tools that will help you out. By getting your hands on a sobriety app, you’ll…
Blessed Are the Poor in Spirit – December 18, 2018 – The congregation lends structure to a rogue coalition of harm-reduction advocates who work to distribute thousands of syringes — possessing more than 10 is illegal in Maine — as well as hundreds of doses of naloxone. Members of the “church” don’t take that title lightly. The decision to brand the organization as a church could also provide a strange element of legal protection. If Harvey is arrested for his work — and he hopes he will be — he will argue that he was merely carrying out his own…