Despicable Douche – October 18, 2018 – While speaking with one drug-addicted inmate who was worried about her career and life prospects when she was released, Brat remarked, “You think you’re having a hard time — I got $5 million worth of negative ads coming at me. How do you think I’m feeling? Nothing’s easy. For anybody.” Full Story @ Alternet.org
Author: Leonard Buschel
Best Cop Ever – Oct. 17, 2018 – She died just like my wife’s cousin Meredith died in Bethesda, herself a young mother, but if Maddie was a black guy from the Bronx found dead in his bathroom of an overdose, it wouldn’t matter if the guy’s obituary writer had won the Booker Prize, there wouldn’t be a weepy article in People about it. Why not? But if there had been, early enough on, and we acted swiftly, humanely, and accordingly, maybe Maddie would still be here. Make no mistake, no matter who you are or what you look like:…
A Rock and a Hard Place – Oct. 19, 2018 – The Elijah House is less than half a mile away from Los Molinos High School. Elijah House Chief Executive Director Joe Henderson said his facility does accept sexual offenders as long as they committed the offense while under the influence of drugs or alcohol. Action News Now spoke with school administrators and parents who say they are worried about Elijah House being so close to the high school. “Housing people like that so close to schools, I really don’t want my kiddo walking around and you already have to…
MEDIA: Book Recommendation – January 8, 2019 – Tom has served in government as well as a private sector attorney specializing in civil rights litigation, serving as an advisor to New York City Mayor David N. Dinkins, Public Advocate Mark Green, and as a high-level policy advisor to two New York State Governors. As an attorney, Tom was among the early pioneers to litigate transgender rights cases. He was the first to take a transgender civil rights case to a successful jury verdict in federal court. He has been an outspoken advocate for the rights of parents in custody litigation…
7 Days of Film and Discussion – STARTS TOMORROW on SANTA MONICA BOULEVARD – The Reel Recovery Film Festival & Symposium presented by Addiction Policy Forum and Writers In Treatment will launch in Los Angeles at Laemmle’s Royal Theater, including an opening night reception at Reception at Safir, A World Class Mediterranean Restaurant. Full Story @ EntertainmentWorld.us
High Holidays Forever – Oct. 21, 2018 – “We left treatment to go shoot up heroin, pretty much,” she said. “And we were running in the streets down here. It was the worst, like, two weeks of my life. The two of us kind of went to a motel. It got really bad. We were held at gunpoint at one point.” It ended, she said, with her “back in a detox center somewhere.” Forman fought her way toward sobriety. Now more than a year and a half later, the Teaneck, New Jersey, native who goes by Ellie is a vocal…
Systemic or Bad Seed? – October 20, 2018 – The attack occurred on Oct. 5 at Phoenix Rising, a facility providing housing and specialized services for young people struggling with addiction, mental-health issues and homelessness. It is part of the larger Valley Cities Behavioral Health campus in Auburn. Rodriguez initially denied sexually assaulting the victim when he was arrested on Oct. 9 by Auburn police. When confronted with the existence of video, he admitted to groping the victim and to strangling her “a little,” according to the police report. The woman told police she had first met Rodriguez three months…
Grief Therapy in Print – Oct. 20, 2018 – Linsenmeir tried OxyContin for the first time at a high school party when she was 16. By 18, she was using heroin. Living in and out of rehab, losing custody of her son, and ultimately dying in a hospital while in police custody, Linsenmeir’s story is a raw one, felt and known by millions of Americans who struggle with addiction amid America’s opioid crisis. Interviews with family, friends and Linsenmeir’s recovery program mentor also paint a picture of a woman beloved for her kindness, perseverance and honesty. Full Story @ TheGuardian.com
Growing Up – October 19, 2018 – This is FRESH AIR. I’m Dave Davies in for Terry Gross. The new film “Beautiful Boy” stars Steve Carell as a father struggling with his son’s drug addiction. Today we’ll hear from the real people the story is based on. “Beautiful Boy” is the name of the memoir journalist David Sheff wrote in 2008 about the struggles of his son Nic. Nic, who was 25 and two years sober at the time, had written his own memoir called “Tweak: Growing Up On Methamphetamines.” Terry spoke to them both in 2008 and to David…
Swimming to Oblivion – OCTOBER 20, 2018 – But this alarm in reproductive health circles is not new. All over the world, reports of declining sperm quality and increasing male infertility attributable to low sperm count and poor sperm motility and morphology have been making the rounds. The typical African, Asian, American or European male has been battling declining sperm quality for decades. In 2017, health experts warned that the human species could face extinction, after facts emerged that the average sperm count in Western countries had more than halved in a generation. Full Story @ Vanguardngr.com
Heart of Gold – Oct. 23, 2018 – A new report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) looked at the results of that emergency declaration. The report found little came out of the declaration. According to the GAO audit obtained exclusively by Vox, the declaration enabled the Trump administration to make use of three new authorities — clearing paperwork requirements for a survey of health care providers about addiction treatment, allowing two states to move forward faster with programs to address the opioid crisis, and expediting support for research about opioid addiction and overdoses. None of this is bad, but…
Halloween Treats – 10/22/18 – Curtis stars in the newest Halloween film, re-assuming her debut role as Laurie Strode to once again face the masked murderer Michael Myers. Between that first starring role and this most recent redux, Curtis has played a wide range of characters in a variety of genres. But the road was not always easy, and it was during these times that Curtis used alcohol and opioids to deal with the stress. She recalls the summer of 1987, trying to balance work and family while shooting A Fish Called Wanda. “My memory of A Fish Called Wanda…
MAN of the Hour – October 22, 2018 – “In recovery, we talk about rock bottoms, you know? And everybody has their own rock bottom,” George elaborated. “Some people, it could something really mundane. For me, it was literally just one morning, waking up, and just having this kind of overwhelming feeling that I was really, truly unhappy, and I needed to do something about it. I remember one of the things I said to myself was ‘If you’re going to be Boy George, you might as well try and be the best Boy George you can be.’ I have…
You’re Innate, and You’re Fired – October 20, 2018 – Many jobs in New York City now take 60 days or more to fill. Thirty percent of the openings in New York City for registered nurses, bartenders, delivery drivers, program managers and machine operators that are posted on professional job websites go unfilled for 60 days or more, according to the employment portals. A 2018 report by Quest Diagnostics reveals a 150 percent increase from 2013 to 2017 of methamphetamine positivity rates for workers tested in the wider New York region, which covers New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Drug abuse rates…
Pain Management American Style – 10/20/18 -”We are pleased with the Advisory Committee’s recommendation to approve DSUVIA as a treatment in medically supervised settings for adults experiencing moderate-to-severe acute pain,” Dr. Pamela Palmer, Co-Founder and Chief Medical Officer of AcelRx said in a news release. “We look forward to continued collaboration with the FDA on the application as we believe DSUVIA represents an important non-invasive acute pain management option with potential to significantly improve the current standard of care.” DSUVIA, the drug in question, is a form of Sufentanil—which is more potent than fentanyl and morphine. It would be sold…
Life Saving Plans – 10/22/18 – Harm reduction for drug users is nothing new. Even in rural America, clean-needle distribution has been going on at least since the late 1980s, when the HIV epidemic showed that it respected no urban boundaries. Libby Guthrie, MCVHN’s executive director, started out in 1987 working on HIV prevention among injection drug users in the San Francisco Bay Area, but in 1990 moved to North Carolina, where HIV was rampant throughout the 1990s and all but ignored. “I watched several people die every month in [the HIV support group I led],” she recalls, “and watched…
Rocky Mounties High – Oct. 17, 2018 – UNITED STATES : With its northern neighbour legalizing and its southern neighbour mulling it, can the world’s most influential proponent of the drug war be far behind? “I don’t think Canada legalizing is going to move the ball with regard to legalization in the U.S., especially with this administration,” says Hannah Hetzer, who tracks international marijuana policy for the New York-based Drug Policy Alliance. While President Donald Trump has said he would likely support a congressional effort to ease the federal prohibition, his attorney general, Jeff Sessions, is a marijuana critic and…
Human Fodder – Oct. 21, 2018 – The United Nations’ drug strategy of the past 10 years has been a failure, according to a major report by the International Drug Policy Consortium (IDPC), which has called for a major rethinking of global policy on illegal narcotics. The report claims that UN efforts to eliminate the illegal drug market by 2019 through a “war on drugs” approach has had scant effect on global supply while having negative effects on health, human rights, security and development. According to the report, drug-related deaths have increased by 145% over the last decade, with more…
Does This Give You Dis-Ease? – Dec. 10, 2016 – Awesome talk. I have been addicted to various drugs through out my life. I was a complete mess until I decided on my own that it wasn’t a disease but a habit. I still do drugs occasionally but not habitually. Somethings that helped me was deciding to never doing drugs when I am in a bad mood, never going out of my way to find them and being mindful of when and why I have a craving. Full Story @ YouTube.com
A Star is Gone – Oct. 16, 2018 – The misuse of prescription medications has been rightly referred to as a national public health crisis and includes opioids, including prescription pain relievers, heroin and synthetic opioids such as fentanyl, a synthetic opioid up to 100 times more potent than morphine. Fentanyl kills the most people between the ages of 25 and 34 and an approximate 90% of overdose deaths in January and February of last year involved fentanyl. The results impact public health, as well as social and economic welfare. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the…
Everyone’s a Star AUDIO – Free Sign Up October 15 – 19, 2018 – Sherry Gaba, Russell Brand, Laura Silverman, Marianne Williamson, Lisa Garr, Debra Poneman, Karen Abrams, Leonard Lee Buschel and more… Full Story @ RecoveryTodaySeries.com
Treatment NOT Prison – Oct. 11, 2018 – “I feel like we’re on the right track,” Kaltenbach said. “Sometimes people do drop off. … We need to be working much closer, the case management workers and law enforcement officers, to identify who may not be engaged, to go find them on the streets.” Abstinence from drug use is not required of diversion-program participants in Santa Fe and jurisdictions following the same “harm reduction” model. The guiding principle favors investments in treatment and services for low-level drug offenders over arrest and prosecution, but little data have been available to gauge the…
Father Time Take Your Time – Oct 13, 2018 – Officer Harold Compton gave Smith, who was unresponsive, but breathing, a dose of Narcan and seconds later Smith came around. In the ambulance, Smith was given more Narcan and he was taken to the hospital. The woman who drove Smith to the police department was evasive with her answers when questioned by officers. She claims she was driving along State Road 200 when Smith overdosed. She said she did not know how he overdosed. Police officials said the woman alleges she’s a friend of Smith, but did not know much…
Country Living – October 16, 2018 – Even as opioids and drug addiction have risen to essentially the same level of economic concerns, our poll shows clearly that rural America is far from a monolith. In fact, the poll also finds strong strains of optimism about the future in rural America. Eight in 10 rural Americans said they feel their lives are turning out either as they expected (42 percent) or better (41 percent). Only 15 percent said things are worse than they thought they would be. A majority (54 percent) said they are better off financially when compared with…
Mind Blowing – Oct. 14, 2018 – On April 11, 2013, I was in the courtroom with three other local reporters listening to the horrifying testimony of Ashley Baldwin, a Gosnell employee. I looked over at rows of empty seats marked with “media only” notices. Disgusted, I snapped a picture of the empty seats and uploaded it to Twitter. It quickly went viral. That pic, along with a same-day column by Kirsten Powers at USA Today, exposed our tribe as derelict. In “Gosnell: Trial of America’s Biggest Serial Killer,” filmmakers Philem McAleer and Ann McElhinney, with writer Andrew Klavan, take…
Exercising Sobriety – October 11, 2018 – “At first I didn’t think I fit in, but all of my coaches, everybody here welcomed me with open arms,” Dresden said. “They listened to my story. They were here when I needed a hug. You know, they encouraged me all they way through my sobriety.” Airo says his fellow gym members are helping him through his newfound sobriety. “Six weeks so far, yes, and counting,” Airo said. He says he knows exactly where he’d be if he hadn’t found The Phoenix: “Right on the street with the same people, with the same…
NBC Special VIDEO REPORT – Oct. 14, 2018 – The strip detects fentanyl, the cheap synthetic opioid, mixed with street drugs – that’s been blamed for the surge of overdose deaths. It’s controversial because helping drug users test their supplies could be seen as advocating abuse. Full Story @ NBCNews.com
Love Makes the World Go ‘Round – October 12, 2018 – Brooks seized on the quote. He asked himself if he needs people on the margins of society, eventually landing on this insight: “If we truly want to help people, we should need them.” Brooks, president of the American Enterprise Institute, spoke Friday at Sen. Mike Lee’s 2018 Solutions Summit. Titled, “Instead — Connecting for a Cure,” the all-day event focused on combatting opioid addiction in Utah. In the morning, about 5,000 high school students filled the Vivint Smart Home Arena for a fast-paced mix of speakers — including many…
Standing Ovations Now – Oct 14, 2018 – The 66-year-old musician – who rose to prominence as a member of the band Chic – has revealed he decided to kick his self-destructive habits after he listened back to a performance he’d given while he was drunk. Appearing on ‘Desert Island Discs’, Nile shared: “My performance said I was pretty lousy. The difference between the reality and the imagined reality was just too strong for me to take. And I knew that the only thing responsible for that was me doing drugs. “My drugs made me think it was amazing. The…
Father Knows Best – October 13, 2018 – Transcending its own grim subject matter, the film deals in sensitive and subtle fashion with the plight of the father. It is never judgmental about the son either. Belgian director Felix van Groeningen is far more interested in probing away as deeply as he can into the psychology of his two tortured protagonists than in delivering the usual ups and downs found in more conventional family melodramas. The film has a deliberately open-ended quality. David Sheff simply can’t work out what has happened to Nic. Full Story @ Yahoo.com