It’s on Television – MAY 7, 2018 – Democratic U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin’s latest television ad focuses on her mother’s addiction to prescription drugs and battle with mental illness. Baldwin unveiled the ad on Monday, a week after she opened up for the first time about her mother’s struggles. She died in August.Baldwin says in the new 60-second ad that she recalls returning home from school and knocking on the door of her house, but her mom was unable to answer because she was passed out. Baldwin says her mother’s drug addiction has helped her understand the need to combat…
Author: Leonard Buschel
Science is Real – May 9, 2018 – The device now has to be refined so that it can be tested in live animals and, eventually, humans. Hall is trying to create a low-power sensor that can be injected blow the surface of the skin, where it would draw power from a smartwatch or some other type of wearable device. “A tiny injectable sensor—that can be administered in a clinic without surgery—could make it easier for patients to follow a prescribed course of monitoring for extended periods of time,” Hall said in a statement. Hall is collaborating with Dr. Carla…
Smoke and Glass – May 11, 2018 – ABC News – If you’re worried about addiction killing people, you’re probably worried about drugs. But they pale in comparison to the deaths caused by two everyday addictions: alcohol and tobacco. In 2015, alcohol and tobacco use, between them, cost the human population more than a quarter of a billion disability-adjusted life years. Illicit drugs cost tens of millions. Some sobering numbers: in 2015, 18% admitted to heavy alcohol use in “the past 30 days”, and 15% were daily tobacco smokers. But in drug use? Over the prior year pot, amphetamine, opioid,…
With AA? – May 9, 2018 – Artificial intelligence is the future. It can predict when we’ll die, help us buy stuff we don’t need, diagnose cancer, and imperfectly predict songs we’d like. It’s not perfect, and sometimes it can be banal. That’s changing, though, and in a surprising space—mental health. Before machine learning directs our autonomous vehicles, it could help humans deal with psychological challenges … Relapse is the biggest challenge to addicts in recovery, and the Sober Grid team knew via anecdotal stories that sometimes their app helped people avoid using again. They also had a lot of…
Vapeway Drug – May 9, 2018 – Teenage smoking has decreased over the past few years in America, but that is not necessarily good news. “Teenagers have flocked to e-cigarettes, and when combined with use of traditional cigarettes, the use of nicotine among teenagers may have actually increased,” said Dr. Indra Cidambi, a nationally recognized Addiction Expert and Medical Director of New Jersey-based outpatient detox facility Center for Network Therapy. For example, in New Jersey, teenage smoking rate dropped from 14.3% in 2010 to 8.2% in 2014. However, one in eight (12%) teenagers had tried e-cigarettes at least once, and…
Sweet and Sour Bullshit – MAY 10, 2018 – “Methadone is stopping me from putting a needle in my body,” she said. “It doesn’t get you high. It stops the cravings, and even if you do use you’re not going to be able to feel it so it’s a waste of money.” (Someone on methadone likely won’t feel the effects of a single dose of heroin; but multiple doses could lead to a fatal overdose, one reason the drugs should never be combined.) For all the members’ success, though, a problem remains: finding sponsors, people in long-term recovery who can…
Punch Drunk Asshole – May 9, 2018 – As one of his accusers recalls in the piece, Mr. Schneiderman “would almost always drink two bottles of wine in a night, then bring a bottle of Scotch into the bedroom. He would get absolutely plastered five nights out of seven.” On one occasion, she continues, “he literally fell on his face in my kitchen, straight down, like a tree falling.” His attacks would follow. The connection between alcohol and domestic violence is hardly speculative. Women who advocated for temperance in the 19th century did so, in part, because they’d had enough…
Narcotics Anonymous has a Winner – May 7, 2018 – Congratulations to Mike “The Situation” Sorrentino on more than two years of being clean! The 35-year-old Jersey Shore star on Sunday posted the achievement on his official Instagram account, indicating that he has been sober for 28 months with the help of Narcotics Anonymous. Sorrentino, who returned to reality TV this year on Jersey Shore: Family Vacation with six other members of the original cast, entered rehab in 2012 for prescription drug abuse. “28 Months Clean & Sober – Here is MY 2 Year Medallion” he wrote on Instagram, next…
More Than Coffee and Cookies – May 11, 2018 – Thirty-five years ago, when Mickey Bakst walked into his first Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, he realized he was the only hospitality worker in the group. “It was all doctors, lawyers and housewives,” he said. The general manager of the famed Charleston Grill credits AA for keeping him alive over four decades. But to survive in an industry where illicit drug use is rampant, he and fellow recovering addict and Charleston, S.C., restaurateur Steve Palmer had always talked about creating their own restaurant support group … Palmer, sober for 16 years, said…
Straight Talk – May 09, 2018 – While in prison DeLeon pitched an idea he had to the Department of Corrections. The idea was to have kids hear from other kids who had been in prison. It was to bring the inmates out to the kids, in a respectful consequential way. “The best messenger for a kid to listen to another kid would be kids that have suffered the consequences,” DeLeon says. “So, you take some of these kids that are in prison, out in their prison jumpsuits, to talk to kids in school.” While in prison, DeLeon helped start…
A Very Handsome Sobriety – May 10, 2018 – The 42-year-old American Horror Story star, who also costars in Paramount Network’s upcoming drama American Woman, jumped for joy about reaching that goal in a triumphant Instagram post. Though he was happy to have made it to the five-year mark, the road hasn’t always been easy. “Over this time I’ve experienced more highs and lows than I sometimes thought I could take,” he wrote in his caption. “The passing of friends, family strife, life disappointments, fear, anxiety, envy, people-pleasing, fatigue, and ultimately, the birth of my beloved [1½-year-old twins] Ethan and…
Assisted Living – May 8, 2017 – Ronnie settles into the love seat in his sister’s living room and prepares to tell his story. He asked 8News not to share his full name or show his face during the candid conversation, but the 62-year-old’s message about hitting rock bottom is as clear as the scar on his chest. It is a reminder of the day doctors had to crack it open to save his life. “It’s really a one day at a time thing,” Ronnie says about his opioid addiction. Ronnie explains it started with knee pain in 2004. Surgery…
Fledglings of Big Pharma – May 9, 2018 – It was not until her third month of feeling unwell, in the fall of 2016, that Alicia thought to take an at-home pregnancy test. Until then, she assumed her fatigue and nausea were withdrawal symptoms from the Percocets she’d been dependent upon since the year before. “When some days you don’t get enough, you could definitely throw up or wake up feeling sick,” she told me. “It was easily confused with morning sickness.” Alicia, who asked that I use her nickname to protect her privacy, was 26 at the time, living…
Depends On Who You Ask – May 9, 2018 – News 5 found that facilities that treat Ohio’s recovering addicts aren’t subject to any state or county regulations that require quality care to stay open. They are subject only to housing and zoning laws in local municipalities. Some counties adopt Ohio Recovery Housing’s standards of care and withhold taxpayer funding from any facility that isn’t accredited, but the homes are still allowed to stay open. Ohio Recovery Housing’s voluntary certification process is the only way in Ohio to know if a recovery home provides the care they claim to. The…
Drunk In Public – May 11, 2018 – It’s palpable in a scene where he takes quaaludes and loses all control of his motor functions, sliding across a floor and down a wall as he attempts to flee from an interrogative dinner. Cumberbatch’s full use of his physical body is necessary for the scene and it’s perhaps why his body is so intensely scrutinized by his fanbase. More so than an actor dripping with sexuality, he’s an actor whose physicality feels as if it is summoning you to analyze it, decode it. Sherlock was his overnight success and it makes…
Music VIDEO – May 10, 2018 Watch VIDEO @ Mashable.com
Criminal Minds! – May 14, 2018 Full Story @ NBCMiami.com
Dirty Needles Amongst the Redwoods – May 8, 2018 – EUREKA, Calif. — The dirty needles can be found scattered among the pine and brush, littering the forest floor around Eureka, a town long celebrated as a gateway to the scenic Redwood Empire. They are the debris of a growing heroin scourge that is gripping the remote community in Northern California. While the state as a whole has one of the lowest overall opioid-related death rates in the country, a sharp rise in heroin use across the rural north in recent years has raised alarms. In Humboldt County, the opioid…
Nothing? – May 8, 2018 – Politicians on the left and the right are calling for an anti-addiction ad campaign aimed at the opioid epidemic. The airwaves of history are littered with previous anti-drug efforts – some of which had the opposite of the intended effect. Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) said Congress ought to fund a new campaign – assuming it can learn from costly mistakes of the past, like ‘Just Say No’. “That didn’t work very well,” he said, “but when there was a real focus and when communities and government listened to the experts on anti-smoking we were…
Murder on the Appalachian Express – May 8, 2018 – The head of a major pharmaceutical distributor apologized before Congress on Tuesday for not doing more to stop the shipment of millions of powerful prescription opioids to pharmacies in two small West Virginia towns, while another industry leader admitted that his company contributed to the nation’s opioid crisis. Cardinal Health Executive Chairman George Barrett said he is sorry that the company did not act faster to halt millions of hydrocodone and oxycodone pills to the pharmacies in West Virginia, which has the nation’s highest rate of opioid overdose death. “With…
Five Times a Day Wasn’t Enough – Amy 2, 2018 – Sex addiction divides expert opinion, but for some people it is a very real condition that can be shameful and even “life-destroying”. As relationship charity Relate calls for help to be made available on the NHS, two sufferers speak about the impact it has had on their lives. At its worst, even having sex five times a day wasn’t enough.” Mother-of-three Rebecca Barker said the compulsion took over her life in 2014 and ruined her relationship. Her addiction meant she was constantly asking her partner for sex. “It was…
e-Juice for breakfast? – May 5, 2108 – SAMIR Soneji, an associate professor of health policy at Dartmouth’s Geisel School of Medicine and the paper’s lead author, warned that the high level of nicotine in e-cigs (the device vaporizes a flavored liquid containing the addictive substance), combined with the expense of the modern habit, sets teens up to become real smokers. “Kids may think they’re vaping flavor-only e-cigarettes, but the actual nicotine content of e-juice may be considerably higher than what is written on the packaging. Even some e-juice claiming to be nicotine-free actually contain nicotine,” said Soneji. Plus, the…
Candy Man Can… – April 29, 2018 – Most people are aware of the types of drugs that are federally classified as substances with no medicinal benefit and high abuse potential: heroin, LSD and marijuana are examples of these drugs and they are indeed classified as illegal. The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) are the two government agencies responsible for classifying drugs. The FDA recently received a Citizen Petition for Stricter Regulation of Added Sugar “to amend the Drug Schedules to include added sugar to either Schedule I or Schedule II of the Controlled…
New Book – May 5, 2018 – The reality — though Robin didn’t know it — was that he was suffering from a pernicious neurodegenerative disease that was in the process of robbing him of his talents, his brain and his very self. This heartbreaking interaction is recounted in the biography “Robin” (Henry Holt & Co.) by Dave Itzkoff, out this month, which provides new details about the comic great’s final days and the harsh reality of what it’s like to lose a once-in-a-generation mind. Robin McLaurin Williams, born in Chicago on July 21, 1951, had a privileged but lonely…
Stick with the Winners – Doug Bopst is an award-winning personal trainer, author, speaker and business owner. Those credentials and accolades are a result of his own transformation. He is a former felon and drug addict, sentenced to years in jail due to his poor decisions. He chose to use that time locked in a small cell to beat his demons and reinvent himself thanks to a combination of faith, family and fitness. He is the author of two books: “From Felony to Fitness to Free,” written to inspire people that they too can turn a negative into a positive…
MEDIA: Classic Book Recommendation – December 1, 1987 – I rarely write reviews, but I feel so strongly about this book that I decided to write one here. This book is, without exaggeration, changing my life. I am in therapy, and bringing insights from this book into my sessions helped IMMENSELY. My therapist often comments that I have a grasp on insights that take others many years to get to, and this book has been central in this. I’ve begun to recognize my childhood issues, reasons for my relationship patterns, and in general the core issues that have kept me…
For Healthier Children – May 1, 2018 – Calm and quiet on the outside, inside the Chrysalis much growth and transformation is happening. “It’s been a long journey,” Heidi, a mother of two-month-old Zander who’s seeking treatment for substance abuse said. “Actually, like we started, I started out in jail pregnant.” A long journey and a lot of work. Much like a caterpillar, it takes a lot of work to become the butterfly. “Definitely a blessing,” Heidi said. “Like, because if it wasn’t for this program, like, I don’t know where we would be. Honestly, I don’t know. Like, it’s…
Try Looking Up Introspection – May 2, 2018 – Here’s the step-by-step process I teach my clients for breaking social media addiction once and for all: 1. Figure out why you’re addicted to social media. Ask yourself: Why do you open Instagram and Facebook in the first place? Was your answer, “There’s no reason, I just like scrolling through my Instagram feed”? If so, take a closer look at your motive. Are you bored at work, stressed out, feeling disconnected from the outside world or just overwhelmed? The first step is to identify the core need, or “cue,” that triggers…
AGONIZING – May 2018 – Claire and Stephen Clement of Stony Point vow to build legacy for their son, Paul Clement, who died of a drug overdose, by opening Rockland County sober living home Seth Harrison/lohud… Full Story @ lohud.com
Burn, Baby Burn – May 2, 2018 – Tanning addiction is dangerous for everyone under the sun, even groups that often go overlooked, like minority teens in Los Angeles. New research shows that this unexpected group is plagued by tanning addiction – dispelling the myth that tanning and tanning addiction is a problem prevalent almost solely among white, college-age women. The new study by the Keck School of Medicine of USC surveyed 2,637 11th-graders in Los Angeles. The survey found that about 7 percent of these students met the criteria for tanning addiction. “Seven percent doesn’t sound like a whole…