Medically Assisted Tripping – April 21, 2018 – I’ve been running through a gauntlet of people for the past four hours, answering questions, laughing at jokes, getting spit on and hit on and molested. At every turn there’s another person who wants something from me. Some shout. Some whisper so quietly I can barely hear them. And their faces and bodies keep morphing, too — they get fat and thin and tall and short all within a matter of seconds. My parents are there, somewhere, and my sisters, too, but I can’t find them right now because a giant man…
Author: Leonard Buschel
Dessert Inn – April 19, 2018 -The Phoenix City Council voted unanimously Wednesday to set new regulations and policies for sober living homes. They will include new licensing and a new zoning structure. Many neighborhood activists were concerned with the quality of life both for people in the homes and those in areas around the homes. Jeff Spellman, with Take Action Phoenix, said the goal is to limit the number of sober living homes in certain neighborhoods, for the good of both the recovering patients and their neighbors. “If you have one on a block, they normalize off of their…
When Doves Never Stop Crying – April 19, 2018 – A Minnesota doctor accused of illegally prescribing an opioid painkiller for Prince a week before the musician died from a fentanyl overdose has agreed to pay $30,000 to settle a federal civil violation, according to documents made public Thursday. The settlement between the U.S. Attorney’s Office and Dr. Michael Todd Schulenberg comes as state prosecutors prepared to announce Thursday morning whether they’ll file any criminal charges stemming from their two-year investigation into Prince’s death. Prince was 57 when he was found alone and unresponsive in an elevator at his Paisley…
Music and Love – April 16, 2018 – Today Eminem has performed at Coachella Festival and of course he dedicated his one of the three diamond songs, the Grammy winning single, “Not Afraid” to his fans: Eminem says: “I’m ten years sober this week and I could not have done this without you all so Cali this is my song back to you and anybody who’s going through that shit. This song’s for you.” and “Not Afraid” starts. Full Story @ SouthPawer.com
It’s a Good Thing, Right? – April 19, 2018 – (AP) — The number of prescriptions for opioid painkillers filled in the U.S. fell dramatically last year, showing their biggest drop in 25 years and continuing a decline amid increasing legal restrictions and public awareness of the dangers of addiction … There was an even greater drop in total dosage of opioid prescriptions filled in 2017, down 12 percent from 2016. Reasons for that include more prescriptions being for a shorter duration, a 7.8 percent decline in new patients starting on opioid prescriptions and far fewer high-dose prescriptions. Opioid doses…
It’s About Time – April 16, 2018 – Ketamine, which has been called “the most important discovery in half a century,” just got a step closer to becoming the first new drug for depression in 35 years. The compound has a reputation as a party drug, but many experts say that’s unfair, since ketamine is increasingly being studied for its potential use as a rapid-fire treatment for depression. In people who live with the disease, thoughts of suicide can strike suddenly and without warning. Fast-acting, successful interventions are hard to come by. But a spate of recent research suggests ketamine…
X Marks the Spot – April 18, 2018 – Research has already been done in the US into using MDMA to treat post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) with the aim to get the drug licensed as therapeutic medicine by 2021. However, this is the world’s first ever study looking at if the drug is similarly beneficial for treating addiction. Candidates in contact with Bristol’s drug services are going on a detox and receiving a course of MDMA-assisted therapy … Dr Ben Sessa, a consultant child and adolescent psychiatrist and senior research fellow at Imperial College London, who specialises in mental health…
To Every Season… – Apr 16, 2018 – Fatal drug overdoses are increasing organ donations, and researchers reported Monday that people who receive those transplants generally fare as well as patients given organs from more traditional donors. The findings could encourage more use of organs from overdose victims. Researchers from Johns Hopkins University found those transplants have jumped nearly 24-fold since 2000. That was before overdoses were making headlines or most transplant centers considered accepting such organs. In 2016, there were 3,533 transplants using overdose-related donated organs, up from just 149 such transplants in 2000, the study found. Deaths from…
BEACONS OF HOPE – 360 Degrees of Empowerment – April 7, 2018 – Presentation by LEONARD BUSCHEL Full Story @ AREB
One Nation Under – April 22, 2018 – A golden age of corporate medicine may be dawning. A slew of mergers and acquisitions looks set to transform American healthcare, drawing health insurance giants, pharmacy benefit managers, physicians’ practices, drugstores, surgical centers and “retail clinics” in pharmacies and supermarkets together into giant corporate healthcare blobs. Whether you view this as a positive development may depend on your stock portfolio: good for industry profits, perhaps, but almost certainly detrimental to the public’s health. Full Story @ TheGuardian.com
How Many Faces? – April 18, 2018 – Kennedy also sits on the boards of eight corporations deeply invested in Washington’s response to the opioid crisis, from which he said he collects director fees and holds an equity stake in the firms. Many of those firms — along with the dozens who support the Kennedy Forum — stand to benefit from fresh efforts in Congress and the Trump administration to combat the opioid crisis by expanding treatment and speeding anti-opioid drugs to market. In the meantime, Kennedy has met regularly with his former congressional colleagues to advocate for higher levels…
So Can 50 – April 13, 2018 – A study published in a medical journal, The Lancet, revealed that drinking 100g of alcohol a week increases risk of mortality. Full VIDEO @ CNBC.com
Here Come the ‘techno-tots’ – April 2018 – Ten years ago, psychologist Sue Palmer predicted the toxic effects of social media. Now she sees a worrying new danger … When the little girl pointed at the sweets at the checkout, her mother said: ‘No, they’re bad for your teeth.’ So her daughter, who was no more than two, did what small children often do at such times. She threw a tantrum. What happened next horrified me. The embarrassed mother found her iPad in her bag and thrust it into her daughter’s hands. Peace was restored immediately. Full Story @ SomeDaily.com
Artist’s Corner – Diana Raab, PhD is a memoirist, poet, essayist, blogger, and speaker. She presents workshops in writing for healing and transformation. She has a PhD in Psychology with a concentration in Transpersonal Psychology with a research focus on the healing and transformative powers of memoir writing. Her educational background also includes health administration, nursing and creative writing. Q. Do you believe artists are made or born? A. Born but they must be nurtured. Q. What is your preferred form of artistic expression? A. Creative written expression Q. Do prefer living by the ocean, lake, river, mountaintop, or penthouse?…
Does CVS Do Transplants Now? – April 7, 2018 – Big corporations — giant retailers and health insurance companies — are teaming up to become your doctor … Is the doctor in? In this new medical age of urgent care centers and retail clinics, that’s not a simple question. Nor does it have a simple answer, as primary care doctors become increasingly scarce. “You call the doctor’s office to book an appointment,” said Matt Feit, a 45-year-old screenwriter in Los Angeles who visited an urgent care center eight times last year. “They’re only open Monday through Friday from these hours…
She’s Back – April 13, 2018 – Demi Lovato has just celebrated six years of sobriety, however after a group picture including the star was posted online, she had fans questioning whether or not she was still sober. The 25-year-old has always been open about her battle with addiction and on many occasions has opened up about her past struggles with bulimia, drugs and bipolar disorder. Just recently a photo emerged of the singer hanging out with some of her old Disney Chanel friends, and fans seem to think Demi has relapsed. In the snap she can be seen posing…
Sue the Bastards – April 5, 2018 – A contract was approved, by a vote of 3-2, by the San Clemente City Council at its Tuesday, April 3 meeting to hire Andrews & Thornton, Skikos Crawford Skikos & Joseph, and Robinson Calcagnie, Inc., law firms to join “a consortium” of attorneys who are filing litigation against companies that, according to the staff report, were directly responsible for contributing to the opioid crisis. The consortium goes by the name National Opioid Litigation Consortium. The agreement is a contingency fee, meaning the city will incur no costs for this action, but it…
Home Street Home – April 14, 2018 – A third of L.A.’s homeless population are women — and “once a shelter is full, it’s full.” … Every time Graciela Fernandez gets off the bus at Skid Row, she clutches her industrial-grade, cross-body bag with thick straps. She checks the road in both directions and scans for danger. Carefully, she makes her way down the street she called home until just three months ago. Fernandez first arrived at Skid Row early one morning in July 2015, wearing nothing but a tank top, her underwear and ripped sneakers. She’d fled an abusive…
Doctors For Sale? – April 14, 2018 – “The work was lucrative. Doctors stood to make $14,000 a day.” Just like that, she had stumbled into a growing industry that makes money by coaxing women into having surgery — sometimes unnecessarily — so that they are more lucrative plaintiffs in lawsuits against medical device manufacturers. Lawyers building such cases sometimes turn to marketing firms to drum up clients. The marketers turn to finance companies to provide high-interest loans to the clients that have to be repaid only if the clients receive money from the case. Those loans are then used…
You Can Run, But You Can’t Hide – APRIL 10, 2018 – Much as the role of the addictive multibillion-dollar painkiller OxyContin in the opioid crisis has stirred controversy and rancor nationwide, so it has divided members of the wealthy and philanthropic Sackler family, some of whom own the company that makes the drug. In recent months, as protesters have begun pressuring the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and other cultural institutions to spurn donations from the Sacklers, one branch of the family has moved aggressively to distance itself from OxyContin and its manufacturer, Purdue Pharma. The widow…
War on Death – April 11, 2018 – WASHINGTON – The opioids epidemic that is ripping apart lives across the country appears to be uniting Republicans and Democrats in Congress. “I know of no other issue right now that commands the attention of so many members of Congress, Republicans and Democrats,” said Sen. Lamar Alexander, a Tennessee Republican who chairs the Senate committee that oversees health care issues. Four committees in the House and the Senate are holding hearings Wednesday on an assortment of bills looking at different ways to combat the epidemic, which resulted in more than 42,000 opioid…
White Privilege – April 12, 2018 – We have been here before — a raging epidemic of addiction that destroys lives, families and communities. Who was on the front line in the 1990s, when the drug was crack and the addicts were mostly black? Drug czar William Bennett. His weapon was prosecution and prison. Today, when the drugs are opioids and the addicts are mostly white? U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams, a doctor, is out there, telling the country, “We need to see addiction as a chronic disease and not a moral failing.” Imagine President George H.W. Bush saying those…
Death in Stockton – April 12, 2018 – Al Senella, president of the California Association of Alcohol and Drug Program Executives, said incidents at sober living homes are hard to deal with. For one, he says even though some get funding from their county, most don’t get any regulation or direct inspections. “There is no official oversight over sober residences or recovery residences,” Senella said. FOX40 wanted to find out who runs the facility. Reportedly it was a man named Phillip Hammonds. Over the phone, he said he’d direct FOX40 to someone for an interview. But when FOX40 arrived no…
Absurd or Amen? – APRIL 15, 2018 – Scrambling for ways to contain America’s out-of-control opioid crisis, some experts in the field are convinced that one bit of good advice is to just say no to the enduring “just say no” antidrug message. Addiction, they say, is not a question of free will or a correctable character flaw, as a lot of people would like to believe. Rather, it is an affliction of the brain that needs to be treated as one would any chronic illness. One possible approach, an experimental vaccine, draws attention in this offering from Retro Report,…
Sobriety Starts at 60 – April 12, 2018 – On June 22, 2007, I had my last drink. Thanks to my faith in God and Alcoholics Anonymous I am still currently a sober, grateful alcoholic. I am 10 years, nine months, one week and four days sober. I didn’t know I had a drinking problem until I decided I had a drinking problem. I spoke to a good friend of mine one day and told him I could not stop drinking. He asked me a few pertinent questions: Do I drink alone, can I go more than 24 hours without…
Staying Up – April 15, 2018 – Eric R. Miller’s story could be one ripped from the pages of a cheap crime novel, a young life that started with struggle and strife, in foster homes at the age of 7. Before he was 20, he had fallen into a life of addiction and crime. But it wasn’t until April of last year, when he discovered methamphetamine, that he was transformed into a self-proclaimed “monster.” Mr. Miller, 28, spent five months falling into a meth hole until he was jailed in September, when he began to fight to overcome his inner…
West Virginia Blue Ridge Mountains … Take Me Home Country Roads – April 15, 2018 – Overdose deaths linked to heroin cut with a potent opioid meant for tranquilizing elephants more than doubled last year across West Virginia. Data released by the West Virginia Health Statistics Center shows the opioid battered state continues to grapple with the influx of powerful synthetic opioids like carfentanil, which is roughly 10,000 times more potent than morphine. Early numbers reveal deaths from carfentanil jumped from 34 in 2016 to 78 in 2017, reports The Register-Herald. Officials with the West Virginia Department of Health and…
Breathing a Sigh of Relief – APR 13, 2018 – The Trump administration is abandoning a Justice Department threat to crack down on recreational marijuana in states where it is legal, a move that could enable cannabis businesses in California and other states that have legalized pot to operate without fear of federal raids and prosecution. President Trump personally directed the abrupt retreat, which came at the behest of Republican Sen. Cory Gardner of Colorado. White House officials confirmed the policy shift Friday. Trump did not inform Atty. Gen. Jeff Sessions in advance of the change in policy, an almost…
Use Clean Advertising – April 16, 2018 – Google plans to resume accepting advertisements from alcohol and drug addiction treatment centers following a lengthy period of review, Reuters reports. Google originally stripped rehab-related search terms of advertising on its AdWords platform last September, following an investigation from The Verge detailing how misleading ads from disreputable treatment centers were gaming Google’s algorithms to boost incoming patient numbers. Google says ads will now be vetted directly by Portland, Oregon-based LegitScript, which monitors online pharmacies for the National Association of Boards of Pharmacy to prevent abuse and unauthorized selling of prescription medications. According…
Now That’s a Disease – May/June Issue -The science on the link is clear, but the alcohol industry has worked hard to downplay it. I thought I’d done everything right: breastfeeding my children, a careful diet, plenty of exercise. I wasn’t overweight and didn’t have a family history. I bought BPA-free bottles for my filtered water. But on a visit to the radiology department last spring, a pair of red brackets highlighted something worrisome on the ultrasound monitor. Invasive lobular carcinoma—a malignant breast tumor. This spidery little beast measuring nearly three centimeters meant I had stage 2 cancer. At 47,…