Back to a Healthy Life – MARCH 20, 2018 – Before opioid addiction unraveled Mike Wallace’s life, food was his livelihood. Wallace, now in recovery, worked for years as a dishwasher and line cook. And on a recent sunny Boston morning, he again found himself in the kitchen. Wallace was one of about a dozen people at a cooking class at Boston Medical Center tailored for people recovering from addiction. Tracey Burg, a dietician and chef who runs the medical center’s demonstration kitchen, which offers classes on how to cook for medical conditions from diabetes to heart disease, led participants…
Author: Leonard Buschel
Worth Rejoicing – March 22, 2018 – Where were you this St. Patrick’s Day? Were you out getting drunk? Well, you should have been at the Palladium Theater celebrating Senator Darryl Rouson’s 20th anniversary of sobriety. St. Patrick’s Day 1998, he started down the path of recovery, one step at a time. Musical guests Cleo Hart, Shawn Brown, Alex Harris and Siobhan Monique tore…down…the…house! You missed out … With three hours of some of the best music you’ll hear in Tampa Bay, this was a celebration of perseverance and resilience. The audience was full of people from all walks of life.…
Dr. Phil’s Interrogation – March 20, 2018 – Appearing on his talk show Tuesday, pop singer Demi Lovato spoke candidly with TV’s Dr. Phil McGraw about her history with bipolar disorder, addiction, an eating disorder and self-harm. And while Lovato has managed to control her demons, struggles with food-related issues remain. “My eating disorder started when I was very young, and that’s something I still work on on a daily basis,” she said. “I’ve conquered my addiction and alcoholism in a way where I don’t even think about it anymore, but my struggles with my food issues are something I…
A Lifestyle, a Choice, an Illness? – March 23, 2018 – Over the course of my career, I’ve spent many years working with alcoholics. I know the battle they face and the torture they endure in facing their demons and giving up the bottle. I’ve seen many succeed, but also many more fail. It’s a struggle that often gets right to the heart of who someone is and I wish Ant McPartlin all the best for his rehabilitation. But after he was charged this week with drink driving I’m afraid my patience and sympathy are in short supply: by all…
MEDIA: Book Recommendation – MARCH 2018 – BEING FUNNY IS A SURVIVAL SKILL. MARTI MACGIBBON’S INCREDIBLE MEMOIR FIERCE, FUNNY, AND FEMALE IS NOT ONLY A SURVIVOR’S TALE BUT AN INSPIRATIONAL STORY OF OVERCOMING THE UNTHINKABLE, AGAIN AND AGAIN. Through drug abuse and eating disorders, through sexual trauma and the murky waters of sobriety, MacGibbon relates how she found a way to smile again. An inspirational speaker and mental health professional, she has clearly made peace with her personal story. Fierce, Funny, and Female has an accessible, friendly tone that sometimes stands in sharp contrast to the extremely dark, tragic subject…
Time for Rehab – March 22, 2018 – The grand opening of the San Diego Addiction Treatment Center was commemorated with a ribbon-cutting ceremony Thursday. The new facility, located less than five miles east of downtown San Diego, provides clinical and support services for adult males struggling with drug addiction and co-occurring mental health disorders. San Diego Addiction Treatment Center is also part of the American Addiction Centers’ family of treatment centers, the nation’s first publicly traded company solely dedicated to addiction, as well as outpatient services arm of Laguna Treatment Hospital in Orange County. Drug overdose is now the…
Not In My ‘Hood – March 22, 2018 – Greene County legislators and health professionals met with members of a drug rehabilitation facility based in Queens last week to discuss opening a 60-bed residential center in a private lodge near Hunter that would primarily serve patients from the city, Hunter Town Board members said. Representatives from J-CAP, the Queens-based nonprofit drug rehabilitation facility, discussed buying the former Clover Lodge on Clover Road in Lanesville during a meeting facilitated by Sen. George Amedore, R-46, and Greene County legislators March 13, the senator said. “It was a preliminary discussion,” said Greene County…
Rocky Road – Mar 22, 2018 – Kellyanne Conway — rumored to be the next White House communications director — drew a strong reaction on social media with a joke about drug use at a forum for millennials. Introducing Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar and the Department of Justice’s Sarah Isgur Flores, Conway discussed fentanyl, a synthetic opioid that is significantly more potent than heroin. “On our college campuses, your folks are reading the labels, won’t put any sugar in their body, they don’t eat carbs anymore, and they’re very, very fastidious about what goes into their body…
Time to Lawyer Up? – March 21, 2018 – But the self-described “wounded healer” found a more lenient regulatory environment in Colorado. He owns two addiction rehab clinics in Colorado Springs and Aurora and 16 sober-living homes in Colorado despite a growing list of allegations against him, including sexual harassment, abuse of patients and inappropriate billing practices at his CoreVision program. “It’s very unprofessional at the least and dangerous at the worst,” said Dawna Stevens, who said her 24-year-old son received little or no treatment when he was a CoreVision patient. “We were afraid he was going to end up…
Up In Smoke – March 20, 2018 – The measure in Cook County — the nation’s second-most-populous county, which has more residents than 27 states of the union – is not binding, but its passage sends a strong message to state lawmakers that ending cannabis prohibition is an issue that voters want the legislature to address. The question, approved by voters with a greater than two-to-one margin, reads: “Shall the State of Illinois legalize the cultivation, manufacture, distribution, testing, and sale of marijuana and marijuana products for recreational use by adults 21 and older subject to state regulation, taxation and…
Beware of Exhalations – March 19, 2018 – He started thinking: San Franciscans would never tolerate those levels of cigarette smoke in a public place anymore. So why were they OK with smoke from burning pot? Did people just assume that cannabis smoke isn’t harmful the way tobacco smoke is? … University of California, San Francisco. “And for a few naive split seconds I was thinking to myself, ‘Hey, they can’t smoke in AT&T Park! I’m sure that’s not allowed.’ And then I realized that it was all marijuana.” Recreational pot was not legal yet in the state, but that…
The Perfect Share – March 21, 2018 – Louie Anderson is opening up about his difficult childhood — and how it’s shaped who he is today. Sitting down with PEOPLE Now recently, the Baskets star said he only began to understand his father’s pain after his death. “My dad had a 10 times harder life than mine,” said Anderson, 64, who grew up in a St. Paul housing project as one of 11 children of an alcoholic father. Full Story @ People.com
Networking Disaster – March 24, 2018 – The rehab ripple effect: There’s an uncomfortable hole in the ITV schedule tonight, where the award-winning Ant and Dec’s Saturday Night Takeaway should have been. From next week, Declan Donnelly will do the unthinkable and host the show alone for the first time in their 28-year screen partnership. The pitiful footage that emerged earlier this week, showing a dazed Ant McPartlin emerging from a crumpled black Mini, following a collision involving two other vehicles, has effectively put two careers on ice – his own, as he has now been charged with drink-driving -…
The 10th Promise? – March 20, 2018 – The Duke of Cambridge bestowed the honour on the Liverpool-born star at a ceremony at Buckingham Palace. “It means a lot actually,” the musician told the BBC. “It means recognition for the things we’ve done. I was really pleased to accept this.” The honour comes 53 years after the Beatles were all awarded the MBE – and Starr said he had missed his bandmates’ companionship this time round. “I was a bit shaky today on my own,” he said … When The Beatles received their MBEs in October 1965, the occasion was…
Executing Addicts’ Enablers – March 20, 2018 – (CNN)President Donald Trump on Monday rolled out his three-part plan to tackle the opioid epidemic — including some programs long championed by public health advocates — but it’s the proposal to impose the death penalty on drug traffickers that has raised the most eyebrows. “This isn’t about being nice anymore,” Trump told the crowd at a New Hampshire event. “These are terrible people, and we have to get tough on those people. We can have all the blue-ribbon committees we want. But if we don’t get tough on the drug dealers, we’re…
Greedy Murderous Bastards – March 16, 2018 – Insys paid the doctors, in some cases more than $100,000 annually, in return for prescribing millions of dollars’ worth of the company’s painkiller product, the indictment said. It charged that Insys funneled the illicit payments to the doctors through a sham “speakers bureau,” in which the doctors were paid for purportedly giving educational presentations about the drug that, in many cases, were mere social gatherings at high-end Manhattan restaurants. Such gatherings involved no educational presentation, and attendance sign-in sheets were often forged to include the names of health care practitioners who were…
Carrying the Message – March 13, 2018 – As a senior in high school, Tony Hoffman was one of the top BMX amateur racers in the country and was slated to appear on the cover of the nation’s leading BMX magazine. Three years later, at age 21, Hoffman found himself in court facing 17 and a half years in prison after committing an armed robbery to support his addiction to prescription pills. Despite what seems like a dramatic fall from grace, Hoffman describes his journey as a series of small decisions that ultimately set him on the wrong path: A…
Mirror Mirror on the Wall… – March 16, 2018 – Demi Lovato is celebrating her sixth year of sobriety, telling others “it is possible”. The actress and musician revealed that, at 21 years old, she was addicted to alcohol and drugs, but she had worked hard to overcome her struggle. “Today is a very special day for me … I’m officially celebrating six years of sobriety!!” she wrote on Twitter on Thursday (local time). “A huge part of my recovery was learning to love myself and to give back to others.” She thanked friends, family… Full Story @ NewsHub.co.nz
With Great Conviction – March 14, 2018 – Actor Danny Trejo came of age in the California prison system, doing time in a juvenile detention center as well as in San Quentin, Folsom and Soledad, on charges relating to drugs. He says that background prepared him well for acting. “Standing on the yard in San Quentin, knowing that there’s a riot coming, you’re absolutely scared to death with every fiber of your body,” Trejo says. “[But] you have to pretend you’re not. You have to stand there and make everybody think you like it.” As an actor, he’s made a…
No Collusion – March 17, 2018 – It was going to be a study that could change the American diet, a huge clinical trial that might well deliver all the medical evidence needed to recommend a daily alcoholic drink as part of a healthy lifestyle. That was how two prominent scientists and a senior federal health official pitched the project during a presentation at the luxurious Breakers Hotel in Palm Beach, Fla., in 2014. And the audience members who were being asked to help pay for the $100 million study seemed receptive: They were all liquor company executives. The 10-year…
Starting Younger – March 5, 2018 – As society faces mounting pressures and distractions, mindfulness has emerged as a widespread phenomenon; its benefits have been widely touted from lower school classrooms to the boardrooms of multinational corporations. While the roots of mindfulness can be traced to early Buddhist philosophy, the practice was made mainstream in the 1970s by Jon Kabat-Zinn, a Professor of Medicine Emeritus at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. Kabat-Zinn founded the UMass Medical School Center for Mindfulness, along with Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction therapy (MBSR), all with the intention of making mindfulness a secular practice of evidence-based…
The Wreckage of the Past – March 16, 2018 – San Diego’s huge outbreak of hepatitis A – a preventable but deadly virus that is spread through contact with human feces – captured national media attention in September. The city began washing streets it believed were contributing to the problem with bleach and initiated a local vaccination campaign among the communities most affected. Soon, it was out of the national conversation. But similar outbreaks have continued throughout the country, still largely among the homeless and illicit drug-using populations who are most vulnerable to the disease, with few national headlines in…
Come On Down – March 15, 2018 – Experts say that could be a violation of Florida law. “Practically everyone from out of state was flown in. They told them ‘We’ll hurry up and get you on the next plane,’” she said. Tonia Donnini came to River Oaks from Ohio, after getting a referral from a medical facility there. “They said basically everything would be taken care of. They would pay for my flight down. They would transport me from Tampa Airport,” Donnini said. Mike Isom, who was River Oaks’ Transportation Manager for two years, says most patients came from…
I Like the ‘relapse strain’ – Mar 14 2018, – It’s a strange thing to obtain a medical marijuana card after nearly a decade of sobriety. My decision to quit drinking was less of a healthy life choice, and more the only way to stay alive. Though alcohol was my substance of choice, I learned in treatment and still largely believe that “mood altering” substances of any kind are very dangerous for folks who have struggled with addiction. So how, nine years after getting sober, did I find myself waiting outside a cannabis dispensary in California, with a prescription from…
A Better Way – 2018 – The emergency room at one New Jersey hospital is trying to avoid giving out potentially addictive prescription drugs. Full Story @ NBCNews.com
Magazines Matter – March 13, 2018 – The video, produced by Aja Harris and Paul Moakley in collaboration with Mic, chronicles the aftermath of a couple’s life after footage of their overdose went viral. “This story had particular resonance for me, because it’s set in Memphis, my hometown. Of course, that’s what’s so haunting, and so unacceptable, about the opioid crisis. It’s set in all of our hometowns,” TIME Editor-in-Chief Edward Felsenthal said during the Ellie Awards, where ASME honors were announced on Tuesday, March 13. “It is the equivalent, as measured by death toll, of a 9/11 every three…
Pills for Everything – March 16, 2018 – When a psychopharmacologist prescribed the drug Klonopin, everything brightened. “It just leveled me out,” Ms. Falstein said. “I had more energy. And it helped me sleep, which I was desperate for.” After several months, however, the horrible symptoms returned. “My body became accustomed to half a milligram, and the drug stopped working,” she said. “So then I was up to one milligram. And then two.” Her doctor kept increasing the dosage and added Ativan to the mix. Now 67, with her health and stamina in decline, Ms. Falstein has been diligently working…
Ain’t No Serpico – March 13, 2018 – An NYPD officer was busted Tuesday for trafficking heroin after returning from Massachusetts with $50,000 stashed in her car, authorities said … After a months-long investigation and surveillance, an agent for the Drug Enforcement Agency confronted Jimenez and cohort Luis Soto, prosecutors said at the cop’s appearance in court Tuesday. The agent shined a flashlight into the woman’s car and discovered a bundle of cash along with her NYPD service weapon in her purse, according to the court papers. The bundle allegedly turned out to be $25,000. Full Story @ NYPost.com
I Cannot Tell a Lie – March 16, 2018 – Plaintiff, a recovering alcoholic, was a former Addictions Counselor Assistant at the Creedmoor Addiction Treatment Center. He sued his employer, New York State Office of Alcoholism and Substance Abuse Services (“OASAS”) alleging he was harassed, discriminated and retaliated against in violation of the ADA and Rehabilitation Act. Specifically, he alleged that he was passed over for a promotion, denied a transfer, and assigned “jobs nobody wants to do.” He further alleged that he suffered adverse actions in retaliation for both internal complaints he made about purported violations of his clients’…
‘Tis Better to Give Than to Recieve – March 12, 2018 – You’ve heard it over and over: Money doesn’t buy happiness. Even if people didn’t keep telling you that, you might guess from the large number of extremely wealthy people with drug or alcohol addiction, depression, or even suicidal tendencies. You may even have experienced it yourself, when that last raise or bonus didn’t increase your own happiness. Neither did the extra money in your bank account or the new gadget or nice piece of clothing you splurged on. But before you give up on money as a source…