NOT STONED SHARON – JULY 31, 2026 – Sharon is taking her health into her own hands … cutting out weed and one of the medications she was prescribed following her nearly fatal 2001 stroke. The star says she’s living a drug-free life … telling Variety she decided to get off her stroke medication against her doctor’s orders. “It was like going off of f***ing heroin. I was sick as a frigging dog for four and a half months.” Once she got off the medication, Sharon says she turned her attention to pot … and she got sick when she…
Author: Leonard Buschel
VIDEO – SONG OF THE WEEK – NOW – Alice Phoebe Lou and her band performing “Something Holy” with the Feature Choir of Berlin at Studio 1 at the Funkhaus. Vocals and El. Guitar – Alice Phoebe Lou Bass – Dekel AdinEl. Piano and synths – Ziv YaminDrums – Julian Berann2nd El. Guitar – Michael TezakWith the Feature Choir of Berlin. WATCH
STICK WITH THE WINNERS! – Aug. 4, 2026 – Issa Ibrahim is a visual artist, author, musician and filmmaker. He hopes his story of resilience and survival will inspire greater compassion and a deeper understanding of our relationship to the gift and curse of mental illness, drug abuse, art, and the art of living. Q. If you are in recovery, what was your drug(s) of choice and when is your sobriety date? A. Marijuana was my drug of choice. It was normalized and encouraged in the jazz/artsy/Bohemian household I came from. Everyone who came over smoked. It was a constant…
SAVE-A-LIFE – July 11, 2026 – Sgt. Police Sergeant Flores heroically turned a life-threatening situation into a life-saving mission by administering Narcan to an overdosing patient and coordinating a swift medical response that thankfully saved the man’s life. Alfredo Jones, Chief Operating Officer, North Central Bronx Hospital, commended Flores, saying, “Sgt. Flores’s decisive action is an example of the high standard of care North Central Bronx Hospital Police officers bring to this community every day. In a matter of seconds, she recognized a life-threatening emergency, applied her training, and gave a patient the chance to survive this incident. We are…
SYMBOLS MATTER – July 30, 2026 – Most accounts of a mind going dull revolve around the same explanation: disuse. If you stop reading, stop learning, coast — and the machinery rusts. Which is why the standard prescription is effort. Do the crossword, learn the language, keep the thing busy. But the more common route to a duller mind doesn’t run through neglect. It runs through competence. Every year of experience adds to your private stock of “moves” that already work — the argument that you know persuades, the fix that almost always clears the bug, the standard way to…
VIDEO – GIRL TALK – July 28, 2026 – For Anne Lamott, it goes Jesus, the cat, and then everyone else. Amy hangs with the ‘Bird by Bird’ author and talks about how she deals with bad reviews, binging on ‘Below Deck’ and People magazine, and dating someone who’s allergic to cats. Guests: Tina Fey and Anne Lamott Executive producers: Bill Simmons, Amy Poehler, and Jenna Weiss-Berman WATCH
EYES DON’T LIE – July 31, 2026 – The former adult film star’s mom, Yesenia Cooper, sued Malibu Lighthouse Treatment Center in 2024, claiming Willis was left permanently disabled and in a vegetative state while she was being treated for ketamine addiction. Willis – born Litzy Lara Banuelos – has a long road ahead of her, as she still needs assistance to eat and is learning to walk again. Cooper revealed the family may fly to Spain to undergo new neurological procedures in hopes of stimulating the brain systems that control speech, communication, and movement. Read More
MUST READ – Issa Ibrahim’s memoir details in searing prose his development of severe mental illness leading to a horrific family tragedy, his acquittal by reason of insanity, and his subsequent commission to a mental hospital for nearly 20 years. Raised in an idyllic creative environment, mom and dad cultivating his talent, Issa watches his family’s descent into chaos in the drug-crazed late 1980s. Following his father’s death, Issa, grief-stricken and vulnerable, travels down a road that leads to psychosis—and to one of the most nightmarish scenarios conceivable. Issa receives the insanity plea and is committed to an insane asylum…
MEMORY – Aug. 4, 2026 – As I approach turning 32 years clean and sober in Alcoholics Anonymous, I am reminded of a very special afternoon many years ago when I was Reading Alan Watts in Emily Dickinson’s Front Yard. I was probably high even though I was at a Macrobiotic retreat in Amherst, and my sensei Michio Kushi was adamantly not in favor of smoking pot or hashish. Yet, what a great feeling that magical plant gave me every time I inhaled it into my lungs. Every time! One time in a hotel room in Israel, with my friend Joe Brodsky, we didn’t…
SOUL MATES – July 16, 2026 – The singer/songwriter shared details about married life ahead of the release of her third solo album “Beard,” revealing she wed her wife Simone in a courthouse ceremony last July. Nearly two decades after a teenage Syd helped reshape the sound of R&B from her childhood bedroom as part of the Odd Future collective the singer and producer is stepping into what feels like her most grounded era yet. In a wide-ranging conversation with Rolling Stone tied to her third solo album, “Beard,” out July 17, the 34-year-old reflected on aging into her confidence,…
BODY CAM VIDEO – LAWYERING UP – July 28, 2026 – Former Dallas Cowboys quarterback Tony Romo told a sheriff’s deputy he was on his way to see his grandparents and had consumed “zero” drinks during a traffic stop in Milwaukee that led to his arrest last week. Romo was booked on one count of allegedly operating while intoxicated … Newly released body camera videos, obtained by NBC Dallas-Fort Worth, provide new details about the July 23 interaction with deputies and field sobriety tests. In one video, Romo, 46, in the driver’s seat when a deputy, identified only as R.…
THE BASTARDS – July 30, 2026 – By the end of 2020, Kentucky’s newly elected Gov. Andy Beshear had one goal above all others: Keep people alive. The state was battling two merciless threats. COVID-19 was killing hundreds of people each month, and deadly drug overdoses were among the highest in the nation. Calling addiction a disease that breeds in isolation, Beshear worried people would stop seeking treatment for fear of contracting COVID-19. So Beshear set out to make drug treatment easier to access. Kentucky joined more than 40 other states in lifting some restrictions on Medicaid, which served most…
REGRETS, THEY HAD A FEW – July 30, 2026 – An open-air drug market stretched along the intersection of 12th and Jackson: about 250 people, many smoking fentanyl or bent over in the thrall of the drug, tilting as if mid-fall. Three women lay passed out on the sidewalk, their chests slowly rising and falling, while fellow addicts stepped over them and dealers made sales. Young boys, schoolbags on their backs, stood on a far corner and watched. I walked around the block to the Hoa Mai playground, named for a Vietnamese flower that signifies rebirth. City workers had installed…
3.14 NOT PIE – July 29, 2026 – Scientists have suggested eating very little sugar up to the age of two may help protect the brain decades later. The research analysed the impact of the end of sugar rationing in the UK which led to a rapid increase in the amount of sugar in people’s diets. The results suggest those who were toddlers during sugar rationing had a 23% lower risk of dementia. This is not the first study to suggest the first 1,000 days of life are critically important for our future health. A suite of studies have been…
“I am here, that I may wonder!” – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1749–1832
AUDIO – UNBELIEVABLE – July 17, 2026 – A Navajo advocate who has blown the whistle on fraudulent “sober living” homes in Arizona says she began shining a light on the Medicaid scam targeting Native Americans after her own cousin was kidnapped by operators who plied her relative with drugs and alcohol. “They told her she would go to Phoenix for the day and (they would) take her home. All throughout the ride they gave her alcohol,” Reva Stewart told “Jesse Weber Live” on Friday. She said the people who took her cousin demanded personal information from her as they…
FINALLY, GREAT NEWS – July 20, 2026 – Drinking up to five cups of coffee a day, or up to 400 milligrams of caffeine, is safe for most adults, and research suggests regular coffee consumption may be linked to a lower risk of stroke, diabetes, and heart failure, according to a new scientific statement from the American Heart Association. The official report, published Monday in the journal Circulation, clarifies years of conflicting advice regarding caffeine and the heart. “Coffee is potentially linked to lower risks of type 2 diabetes, stroke, and heart failure, though its relationship with blood pressure is…
STAY AWARE – July 21, 2026 – Impaired memory and thinking are the most common symptoms associated with a dementia diagnosis. But noncognitive symptoms can appear years or even decades earlier. Alzheimer’s disease, which accounts for 60 to 80 percent of dementia cases, can progress through three main stages. The first stage can start 15 to 20 years before any obvious changes to cognition. Read More
CHRONIC DREAMS – July 23, 2026 – For years, while he regularly smoked cannabis, his dreams seemed to disappear. Then, last summer, he quit. Soon afterward, his nights became populated by a vivid nocturnal world unlike anything he had experienced before. There was the dream in which he was driving his old green 1985 Lincoln — with its white leather seats — alongside his dead cousin listening to C-Bo. Another found him sitting on the steps outside a club talking with friends. And then there were the sex dreams. They were so real and so electrifying, Mitchell said, “I was…
SAVE THE ADULT – July 23, 2026 – A 25-year study found that frequent consumption of soda, sports drinks, and fruit juice beginning in childhood was linked to a higher risk of high blood pressure in adulthood. Drinking fruit juice and sugar-sweetened beverages regularly from childhood into adulthood may increase the likelihood of developing high blood pressure later in life, according to new research published today in the American Heart Association’s flagship journal Circulation. Read More
VIDEO – BUYER BEWARE VERY AWARE – July 21, 2026 – Betty Thomas, 78, said she unknowingly used fentanyl patches for nearly three weeks after a Publix pharmacist in Decatur, Georgia, allegedly gave her another customer’s prescription instead of her own. As the days went on, Thomas said, she became increasingly ill. “I’m throwing up, I’m nauseous, I’m dizzy, I can’t go to the bathroom, I’m sick,” Thomas said. She said her son eventually came to take her to the hospital. That was when he realized she had been given a prescription for fentanyl patches intended for Betty Davis instead…
NOW WHAT? – July 21, 2026 – In 1983, while on a flight to South Dakota, a 29-year-old Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was reported to have developed profuse sweating, pallor, and a weak pulse. Authorities found two-tenths of a gram of heroin in his luggage. He entered rehabilitation for substance use and shared that since then, he has been in recovery for 43 years. He pled guilty to a felony charge, and the judge ordered him to two years of probation instead of a possible jail sentence. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is now the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human…
EACH ONE, TEACH ONE – July 23, 2026 – Out of 8 billion people in this world, how is it possible that we somehow find the ones who change our lives forever? I’ve asked myself that question more than once because that’s exactly what happened with Eve Goldberg and BigVision NYC, the first time I heard Eve speak, it was through a screen. She took my breath away. Not because of what she had accomplished. Not because of what she had built. Simply because of who she is. How does someone experience every parent’s greatest heartbreak and still choose love?…
SAD WAY TO GO – July 24, 2024 – On their way out the door, corrections officers offer people getting released from the Aroostook County Jail in Houlton a bag with the opioid overdose reversal medication naloxone, drug test strips, a first-aid kit and a brochure for the Aroostook Recovery Center of Hope. More than two-thirds of the jail’s prisoners have a substance use or mental health diagnosis … That’s something jail officials, public health experts and advocates said they would like to see change. Providing addiction treatment within jails is one thing. Helping people stay sober after they leave…
VIDEO – EACH ONE, TEACH ONE – Eternally – Jorma Kaukonen – vocals, guitarJack Casady – bass, vocalsPaul Kantner – vocals, guitarGuest: Grace Slick – vocalsGuest: Papa John Creach – violinGuest: Will Scarlett – harmonicaRecorded Live: 3/4/1988 – Fillmore Auditorium – San Francisco, CA WATCH
STICK WITH THE WINNERS! – July 28, 2026 – Vinsent Franke is a dedicated healthcare professional and an industry leader in behavioral healthcare, rooted in the belief that everyone has the potential to rediscover their purpose. Raised in California and inspired by the lessons learned through his own experiences, Vinsent has transformed his life from overcoming personal addiction to helping others navigate their own journeys of healing and self-rediscovery. He asserts, “Being prepared for what we were made for,” as both a personal mantra and a guiding principle in his work, emphasizing the significance of purpose in recovery. Q. If…
NO VALIUM EITHER? – July 20, 2026 – “This past week marked 4 years since I gave up alcohol. I’ve talked about my reasons why I made that decision,” the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills star, 57, shared in an Instagram post on July 20. In her new update, Richards shared more details about her decision to quit, explaining, “I wanted to look and feel better during a time where I didn’t feel my best both physically or mentally & didn’t feel like I could afford any bad days. Read More
AUDIO – MYSTERY ABOUNDS – July 24, 2026 – On July 15, a Santa Monica judge approved a $3 million settlement in a lawsuit brought by former adult performer Emily Willis’ mother and legal guardian against Malibu Lighthouse Treatment, the company that owns the exclusive Southern California rehab center Summit Malibu. She was 25 years old when the paramedics tried to revive her after she was found unresponsive at the facility. Only three years before that, Willis was among the most prominent adult performers in the world, having received the 2021 AVN female performer of the year award — the…
BROTHERLY LOVE – July 22, 2026 – Both the famed director, now 72, and his younger brother, 67, appeared on In Depth with Graham Bensinger in 2023. During their conversations on the show, they discussed the period in Clint’s life, and Ron candidly addressed his own guilt that he struggled with. “I had been really strictly controlled as a kid. My parents must have been worried about kidnapping and other things,” Ron shared, saying that he “chafed” under their parenting style and wanted something different for his brother. Read More
THE ROOMS CONNECT – July 20, 2026 – Jodie Sweetin has a full heart on her sobriety journey. The Full House alum recently reflected on how she and her former costar John Stamos have “really connected” over their recovery experiences. “We have been there to celebrate each other’s big successes and milestones,” Sweetin said on the July 15 episode of The Dory Jackson Interview series, “and I am so glad that I got to be an example of attraction rather than promotion, which is a big principle in recovery.” After all, her mindset since taking her last sip of alcohol…