‘largest provider of residential treatment’ – April 16, 2025 – A federal judge has given the go-ahead for a class-action lawsuit that could radically expand Americans’ access to lifesaving addiction medications. The perhaps surprising defendant: The Salvation Army, the Christian charity known more for its thrift stores than for its nationwide network of addiction treatment facilities. Yet following the March 26 ruling from Leo Sorokin, a federal district court judge in Massachusetts, the nonprofit now finds itself at the center of a legal fight that could set a precedent for all Americans seeking treatment for opioid addiction using two common…
Author: Leonard Buschel
VIDEO – PROGRESS – April 14, 2025 – New York City’s public hospital system is adopting a revolutionary addiction treatment program at its medical facility serving the South Bronx after the same initiative helped dramatically curb overdose deaths on Staten Island. Health + Hospitals will launch the specialized “Hotspotting” treatment program at Lincoln Hospital, thanks to a $660,000 grant from the Robin Hood Foundation. Under the Hotspotting model, patients being treated for opioid use in the Lincoln Hospital emergency department will be connected to a dedicated care team, including community health workers and peer counselors. For up to a year…
BELFAST MAYOR – April 17, 2025 – It is no secret that Belfast is currently in the grip of a drugs epidemic, and when asked if he had ever smoked marijuana, Micky Murray admitted that he has tried it twice. “I don’t think there’s a huge issue with marijuana. It needs to be legalised, at the very least for medicinal purposes. The way we treat drugs – and especially addiction – is really behind the times,” he said. “Marijuana doesn’t do the damage that people think it’s going to do. And if you look at places across the world who…
VIDEO – WE SHALL SURVIVE – April 9, 2025 – Long-distance running is something that comes naturally to the Running Rooster but he says he lost that passion while battling addiction. Thanks to organizations like Dawn Farm and Home of New Vision, he’s in recovery and lacing up those running shoes once again to give back and give meaning to why the chicken crossed the road. “I’ve run marathons, and I used to be someone who ran sixty miles a week,” Haase told us while jogging.That’s a 125-mile pace already, and the donations are still coming in to keep Dawn…
VIDEO – LAWYER TO JAIL? – April 17, 2025 – When Brett Ryan was arrested for DUI in 2023, the Lakewood defense lawyer he hired quickly referred him to a substance abuse treatment clinic. … we were just trying to make the attorney happy. Regularly it would kind of be just burned into your head, that’s the moneymaker,” said Alyssa Keane Keane and three other former employees who did not want to speak on the record identified Barbara Bowden as the unnamed lawyer in state records. Judy Russo said her son was a long-time drug and alcohol abuser. “He was…
NOW IT’S GOOD FOR YOU – April 14, 2025 – Fears that smartphones, tablets and other devices could drive dementia in later life have been challenged by research that found lower rates of cognitive decline in older people who used the technology. People with better cognitive skills simply use them more, but the scientists say the findings question the claim that screen time drives what has been called “digital dementia”. “For the first generation that was exposed to digital tools, their use is associated with better cognitive functioning,” said Dr Jared Benge, a clinical neuropsychologist in UT Health Austin’s Comprehensive…
PARTY HEARTY – April 16, 2025 – Alcoholics Anonymous (A.A.) will bring together tens and tens of thousands of members and guests from around the world, July 3–6, 2025, for its International Convention in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, to mark the Fellowship’s 90th anniversary. The International Convention promises to be one of the largest-ever convention hosted by the city of Vancouver. Events will take place at the Vancouver Convention Centre and BC Place Stadium. They include: CONTINUE@PRESS
SANITY MATTERS – April 17, 2025 – Her first panic attack came at a company-wide meeting, right before her scheduled presentation. Carolina Lasso had given many similar talks about her marketing team’s accomplishments. When her name was called this time, she couldn’t speak. “I felt a knot in my throat,” Lasso said. “My head, it felt like it was inside a bubble. I couldn’t hear, I couldn’t see, and it felt like an eternity. It was just a few seconds, but it was so profound, and in a way earth-shattering to me.” Lasso was struggling after a cross-country move followed…
“I want to tell you: carry on, keep riding the waves of love, of charity. Be ‘surfers’ of love!” – Pope Francis, Dec. 17, 1936 – Apr. 21, 2025
VIDEO – MUSICAL INTERLUDE – TODAY – A great performance from Gil Scott-Heron and the Midnight Band, live at the Wax Museum Nightclub. Ripped from Channel 4 and Robert Mugge’s brilliant documentary Black Wax about Gil and his great poems and music. ENJOY! So relevant Winter is here 2025, Gill Scott Heron the prophet. CONTINUE@YouTube
HELPING HAND – April 4, 2025 – “Recovery affects both people in the relationship—not just the one with addiction. Partners might feel stressed or anxious. Sometimes even resentful, especially if trust has been an issue, or if they’ve taken on extra responsibilities as the result of their partner’s substance use,” Dr. Stacy adds. If you’ve helped a friend or a loved one deal with addiction, you’re not alone. Almost 49 million people in the United States ages 12 and older struggle with substance use disorder.1 For many adults, their partners walk the journey beside them. As you watch someone you…
AIN’T NO GOOD – April 8, 2025 – Alcohol, whether consumed regularly or only on special occasions, takes a toll on your body. From your brain and heart, to your lungs and muscles, to your gastrointestinal and immune systems, alcohol has broad harmful effects on your health – including causing cancer Alcohol is the third-leading preventable cause of cancer in the US, responsible for about 100,000 cases of cancer and 20,000 cancer deaths annually. In comparison, alcohol-related vehicle crashes cause around 13,500 deaths each year in the US. As early as the 1980s, researchers suspected that alcohol can cause cancer.…
Bon Appétit – April 4, 2025 – Nothing in life comes free, not even a sugar-free drink. Scientists have now linked the artificial sweetener sucralose (sold as Splenda) to yet another potential health downside – and this time, the impact is not in the gut; it’s in the brain. In a randomized crossover trial, when a group of 75 adults drank a beverage containing sucralose, they showed heightened blood flow to the hypothalamus – a part of the brain that helps control appetite and cravings. By contrast, when the same participants drank a beverage with sucrose (aka table sugar), there…
DIRTY BUSINESS – April 3, 2025 – PRETORIA, South Africa (AP) — A secluded corner surrounded by litter and makeshift structures on the outskirts of South Africa’s capital is home to dozens of people with drug addiction. They inject themselves and each other with heroin-laden mixtures, some of them sharing needles. And at least one local health clinic that was providing services in Pretoria has closed, forcing patients to turn to often crowded, poorly funded government-run facilities. Now, harm reduction programs like the Pretoria one for drug users will face stiff competition for sharply shrinking resources. CONTINUE@WHEC
LIFE MATTERS – April 10, 2025 – Federal spending cuts instigated by the White House threaten to reverse a steep decline in American overdose deaths and are jeopardizing other gains in the battle against synthetic opioids, people on the front lines of the anti-narcotics fight say. Government drug researchers have been sacked One of the nation’s premier narcotics testing labs has furloughed chemists who test the potency of illicit drugs. A Pennsylvania outreach center that distributed thousands of doses of lifesaving overdose-reversal medication has closed its doors. An Illinois nonprofit that works to reduce overdose deaths in communities of color…
VIDEO – INNOVATION – April 8, 2025 – A complementary but no less controversial harm reduction strategy, heroin-assisted treatment involves administering pharmaceutical-grade heroin under medical supervision. It stabilizes individuals with moderate to severe opioid use disorder who haven’t responded to other treatments, such as buprenorphine and methadone. Studies in Switzerland, Canada and the Netherlands show that heroin-assisted treatment reduces illegal drug use, improves health, decreases criminal activity and fosters social integration. A 2023 systematic review of nine randomized controlled trials in Europe and the U.K. found that heroin-assisted treatment “more consistently retains people with heroin addictions in treatment and reduces…
VIDEO – DON’T SMOKE – April 9, 2025 – Christie Martin received a panicked call from her daughter Brianne Cullen who claimed she was struggling to breathe. Horrified, Christie rushed the 17-year-old to a nearby ER where she was given oxygen, X-rays and medication before being diagnosed with bronchiolitis obliterans — a health condition better known as ‘popcorn lung’. “She called me all of a sudden and said she can’t catch her breath. “I couldn’t understand her, she kept saying ‘I can’t breathe’, it was the scariest thing.” The mom went on to credit the sport for saving Brianne’s life.…
HE SHOULD KNOW – March 2025 – The aspiration of becoming a great or even just competent psychotherapist is, at its root, somewhat paradoxical. Over the past 15 years of daily practice I have learned that psychotherapy is not about mastery, not about “fixing” people, and certainly not about discovering truth. If anything, it’s about constantly evolving, unlearning mastery, tolerating uncertainty, and embracing the often irrational and patently absurd complexity of human beings. The path to greatness in this metier is littered with counterintuitive situations and if you are in search of clarity this may not be the ideal profession…
BE CAREFUL – April 9, 2025 – Children born to mothers with diabetes face significantly higher risks of developing neurodevelopmental disorders, according to a sweeping new meta-analysis involving over 56 million mother–child pairs….A massive new meta-analysis offers the clearest evidence to date that children born to mothers with diabetes face significantly higher risks of developing neurodevelopmental disorders, including autism, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and intellectual disabilities. CONTINUE@NeuroscienceNews
IT’S THE DOPAMINE – April 8, 2025 – Kate’s family was about discover a devastating secret she’d kept hidden for years – one that was going to turn their financial lives upside down. Grasping for the words to explain the depth of her deceit, she could only say ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry’, over and over again. It started with a flicker of excitement and the push of a button. It was 2002. Kate, then an expectant mother, sat trance-like in front of a poker machine, her eyes glued to the flashing screen for hours. Her mind ruminated on…
STUNNING SHARE – April 10, 2025 – Spencer Matthews has been open about his journey with alcohol after suffering with alcohol dependency between the ages of 15 and 30. He admitted that during that time period he would take shots of liquor at nine or 10 in the morning. “I used to drink every day from the age of 15 all the way up to 30….I’d drink every day, quite often. “There was a period where I’d walk past our liquor cabinet at 9 or 10 am and I’d be drawn by it. I would sometimes open the liquor cabinet…
SCIENCE – April 10, 2025 – Investigators found that maladaptive guilt and shame were influenced more by individual characteristics than by specific disorders. They suggested incorporating guilt and shame dimensions into psychotherapy. Guilt and shame shape social interactions and are linked to depressive disorder (DD) or alcohol addiction (AA). Oxytocin may influence these emotions. Guilt and shame are important and universal social emotions that fundamentally shape the way people interact with each other. Mental illness such as depressive disorder (DD) or alcohol addiction (AA) is therefore often related to pronounced dysfunctional feelings of shame and guilt. Oxytocin has been suggested…
HARM REDUCTION – April 9, 2025 – Cali sober describes a lifestyle intent on both using drugs and reducing harm from drug use. However, the term has been adopted by others rejecting abstinence as the only path after an addiction overdose or treatment. Advocates believe substituting harmful substances with less dangerous alternatives is a harm-reducing strategy for individuals seeking to control their substance use. However, it’s important to note that we do not really know which drugs are the most dangerous for which people, which people are more vulnerable to drug addictions, or when a person might be more vulnerable…
CLEVELAND DESERVES BETTER – April 10, 2025 – As our country faces the possibility of federal health care funding cuts, it’s critical that we raise awareness about what’s at stake — especially for low-income individuals and families who rely on Medicaid to access essential health services. Among the most urgent concerns is the potential rollback of Medicaid expansion, which currently provides coverage to hundreds of thousands of Ohioans. Today, the federal government covers 90% of the costs for Medicaid expansion enrollees, extending coverage to individuals earning up to 138% of the federal poverty level (approximately $21,600 for an individual). However,…
OR WITHOUT WOMEN – April 9, 2025 – Hope deleted all her dating apps and made a promise to herself: No more dates for a year. Then, armed with a catchy new term coined by her sister, Hope started documenting her “boy sober” journey to her half a million TikTok followers. The caption for the first video, which she shared in November 2023, read: “Should we start a CULT.” In a later video, Hope laid out the rules of going boy sober, among them “no dating apps, no dates, no exes, no situationships,” and “no hugs and kisses—etcetera.” The term…
BARFLY – April 9, 2025 – Boozers who down eight or more alcoholic drinks every week have an increased risk of brain lesions associated with memory and thinking problems, say scientists. They explained that the condition, caused hyaline arteriolosclerosis, causes the small blood vessels to narrow, becoming thick and stiff – making it harder for blood to flow, which can damage the brain over time. It appears as lesions, areas of damaged tissue in the brain. Heavy drinkers also died an average of 13 years earlier than those who never drank, according to the study published online by the journal…
VIDEO – MUSICAL INTERLUDE – 297,835 views since Jan 17, 2014 – My brother, a friend and I, saw Phil Ochs in Greenwich Village in 1964. We each bought an album from him. In 1977 I picked up a woman hitchhiking across the Golden Gate Bridge. She was Phil’s ex-wife, and I guess sort of his ex-widow, and she gave me one piece of information. She said that obviously Phil was a talent. However their friend named Bob Dylan would “just pull songs out of the air” seemingly with no effort. — I really miss these kinds of song that…
STICK WITH THE WINNERS! – April 15, 2025 – Ira Israel is a Psychotherapist & Author currently based in Santa Monica. Israel is a Licensed Professional Clinical Counselor, a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, an NLP Master Practitioner and an Authentic Relationship Coach. He graduated from the University of Pennsylvania and has graduate degrees in Psychology, Philosophy, and Religious Studies. Ira has taught happiness, authenticity and mindfulness to thousands of physicians, psychologists, attorneys, engineers and creative professionals across America. He is the author of “Wired & Tired: A Guide to Revitalize Your Life” and “How To Survive Your Childhood Now…
SMART PIZZA! – April 9, 2025 – Rich in plant chemicals and antioxidants, mushrooms are a delicious, nutritious powerhouse that everyone could benefit from eating more of. Low in calories and fat but packed with vitamins, mushrooms are a nutritional force for good and a tasty addition to any plate…“Mushrooms contain vitamins and minerals including B vitamins, potassium, selenium, copper and zinc in varied quantities,” says Humphries. “Perhaps my favourite aspect is the presence of the hard-to-find mineral selenium. This useful nutrient is available from dried porcini mushrooms, and many wild edible mushroom species.” CONTINUE@Telegraph
LISTEN – J&J Knew They Were Killing People – April 10, 2025 – J&J recently lost a bid to settle lawsuits that claimed its talc powder products, including baby powder, caused cancer. Author Gardiner Harris says the company’s defense “is beginning to crumble.” Maybe it’s that childhood memory of running into the house with a scraped knee, reaching for band aid from the iconic red and white box or Tylenol from the medicine cabinet. From pharmaceuticals to medical devices, Johnson & Johnson has been woven into the most tender, vulnerable parts of our lives for generations. But a new book by investigative journalist Gardiner…