Category: From Addiction Recovery Bulletin

Addiction Recovery Bulletin

WATCH – LOCK US UP – 

May 25, 2021 – You can’t tell the story of Matthews without talking about the War on Drugs. “People were making a lot of money but people was also losing a lot of their livelihoods from the drugs,” recalls Matthews. Growing up in north Portland in the 1980s, drugs ran rampant in his community.”I felt like that was the way to go to get the American dream; to sell drugs to get the money, I could buy the American dream,” he says. “But for me it became the American nightmare because what I thought I could use to gain wealth became my downfall. I became addicted to it.”Matthews became addicted to crack cocaine in his twenties.

“In that process, I was incarcerated a lot of times – in and out of county jail.”Matthews says War on drugs-era policies of “no drug zones” essentially banned him from his community.”This was damaging because I would continually catch cases,” he says. “It kept me stuck in my addiction.” Decades after the War on Drugs, policing looks a lot different.

more@NBC16

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Addiction Recovery Bulletin

IT’S INSANE –  

May 25, 2021 – One popular explanation blames “deinstitutionalization”: the emptying of state psychiatric hospitals that began in the 1950s. When the hospitals were shut down, the story goes, patients were discharged with no place to get psychiatric care. They ended up on the streets, eventually committing crimes that got them arrested. As a result, jails and prisons essentially became the new asylums. It’s an idea with roots in a theory developed in the 1930s by a British psychiatrist, Lionel Penrose, who argued that there was an inverse relationship between the number of people held in prisons and those in asylums. Today, the “Penrose hypothesis” is largely regarded by scholars and historians as an oversimplification of the problem, yet variations of it are regularly repeated in the media. The truth is far more complicated. The first psychiatric hospital was established in 1773, but asylums were few and far between until the mid-1800s. In 1841, a former schoolteacher named Dorothea Dix visited a Massachusetts jail to teach a Bible class. She was appalled to find it filled with people with mental illness, living in horrific conditions; traveling around the country, she found similar conditions in other jails. Residents were kept in “cages, closets, cellars, stalls, pens!” she later wrote in a letter to the Massachusetts legislature. “Chained, naked, beaten with rods, and lashed into obedience!” She started lobbying states to create asylums, and eventually she helped establish or expand more than 30 institutions. Many more were created in the decades that followed; by the height of institutionalization in 1955, roughly half a million people were living in state-run psychiatric facilities.

These were designed to be safe, therapeutic places where people with mental illness could live quality, productive lives. Occasionally, they succeeded. Some self-sufficient asylum communities provided both employment and sustenance for residents: small-scale agricultural production, laundries, and bakeries.

But as more patients were moved into these institutions, the facilities quickly outgrew their capacity, and staff struggled just to keep up with patients’ needs. When a public psychiatric hospital in Worcester, Massachusetts, opened in 1833, for example, it had 120 beds. Just 13 years later, it had almost 400. The problem grew significantly worse during World War II, when many doctors and other staff were drafted, leaving the hospitals dangerously understaffed.  The resulting conditions looked remarkably similar to those seen in jails and prisons today. This was the beginning of the end for the state hospital system—but other factors sped it up. In 1954, the FDA approved the use of the antipsychotic drug chlorpromazine—also known by its trade name, Thorazine—to treat mental illnesses like schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. Its apparent ability to control psychosis—combined with a heavy marketing campaign that made it one of the first blockbuster drugs—helped promote the notion that mental illness could be cured with medication. Specialty inpatient psychiatric hospitals would no longer be needed because patients would no longer need the kind of intensive care they promised to provide.  

more@TheAtlantic

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Addiction Recovery Bulletin

BOOK REVIEW – 

May 28, 2021- Tim had wrestled in high school at 270 pounds, and at 23, he was still gigantic, living at home, sleeping through the days and spending nights in the basement lifting weights while his psychosis was slowly dominating him. He saw coins floating before his eyes. He tossed salt on his parents as they slept. And he struggled, in his mind quite literally, with devils he communicated with via Google. On the morning of his mother’s death, he warned her that those devils were winning. “Something bad is going to happen,” he told her in the kitchen. “They are going to come for me. If something looks like a suicide, just know that I love you.” The lines between suicide and homicide blurred in Tim’s mind. In the Granata home, things had not been fine for a very long time. Both parents were trained as emergency room doctors, but even they were stymied — trapped — by the horror-show suite of nonchoices schizophrenia presents. Sufferers can’t perceive how sick they are, nor can they be hospitalized against their will, unless they present a danger to themselves or others. So many don’t seek help, and absent a trip to the E.R. or a 911 call, loved ones have no way to obtain it for them.

more@NYTimes

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Addiction Recovery Bulletin

HEALING THE NEW NORMAL –  

May 27, 2021 – The program offers inpatient treatment and outpatient programs in several states, which switched to teletherapy when the pandemic began. That has continued, though some in-person treatment has resumed.

“We’ve seen an increase across the board” in patients of all races and ages, even young kids, she said. That includes LGBTQ people, who tend to have higher rates of eating disorders than other groups. Women and girls are more commonly affected than men. 

Peyton Crest, an 18-year-old from Minnetonka, Minn., says she developed anorexia before the pandemic but has relapsed twice since it began.

She was already anxious and under pressure when school went online and social distancing began last year. 

“It was my junior year, I was about to apply for college,” she said. Suddenly deprived of friends and classmates — her support system — she’d spend all day alone in her room and became preoccupied with thoughts of food and anorexic behavior.

more@LATimes

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Addiction Recovery Bulletin

PERFECT SUMMER VACATION? – 

May 27, 2021 – “I have been aware of the harm done to immigrant communities by drug policy since working on the deportation issue in the Azores since the 1990s,” he said. “Most of the U.S. permanent residents repatriated to the islands were the result of felony convictions for crimes related to substance use disorder. Had these individuals received treatment and not criminal records, they would have been allowed to stay in the U.S. and build back their lives.”  This has also led to secondary problems, including the inability of migrants to seek assistance for fear of deportation, he said.

Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, Dr. Moniz has been spending more time in his hometown of Falmouth, Mass. He took this opportunity to start conversations about best practices and innovations for drug treatment and overdose with several community shareholders, including his friend and neighbor Lt. Mike Simoneau of the Falmouth Police Department.

“We had a number of conversations about the issue, his experiences, and my own work on the issue through an initiative with the Center of Biomedical Research Excellence (COBRE) on Opioids and Overdose (NIH),” said Dr. Moniz. “More people were added to the conversation, including the Police Chief, as well as officers in the Falmouth Fire Department, where my father, who passed away in 2017, was an EMT and captain.”

He also spoke with Falmouth’s two Portuguese-American state representatives, representatives from treatment and harm reduction groups and members of six of the Portuguese and Cape Verdean fraternal and cultural associations.

more@HeraldNews

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Addiction Recovery Bulletin

WATCH – WITH MORE THAN PRAYER – 

MAY 25, 2021 – If trying to roust the potential overdose victim verbally, and then with a sternum rub fails, Buelhman then sticks the narcan dispenser up the nostril.

The Narcan comes in a two-dose box, and it’s recommended to wait 2-3 minutes before giving the second round if needed. 

But Buehlman says with the powerful opioid fentanyl, sometimes even just two sprays wont’ cut it.

“Because there aren’t ill effects from mistakenly administering Naloxone, it makes it very easy and safe to administer,” said Dr. Hillary Kunins

Last year the Department of Public Health, through community partners and other city agencies including the fire department, gave out more than 60,000 doses and expects to give out even more this year.

“Our goal is to put this effective tool into the hands of people who could respond, who are often people themselves who use drugs, who themselves may be at risk for overdose. This is a tool to help people take care of each other,” Dr. Hillary Kunins said.

Buehlman himself has been on the receiving end of Narcan approximately seven times, before going into treatment in 1999 and turning his life around. 

Since then he says he’s lost track of how many times he’s performed the life saving act over the last twenty years in his work in harm reduction.

more@KRON4

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Addiction Recovery Bulletin

WATCH – GRINDING TO A HALT –  

May 26, 2021 – Speaking about her past trouble’s on Wednesday’s edition of Morning Live, Kerry explained that she thinks she is lucky to still have her life after surviving years of drug abuse and addiction.

She opened up about her struggles but added a positive outlook for the future, saying that she hopes the fact that she has managed to turn her life around and even buy a house may inspire others to take control over their lives. She said: “I mean technically I should be dead and I’m really proud of what I have achieved.

“And the reason why I’m talking about this is because if I can overcome these things, so many people out there can do it as well and it is achievable.

“I think also as well, surrounding yourself with the right people who are your friends as well and exercise is a massive, massive factor.

“But what I have just achieved, after 13 years of being bankrupt, twice!, I’ve just finally bought my own house! So for me that’s a huge achievement, from going from the depths of low and despair and drugs and drink and divorces, I mean I could be here all day but I don’t think we’ve got the time!”

more@Mirror

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Addiction Recovery Bulletin

WATCH – IT’S NEVER TOO LATE! – 

May 26, 2021 –  For the past 35 years, Bob Nylund’s family and friends told him to write a book about his interesting life of overcoming alcohol addiction.

It took until the age of 93, some advice from a ‘guy in a coffee shop’, and a winter full of boredom ahead for the Ironwood native to start writing. His first book only took him 3 weeks to write. After reading his book, Bob’s daughter Greta encouraged him to write more. He now has 3 published books; Life of a Recovering Alcoholic … and Golfer, Reflections, and Two Lost and Found Souls. Bob is a huge lover of golf – in fact, he golfed 1000 holes at the age of 86. He is still golfing today. Bob says his friends call him Ol’ Grateful Bob. He he lives by the saying “If you’re grateful for being sober, how can you pick up a drink?” 

more@UpperMichigansSource

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Addiction Recovery Bulletin

WATCH – BLAME IT ON WALTER WHITE –  

May 24, 2021 – This is “the high pure form” that’s meant to be smoked. The other popular form is a white odorless and bitter-tasting crystalline powder that can dissolve easily in water or alcohol.” We’re seeing hundreds of pounds of that coming through the laboratory, and that’s one of the areas where we cooperate with other agencies like the DEA,” says Miller.Peter Stout is the President & CEO of Houston Forensic Science Center. He says the number of cases that they’re getting has not changed that much, but its makeup has changed a lot… “In the last three years we have seen methamphetamine, go from the third most common drug to, by far the most common drug last year, 42% of materials, had methamphetamine,” says Peter Stout, President & CEO of Houston Forensic Science Center.  Meth is a stimulant, it is consumed primarily by smoking like you would crack cocaine. It then stimulates the body. It raises the heart rate, the respiration and it increases your blood pressure. “Now the reason why people consume methamphetamine is what it does in your brain is going to release large amounts of dopamine. The feel really good chemicals that are in your brain but because it’s so pure, it’s releasing such large quantities at this dopamine that without methamphetamine, you’ll never feel that good again,” says Miller.

If the results of addiction aren’t bad enough, the stress on the body can kill you. “On the one hand, you can suffer strokes and heart attacks from smoking these strong potent stimulants like meth, but you can also have the long term psychological effects, where you can never reach the high that you had smoking meth and so you now are struggling, putting everything you have into getting that high again,” says Miller.  “I’ll tell you, I don’t get it. I do not understand it, I’m looking at people like, why would you do that to yourself, can you see what you look like, you know, can you see your skin can you see your teeth. Can you see, you know, your mental state how you deal with other people? So when you talk about that ‘high’ – what is it?” Yami asks. “So, one of the things you can compare it to is what we call a runner’s high. People who do long-distance running or strenuous exercise, you hit that wall, right, and you’re like, my body is telling me I need to stop, you know, this hurts, but if you keep pushing through that you reach that runner’s high. That’s where your body is actually releasing chemicals – hormones in your body that allow you to numb that pain, and it makes you feel good so that you can actually push through and continue,” says Miller. A dangerous first-time high feeling that meth addicts keep chasing in vain.

more@FoxSanAntonio

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Addiction Recovery Bulletin

THE BEST INTENTIONS…? –  

May 28, 2021 – And they did succeed in significantly shrinking the medical supply: since 2011, opioid prescribing has been cut by more than 60 percent. 

Unfortunately, however, as medical use declined, the total number of overdose deaths more than doubled between 2011 and 2020. Indeed, even before the pandemic, more overdose deaths had occurred since prescribing began to fall than took place while medical opioid use was soaring. The fact that cutting the medical supply could potentially make matters worse didn’t seem to factor in to the calculations of those who supported this approach. But this outcome was, in fact, completely predictable — so much so that the phenomenon has an academic name, “the iron law of prohibition.”

Coined by activist Richard Cowan in 1986, the phrase refers to the effects of reducing drug supplies while not acting significantly to manage demand. Almost always, it results in the rise of a more harmful drug because of a simple physical fact: hiding smaller things is easier than hiding bigger ones. So, because illegal drugs need to be concealed, prohibition favors more potent and therefore more potentially deadly substances.

This was seen even during alcohol prohibition, when hard liquor was preferred for sale over lower-alcohol wine and beer. Whisky is roughly eight times more potent than beer—so, it’s much easier to stash. Hence, we refer to alcohol smugglers as bootleggers, because they could hide flasks in their boots—not, say, “barrel hiders.” During today’s overdose crisis, the iron law meant that when people with addiction lost access to pharmaceuticals like oxycodone (the active drug in OxyContin), they created a massive demand for street opioids. Historically, the most common of these has been heroin, but aided by the internet, dealers soon found a cheaper and more potent substitute: fentanyl and similar synthetics, which can be hundreds to thousands of times stronger. 

It’s not clear what the thinking was here: did policy makers believe that simply taking away drugs cures addiction? Or pain? Regardless, drug dealers were far more nimble than the government, often trolling for customers outside the offices of shuttered pill mills.

more@ScientificAmerican

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