Category: From Addiction Recovery Bulletin

Addiction Recovery Bulletin

ONE MORE SAD LOSS – 

May 11, 2021 – In the April 12 post, Colt discussed the fallout from a sexual misconduct allegation he faced while at the University of Colorado (where he played football before transferring to Hawaii), as well as the aftermath of a near-fatal car accident that family and friends believe led to a series of legal troubles down the line, including multiple arrests for driving under the influence.

“I’ve been through a lot in my life,” Colt captioned a photo of him from a 2007 ESPN cover story. “I was a convicted felon for a crime I never committed, (passed polygraph and all). I captured every dream I had as a child. I was drafted into the league only to have 2 knee and 2 hip surgeries.” “I reached my 3rd year in the NFL,” he went on, “only to awake from a coma with traumatic brain injury as a passenger in a car accident. I battled drug and alcohol abuse, and eventually developed blood clots years after the car accident. I spent 9 months in the hospital and for the last 2 1/2 years have been trying to learn how to walk again with a broken heart.”

more@RadarOnline

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Addiction Recovery Bulletin

FOLLOW THE MONEY – 

May 5, 2021 –  It was an American epidemic long before Covid-19. Opioid addiction and overdoses have scythed through the US heartland, often compounding misery in regions already ravaged by economic desperation. Between 1999 and 2019, more than 247,000 people died in the US from overdoses involving prescription opioids, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In 2019 alone, nearly 50,000 Americans were killed by overdosing on powerful synthetic drugs like fentanyl. These questions may start to be sorted out in West Virginia, where a trial has just opened with Big Pharma firms McKesson Corp., AmerisourceBergen and Cardinal Health on the stand. It will help test whether an opioid case can be successful at trial against pharmaceutical companies under a claim of “public nuisance” for failing to monitor, divert or report suspicious or excessive orders under the Controlled Substances Act.  The case is being brought by Cabell County, West Virginia, and the city of Huntington. The three firms funneled more than 57 million doses of hydrocodone and oxycodone to a community of just 100,000 people over eight years starting in 2006. Lawyers for the defendants argue that their clients did not break the law and were not responsible for prescribing the drugs to patients.  The trial, one of the first of what could be hundreds of cases to reach the court, could provide important precedents as to the culpability of Big Pharma firms and the price it may have to pay to end the blizzard of lawsuits.

more@CNN

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Addiction Recovery Bulletin

WATCH – FOOD FOR THOUGHT – 

May 6, 2021 – According to the association, that’s a 30% spike in teens compared to the year prior to the pandemic.

Officials at Denver Health say they’re experiencing similar numbers.  ”We’ve always accepted air ambulance into our hospital because we take so many patients from out of the state and out of the country. Prior to COVID happening, about 15 to 20 percent of our patients were air ambulanced into Denver Health. Since COVID we’ve seen that number jump up to 60% of our patients get air ambulanced in,” said Jeana Cost, Executive Director of the ACUTE Center for Eating Disorders at Denver Health.

ACUTE serves as an ICU of sorts. It’s a one-of-a-kind facility treating people struggling with eating disorders.

It has 30 beds for patients, but according to Cost, all of the beds are full and there’s even a waiting list.

”Not only are people needing an eating disorder treatment so much more than they were a year ago, but they’re needing an ICU because they’re that ill. These people are coming in on gurneys, they can’t lift their heads off their beds, they need physical therapy on a daily basis just to be able to walk again. Things like that,” Cost said.

Anyone struggling with an eating disorder during the pandemic can reach out to the ACUTE Center for help or additional resources.

more@KDVR

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Addiction Recovery Bulletin

WATCH – PAYING IT FORWARD – 

April 30, 2021 – “Every minute that we could be there that quick, we were that close, it was amazing. A saved life got to save a life,” said Theo Shackleford, who also works at ARC.

As Trout left the EMTs to do their job, in recovery himself, he knows just how much those minutes mattered.

“Unfortunately, I’ve been on the receiving end of it, and this time I was just lucky enough to be the one administering the Narcan, then receiving it. I was just glad to be able to give back what someone had done for me,” Trout said.

Shackleford believes the event was all in God’s timing. He hopes the act inspires the public to learn the value Narcan can play in communities. “I would hope they would look into it. Something I’ve come to learn is you never know who the disease affects. But nine times out of ten, you all know someone it does,” Shackleford said. “You never know when you’re going to come upon that moment. It could happen once a week, it could happen once a month, or once in a lifetime, but it’s worth it.”

more@WSAZ

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Addiction Recovery Bulletin

DAYLIGHT! – 

May 1, 2021 – Women of all ages arrive in damaged condition, spirits broken, having lost it all. They have no jobs, no homes, no family support, and no solid reason to believe anything is ever going to change.

Valerie, 39, told me she was molested throughout her childhood by a stepfather, ran away as a teenager and was raped and beaten during years of homelessness.

Jasmin, 27, said she was dominated by a boyfriend who used her as a punching bag, broke her nose and pushed her in front of a moving vehicle. She finally ran for her life one day when the brute was out of the house and begged a stranger to help whisk her to safety. La Donna, 58, said her father whipped her with a belt and battered her mother so severely, he once broke her jaw. As an adult, La Donna ended up with a man who specialized in mental abuse. He mocked her and repeatedly referred to as a dummy. “Oh, I hated that word,” said La Donna.

Valerie, Jasmin and La Donna have different stories but two things in common.

more@LATimes

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Addiction Recovery Bulletin

NEVER SAW SCARFACE? “DON’T GET HIGH ON YOUR OWN SUPPLY”

May 10, 2021 – The Appomattox County Sheriff’s Office and the Central Virginia Drug and Gang Task Force (CVDGTF) say they have been actively investigating multiple individuals for the distribution of methamphetamine. 

EDITOR’S NOTE: Not meant to stigmatize Meth dealers… 

more@WSET

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Addiction Recovery Bulletin

EVERYONE’S OPINION? – 

May 2, 2021 – THE UNITED STATES is still grappling with the deadly coronavirus pandemic, yet, sadly, that is far from the nation’s only public health crisis. The opioid addiction epidemic that was already raging before March 2020 appears to be getting worse, in part because hardships and isolation stress brought on by covid and the attendant economic shutdown are adding to mental health strains.

Whereas annual drug overdose deaths in the United States had hovered around 70,000 — an intolerably high level — from 2017 through 2019, evidence suggests that they accelerated last year. Provisional data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show that there were 90,237 drug-overdose deaths in the 12 months ending in September 2020, a leading indicator that implies a substantial increase over 2019’s total of 70,630, when final figures for all of 2020 are in. Seventy percentof drug overdose deaths are opioid-related, according to the most recent CDC figures.

more@WashingtonPost

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Addiction Recovery Bulletin

THE WHOLE FAMILY ISN’T TOXIC – 

May 4, 2021 –  I had never before heard of the novel, called The Company You Keep, and I was quite sure the author, Neil Gordon, was a complete stranger to me. I’m happy to report that I am not now nor have I ever been a bouffanted cheerleader, a widow, or, perish the thought, a Republican. How had my name, always a bit comical and offbeat to my own ear, ended up in this book? Had Neil Gordon and I crossed paths? Had he perhaps known my father, also a writer? Was there a connection between us? In 2003 it wasn’t so easy to get an author’s address. I had to do some research to find a snail mail address and write Neil Gordon a letter:

Dear Mr. Gordon:

As far as I know, we have never me … I’m contacting you because you use my name for a character in your recently published novel The Company You Keep. Would you please let me know how and why you alighted on this name?

Neil Gordon swiftly emailed me back, saying that while it was surely odd for me to come across myself in his novel, it was astonishing for him to receive a letter from one of his own fictional characters! He politely explained that he didn’t know me and that the way he’d come to the name Molly Sackler was quite random. Molly was a schoolfriend of his daughter’s, I believe. Sackler, too, was an arbitrary choice. The coincidence was entirely accidental, not freighted with mystery or meaning at all.

more@VanityFair

The post “I Can’t Abandon My Name”: The Sacklers And Me appeared first on Addiction/Recovery eBulletin.

Addiction Recovery Bulletin

LISTEN – MONEY BUYS FREEDOM – 

May 3, 2021 – But a growing group of public officials and activists is mounting a last-ditch effort to derail the plan, describing it in legal briefs as an unethical, and possibly unlawful, use of the bankruptcy court’s power. Late last week, 24 state attorneys general as well as the attorney general for Washington, D.C., filed a new brief describing the proposed settlement as “unprecedented,” “unjust” and “unconfirmable as a matter of law.”

“The bankruptcy system should not be allowed to shield non-bankrupt billionaires,” said Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey in an interview with NPR.

“It would set a terrible precedent. If the Sacklers are allowed to use bankruptcy to escape the consequences of their actions, it would be a roadmap for other powerful bad actors.”

State AGs aren’t alone in objecting to the deal. In recent weeks, attorneys representing local and state governments, native tribes and opioid activists filed briefs raising legal and ethical concerns about the plan.

A division of the Justice Department that oversees bankruptcy cases also filed a brief questioning whether the bankruptcy court has the “authority and jurisdiction” to approve such a plan.

more@NPR

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Addiction Recovery Bulletin

CALIFORNIA NODDING – 

April 22, 2021 – Supervised injection sites have emerged around the world in recent years, part of a movement to rethink treatment for people addicted to powerful opioids — including heroin, fentanyl and some prescription pain killers.

People get very sick when they try to stop taking the drugs, making it hard to stop using them. Overdose deaths have surged nationwide in recent years, prompting debates in state Legislatures about how best to tackle a problem that is rooted in public health and public safety.

These sites are legal in Canada, but illegal in the U.S. The former Trump administration sued to block a proposed injection site in Philadelphia and a federal appeals court sided with the government in January. But supporters are appealing that decision, hoping President Joe Biden’s administration might drop the lawsuit.

“Unlike the Trump administration, President Biden takes a science-based approach to addiction,” said state Sen. Scott Wiener, a Democrat from San Francisco who authored the California legislation. “We hope the administration will allow states to pilot evidence-based strategies like safe consumption sites.”

more@CBSSacramento

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