Category: From Addiction Recovery Bulletin

Addiction Recovery Bulletin

POISONED AMERICA c/o BIG PHARMA – 

2020 – “I could not put down Gerald Posner’s Pharma, the definitive story of how one family, the Sacklers, set out to get exquisitely rich on the back of unsuspecting Americans—then blamed the so-called ‘abusers’ instead of their own highly addictive drug. Posner has unearthed important new material that illuminates our national tragedy, crafting a meticulously reported page-turner that is as juicy as it is clear-eyed.” —Beth Macy, New York Times bestselling author of Dopesick

“A withering and encyclopedic indictment of a drug industry that often seems to prioritize profits over patients … Pharma reads like a pharmaceutical version of cops and robbers.”—New York Times Book Review

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Addiction Recovery Bulletin

$ $ $ $ $ $ – 

February 12, 2021 – The deductions may deepen public anger toward companies prosecutors say played key roles in a destructive public health crisis that kills tens of thousands of Americans every year. In lawsuits filed by dozens of states and local jurisdictions, public officials have argued that the companies, among other corporate defendants, flooded the country with billions of highly addictive pills and ignored signs they were being steered to people who abused them.

Under the terms of the proposed settlement — which is being finalized and will ultimately be subject to federal court approval — the four companies would pay between $5 billion and $8 billion each to reimburse communities for the costs of the health crisis. Plaintiffs who support the proposal say it will resolve a highly complex litigation process and make funds available to communities and individuals still struggling with addiction.

Others including Greg McNeil, whose son became addicted to opioids and died from an overdose, have said $26 billion is only a small fraction of the epidemic’s financial toll and argue the proposal doesn’t include what many family members of opioid victims want the most: an admission of guilt.

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Addiction Recovery Bulletin

A COMPLICATED PLACE – 

Feb. 4, 2021 – I’m 34 but this feeling isn’t unfamiliar; this spiralling soothed by the strange comfort of a sterile white room. I felt the same thing when I was just 17, enduring another – albeit entirely different – physical crumpling. Awful, in many ways. But, my God, the enforced pause. That was welcome. Even more so now. Recently I’ve thought of poisonous mushrooms and oncoming traffic. The kind that just clips you but puts you down enough to enjoy an achingly slow passage of time, statements not questions, white rooms and malt biscuits.

This need to rest had started a few years ago, not long after I’d had my second child – the younger of my two beautiful buttery-haired boys. Becoming a mother had brought me home. I was burning with love for them.

Yet I was also aware of that scratching white noise of anxiety, which won’t lay dormant in your thirties. An old-school interference still cracking away and a manic preoccupation with ‘do more, be more, try harder, be better’.

more@ELLE

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Addiction Recovery Bulletin

SET OUR PEOPLE FREE – 

Feb. 13, 2021- All the evidence, for decades, shows that the drugs that children under 17 or 18 years old are most likely to use are marijuana, alcohol and tobacco. That’s where my education would focus. With teaching about other drugs at that age, you are distracting them and using scare tactics with them. If you’re doing the education because you’re concerned about the health of the people who you’re talking to, then you’re talking about alcohol, tobacco and marijuana.

For marijuana, the major effect that young people have to worry about is taking too much of it [which can prompt paranoia and anxiety]. I would make sure I explained to them that the difference between the oral route and smoking in terms of onset, the effects and how long the effects will last, and make sure they understand all of that really, really well. With alcohol, I’d make sure they understand the sedating effects of it when you have too much, too rapidly. I’d make sure they understand what it means to vomit, when you’ve been drinking … that’s telling you to stop, because now you’ve had enough. That’s your mechanism to let you know that it’s getting really serious now.

And with tobacco, I’d tell them about the data. The effects of tobacco are not so immediate — the ones that we’re concerned about, like cancer. At first, you might think you’re good, but then later in life, these things start to show up. As a young person, you might not see any of these effects. So we would warn about cancer and those sorts of things — young people rarely see those effects right away, and so I’d be real with them about that.

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Addiction Recovery Bulletin

WATCH – DEAR GOD, MAKE IT STOP – 

Feb. 8, 2021 – Berman first shared the news of her son’s death on Instagram Sunday, writing that her son got “the drugs delivered to the house” in an “experimentation gone bad.”

“My beautiful boy is gone. 16 years old,” the host of “In the Bedroom with Dr. Laura Berman” captioned a picture of herself embracing her smiling son. “My heart is completely shattered and I am not sure how to keep breathing.” Berman said her son got his hands on the unknowingly fatal drug through Snapchat and warned other parents to “watch your kids and WATCH SNAPCHAT especially.”

“A drug dealer connected with him on Snapchat and gave him fentinyl (sic) laced Xanax and he overdosed in his room,” Berman wrote. “They do this because it hooks people even more and is good for business but (it) causes overdose and the kids don’t know what they are taking.”

more@USAToday

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Addiction Recovery Bulletin

TALKING HEADS – 

February 5, 2021 – to the car (“You know your dad hates you”) and then to work, where the dope, wearing a pin-striped olive jacket and gold chain, keeps the bit going through lunchtime. (“Eat normal.”) He’s a nuisance, a torment, and not especially original—the kind of bargain-bin hater that makes all the rest of us critics look bad.This dope, or some form of him, is also the subject of “Chatter,” a new book by the experimental psychologist Ethan Kross. (The book’s subtitle—“The Voice in Our Head, Why It Matters, and How to Harness It”—reflects a slightly warmer attitude toward our inner cynic, who can also, Kross suggests, become our “best coach.”) It’s an irresistible thought experiment: What does yours look like? A drill sergeant? A languidly bored crush? Kross, who studies the “science of introspection” at the University of Michigan’s Emotion & Self-Control Lab, which he founded, aims to produce a different sort of portrait, one pieced together from MRI scans and clinical observations.  “Chatter,” which spends a lot of time examining high-drama conversations that go nowhere, arrives as hundreds of millions of people broadcast their innermost thoughts (or what they’d like us to believe are their innermost thoughts) on social media every day. But Kross argues that self-talk has long been a part of humanity’s basic architecture. “We are perpetually slipping away from the present into the parallel, nonlinear world of our minds,” he writes; our “default state” is a rich zone of remembrance, musing, projection. This is a quiet rejoinder to New Age wisdom—people are simply not designed to “live in the moment”—and the first part of “Chatter” grounds its argument in research about the brain.

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Addiction Recovery Bulletin

WATCH – YET, THERE IS SO MUCH TO LIVE FOR – 

Feb. 4, 2021 – They say increased isolation and dwindling access to support has been a huge blow to those in recovery. 

“We have a pandemic within a pandemic happening,” Ryan-Gimenez said.

In 2018, North Carolina’s opioid overdose rate dropped for the first time in 5 years. The pandemic has shattered that progress.

“Suicides are up 1,000%, mental health calls are up 850%, overdoses are up 33%, alcohol sales are up 250 to 300%,” Ryan said. “Prescriptions for anti-anxiety meds, Xanax, sleeping pills are up 63%. There are not enough people talking about this at all.”

Rehab.com has seen a 383% increase in people seeking treatment options.

But rehabilitation facilities haven’t been immune to the pandemic’s financial blow.

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Addiction Recovery Bulletin

WATCH – REGULAR DUDE LOVES SOBRIETY – 

Feb. 4, 2021 – Addiction runs in his family, he said, he said before he knew it, he was following in the footsteps of those he’d watch struggle with their own addictions.

Pete abused alcohol through high school and college.

After graduating from the University of Richmond, which he attended on a football scholarship, he worked in public relations at USA Basketball and then in the NBA for the Charlotte Hornets and Philadelphia 76ers. Seven years later he was on the air, calling NBA Development League games. But the addiction followed him into the first decade of his professional career.

“I worked in the NBA for a while, for eight or nine years abut then it became too much,” Pete said.

“It was the focal point of my life. The next drink was the only thing on my mind.”

With his life falling apart, Pete entered rehab.

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Addiction Recovery Bulletin

WATCH – TOO MUCH EVERYTHING – 

Jan. 30, 2021 – Among the many romantic relationships featured in the film was one with a man who Williams said “ruined” her credit by renting cars on her credit cards without telling her. In the end, she ended up pregnant with his baby. 

“Our relationship, I mean if you could call it that, didn’t even last a year,” she said. “When it was all over, my credit was ruined — and I was growing his seed.”

Ultimately, she decided to have an abortion. 

“I went alone and I went in secret,” she narrated of the experience. “I didn’t tell him or anyone else. It was one of the loneliest experiences of my life.” 

“If you’re going to lay on the table and have somebody else cut you open, I say you see at least three doctors first, and then decide between them,” she advised. “But most importantly, I say, pay for your own plastic surgery. I mean seriously do you really want some future ex-boyfriend out here talking about how he bought your breasts?” 

As she’s speaking, her boss came in to let her know her candid statements have led to a suspension. 

“You’re off the air next week,” she said. “You can’t talk about your plastic surgery.” 

more@People

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Addiction Recovery Bulletin

ARE THE HORSES ON STRIKE? – 

Feb. 1, 2021 – She said they mostly appeared briefly, but one family books one of her other goats, Margaret, every Saturday morning for a longer catch-up. 

“They call her Marg and she is one of the family now,” she said.

“They love to hear her news – from her first hot date to news that she is expecting.” 

She said her team had struggled to keep up with the number of calls, but the success had seen her buck the trend of furloughing staff and allowed her to keep her two employees on full-time.

The money will also go towards converting the farm to renewable power to improve its carbon footprint. 

She added that she much prefers the calls to selling manure, which she has also taken to doing to raise revenue.

“It’s way easier and more fun,” she said.

more@BBC

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