Category: From Addiction Recovery Bulletin

Addiction Recovery Bulletin

SMOKESCREEN – 

Jan. 25, 2021 – The Biden administration has a chance to embrace this agenda after Trump’s FDA abandoned it. Ending Covid-19 is their top priority, and rightfully so. But the new administration will hopefully recognize that combating cigarette addiction and Covid-19 go hand-in-hand and both should be pillars of their overall public health agenda. Cigarette addiction continues to take a serious toll on millions of Americans, causing about one in five deaths in the United States, or more than 480,000 deaths annually, and costs $300 billion in health care expenses each year. In New York alone, smoking kills 28,000 adults annually and costs the state more than $17 billion in health-related costs and lost productivity.

I lead a dynamic biotechnology company based right here in Western New York that has a solution to help the FDA achieve its goal of solving cigarette addiction, which remains one of the world’s largest preventable health crises.

While the country has made progress in the battle against cigarette addiction over the last decades, now is the time to enact policies that will allow us to take that fight to the next level. Specifically, requiring cigarettes to be minimally or non-addictive would put us in a strong position to help end this epidemic.

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Addiction Recovery Bulletin

WATCH – LARGER THAN LIFE –  

Jan. 25, 2021 – TMZ broke the story … Balducci was found unresponsive in his bed back in July and paramedics pronounced him dead at the scene. When we spoke to his mom, she told us his death came unexpectedly since he hadn’t exhibited any kind of sickness.

For the non-hardcore reality TV aficionados out there … Balducci is known as a trailblazer of sorts in the reality TV world after appearing in “True Life: I’m Getting Married.” He allowed MTV cameras to follow him for 4 months before marrying Sabrina … which ultimately produced one of the most infamous rants ever caught on TV.

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Addiction Recovery Bulletin

STILL EXHALING – 

Jan. 25, 2021 – On Sunday, the R&B singer revealed she gave up the green and the alcohol, in response to a fan who created a Twitter thread of images that show Kehlani smoking.

“Wow, It’s been almost three years. Prada me I thought I’d never get free from the backwoods clutches,” she tweeted.

“That’s why I be dead when people’s response to something I do is about how I must be high. I am a square. I do nothing at all,” Kehlani continued. “Absolutely zero drugs. [I] ain’t smoked in 3 years, ain’t even drank in six months. It’s the VIETNAMESE ICED COFFEE.”

In another tweet, the Oakland native admitted she was not “smoker shaming,” but simply sharing her personal experience as an ex-smoker.

“I’m not smoker shaming. I’m jus speaking from my personal ex-smoker experience,” wrote Kehlani. “S/o all the people that weed is doing beautiful things for. I [freakin’] love the plant and all its purposes & beautiful qualities. Smoke da weed don’t let it smoke you.”

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Addiction Recovery Bulletin

GOT KNOWLEDGE? – 

Jan. 27, 2021 – Substance use disorder counseling is an increasingly specialized area of behavioral health, serving patients who have complex substance use and co-occurring mental health disorders. Employment in the field is projected to grow 25% from 2019 to 2029, much faster than the average for all occupations.

“We are so pleased to welcome Dr. Doyle to our team,” said Dr. Valerie Slaymaker, vice president of education and research at the Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation and provost of the Hazelden Betty Ford Graduate School of Addiction Studies. “He has an admirable breadth and depth of experience and knowledge spanning the fields of substance use disorder and higher education. Dr. Doyle will make an instant impact in the academic careers of our students and help meet the incredible workforce demand for excellently trained counselors in the midst of the ongoing addiction crisis and overdose epidemic.”

With both onsite and distance-learning options, the Hazelden Betty Ford Graduate School currently enrolls around 270 students each year in two addiction counseling programs. While focused on the treatment of substance use disorders, both programs also include coursework on mental health and co-occurring disorders—preparing students to provide integrated, comprehensive care consistent with best practices in healthcare. Graduates taking licensing and certification examinations have a 99.5% exam pass rate, and 92% of graduates are successfully employed within six months of graduation.

Accredited by the Higher Learning Commission, a regional accreditation agency recognized by the U.S. Department of Education, and the National Addiction Studies Accreditation Commission, the Hazelden Betty Ford Graduate School of Addiction Studies upholds the highest standards of academic excellence and professional competence. Dr. Doyle joins as the school prepares to also pursue accreditation from the Council for Accreditation of Counseling and Related Educational Programs (CACREP), which is gaining significance…

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Addiction Recovery Bulletin

OPEN MOUTHS, OPEN MINDS –  

Jan. 27, 2021 – “I have a perspective that I bring to the conversation that a traditional clinician may not,” he said. “And I also know that an hour a week [the traditional model for conventional therapy] may not be enough. My goal is to move them to the next level of support.”

The structure of Confidential Recovery’s program is 10 hours per week, he said. 

In some cases, more action may be needed. “With someone who’s lying, cheating, manipulating and is actively involved with their disease of addiction, sometimes you need to do an intervention,” Silverman said.

“That’s what I’m pretty good at. And I talk to the whole family,” he said, noting that each family member may need his or her own therapist to “help them move into action.”

Silverman is no stranger to nonprofit work. In 1992 he founded the San Diego Second Chance program, aimed at working “with the homeless, men and women coming out of jail and prison,” he said. 

He left the organization about 10 years ago. “It was time to move on to something else,” he said.

That “something else” has led to some fulfilling moments, Silverman said. “Watching someone or bumping into someone who’s graduated one of our programs” and earned a credential in a therapy program or a similar achievement is “exciting.”

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Addiction Recovery Bulletin

LISTEN – STORMY FEBRUARY – 

Jan. 29, 2021 – The new administration has also appointed California Attorney General Xavier Becerra to head the Health and Human Services Department.

Becerra, who hasn’t been confirmed by the Senate, has been active in the past on opioid issues. Earlier this month, he joined a coalition of state attorneys general demanding immediate action by the FDA on the addiction crisis.

“The COVID-19 pandemic has hit us all and further exacerbated the opioid crisis — people need support now more than ever,” Becerra said in a Jan. 11 statement.

Drug use appears to have increased amid the isolation and fear wrought by the pandemic, while treatment options have become limited because of coronavirus precautions.

But since taking office, Biden hasn’t yet used executive orders or other policy announcements to focus attention on overdose deaths the way he has done with issues such as energy, climate, immigration and abortion.

“New ideas are desperately needed”

Experts interviewed by NPR said they understand why the new administration’s focus lies elsewhere. The pandemic and the resulting economic fallout were widely expected to top the Biden team’s agenda.

But there was also a consensus that the drug epidemic, heightened by the coronavirus, has entered a particularly dangerous phase that demands action.

“While COVID-19 may have pushed our problems with overdoses to the backburner, they’re still boiling over,” said Beau Kilmer, director of the Rand Drug Policy Research Center. “New ideas are desperately needed.”

More than 220 Americans are dying from overdoses every day, according to preliminary data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Last month, the CDC issued an advisory calling for a swift public health response. Researchers warned that 10 Western states had reported a doubling in synthetic opioid-involved deaths.

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Addiction Recovery Bulletin

WHEN 911 IS THE LAST RESORT – 

Jan. 30, 2021 – The moment their family members called 911, both Carlos and Christian became unwitting players in a system that is massive, complicated, and, according to many experts, manifestly broken. Both families would come to regret the decision to call the police for help, and Christian would not survive. “We were blind to the fact that something could happen to our son in that jail,” Jose told me. “Completely blind.”

Two weeks earlier, Christian had tried hallucinogenic mushrooms for the first time, and he hadn’t been normal since. “When you looked him in the eyes, he was not our boy,” Jose told me. “His eyes were different. His face was different. Everything was different.”

Jose said when the Fremont police arrived, they called for backup and ordered that Christian be brought outside. There, they arrested him for being under the influence of a controlled substance, although his parents maintain that he hadn’t used any drugs since he ingested the mushrooms. When they led him outside the house, Christian began crying out to his mother for help. She and Jose stood by in shock, not knowing what to do. Carlos and Christian weren’t just unlucky. They’re representative of a decades-long pattern of filling up jails with mentally ill people. When policy makers began closing state-run psychiatric hospitals in the 1950s, they promised to replace them with localized mental-health care—but in most places the funding and political will required to make this happen never materialized, leaving large swaths of the U.S. without any options for those seeking treatment. A conservative estimate says 900,000 people with mental illness end up in our jails every year. “These are people who are not necessarily intending to perform criminal acts,” Christine Montross, a psychiatrist and author of Waiting for an Echo: The Madness of American Incarceration, told me.

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Addiction Recovery Bulletin

LISTEN – NO BOOZE IS GOOD BOOZE – 

Jan 30, 2021 – You don’t realize how many times an alcoholic is asked, “Why can’t you just have one glass and stop drinking?” I didn’t know. I wanted to answer that question so badly for so long. I could, and did, have periods of complete abstinence from drinking, like Dry January.

The fact that I could do that, just stop drinking for five, 10 or 20 days, kept me wrapped warm in my disease of alcoholism for years. Decades. The not-dry decades. I told friends and family “see, I can’t be an alcoholic or whatever you think I am — I can stop drinking and I’m fine.” The problem was, though, once I picked up even one drink I couldn’t stop. One teeny, tiny itty-bitty glass of wine could lead me to completely forgetting where I was, who I was with or how I got there. My stomach drops now thinking of the unpredictability of it. That’s really why I get mad hearing about Dry January, because I’m afraid it may keep people like me locked in their addiction. Wrapped in their disease. Stopping isn’t necessarily the hardest part of getting sober. In my experience, that’s just the beginning, it’s staying stopped that’s really hard. 

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Addiction Recovery Bulletin

STICK WITH THE WINNERS! – 

January 28, 2020 – Gretchen Burns Bergman is Executive Director and Co-Founder of A New PATH (Parents for Addiction Treatment & Healing), a non-profit organization that works to reduce the stigma associated with addictive illness through education and compassionate support and to advocate for therapeutic rather than punitive drug policies.  She served as State Chairperson for Proposition 36 in 2000, which mandates treatment instead of incarceration for non-violent drug offenders in California, and she was one of the three signers of Prop 64 in 2016 to regulate and legalize marijuana. She is leading the international Moms United to End the War on Drugs campaign that was started in 2009. She is Owner/Director of Gretchen Productions, a Fashion Show Production Company, started in 1979. Her articles on treatment vs. incarceration have been published nationwide, and she has spoken before countless audiences on the topic of therapeutic justice for individuals with substance use disorders and harm reduction strategies. She has two grown sons who are in long-term recovery from heroin addiction.

Q. Do you think addiction is an illness, disease, a choice or a wicked twist of fate?
A. It is a substance use disorder

Q. Do you log on to ZOOM 12-step meetings? How often? Do you share?
A. No, but I am on countless zoom advocacy meetings

Q. Where did you grow up?
A. Escondido, California

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Addiction Recovery Bulletin

ONE YEAR AND A HALF AT A TIME – 

Jan. 27, 2021 – She “got clean” but six months later she fell off the wagon again and “lost everything.”

“I lost my marriage. I lost my house I worked for 10 years to buy. My career started sinking. I lost all my friends. I was so resentful. So angry all the time. Really felt like the world owed me stuff,” she said on the podcast. “That went on for another four years.”

But she sobered up again and has been going strong ever since.

“I’m in the process of breaking that cycle. I felt so guilty about neglecting my kids in those early years of their life and having to go off on tour and misbehave in the way that I was. I really have a great relationship with my kids now,” she said. 

Allen, who has two kids with ex-husband Sam Cooper, is now married to “Stranger Things” star David Harbour. 

“I’m in a really happy and healthy relationship. He’s sober, has been sober for 20 years now,” she said of Harbour. “We’re thinking about what we’re going to do with the rest of our lives … I don’t have as much as I had then in terms of success and wealth, but I have success and health in my mind, which is more valuable, I think.”

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