Category: From Addiction Recovery Bulletin

Addiction Recovery Bulletin

The dark ages are ending… –  

Dec. 25, 2020 – For most of his sentence, Winslow’s chances of getting out were virtually nil. He is guilty of the crime he was convicted of, so there was no path to getting his conviction thrown out. And it was his fourth offense, precluding the possibility of catching the attention of a public sympathetic to the plight of “first-time offenders” — like activists did with Alice Marie Johnson — to appeal to the mercy of executive lawmakers with pardon power. Johnson was granted clemency by President Donald Trump after viral appeals from celebrities like Kim Kardashian, who stressed that Johnson had made just one mistake. Because Winslow wasn’t eligible for parole, it was unlikely he would get a grant of clemency from the Louisiana governor, as governors tend to defer to parole boards.

He didn’t have a lawyer until his case was taken up by the Innocence Project of New Orleans in 2019. That his case was taken up by a group whose primary goal is to take on cases in which the prisoner is innocent of the crime, and whose most high-profile work has been to overturn wrongful convictions in capital punishment cases, signals a shift in the advocacy community’s understanding of innocence, guilt, and punishment.

more@TheIntercept

The post Man Serving Life Without Parole for $20 of Weed Freed appeared first on Addiction/Recovery eBulletin.

Addiction Recovery Bulletin

Big Pharma Meet Big Food – 

Dec. 26, 2020 – “This study found that the food industry is commonly involved in published research from leading nutrition journals,” researchers write.

“Where the food industry is involved, research findings are nearly six times more likely to be favourable to their interests than when there is no food industry involvement.”

As far as the authors know, this is the first systematic review on the extent and nature of food industry involvement in peer-reviewed research. Similar studies focusing on industry involvement have produced mixed results, but far more research is needed.

In recent years, as industry ties to scientific research have begun to surface, many have lost trust in nutrition science and some have called it a ‘credibility crisis’. Whether or not that distrust is justified is something independent scientists and businesses have been trying to prove ever since.

These new findings support growing evidence and rising concerns that competing interests are contaminating the field of nutrition and dietetics, even at the most reputable journals. The findings also suggest this involvement is skewing results.

more@ScienceAlert

The post Nutrition Science Has Deep Ties to The Food Industry appeared first on Addiction/Recovery eBulletin.

Addiction Recovery Bulletin

Always Low Prices – 

Dec. 22, 2020 – “As one of the largest pharmacy chains and wholesale drug distributors in the country, Walmart had the responsibility and the means to help prevent the diversion of prescription opioids,” Jeffrey Bossert Clark, acting assistant attorney general of the Justice Department’s civil division, said in a statement. “Instead, for years, it did the opposite — filling thousands of invalid prescriptions at its pharmacies and failing to report suspicious orders of opioids and other drugs placed by those pharmacies.”

The lawsuit is a significant escalation in the government’s effort to hold major pharmacy chains responsible for their role in the opioid crisis. While much of the litigation around opioid addiction has focused on doctors and distributors, a lawsuit filed in federal court in May by two Ohio counties accused CVS, Walgreens and Rite Aid of also fueling the problem. The retailers were accused of selling millions of pills in tiny communities, rewarding pharmacists with the highest volumes and promoting opioids as safe and effective.

more@NYTimes

The post Walmart Fueled Opioid Crisis appeared first on Addiction/Recovery eBulletin.

Addiction Recovery Bulletin

A champ goes down swinging – 

Dec. 22, 2020 – An important player in the drug and alcohol addiction treatment network for more than 60 years is closing at the end of the month, a victim of a combination of the pandemic and dwindling insurance reimbursements. Beacon House is a nonprofit in-patient alcohol and drug treatment facility in Pacific Grove that was founded in 1959

Dec. 22, 2020 – A spokesperson for Gateway confirmed the closing Tuesday and said it was a one-two punch of COVID-19 and health insurance companies not adequately covering in-patient treatment. Many people who would otherwise seek treatment are fearful of entering any type of medical setting because of the virus. She said the census at Beacon House had fallen to two or three patients at any one time.

“This is a major loss for our community,” said Lisa Naylor, a nurse and director of Behavioral Health Services at Community Hospital of the Monterey Peninsula.

Community Hospital’s Recovery Center provides an intensive outpatient program specializing in alcohol and chemical dependency addictions. The pandemic is one driver contributing to increased drinking or drug use, including stress, anxiety and depression, health professionals say.

Dr. Lee Goldman, whose specialties include addiction medicine at the Recovery Center, said he is a proponent of local treatment. Sobriety may begin in treatment but continues once people are home, he said.

“Local treatment helps people establish or continue their recovery plans and the support they need to remain clean and sober,” Goldman said. “People who have to leave the community, return without local support especially now with the pandemic which leaves them ripe for relapse.”

Ann Bispo, a mental health clinical nurse in Behavioral Health Services at Community Hospital, has seen increased numbers of patients struggling with substance use problems during the COVID-19 pandemic.

more@MontereyHerald

The post Beacon House in Pacific Grove Closing appeared first on Addiction/Recovery eBulletin.

Addiction Recovery Bulletin

December 22, 2020 –

Dear readers, Welcome to Christmas 2020. Well, this isn’t your traditional Christmas, but the heartfelt gratitude to our subscribers, contributors and sponsors/advertisers is invested with the same sincerity as always.  Our readership is rising as more and more people find themselves wanting more and more connection to the world of recovery.

Treatment centers – and I mean the real ones of compassion, understanding and true intent – find themselves socially distanced at a time when, more than ever, their means, methods and integrity are of undeniable value...

more@AddictionRecoveryeBulletin

The post Letter from the Editor appeared first on Addiction/Recovery eBulletin.

Addiction Recovery Bulletin

Admitted into not ‘Checked’ into – 

Dec. 21, 2020 – The former Saturday Night Live writer, 38, is seeking treatment after relapsing following a decades-long battle with addiction.

Mulaney’s rep did not immediately respond to PEOPLE’s request for comment. The New York Post’s Page Six was the first to report the news.

The comedian, who previously said he started drinking at the age of 13 before later abusing drugs, has been open about his struggles with sobriety.

“I drank for attention,” he told Esquire in 2019. “I was really outgoing, and then at 12, I wasn’t. I didn’t know how to act. And then I was drinking, and I was hilarious again.”

While he said he never enjoyed smoking marijuana, he “loved” cocaine and other prescription drugs.

more@People

The post John Mulaney Has Checked Into Rehab appeared first on Addiction/Recovery eBulletin.

Addiction Recovery Bulletin

Win Win –  

Dec. 18, 2020 – Even before the COVID-19 pandemic put millions of Americans out of work, lacking the financial means to pay for addiction treatment meant people have long relied on a mixed bag of rehab scholarships, GoFundMe campaigns, and other donation-based services to try and find care. 

There’s even a phone app that offers scholarships and “sponsored beds” for treatment as well as how-to guides that give people instructions on how to crowdsource and find what are known in the industry as rehab “scholarships.” Because the U.S. lacks a universal health care system like other developed countries, only a select group of wealthy people can afford the exorbitant cost of addiction care. Cost partially explains why only about one in ten people in the U.S. who meet diagnostic criteria for addiction ever receive specialty treatment for it.

A spokesperson for Banyan told VICE World News: “We don’t intend this to be any sort of ‘prize,’ rather it’s a gift of a new life that is deserving of all people struggling. We have had an overwhelming response to the post with many people who have already applied. Just to be clear, our scholarship offered by Banyan is a wonderful gift and it is not a ‘lottery’ or a ‘sweepstakes’. It’s a free, 30-day treatment program based on their clinical and medical needs, with room and board covered.”

Cost is far from the only issue with addiction treatment in the U.S. Thanks to decades of stigma and criminalization, the country has a sprawling addiction treatment system that thrives way outside the bounds of traditional medicine and health care. 

more@Vice

The post Heartwarming! Drug Rehab Centre Offers Free Treatment Via Christmas Raffle appeared first on Addiction/Recovery eBulletin.

Addiction Recovery Bulletin

The fix is in? – 

Dec. 16, 2020 – “We have the opportunity today to provide some well needed funds to organizations that really need it within this community,” said Daniel Warren, director of OCIB and who also is a special agent supervisor with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement Orlando Regional Operations Center.

 OCIB is a multi-agency task force, which investigates vice, narcotics and organized crime. In partnership with the State Attorney’s Office, the bureau consists of agents from the Osceola County Sheriff’s Office, Kissimmee Police Department and the St. Cloud Police Department, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement and the Florida Highway Patrol. Through its investigative and enforcement efforts, OCIB is able to seize funds in certain cases. The OCIB Charitable Contribution Committee was developed in an effort to distribute the seized funds taken from mostly drug dealers, in a way that can best serve the community, to include providing funds to drug treatment facilities in order to help residents recover from drug addiction.

“It’s such a collaborative effort in an effort to get rid of and remove the criminal element that plagues sometimes our communities,” said St. Cloud Police Chief Pete Gauntlett.

more@AroundOsceola

The post 4 treatment centers get almost no money seized by Osceola County appeared first on Addiction/Recovery eBulletin.

Addiction Recovery Bulletin

Trudging and Trudging – 

Dec. 17, 2020 – Some of you reading this might have an addict/alcoholic in your family or life who is in recovery, or an addict/alcoholic who hasn’t yet decided to admit it or get help.

Getting help was perhaps the hardest decision I ever had to make. Here I was, pretty successful, with a good job. My bills were paid, my kids are healthy and I’m a father actively involved in their lives. Nothing the matter, right? Not so fast. Just to give you the insight into the depth of my drinking; I didn’t just drink three or four beers and call it quits. I drank a 12 pack of beer and a fifth of whiskey nearly every night for the past ten years.

I didn’t want to admit I was an alcoholic. But, what my brain and heart refused to realize, my body actualized. My body told me that I needed to knock it off and do so quickly. My blood pressure was at a life-threatening level. My liver enzymes were at a very dangerous level too. This once fit Marine sergeant had even become morbidly obese. The end result – I drank myself into a type two diabetic. That’s my reward for neglect, remorse … for hiding out. That’s what I got from years of drinking my fears away … for not facing the man in the mirror.

more@Radio

The post Kristian Garic: I’m an alcoholic appeared first on Addiction/Recovery eBulletin.

Addiction Recovery Bulletin

WATCH – Praise for AA –  

Dec. 19, 2020 – Explaining how she still felt shame at being asked to leave a friend’s 40th birthday because she was so drunk, she shared the moment that had prompted her to seek help.

Read more: Fears of alcoholism during lockdown

She wrote: “My rock bottom came in 2013 while on holiday in Cornwall with my husband. I blacked out and fell, fracturing two small bones in my back. I woke up, in terrible agony, on the pavement and realised I needed help.”

Constantine added that she was now quite far along her road to recovery, and said she was grateful to her husband Sten Bertelsen for supporting her.

more@YahooSports

The post Susannah Constantine Reveals She’s an Alcoholic With Seven Years in Recovery appeared first on Addiction/Recovery eBulletin.