Category: From Addiction Recovery Bulletin

Addiction Recovery Bulletin

An Actual First Lady –

Oct 5, 2020 – The project calls for removing four of the current residential buildings and replacing them with a pair of two-story residential buildings, which each would house 46 beds. Each of the two buildings would be 30,935 square feet.

Additionally, a new one-story, 22,748-square-foot day-treatment facility would be built on what is currently a vacant portion of the center’s campus. The facility would be able to accommodate 44 day-treatment patients. The building would also include additional administrative space, a computer lab and a lecture hall.

These plans would increase the Betty Ford Center’s capacity from 100 beds to 156 beds and increase the total campus from 137,200 square feet to 170,000 square feet.

“By expanding our capacity by 56 beds, several hundred more people will be able to get the help they need each year,” Yadron said. “We’ll also be increasing safety, improving access by implementing the very latest ADA requirements, and expanding our ability to improve outcomes by keeping people engaged in a long-term continuum of care.”

The project will be built over three phases, with the single-story day treatment building slated to be built first. Phase two will see the old residential buildings demolished and one new residential building constructed. The final phase will see the construction of the second residential building.

The project also includes modifications to landscaping, parking spaces and the development of a new driveway onto the campus from Vista Del Sol.

more@NAATP

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Addiction Recovery Bulletin

WATCH – What about the Pope? –

Oct. 2020 – Jim joined Matt Austin and Ginger Gadsden from his Fort Lauderdale home for this week’s edition of Florida’s Fourth Estate to talk about being in recovery for 32 years now, and what it took to get him there to begin with.

Jim says he knows during the pandemic that people with addictions are suffering.

He said people who suffer from addiction or mental illness are fragile.

“Recovery is connection. It’s love. It’s friendship,” he said. “Addiction is the opposite. It’s isolation. It’s loneliness. It’s depression. We’ve been forced into a depressive state.”

In a pandemic, when you’re forced to isolate, he says it has done a number on many who turn drugs and alcohol for escape.

He encourages those struggling to reach out and not be ashamed to ask for help.

At the age of 22, Jim found himself in prison for the second time for breaking into a police officer’s home.

more@ClickOrlando

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Addiction Recovery Bulletin

She’s not the only one… –

Oct 9, 2020 – Davis’ most iconic role came after she checked herself into a rehab program. During a sit-down interview with James Andrew Miller for his podcast, Origins, Davis admitted that she began drinking at a very young age to dull her senses and her anxiety. She noted that she only got serious about sobriety when she found her acting was suffering. Davis didn’t share exactly when she checked herself into rehab, but reportedly it occurred before she landed her breakout role in Sex and the City. Before the series, Davis appeared in General Hospital and Melrose Place. Her role in General Hospital lasted for 23 episodes in 1991. She appeared in Melrose Place for two seasons before her character, Brooke Armstrong, was killed off.

more@CheatSheet

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Addiction Recovery Bulletin

Stick with the Winners!

October 8, 2020 – Award winning director, writer, actress Christina Beck began her career as a punk rock teenager acting in cult films such as Suburbia, Boys Next Door, and Dudes all directed by Penelope Spheeris. She studied at Playwright’s Horizons in New York City forming an all-female theatre company, POW (Power of Women) productions, and wrote, produced and starred in “From the Heart” premiering at the Samuel Beckett Theatre. After writing, directing and acting in numerous Los Angeles theatre productions, Christina wrote and starred in her first short film, DISCO MAN, followed by the noir comedy, BLOW ME, which screened in the New York, Chicago, and Seattle Underground Film Festivals. 

Q. If you are in recovery, what was your Drug of Choice? When did you stop using?
A. I’m gratefully clean and sober for over twenty-seven years.

Q. Do you think addiction is an illness, disease, a choice or a wicked twist of fate?
A. It’s an individual path. For me, using any substance was a way to disconnect from trauma. I grew up in a home with active addiction and I believe my parents truly did the best they could. I don’t bother with questioning if it’s a disease etc. … I just feel lucky to have tools for recovery and to be sober today. 

Q. Do you log on to ZOOM 12-step meetings? How often? Do you share?
A. I’ve been very fortunate with the habit of going to lot’s of meetings. At least one meeting a day either on Zoom or socially distant with a mask in a park. 

Full Profile@AddictionRecoveryeBulletin

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Addiction Recovery Bulletin

WATCH – What goes around…  –  

OCT 5, 2020 -”DELONTE WEST IS JUST LIKE ANYONE ELSE THAT PROBABLY HAS SOME DEEP-ROOTED ISSUES THAT HAVE NEVER BEEN DEALT WITH, YA KNOW? PUTTING ON A BASKETBALL UNIFORM AND BEING SUCCESSFUL, THAT JUST COVERS UP EVERYTHING THAT HAPPENS TO A PERSON.”

Strawberry continued … “It reflects back to when he was probably young somewhere, some kinda trauma, abuse or something affected him and it can leave you crippled and paralyzed. So, no one signs up to be in that situation he is. I didn’t sign up to be in that situation.”

But, Darryl — who now runs Strawberry Ministries with his wife, Tracy — isn’t just talking about West’s struggles … he actually wants to work with Delonte.

“I would love to help him.”

Strawberry says he doesn’t want to interfere with Delonte’s current treatment program … but after he completes rehab, Straw wants West to know he’ll be around to help keep on the right back.

“My hopes and thoughts and prayers are with him. Here was a guy that was successful playing in the NBA, and here he is struggling. He’s down and out.”

“I just want him to know that people like me, that are in recovery, been for a long time, is praying for him and thinking about him,” Darryl tells us.

“If there’s anything I can ever do to encourage him and sit down and have a talk with him, I just hope he can reach out and do that.”

more@TMZ

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Addiction Recovery Bulletin

Treat people with care and respect –

Oct 8, 2020 – What happened in Pittsburgh is instructive because the steel industry collapsed, and, along with that, communities collapsed, and drugs came in. When communities and cultures are wounded, drugs are more likely to come in. 

What we’ve seen is a trend from primarily alcohol dependence in the country, to cocaine and prescription opiates, followed by intravenous heroin, supplanted by intravenous fentanyl. 

Now the scary thing that we’re facing is increases in combinations of fentanyl with cocaine, and fentanyl with methamphetamine. What the cartels are doing is combining fentanyl with cocaine. People may not be aware that they’re using fentanyl, which may be one of the reasons that can account for the increase in overdose death rate over the last year or so. 

In this state we’ve been largely spared methamphetamine. But no longer. Over the last year and a half it’s flooded into the state. The drug problem is quite severe and not showing any signs of slowing. In the midst of all of this, hidden, is high rates of alcohol dependence. Attention to it has been orphaned by the prescription opiate epidemic. It definitely kills more people per year than opiates do.

more@BangorDailyNews

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Addiction Recovery Bulletin

First comes bloating, nausea, vomiting, gas and diarrhea  –  

Sep 29, 2020 – The combination of my father’s death and my personal background lit a fire in me to know more. He was admitted to the hospital on June 24th, 2016, and he died on July 18th, 2016. That’s only 24 days between the first sign there was a problem and his subsequent death.

Now, hearing that he was in end-stage cirrhosis didn’t surprise me, given his heavy drinking. What did surprise me was that he’d visited several doctors and specialists in the months before his death, and no one knew his liver was struggling either.

So what happened? Does end-stage liver cirrhosis really sneak up that fast? Were there other signs that would have alerted someone to his failing liver?

more@Medium

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Addiction Recovery Bulletin

“What a drag it is getting old” –  

Oct 3, 2020 – That [message] is from a mother in California in early September, when she was trapped inside with her three children for days because the air was so thick with smoke that it was unsafe to breathe outside. Since the pandemic began, members of the group have experienced job losses, wildfires, weekslong power outages from tropical storms, political unrest, elderly parents with Covid-19, a news cycle on turbo and unending days filled with educating, feeding and caring for their children while also trying to fit in eight or more hours of work.

And we’re the lucky ones who can meet our children’s basic needs. Somewhere between 20 and 40 percent of parents of children under 5 have worried about their children getting enough to eat since the pandemic started, and many who cannot work remotely are scrambling for coverage with the fitful reopening of day care centers and schools.  The increase of substance use among parents is “just kind of understandable,” said Jonathan Metzl, the director of the department of medicine, health and society at Vanderbilt University. “This is an incredible, once-in-an-epoch stressful situation, and the kinds of outlets people usually have in their lives are just not available.” We can’t go to the office, we can’t go to the gym, we can’t really see friends or family, and we never get a break.” “My hobby is doom scrolling and learning the science of Covid and smoking weed and sitting on the toilet staring at the wall,” said Julie Kortekaas, 36, a mother of two children, ages 10 and 18, and a health-food restaurant owner in London, Ontario.”

more@NYTimes

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Addiction Recovery Bulletin

Golden Gate Deaths –

Oct 10, 2020 – Paramedics revive an overdose victim in the Tenderloin in July. San Francisco is on track to lose more than 700 people to drugs in 2020 — or nearly two every day.

more@SFChronicle

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Addiction Recovery Bulletin

Business as Usual –  

Oct 9, 2020 – Cleveland County District Judge Thad Balkman last summer ordered Johnson & Johnson to pay $572 million to help address the state’s opioid crisis, saying the consumer products giant downplayed the risk of addiction and death while overstating the benefits of opioid painkillers. State attorneys have previously argued it was appropriate to file the case as a public nuisance lawsuit since the state was seeking money to abate the opioid epidemic rather than damages to pay for harm caused by the company. “Unless this Court overturns the decision, Oklahoma will become ground zero for every breed of public-nuisance claim imaginable,” the Chamber said. “The decision will chill business activity throughout Oklahoma.”

Prescription opioids have been linked to more than 6,100 deaths in Oklahoma from 2000-2017. Balkman reduced the amount to pay about a month later by nearly $107 million, acknowledging he miscalculated in determining how much Johnson & Johnson must pay the state to help address the state’s opioid crisis.  Attorneys for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce argued there was “no basis in Oklahoma law” for the way the state’s public nuisance statute was applied in this case, according to The Oklahoman.  “The trial court ignored the differences between actually false speech and speech that is only “potentially misleading,” attorneys for the Goldwater Institute said.

more@JournalStar

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