Category: From Addiction Recovery Bulletin

Addiction Recovery Bulletin

GO TELL IT TO THE JUDGE –

Nov. 29, 2024 – Rainier Recovery, which runs centers in Lakewood, Gig Harbor and Puyallup, is accused of altering patient records to maximize profits and employing unqualified staff, according to investigative documents from the Washington State Department of Health. The treatment provider has 28 days to formally respond to the allegations…and cannot provide services to patients in the state until the charges are resolved, the DOH said Tuesday in announcing the licensing suspensions.

In a statement to The News Tribune, Rainier Recovery rejected accusations of wrongdoing.

“Our client denies the allegations raised by the Department of Health,” attorney Seth Rosenberg, who’s representing the treatment provider, said in an email. “We look to the administrative process to clear them of the allegations.”

Rainier Recovery may contest the suspension and request an adjudicative proceeding as well as a hearing to show cause whether an immediate jeopardy exists, according to the DOH.

The allegations against Rainier Recovery Center LLC were laid out in a 25-page “notice of immediate enforcement action” sent Tuesday to the provider by the DOH.

CONTINUE@Spokesman

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Addiction Recovery Bulletin

ANOTHER TWO BITE THE DUST –

Dec. 5, 2024 – Addiction Recovery Care (ARC) has temporarily closed at least two more facilities, officials told WYMT Thursday.  (ARC) continues to face significant challenges due to reductions in state and payer reimbursement rates for addiction treatment and mental health services. As a result, we are making the difficult decision to temporarily close two of our centers. To ensure uninterrupted care, all current clients at these facilities have the option to transition to other ARC centers — or other centers of their choosing.

Despite these industry-wide challenges, ARC remains steadfast in its commitment to providing award-winning treatment and recovery services that are transforming lives and addressing the addiction crisis in Kentucky and beyond.

We, along with other treatment providers across the state, remain hopeful that access to high-quality addiction treatment and mental health services will continue to be a priority for Kentucky.  

CONTINUE@WYMT

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Addiction Recovery Bulletin

JAIL’S CHEAPER THAN REHAB –

Dec. 6, 2024 – The American Medical Association’s annual report on the overdose crisis, released last month, repeatedly accused insurance companies of violating federal laws that require them to cover SUD treatment. Laws that further criminalize drug use are also making it more difficult for people who use drugs to access care, and could also lead to more overdoses.

Research shows that people are as much as 40 times more likely to overdose after experiencing incarceration, and very few jails and prisons provide access to SUD treatment.

The Biden administration continued a Trump era policy of criminalizing fentanyl and its analogues, and multiple states have toughened their fentanyl laws in recent years. For example, Colorado passed a law in 2022 that lowered the threshold for felony possession of fentanyl from 4 grams to 1 gram. Researchers predict this change will lead to over 5,000 overdose deaths in five years.

“If you want to actually treat addiction and problematic drug use as a health issue, it’s hypocritical then to want to throw individuals who use drugs in an incarcerated setting,” said Medina, “because we know that that doesn’t do anything to actually solve what is, at the end of the day, a health issue, and in fact diverts resources away from the systems of support that people really need.”

CONTINUE@TheGuardian

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Addiction Recovery Bulletin

THEM OR HER? –

Nov. 30, 2024 – The “Smile” singer confessed she’s never “had sex” with a partner “not drunk” until she married her current husband, “Stranger Things” star David Harbour. 

“We don’t really talk about it,” Allen, 39, told The Times of London. “I don’t think I’d ever had sex with anybody not drunk before I got together with him. So that was different for sure.” Allen’s comments come after she recently celebrated five years of sobriety. Harbour, 49, has also been sober for more than 20 years, respectfully.

“It’s a totally different thing. It’s unavoidable, conscious and real. He had a lot of experience with it, so it’s been helpful to do it with someone that’s long-in-the-tooth in that game,” she laughed.

The two tied the knot in a low-key ceremony officiated by an Elvis Presley impersonator in 2020. 

CONTINUE@Fox

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Addiction Recovery Bulletin

INCARCERATION FOR ADDICTS –

Dec. 5, 2024  – Trump’s “Agenda 47” proposes an aggressive stance against drug trafficking and addiction, including measures such as naval embargoes on cartels and the death penalty for drug dealers. (Yours truly would have been a target if these were in place 20 years ago.) 

The “War on Drugs” has long been criticized for its disproportionate impact on marginalized communities and its failure to reduce substance use and related struggles. Instead of addressing root causes such as poverty, trauma, and lack of access to mental health care, these policies focus on punishment, exacerbating harm for individuals and families.

As I emphasize repeatedly in Unhooked, addiction is rarely about the substances or behaviors themselves. It’s about the pain, trauma, and emotional activation driving the behavior. Policies focused solely on eradication and punishment do little to address the core question: Why are people turning to drugs? Without tackling this, we risk perpetuating cycles of addiction and incarceration.

And in the U.S., people keep turning to drugs, no matter the policies.  

CONTINUE@PsychologyToday

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Addiction Recovery Bulletin

IT CAN’T HAPPEN HERE? –

Nov. 30, 2024 – When I first met Evan B Harris he was fizzing with talent and kindness. So I was shocked to hear he had become homeless and out of control. What happened to him is a story playing out in cities across America. … One evening, a friend invited me to an art opening across town. Inside, Ben Gibbard from Death Cab for Cutie was playing an acoustic set … but most of us were out in the yard, drinking beer in the lowering sun. I remember Evan, heavily tattooed and wearing a wide-brimmed hat. He asked how I was enjoying the exchange rate – in those days two dollars to the pound – and I joked I’d bought so much vintage clothing I was thinking I would have to buy a house to keep it all in.

Portland, a midsize city in north-west Oregon, was affordable back then. Not just for visiting Britons, but for artists, musicians and writers. 

CONTINUE@TheGuardian

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Addiction Recovery Bulletin

VIDEO – WHO IS AT FAULT? –                                                                                        

Dec. 3, 2024 – Chronicle photographer Gabrielle Lurie and reporter Maggie Angst spent 10 months investigating deaths inside San Francisco’s largest publicly funded addiction treatment provider, HealthRight 360. In the last 13 months, four clients and one staff member fatally overdosed at HealthRight’s facilities, which promise a safe environment for drug and alcohol detox and recovery.  

CONTINUE@YouTube

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Addiction Recovery Bulletin

BEYOND DENMARK? –

Dec. 1, 2024 – Brain rot is defined as the supposed deterioration of a person’s mental or intellectual state, especially viewed as the result of overconsumption of material considered to be trivial or unchallenging,  you spending hours scrolling mindlessly on Instagram reels and TikTok? If so, you might be suffering from brain rot, which has become the Oxford word of the year.

It is a term that captures concerns about the impact of consuming excessive amounts of low-quality online content, especially on social media.  he first recorded use of brain rot dates much before the creation of the internet – it was written down in 1854 by Henry David Thoreau in his book Walden.

He criticises society’s tendency to devalue complex ideas and how this is part of a general decline in mental and intellectual effort.

It leads him to ask: “While England endeavours to cure the potato rot, will not any endeavour to cure the brain-rot – which prevails so much more widely and fatally?”

The word initially gained traction on social media among Gen Z and Gen Alpha communities, but it’s now being used in the mainstream as a way to describe low-quality, low-value content found on social media…

CONTINUE@BBC

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Addiction Recovery Bulletin

TO EACH HIS OWN –                                                                                        

Dec. 4, 2024 – Stigmas can result in poor mental health, physical harm, lack of understanding  and fewer opportunities. I saw this firsthand with my brother and the stigmas that were put onto him and by extension my family. 

Substance Abuse Disorder  has been defined as a medical condition of the brain by the American Addiction Center, yet there is still debate whether addiction is a true medical condition or simply a choice someone makes. Being from a small town in Florida, it’s hard to have any kind of moral failing without everyone dissecting your every flaw. Because of my brother’s issue with substance abuse, he experienced people constantly discussing his “failings.”  Stigmas were hung over him from a young age, making him feel outcasted. This kind of harmful speech only worked to further his feeling of isolation. 

As a society, we have worked hard to rid our world of hateful stigmas, from race to gender to class. Yet why as a society have we allowed Substance Abuse Disorder to be the final frontier of socially acceptable shame? 

CONTINUE@Gargoyle

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Addiction Recovery Bulletin

ANYTHING FOR A BUCK –                                                                                        

“That business has been built on deception, a New York Times investigation found.”

Dec. 7, 2024 – The  the country’s largest for-profit chain of 165 methadone clinics has generated more than $1.3 billion in revenue since 2022. Clinic directors can get bonuses when their patient enrollment goes up, an incentive that has led Acadia to treat people who do not have opioid addictions but are dependent on other drugs.  Her boss excoriated her after she turned away a patient who tested negative for opioids and admitted to using only methamphetamine. The boss demanded to know why she had let a potential patient walk.

Methadone is a narcotic, and the clinics are heavily regulated by federal and state governments. In addition to handing out methadone, the clinics are required to provide counseling and other services, like drug testing.

But Acadia often fails to provide that counseling, according to five dozen current and former employees in 22 of the 33 states where the company has clinics. Instead, employees at times falsify the medical records that Acadia uses to bill insurers, according to the employees and internal emails.

CONTINUE@NYTimes

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