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Addiction Recovery Bulletin

Check(mate)-ing out – 

November 3, 2020 – Even when she wakes up severely hungover in Paris, she whips her head forward and instantly collects herself, looking like a veritable siren doll with sinuously reflective red curls magically restored to bouncing perfection — just minutes after emerging from a bathtub with pitch-black mascara bleeding down her cheeks. Every man that has been in her life saves her more than once; the show is a fairy tale without Brothers Grimm body horror or any horror to speak of aside from its tragic opening scene.

But let’s rewind a bit more, to the moment when Harmon first visualizes an upside-down game of chess on the orphanage ceiling. There is a particularly dangerous form of causality being drawn here between Harmon’s blossoming intellect — her precocity — and not just her tendency toward addictive behaviors, but her addiction to pills as well. It’s important to note the difference: It’s perfectly fine to acknowledge that sometimes yes, there is a link between an individual who harbors some kind of genetic predisposition toward addiction and their potential for greatness. But linking Harmon’s intellectual development to the tranquilizers themselves at least somewhat implies that without them, she would have never realized her talents.

Today, addiction specialists use the term “medical model” to summarize their understanding as opposed to attributing addiction to moral shortcomings. But cue Harmon downing entire bottles of red wine at an astonishing pace with a pensive, sultry gaze. Her ensuing spiral into substance abuse has a cinematic, nearly iconic look to it. We might want to step away from imagery depicting someone’s bottom as a well-choreographed music video with only one scene of projectile vomiting, where she somehow never manages to lose the house.

She simultaneously takes incredibly strong tranquilizers, but even at the end of the series, anyone who has been in or has known someone in the throes of addiction cannot watch the final scene unfold without wondering how Taylor-Joy’s complexion has remained so lovely throughout. Dare I say, her complexion improves significantly and becomes miraculously more radiant, with not a trace of dehydration aside from the one time she downs glasses of water during her “hangover match” with the Russian.  

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The post The Queen’s Gambit Shows Knowledge Can’t Defeat Addiction – OPINION appeared first on Addiction/Recovery eBulletin.

Addiction Recovery Bulletin

While my bass gently weeps – 

December 8, 2020 – Its forty years since John Lennon was shot dead.  I will never forget the feeling of hearing that news. I was stuck in London traffic, the December rain pouring. It was cold and I was lonely. I have had experiences that would never have occurred to me to desire were it not for John.  Sometimes it bothers me, why some of us survive, and others, who often seem the better person, don’t.

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The post 40 Years Later – John Taylor from Duran Duran Looks Back at The Beatles & Their Legacy appeared first on Addiction/Recovery eBulletin.

Addiction Recovery Bulletin

The whole world is toking – 

Dec. 2, 2020 – The drugs that are on Schedule IV are a subset of those on Schedule I of the convention, which already requires the highest levels of international control. The agency voted to leave cannabis and cannabis resin on the list of Schedule I drugs, which also include cocaine, Fentanyl, morphine, Methadone, opium and oxycodone, the opiate painkiller sold as OxyContin,

Wednesday’s vote therefore does not clear U.N. member nations to legalize marijuana under the international drug control system. Canada and Uruguay have legalized the sale and use of cannabis for recreational purposes, but many countries around the world have decriminalized marijuana possession.

The schedules weigh a drug’s medical utility versus the possible harm that it might cause, and experts say that taking cannabis off the strictest schedule could lead, however, to the loosening of international controls on medical marijuana.

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Addiction Recovery Bulletin

Don’t wait!!!!!!!!!!!!!! – 

Dec. 6, 2020 – Then, just before entering a shed on his girlfriend’s posh waterfront property in the wee hours, the on-edge Hsieh asked pals to check on him every 5 minutes, sources told the outlet.

Details of the ensuing fatal shed fire remain murky, although authorities have said the Harvard-educated business genius died from smoke inhalation and that the blaze was accidental.

But Hsieh’s obsessions and fascination with experimenting with his body — for example, trying to see how much food and oxygen he could live without — may provide some clues as to what happened.

He was entranced by fire — with a real-estate agent recalling seeing an estimated 1,000 candles in Hsieh’s Park City, Utah, home earlier this year, the Journal said.

Hsieh, who wrote a 2010 bestseller about his alternative path to success called “Delivering Happiness,’’ “explained to me that the candles were a symbol of what life was like in a simpler time,” the agent, Paul Benson, told the Journal.

The quirky entrepreneur, who sold his business to Amazon for $1 billion in 2009, also liked to use a heater in his girlfriend’s shed to decrease his oxygen level, sources told the media outlet.

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Addiction Recovery Bulletin

The good, the bad and the ugly – 

Dec. 4, 2020 – On Thursday, Dec. 3, three Congress members introduced a bill aimed at improving the quality of care offered to recovering addicts living in sober living homes.

Dubbed “The Excellence in Recovery Housing Act,” the proposed law would require the National Academy of Sciences to study high-quality recovery housing and make recommendations for increasing its availability. It also would determine how to improve data collection about recovery, ensure that medication-assisted treatment would be available for people seeking to stay sober and explore the legal tangles that still exist on the state and local front involving recovery housing.

The bill also would push the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration to work with “reputable providers” to come up with comprehensive guidelines for struggling state governments, and would provide some $57 million in grants states could use to help make quality housing a reality.

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Addiction Recovery Bulletin

Gone way too soon … 40 years ago today –  

Dec. 2, 2020 – “He was probably, in those years, the most notable stay-at-home dad in America,” said Larry Kane, author of “Lennon Revealed,” a 2005 biography, and “Ticket to Ride,” a chronicle of the Beatles’ early American tours.

It was a pointed turn for a celebrity who was once one of the international avatars of the “sex, drugs and rock-’n’-roll” cliché. Lennon said he bottomed out while he was separated from Ono in the early 1970s, during an 18-month “long weekend” of substance abuse, according to Kane.

But it was also an unusual role for a middle-age man in that period: Just 2 percent of American households had stay-at-home fathers from 1976 to 1979, according to a Pew Research article citing a 2013 study published in the Journal of Family Issues.

Lennon, according to news articles published at the time, apparently had some help from a nanny. But nearly all contemporaneous stories depict Lennon as a steadfast and joyful father, totally consumed with domestic life. (“Lennon Is Playing Daddy,” a headline from the time read in part.)

“John talked baby talk, tickled [Sean], threw him in the air… 

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Addiction Recovery Bulletin

Sober mother, sober daughter –  

December 3, 2020 – Willis also said she finds herself “becoming [her] mother in the most complimentary way” and feels that Moore is someone she can “really draw from.”

“She’s even, I think, at this point in her life now still exploring and coming into herself creatively which is so inspiring for me because I think you can get really hung up on ‘I didn’t figure it out soon enough’,” she shared, noting that she herself struggled to “figure out” her “life path.”

Moore even had an influence on her daughter’s style.

“… So much of it was probably my mom. It really was. She is constantly shifting and evolving her style, but is also a hoarder,” Tallulah explained. “She’s kept every iteration of vibe that she’s ever had.”

Being the child of two Hollywood juggernauts — not to mention the youngest of their three shared children — Willis found herself under some pressure in her early years.

“There was a little bit of [pressure with] me being the youngest, and kind of seeing a lot of people in already-developed stages of creativity. There was pressure, not spoken, but pressure that I put on myself to kind of figure it out,” she explained.

However, Tallulah feels she’s hit her own stride these days.

“At 26, I think you start to know yourself,” she said. “I think you start to see these patterns really kick in.”

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Addiction Recovery Bulletin

Weighing the Alternatives – 

December 3, 2020 – That’s when she started the binge-purge cycle; uncontrollably eating large quantities of food before forcing herself to vomit. “I’d go to the corner shop and buy a ridiculous amount of food – triple sandwiches, big bags of crisps, sweets and fizzy drinks – binge-eat them in a specific order, then purge until there was nothing left. It completely took over my life.”  When Jeni saw her doctor, she was told that her potassium levels were so low – due to electrolyte imbalances caused by vomiting – that she was at risk of having a heart attack. She was referred for therapy but relapsed dangerously five years later, making herself sick around six times a day.

“I was scared so eventually I went to my GP for help,” Jeni says. “But my doctor told me I wasn’t underweight enough for treatment. I was crushed. I’d always felt like a fraud for having an eating disorder and not being ‘skinny’, and that just confirmed it.” 

Now 32, Jeni is in a much better place mentally, but still purges from time to time. Like so many women over the age of 30 who have been battling bulimia since a young age, she’s simply learnt to deal with it on her own.  Jeni’s experience may sound familiar if you’ve been watching the latest season of The Crown, which depicts Princess Diana’s battle with bulimia in graphic detail. The show portrays a young woman thrust onto the world stage, under constant scrutiny, struggling to cope in a doomed marriage. Consequentially, we watch a vulnerable and deeply troubled Diana resorting to binging and purging as a coping mechanism, gradually cloaking herself in bulimia like a security blanket. It gives her control in a situation in which she has none.  “Unfortunately, there is a lot of stigma and misguided judgement attached to bulimia,” says Jessica Griffiths, clinical lead at eating disorder charity Beat. “There’s an assumption that people with any sort of eating disorder are just underweight, or that people with bulimia are simply greedy and can’t control how much they eat. But it’s not about the physical state – it’s not about discipline or willpower – it’s about the mindset, and the really powerful, distressing feelings driving these mental health issues.”

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Addiction Recovery Bulletin

Thumbs Down – 

Nov. 30, 2020 – The September debut of “The Social Dilemma” on Netflix sounded this alarm for millions of viewers.

The documentary centers on Tristan Harris, the former Google engineer who has been leading the assault on social media as cofounder of the Center for Humane Technology, 

Harris started talking about smartphones as “slot machines” years ago: “Every time I check my phone, I”m playing the slot machine to see, ‘What did I get?’ This is one way to highjack people’s minds, to form a habit.” 

At a Nov. 17 hearing to grill Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Lindsey Graham borrowed Harris’ “slot machine” language and promised further inquiries.

The catch: For psychologists, “Facebook addiction” is a subset of “internet addiction.”

“Internet addiction” follows previous alarms over video game addiction, TV addiction, comic book addiction and so on. 

“Social media is a drug” is the latest version of “TV is a drug,” which was an update of “rock music is a drug,” and so on.

Every new media technology or format, particularly those that gain popularity among younger users, has sparked a wave of fear and concern among adults that kids’ attention is being hijacked and their minds are being warped. 

Media historians call these reactions “moral panics,” and many view them as ways of deflecting attention from deeper social ills.

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