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Addiction Recovery Bulletin

All original writing –  

Dec. 30. 2020 – Why journalism matters. Journalism is living history that tells truths we might never learn otherwise. It quickly informs people, and the rapid publication of journalism is essential in our busy times. Even our in-depth projects are published relatively rapidly. What I love about journalism is that it brings us closer together with understanding. And what’s “extra” about it for me is, it can evoke empathy and it can elicit change. I don’t know what else can do that.

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Addiction Recovery Bulletin

WATCH – Decency has come to the USA – 

Jan. 1, 2021 – In a unique twist, the law also created a program that reinvests 25% of cannabis tax revenue into a fund for youth development, anti-violence programs, re-entry programs, economic development and civil legal aid services for “R3 communities” ― those dealing with high rates of gun violence, child poverty and incarceration rates.

With Thursday’s action, the state also met a separate January 2025 deadline to expunge all 492,192 state-level records.

However, only nine of the state’s 201 counties have finished clearing their own non-felony cannabis-related arrest records.

In a statement to the Chicago Sun-Times, state Sen. Majority Leader Kimberly Lightford (D) said the expungements are encouraging, yet ultimately incremental.

“Dismantling decades’ worth of criminal justice atrocities will take years. That’s evidenced by how this country handles cannabis,” she said. “We must never stop chipping away at that painful history. I’m proud of these critical first steps.”

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Addiction Recovery Bulletin

He Can’t Stop –  

Jan. 1, 2021 – “We can’t meet now because of COVID,” Evans said. “But when we can meet, I’m there.”

He said, “I was 50 when I quit drinking. It was a very serious problem for me for the last 14 to 16 years. But I didn’t realize it for a long time.” Evans said, “I lost everything. My wife, my kids, my home, my cars. I would drink myself out of jobs. I would end up homeless, begging on the streets, living in bushes and abandoned cars.” He said, “Everywhere I went, there was a bar. My first wife and my daughter died of alcoholism. I married again and we’ve been married 33 years.” Evans said he stopped smoking five years after he quit drinking. He said he was a painting contractor in Florida for 25 years, painting such homes as that of basketball legend Shaquille O’Neal.

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Addiction Recovery Bulletin

Hugs Not Drugs – 

Jan. 1, 2021 – As complications of the opioid crisis spread in US communities, nurseries across the country also felt the impact of the crisis. Over the last 2 decades, the number of infants diagnosed with neonatal opioid withdrawal syndrome (NOWS), also known as neonatal abstinence syndrome, grew nearly eightfold, reaching 1 infant diagnosed every 15 minutes in the United States in 2016. However, just as overdose deaths represent only a fraction of adults affected by the opioid crisis, diagnoses of NOWS represent a fraction of all opioid-exposed infants. Currently, there are no gold standard diagnostic criteria for NOWS nor validated quality measures for opioid-exposed infants. Thus, there remain substantial gaps in care delivered.

In this issue of Pediatrics, Young et al4 present findings from a large cohort of infants treated at 30 hospitals participating in the ACT NOW (Advancing Clinical Trials in Neonatal Opioid Withdrawal Current Experience Study). The authors found profound variation in care for NOWS in every domain examined, including which units cared for these infants and breastfeeding rates. Strikingly, the proportion of infants requiring pharmacotherapy ranged from 6.7% to 100% and hospital mean length of stay ranged from 2 to 28.8 days between centers. Although the authors found hospital differences in study populations, it seems implausible that individual patient factors could account for this level of variation. It is apparent that 2 decades into the present opioid crisis, and despite countless state and national efforts to improve quality of care for opioid-exposed infants, one of our nation’s most vulnerable populations is receiving highly variable care, resulting in disparate outcomes.

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Extended families matter –  

Jan. 1, 2021 – If he hadn’t already started drinking hours before with patrons while on the clock, he’d start soon after finishing work late at night. Pocketing the cash he’d earned in gratuities that evening, Smith would go out to party into the early morning hours with the other servers, cooks and bartenders.

The next day, he’d wake up and do it all again.

“You make 400 bucks on a Tuesday, you go out with 400 bucks in your pocket, and you make it back Wednesday,” Smith said. In an industry where alcohol is readily accessible and revelry is always on the menu, Smith’s lifestyle epitomized the “work hard, play hard” mentality of many who make their living at bars and restaurants. For 20 years, Smith became immersed in a culture where the demands of high-stress jobs fueled the desire for drugs and alcohol.

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Addiction Recovery Bulletin

It’s True –  

Jan. 1, 2021 – “This year has brought up so many challenges but I know that because I choose to rise to the challenge each and every time I am loving myself and showing myself that I am capable of getting through anything,” the former “Empire” star shared. Willis, who took home the Mirror Ball trophy on “Dancing with the Stars” in 2015, concluded her inspiring note with a message to anyone else thinking about pursuing sobriety, noting it’s a personal journey that is different for everyone. “For anyone and everyone who is struggling or has a desire to get sober know that it is not a one size fits all process but it’s one day at a time,” she wrote. “I don’t have all the answers, I know what has worked for me but always here to lend support or just listen.” In the past, Willis did not clarify specifically what she was becoming sober from. That was intentional. “I didn’t say I was sober from anything, I could have been sober from a food addiction or buying too many clothes or from relationships or whatever, but I think we’re in this culture where we naturally presume and assume,”…

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Addiction Recovery Bulletin

Talk is cheap –  

Jan. 2, 2021 – Shepard celebrated a major milestone in his sobriety journey in September 2016. “12 years ago today I came out of my last toxic, life threatening stupor. I now have a wife & babies & some self-esteem #gratitude #promises,” he tweeted at the time. “There’s a couple of common fallacies about sobriety. One being that people hit a bottom and then that’s that. Most addicts have many bottoms,” Shepard explained during a 2019 conversation on Off Camera With Sam Jones, reflecting on one moment that made him “take stock” of his life. “I am about to star in this movie, Zathura; they’re paying me a ton of money; people recognize me at the airport. I’m doing everything I had dreamt of doing for 30 years. It all came true, and I’m the least happy I’ve ever been in my life. I’m closest to not wanting to be alive as I’ve ever been, and I had every single thing on paper that I’d ever wanted. I feel grateful for this because I was able to say, ‘Something much more profound is broken.’”

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Addiction Recovery Bulletin

The chosen ones – 

Dec. 28, 2020 – Residents and staffers will be vaccinated at both the state-run and privately operated rehab centers, as well as at facilities run or licensed by the Office for People with Developmental Disabilities and the Office of Mental Health, according to the state Department of Health.

Emergency medical services personnel, medical examiners and coroners and some funeral workers will also get shots, a DOH spokeswoman said.

Luke Nasta, a director of the New York Association of Substance Abuse Providers, said the non-profit group had lobbied for rehab patients to receive vaccinations.

Nasta, CEO of the Camelot Family Foundation — which runs two residential treatment centers on Staten Island — said it made sense to give the shots to drug users because they were most likely “to get the disease and spread it.”

“We were overlooked initially. We got the governor’s office’s attention and Gov. Cuomo acted appropriately,” he said.

Meanwhile, the percentage of New Yorkers who tested positive for coronavirus jumped from 5.8 percent to 8.3 percent over the three-day Christmas weekend, Cuomo said.

The spike could show that a post-Thanksgiving surge in cases is gaining steam or merely be an aberration caused by fewer people getting tested because of the holiday, he said.

More certain were the COVID-19-related hospitalizations that rose to 7,559 statewide — up 376 — and the 114 fatalities blamed on the respiratory disease, which brought the state’s death toll to 29,629.

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Addiction Recovery Bulletin

LISTEN – Academia not bulimia –  

Dec. 29, 2020 – Chris studied marketing at MSU and has established himself as a business leader, public speaker, coach, mentor, and lifelong student striving to be of service to others. With over 25 years of experience in technology, he currently serves as the vice-president of US Consumer Goods at Salesforce Marketing Cloud, where he grew from account executive to vice president. Chris recently opened up about his 15-year journey with sobriety and established the soberexec.com to help others navigate recovery and sobriety. Our Collegiate Recovery Community here at MSU has been on quite a journey,” says Kepler. “From the very beginning, it has been spearheaded by students. It’s for students and by students who have come to MSU. It was approximately three years ago that a more formal program was established that is similar to what we have today, the Collegiate Recovery Community.  MSU has the first on-campus recovery housing in the state of Michigan. It all stemmed from needs being identified then students advocating for them and working with staff and faculty on-campus to make things happen. The ultimate mission of the Collegiate Recovery Community is to help students achieve their goals – their academic goals, their personal goals, and their recovery goals – and live a full college experience feeling supported in their recovery from a substance use disorder.”

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The Horror –  

Dec. 29, 2020 – Boyle told Theroux he was drinking vodka as a child and “was definitely up for drinking on my own from my teens”.

When asked whether he was still functional and managing to hold down jobs, Boyle said: “Just. I was just getting to the stage where I wasn’t. I was in comedy when I stopped. To an extent you can do it drunk. You can certainly do 20 minutes drunk.” … He said: “I thought, ‘This isn’t good. This is getting to the stage where you either have to give up or die.’ So I gave up. I found it relative easy compared to other people. I didn’t fall off the wagon and go back on a lot or whatever.”

The comedian added that people would message him on social media to ask advice about giving up alcohol, but that those DMs had “dried up” considerably during lockdown.

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