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Addiction Recovery Bulletin

WATCH – Sixxed to the twelve steps – 

Sept. 15, 2020 – But then again, there was a time when people wouldn’t have expected Sixx, now age 61, to even be alive in 2020. As chronicled in his harrowing memoir The Heroin Diaries, the band autobiography and Netflix film adaptation The Dirt, and VH1’s Behind the Music, Sixx overdosed on heroin multiple times in the ‘80s — most famously on Dec. 23, 1987, when he was declared clinically dead for two minutes before being revived. But now that Sixx has been clean for nearly 20 years now, he has made it his mission to help other addicts, even if there are some Crüe fans out there who don’t think sobriety is very “cool.” 

Sixx’s latest endeavor, with his other band Sixx:A.M., is the all-star Artists for Recovery charity single “Maybe It’s Time,” which features Def Leppard’s Joe Elliott, Slash, country star Brantley Gilbert, Corey Taylor of Slipknot and Stone Sour,  Five Finger Death Punch’s Ivan Moody, AWOLNATION, and Bad Wolves’ Tommy Vext. The song is part of an initiative to draw attention to the opioid crisis and raise funds for the recovery community, timed with National Recovery Month; all artist royalties from the song will go to the Global Recovery Initiatives Foundation (GRI), with a matching contribution from Better Noise Music. The song is also featured on the soundtrack for Better Noise Films’ Sno Babies, a raw depiction of teenage drug addiction in a seemingly picturesque suburban town.

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Addiction Recovery Bulletin

WATCH – The little ones left behind –

Sep. 14, 2020 – Both men were into racing so the Schultz family hopes these t-shirts in his memory alert others to the danger of street drugs laced with fentanyl.

“I hope they raise awareness for what fentanyl can do for anybody and obviously to raise money for her 3-year-old daughter to help her later in life,” Tanner’s mother, Marcia Leonard, said. 

The shirts say, “Life is not about winning the race. It’s about finishing the race.”

The family has raised more than $1,300 for Sophia’s college fund. 

If you’d like to buy a t-shirt for $15 to help out, you can email Leonard at: [email protected]

more@KeloLand

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Addiction Recovery Bulletin

Encouragement in Life – 

Sep. 15, 2020 – Each poem is a testimony of the author’s strength and hope as he overcomes his experiences. Ultimately, the book offers readers inspiration and motivation to deal with the real life issues that they are going through, all while cleverly adding a poetic twist to each and every poem title.

“I would like my readers to know that it’s okay to feel whatever you want,” Hunter states. “I want them to know that they are not alone because there is at least one other person that’s feeling the same way. Finally, I want my readers to know that no matter how bad it gets there is a solution for making the best out any negative situation.

more@GlobeNewswire

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Addiction Recovery Bulletin

Local Hero –

Sep. 17, 2020 – “In this profession, you have many temptations but being sober is part of who I am today. It’s easy to say no to people when I am offered a drink. It used to not be that way.” Going back to those times that it wasn’t easy to say no, Velasquez explained, “My alcoholism started off as just fun. Drinks here and there, parties, the good old times with the friends and ladies. Then, it became very bad when I started drinking on my own. Late-night calls to my mother crying for no reason, missing training sessions for Real Salt Lake, driving under the influence, showing up to training sessions hungover and smelling like alcohol.”

“One time, I had two of my RSL teammates do an intervention on me at my apartment, asking me to seek help because they thought I had a problem. I always denied it and keep moving forward as long as I was playing well. My drinking became almost drinking every day unless I was starting on the weekend so I wouldn’t drink Fridays to play Saturday. Soccer held a tab on me and it finally made me pay for all my unprofessional actions.”

With multiple professional seasons under his belt and his drinking getting worse, Velasquez talked about the low point for his battle with alcoholism. “It was in 2014, I had a DUI at RSL but that wasn’t enough for me to change,” he said. “It was the second DUI on December 11, 2014, in Greenville when I was on vacation visiting my dad.”

“I borrowed a car to go get a haircut. Atletico Nacional was playing the final of Copa Sudamericana so after my cut, I walked into a restaurant right beside the barbershop to watch the game. I started buying drinks for myself and was super hammered in less than 45 mins. I go in the car, and try to go back to my family’s house.”

He didn’t make it back to the family home that night. “I ended up running a red light to cross the bridge and the car hits the railing and almost flips, but it bounces back from the railing to stay on the road,” he recalled. “A cop sees this as it happens and puts the lights on me. I drive into the next parking lot and try to run away. I was so drunk that I trip over and they jump on me and lock me up. I wake up the next day in the jail cell, puking, crying, and all sorts.”

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Addiction Recovery Bulletin

WATCH – Mind Blowing – 

Sep. 15, 2020 – Belief can be tricky. Either you wholeheartedly believe in your faith or you have niggling doubts that crop up at the most inopportune time. The narrator of our latest read finds herself trying to reconcile her religious upbringing with her scientific pursuits. 

Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi In her brilliantly executed sophomore novel, Yaa Gyasi asks readers to follow the protagonist’s internal journey as Gifty struggles to reconcile her religious upbringing with her scientific research after her mother falls into a deep depression. Gifty is a talented scientist working on a Ph.D. in neuroscience as she studies the brain to try to understand if the brain can be trained to not want something it has grown addicted to. As Gifty tries to care for her mother who has been shipped from Alabama to Gifty’s small student apartment in California, she finds herself forced to think about her family and her childhood.

Gifty was raised by her Ghanaian immigrant parents and lived in the shadow of her talented and beloved older brother, Nana. With a distant father who abandoned her and Nana’s drug addiction, Gifty clung to her mother’s deep love of God to provide some stability in her life.

“Transcendent Kingdom” examines addiction, depression, immigration, racism, religion and science in a beautifully fluid manner that educates the reader while keeping them entranced in Gifty’s story. Readers will find themselves invested in Gifty’s scientific pursuits as she tries to determine whether she believes more in the corporeal practicalities of the mind or the spiritual nature of religion.

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Addiction Recovery Bulletin

Everyone can quit –

Sep. 16, 2020 – As we get closer to the final few bachelorettes in line to win Locky Gilbert’s heart, it’s safe to say things can get pretty heated, pretty fast.

The Bachelor’s Juliette Herrera spoke to The Hit Network’s Xavier, Juelz & Pete about her dark history of her struggling with a major drug addiction and revealed how she finally was ‘set free’.

She also spilled the tea on what really happened with the ‘skank comment’ which was reportedly said off-camera in the bathroom with Roxi Kenny…

more@Hit

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Addiction Recovery Bulletin

Sure, anything is possible –

Sep. 18, 2020 – The state was awarded $16.7 million Friday to reduce drug-related deaths by funding drug prevention, treatment and recovery support services. 

The state Department of Health Services noted half of the money will be used for individual treatment costs and the remainder will be used for support prevention programs, overdose response efforts, an expansion of treatment options and recovery coaches.

This grant is part of the latest round of funding under the State Opioid Response Grant Program which is overseen by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. 

The program’s main focus is reducing opioid use, but they also support services for stimulants like cocaine and methamphetamine. The department noted that the pandemic has presented more stress, trauma and uncertainty which could lead to harmful substance abuse now more than ever.

more@NBC15

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Addiction Recovery Bulletin

Stick with the Winners!

September 17, 2020 – Dr. Jamie Marich (she/they) began her career as a humanitarian aid worker in Bosnia-Hercegovina from 2000-2003, primarily teaching English and music while freelancing with other projects. Jamie travels internationally teaching on topics related to trauma, EMDR therapy, expressive arts, mindfulness, and yoga, while maintaining a private practice in her home base of Warren, OH. Jamie is the author of seven books on trauma recovery and healing, with many more projects in the works. 

Marich is the founder of the Institute for Creative Mindfulness.  Her bibliography currently includes: EMDR Made Simple (2011), Trauma and the Twelve Steps (2012), Creative Mindfulness (2013), and Trauma Made Simple (2014), Dancing Mindfulness: A Creative Path to Healing and Transformation (2015), and EMDR Therapy & Mindfulness for Trauma Focused Care (2018, with Dr. Stephen Dansiger), and Process Not Perfection: Expressive Arts Solutions for Trauma Recovery (2019). She has also written guest chapters and contributions for several other published collections. North Atlantic Books is publishing a second and expanded edition of Trauma and the 12 Steps, due for release in the Summer of 2020.

Q. If you are in recovery, what was your Drug of Choice? And when did you stop using?
A. Alcohol and pills (opiates) brought me to recovery, yet I also identify food and maladaptive attachments in relationships/love addiction as also being problem areas for me

Q. Do you think addiction is an illness, disease, a choice or a wicked twist of fate?
A. I do believe addiction can be viewed as a disease or an illness, IF we conceptualize it as one that primary forms in response to unhealed trauma. Of course there are exceptions out there, yet unhealed trauma seems to be the rule.

Q. Do you log on to ZOOM 12-step meetings? How often? Do you share?
A. Yes! My home group meets on Zoom once a week and I also take part in two non-12 Step holistic recovery meetings each week on Zoom. Yes, I share when I feel I can add something to it.

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Addiction Recovery Bulletin

Maybe? Maybe not. – 

Sept. 14, 2020 – If addiction is a disease, then we should treat addicts the same way we treat diabetics. The goal in treating diabetics is not to cure diabetes but to limit its harm: Treatment helps prevent heart attacks, strokes, blindness, kidney failure, nerve damage, arterial blockages, etc. Similarly, addiction treatment is not aimed at “curing” addiction but at controlling damage: Treatment decreases mortality, criminal activity and transmission of hepatitis. Treated addicts often return to productive lives. Medicines used in opioid addiction have proven effective at controlling the damage from addiction. Understandably, many people bristle at the idea of treating opioid addiction with opioid medications, such as buprenorphine or methadone. It feels like we are merely feeding the addiction. The easiest explanation for this strategy is to compare it to the apparent paradox of fighting fire with fire. Forest fires are contained by deliberately burning a narrow strip of land ahead of the advancing fire, depleting the fuel needed to spread. Using buprenorphine or methadone is like fighting fire with fire!

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Addiction Recovery Bulletin

We can all help…

September 18, 2020 – Experts say it’s too soon to tell whether suicide rates are already spiking as a result of the pandemic. But they warn that the risks are significant. The authors of a recent study in the Lancet on suicide risk and prevention during the pandemic note that suicides went up during the 1918 Spanish flu and 2003 SARS outbreaks, as well as after the 2008 recession. The authors of the study say that suicide is “likely to become a more pressing concern as the pandemic spreads and has longer-term effects on the general population, the economy, and vulnerable groups. Preventing suicide therefore needs urgent consideration.”
Even before the pandemic began, the youth suicide rate in the United States was the highest in recorded history. According to an April 2020 report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), suicide rates have risen by 35 percent since the start of the 21^st century. And the rates among teens are of particular concern.
Studies examining depression and suicide among teens reveal the following troubling statistics.

• In 2017, the suicide rate for young people between the ages of 15 and 24 was 14.46 per 100,000—the highest recorded rate ever.
• Suicide is the second leading cause of death in the United States among ages 15–24.
• Current teen suicidal stats show that 17 percent of high school students have seriously considered suicide, and 8 percent have made failed suicide attempts.
• More than half of the teens who try to commit suicide have never been given a mental health diagnosis.

Risk Factors and Causes of Teen Suicide
Many factors can contribute to the risk of adolescent suicide. Risk factors do not cause teen suicide, but they may contribute to a teen’s likelihood of making a suicide attempt.The top reasons for teenage suicide include the following:

• Depression, anxiety, or other mental health disorders
• Family history of suicide
• A history of substance abuse
• Exposure to violence, abuse, or other trauma
• Social isolation or bullying
• Losing a family member through death or divorce
• Financial or job loss
• Conflict within relationships
• Starting or changing psychotropic medications
• Feeling stigmatized
• Lack of support.

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@NewportAcademyResources

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