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 Tuesday, November 25, 2014  |  That Was the Week That Was  |  Volume 2. No. 14 
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A Feast of Ideas
Food Addiction: 
A Controversial Disease

“Food is addictive, but my book goes beyond that and says there is a subpopulation who, when they eat this stuff, it takes over their life,” she told the Star. “It can be even more addictive than substances like cocaine.” “In order to include food in the list of addictive substances or eating as an addiction under the classic definition, a specific chemical that causes changes in the body’s reward system and addiction would have to be identified,” says a post from Weight Watchers’research department. CONTINUED 

Finding The Goddess In Every Woman
Woman’s Path to Sobriety Inspires Alcoholics

At the Las Vegas Women and Children’s campus, the nonprofit offers substance abuse treatment for pregnant adults, outpatient counseling, family support groups, temporary housing, intake services available 24/7, individual and group counseling, drug and alcohol assessments, and health education and prevention. WestCare also offers a place for homeless youth and domestic minor human trafficking victims. Many of the women Frost sees daily would never know she once walked in their shoes. CONTINUED 

Turning Off The Switch
Alcoholism Damages
Brain’s White Matter

Heavy drinking may be especially damaging to white matter in the frontal areas of the brain, which can interfere with the impulse control needed to stop drinking, according to the study. The researchers used high-resolution structural magnetic resonance scans to compare the brains of 20 light drinkers and 31 abstinent alcoholics who drank for an average of 25 years and had been sober for about five years. “The day-to-day implications of this study are clear: abstinence and light drinking lead to better health and better brain function than heavy drinking.” CONTINUED 

Nature and Nurture
Family Substance Abuse: Kids Brains Work Harder To
Fight Impulses

Some might consider it a given that a child who grows up around adults who abuse alcohol will eventually go on to abuse it themselves. One in five kids grows up with an alcohol relative. These kids are four times more likely to become alcoholics. However, a new study suggests it’s not entirely because of the environment they’re in, but instead because their brains are predisposed to improper development. CONTINUED 

The Sweet Taste Of Money
British Govt Accused of Selling Alcoholic Products
to Kids

“Because the sale of alcohol in liquid forms has been declining the industry is now seeking to extend the areas in which it is selling alcohol in other forms – particularly those available to children – like ice cream with vodka in it, sorbets with vodka in it. “Why have they responded to solely to the industry’s pressure to repeal that act which protects children when no one else – parents, the chief medical officer – has asked the government to do this?” CONTINUED 

Out of Bounds
Why The DEA Is Investigating NFL Teams And What Comes Next

The DEA stopped multiple NFL road teams on Sunday afternoon to investigate potential violations concerning prescription painkillers. Here’s the background you need to know about why the Feds are interested, what’s happened so far, and what comes next. In 2010, the DEA raided the San Diego Chargers and found that the team’s doctor at the time, David Chao, had issued more than 100 prescriptions to himself.
CONTINUED 

Get Up, Stand Up! Lie Down
Bob Marley Marijuana
Is Coming

Bob Marley, the late reggae superstar whose name is virtually synonymous with pot, will soon have his own marijuana label. Marley’s family has joined with Privateer Holdings, a private equity firm focused on marijuana products, to develop Marley Natural brand weed. CONTINUED 

Black Market Mayhem
6 Oxycontin
Kills Child

On Tuesday, the boy’s father, Coco Kollie Wallace, 38, of Middletown Township, was charged with criminal homicide in the death of Sebastian Wallace and ordered held without bail at the Bucks County Prison. At a news conference, officials said three witnesses had affirmed that the father had Oxycodone in his possession when Sebastian Wallace somehow ingested the fatal dose last month. CONTINUED 

Parental Controls Missing  VIDEO
Energy Drinks Poison Young Children  VIDEO

Popular energy drinks can actually poison young children. Data from U.S. poison control centers shows half of all calls about energy drinks involve children younger than 6-years-old. In the past three years, more than 2,000 children ages 6 and under were taken to U.S. hospitals suffering from serious cardiac symptom or seizures after consuming the drinks. An unpublished study claims energy drinks can contain up to three times more caffeine than coffee or soda…But it’s not just children who should avoid them. CONTINUED 

New Flash: Cocaine Unhealthy
Cocaine Can Cause Heart Problems

Cocaine users can have abnormal blood flow in the heart that is hard to detect, which can put them at increased risk for heart disease or death, a new study warns. Those using cocaine showed subtle abnormalities in blood flow through the heart’s smallest blood vessels, which were considered significant when compared to non-cocaine users with diabetes, high blood pressure and a family history of heart disease. CONTINUED 

That’s Why They’re Called Heavy Drinkers
Most Heavy Drinkers
are Not Alcoholics

Heavy drinkers should not cheer the new study’s results. Drinking too much is unhealthy, killing 88,000 people annually regardless of whether the drinker is an alcoholic, the CDC said. Health effects include breast cancer, liver and heart disease and auto accidents. “Anybody who takes from this paper that excessive drinking is not dangerous unless you are dependent is simply not getting the message, which is that drinking too much is bad, period.” CONTINUED 

Science Marches On
Long-Acting Anti- Methamphetamine Antibody Benefits Meth Addiction Treatment

“The goals of this project are to integrate antibody engineering and gene therapy technology to generate a long-acting (months to years) antibody-based medicine that will both protect patients from relapse to meth use and minimize treatment failures associated with long-term patient compliance.”
CONTINUED 

Marlboro Panama Red Strip  VIDEO
Vice Wars: Tobacco, Alcohol and the Rise of Big Marijuana VIDEO

Tobacco executives, meanwhile, have been studying the marijuana industry for years, according to Stanton Glantz, a professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. His research has drawn an 80-million page archive of tobacco industry documents, spanning the 1960s to the late 1990s. Many of the documents reference softening pot laws, rising use, and the dual threat/opportunity of a third major vice industry. CONTINUED 

Twelfth Knight
Lady Gaga Says Sir Elton John Helped Her Beat Drug Addiction

“It’s pretty messed up being friends with people who used to have drug and alcohol problems, like Elton,” she said. “He got me on the straight and narrow. He was telling me: ‘Gaga, you’re smoking too much.’ He saved me.” After injuring her hip on the “Born This Way” tour, Gaga had surgery and used drugs to cope with the pain. The singer admitted to radio station Z100 that she smoked up to 20 marijuana cigarettes a day. CONTINUED 

Beauty Is Only Skin Deep
Police Release Before And After Pictures Of Former Beauty Queen 

Jamie Lynn France, 23, was arrested on drugs charges on Wednesday after being caught in a motel room full of drugs along with her alleged dealer. France, who won the Miss Teen Oregon-World pageant in 2009, was charged with possession of methamphetamine, heroin and suboxene. CONTINUED 

Interesting Video
Watch What Would Happen if Alcohol Did Not Exist VIDEO

While Professor Lauren Lissner, said that moderate drinking alone did not have a strong protective effect, nor does this particular genotype but the combination of the two appeared to significantly reduce the risk of coronary heart disease. While you are at it watch this video on what would happen if alcohol did not exist: CONTINUED 

Can’t Treat a Dead Junkie Though
Narcan Saving Hundreds
of Heroin Overdose
Victims, But Leaves Addiction Untreated 

There aren’t many who would call saving 200 lives a failure, but Mayor William Gotto says it with a straight face. “I don’t think we should be bragging about it,” Gotto said. He’s talking about the use of naloxone, also known as Narcan, an opioid-reversal drug recently approved for use by law enforcement to help rip heroin and opioid users out of the clutches of death following an overdose. CONTINUED 

Fighting Fire With Fire
Canada Starts Prescribing Heroin To Drug Addicts

Doctors in Vancouver, Canada, have become the first medics in North America to administer prescription heroin to drug addicts. The treatment will only be given to a group of patients who failed to respond to traditional therapies. “For this group the addiction is so severe that no other treatment has been effective,” David Byres, vice president of acute clinical programs at Providence Health Care. CONTINUED 

West and East
‘Mexican Oxy’
Moves North

“Any patient can be over-prescribed,” Martinez said in an interview. “We’ve seen the progression of addiction in people with no criminal backgrounds.” That progression is simple. A person starts out on prescription opiates for pain problems, moves into pill addiction and then on to heroin when he or she can no longer obtain the prescription opiates. Now, authorities say there is a new threat looming in the illegal drug trade. It’s “Mexican Oxy,” a heroin-based drug manufactured to look like a knockoff of the painkillers manufactured and sold in the U.S. CONTINUED 

Brought Crack Into The Mainstream 
Marion Barry Dies
at 78  VIDEO

Divisive and flamboyant, maddening and beloved, Marion Barry outshone every politician in the 40-year history of District of Columbia self-rule. But for many, his legacy was not defined by the accomplishments and failures of his four terms as mayor and long service on the D.C. Council. Instead, Barry will be remembered for a single night in a downtown Washington hotel room and the grainy video that showed him lighting a crack pipe in the company of a much-younger woman. CONTINUED 

Celebrity Rehab
Kendra Wilkinson Opens Up About Overdose: “I almost didn’t survive”

“Line after line, I just kept going. Usually I knew my limit and stopped myself when I hit it because even though I was a druggie, I was still fearful of anything bad happening,” she admitted. “I was shaking and choking on the blood that was dripping down my throat.” “I decided I’d had enough,” she said, and focused on getting clean. Just a few years later, Kendra became one of Hugh Hefner’s live-in girlfriends and became the girl we all know and love. CONTINUED 

AA Stars in Courtroom Drama
Couple Named In Wrongful-Death Lawsuit Deny AA Sponsorship

A woman identified as an Alcoholics Anonymous sponsor and named in a lawsuit filed by the parents of murder victim Karla Brada denies she was ever the murdered woman’s sponsor. Joanne Fry is among the defendants named in a wrongful death civil suit filed last month. In the lawsuit filed against them, the Frys are described as “sponsors” who “provided counseling to members attending meetings and specifically became sponsors for Karla H. Brada and Eric Allen Earle.” CONTINUED 

Science Cops A Buzz
Could Coffee Treat
Cocaine Addiction?

According to New York Researchers, drinking coffee may help people who are trying to fight a cocaine addiction.  Their study found that coffee can block the changes in the brain associated with cocaine use – especially in women who are more prone to cocaine addiction. Researchers said that caffeine works as a neuroprotective block against brain changes associated with drug use.  CONTINUED 

Just Amateurs
Most Heavy Drinkers
are Not Alcoholics NYT 437 Comments

“Many people tend to equate excessive drinking with alcohol dependence,” said Dr. Robert Brewer, who leads the alcohol program at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “We need to think about other strategies to address these people who are drinking too much but who are not addicted to alcohol.” CONTINUED 

WRITERS IN TREATMENT

Writers In Treatment 
501 (c)(3) nonprofit

REEL RECOVERY FILM FESTIVAL is a social, educational, networking and recovery forum showcasing first-time filmmakers and experienced professionals who make films about addiction and recovery. Our audience is treatment professionals, people in recovery, members of the entertainment industry, media representatives, educated moviegoers and the general public.  

Addiction/Recovery eBulletin Publisher & Editor:  
Leonard Buschel  

It’s A No Brainer
Using Marijuana
Daily Linked To Changes In Brain

They found that the people who had been smoking marijuana daily for at least four years had a smaller volume of gray matter in their orbitofrontal cortex.”We found that there not only is a change in structure, but there also tends to be a change reflected in the connectivity.” “We also saw that the younger you are when you start using marijuana regularly, the greater the changes in the brain.”
CONTINUED