Bad news party people. Doing coke in New York City and LA just got even seedier. Cocaine cut with the veterinary drug levamisole could be the culprit in a flurry of flesh-eating disease in New York and Los Angeles. The drug, used to deworm cattle, pigs and sheep, can rot the skin off noses, ears and cheeks. And over 80 percent of the country’s coke supply contains it.
Sobriety may seem anathema to rock bands with a high octane lifestyle, but the drummer from Metallica has said his musicians are definitely staying away from the drink this Glastonbury. Drummer Lars Ulrich won’t be the only member of his heavy metal band keeping away from drink, as frontman James Hetfield has been sober for some years after he sought rehabilitation for alcohol and substance abuse in 2001.
At the 23-day trial, Murray revealed he injected Jackson with the drug every night for 60 nights to treat his insomnia. ‘I didn’t want to hurt him, he was my friend, didn’t want MJ to fail, I cared about his writing and his producing, I tried to wean him off, MJ was a bit restless but it was working,’ Conrad told Judge Pastor. Meanwhile, the 13-time Grammy winner is buried in an unmarked plot (only his family knows the location) at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale.
Scientists Find the Part of Your Brain That Lies to Your Hangover
After an indulgent evening being ‘over-served’ on a night out the inevitable phrase, ‘never again’ is uttered from many a hungover mouth. While battling the headaches, sickness and fatigue that comes with the dreaded hangover comes an overwhelming sense of needing to avoid all alcohol… until the next social gathering.
“We need to talk about Jackie,” All Saints Hospital nurse Zoey warns her boss as the penultimate episode of Nurse Jackie’s sixth season winds down. That’s an understatement. The show’s titular caregiver and reckless drug addict (Oxycontin being her preferred little blue pill), played to memorable imperfection for the past five years by Edie Falco, has relapsed so hardcore that for the first time in the Showtime drama’s run, its anti-hero is a straight-up villain.
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BRIDGES TO RECOVERY
Nothing Anonymous About Drug Abuse
33 Celebrity Substance Abuse Confessions
In 2012, Black Eyed Peas singer Fergie told Oprah that her drug use proceeded from ecstasy to crystal meth. She became so paranoid she thought the FBI and SWAT teams were following her before she sought treatment.
Christian Motivational Speaker Arrested for Public Intoxication
Justin Lookadoo, the Christian motivational speaker who makes a living telling teenagers that “dateable girls know how to shut up,” was arrested in Indiana this week for public intoxication. Police found Lookadoo passed out in his car, which he had apparently vomited in. Lookadoo’s website says that his motivational presentations are “designed to reinforce the importance of high moral values and character for teens.”
Smoking is More deadly and addictive than it was 50 years ago VIDEO
Tobacco companies know that almost all new smokers begin their addiction as children. Chemicals added to cigarettes to ensure addiction, make smoke easier to inhale, reduce harshness and increase the speed nicotine hits the brain. Today’s smokers have a higher risk of lung cancer and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease than in 1964 despite smoking fewer cigarettes.
Celebrities Sign Letter Calling for Drug Law Change
More than 90 celebrities, politicians, lawyers and health experts have written a letter calling for a review of the government’s policy on illegal drugs. The group includes musician Sting, Sir Richard Branson and … “The tide is turning and governments need to urgently fix their drug policies and repair the damage that has been done.”
As the world marks the United Nations’ International Day Against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking on Thursday, millions of drug addicts in Russia have nowhere to go for treatment, and specialists are in despair over the lack of progress in the country’s rehabilitation system. The Federal Drug Control Service, or FSKN, recently announced plans to create a system of communes to treat drug addicts, but drug counselors dismiss such statements as empty promises.
See clips from last year’s Award Winning REEL Recovery Film Festivalwith Paul Williams, Russell Brand, Robert Blake, Barbara Eden and Phillip Seymour Hoffman. See VIDEO
Media: Book Review
Book Examines Alcohol and the Writer’s Life
Let’s begin by noting the continuing biographical interest in writers and drinking. In my own collection are Tom Dardis’s The Thirsty Muse; Kelly Boler’s A Drinking Companion: Alcohol & The Lives of Writers; physician Donald W. Goodwin’s Alcohol and the Writer; Kaylie Jones’s Lies My Mother Told Me; Donald Newlove’s Those Drinking Days and Kingsley Amis’s Everyday Drinking, with its introduction by renowned boozer, Christopher Hitchens.
“About ten months after I got back, I attempted suicide,” Kahl told CBS News’ Barry Petersen. “I was completely hopeless,” recalled the veteran, who said he was on about 15 different medications. Until the day he tried marijuana. “Suddenly, my extremely overactive, hyper-vigilant mind started to calm down, and my pain gradually started to go away, too. I needed less of these other medications, and shortly afterwards, I determined that I absolutely have to move to a state that allows this so that I can get my life back.”
Michael Botticelli knows this crowd. They are his people, the often-underpaid foot soldiers of the no-finish-line struggle to stem the scourge of addiction. And hundreds of them return the love, giving him rock-star treatment as he walks across the stage at Worcester State University. “It’s hard to get the words out: I work in the White House,” said the 56-year-old Botticelli, looking slightly sheepish. “It’s really wild.” Botticelli said, that “speaks to the redemptive power of treatment and how it can restore people’s lives.”
Mindfulness-Based Intervention and Substance Abuse Relapse
Mindfulness-based relapse prevention (MBRP) significantly reduced drug use and heavy drinking after 1 year in a trial of 286 participants randomized to receive 3 different aftercare interventions (Bowen S et al.JAMA Psychiatry. 2014;71[5]:547-556). Among individuals with substance abuse disorders who get treatment, 40% to 60% will relapse within 1 year.
Alcoholics Anonymous began in Canada around 1939 when a clergyman from Toronto obtained three copies of the “Big Book” of Alcoholics Anonymous, and started a meeting there. Within a very short time it had spread to Lambton County where to this day AA has a strong presence. In addition to the “12 Steps” there are also the “12 Traditions” that were devised to help the groups stand on their own, and to prevent someone from co-opting the program either for financial or other personal gain.
LGBT Pride – Lessons for the Addiction Recovery Movement?
Lisa Frederiksen, “I grant there are definite differences between the Addiction Recovery Movement and the LGBT Pride Movement. There is not the family wreckage of secondhand drinking | secondhand drugging (aka codependency) that accompanies addiction, for example, nor is there the cost and necessity of treatment for a brain disease with its hallmark relapse factor. But there are significant similarities.”
“There is a lot of family support and understanding, and we’re all determined to rally behind him and help him become the man he’s capable of being. We’re grateful to the Sheriff’s department for their intervention, and believe Indio can be another recovery success story instead of a cautionary tale.”
Genius and Addiction: Creative Fuel or Speedway to Self-Destruction?
Drugs have claimed the lives of too many too soon and have pushed some to madness, and have destroyed many lives and careers, but they have also led to the blossoming of mind-bending imagery, wild and mercurial wordplay and musical composition and works of art and philosophy that have altered our entire world views.
People who watch TV for three hours or more each day may be twice more likely to die prematurely than those who watch less, according to new research published Wednesday in the Journal of the American Heart Association. “Television viewing is a major sedentary behaviour and there is an increasing trend toward all types of sedentary behaviours,” “Our findings are consistent with a range of previous studies where time spent watching television was linked to mortality.”
From Addict to Entrepreneur: Woman Opens Recovery Center to Help Others
Brittany Ringersen was introduced to prescription painkillers innocently enough. After having her wisdom teeth extracted at age 16, she was issued a prescription for opiates. By the time she’d started college, she’d developed an out-of-control addiction.
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MILESTONES MALIBU RANCH
A New Paradigm? NY Times
‘Crack Wasn’t the Real Problem’ Carl Hart
Your book dispels lots of myths – but does meth really not mess up your face? No, we think that because of great marketing. They show very unattractive people who have had a hard day’s night, if you will, and they say that’s a result of methamphetamine. That’s not true. It’s a result of people being unattractive before they start using methamphetamines or poor hygiene.
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.
Drinking Behind 10% of Deaths of Working-age Adults
“Oftentimes when we talk about alcohol-related problems, people assume it’s about alcoholism and they’re the ones causing all the problems, when in fact any of us can drink alcohol in excess, so because people occasionally binge drink and there are many more of them (than alcoholics), those non-addicted binge drinkers account for more problems in our society.”
You need not be a Buddhist to benefit from the Buddhist form of meditation. Buddhism is not about theology. The Buddha was famous for, when asked questions about theism, saying, “I only teach what causes suffering for humans, and what ends suffering.” I only teach a very practical path that craving and addiction cause suffering. Non-attachment, abstinence, compassion, mindfulness, and ethical ways of life end suffering.
Look at that happy face! Here I am at 18 months sober, completely defying the stereotype that I myself once believed – that alcoholics in recovery were a bunch of sad sacks. Quite the opposite! When you aren’t concerned with clubs and bars, you find there are other interesting things going on! I got in a members-only event at The Guggenheim. It was quite the experience and not one single second is fuzzy!
I Don’t Want Russell Brand Deciding Drugs Policy VIDEO
I love Russell Brand – as a comedian. But I really don’t want him deciding drugs policy. Sting? He’s a good singer and respected on the yoga-front, but here is why I think he and all the other signatories in their letter to the Prime Minister have got this issue wrong.
A Chinese Internet addict was beaten to death at a Web rehab center for using the bathroom without permission, according to a new report. Guo Lingling, 19, was reportedly kicked and punched in the head for two hours by instructors as part of a disciplinary “training session” to atone for her “crime.” She later died from brain damage and severe skull injuries.
White House changes to proposed rules for tobacco products significantly weakened language detailing health risks from cigars and deleted restrictions that might have prevented online sales of e-cigarettes, published documents show. U.S. senators excoriated the chiefs of two of the biggest e-cigarette companies, blu eCigs, which is owned by tobacco giant Lorillard Inc, and privately held NJoy, saying they were targeting children with ads depicting cartoon characters, movie stars and other celebrities.
A quarter of people coming forward to access specialist drug treatment services are over the age of 40, according to new figures. “It is therefore encouraging to see that there is an increase in the number of older drug users engaging in treatment to support their recovery.”
“I ended up breaking my wrist and had four pins put in my arm and I had nerve damage in my hand. I lost feeling in my fingers and it was a significant injury – enough so that it took me out of sports completely for two-thirds of my senior year. But also it was the time where I was introduced to pain medication … I didn’t understand the addictive nature until I was completely hooked.”
Composer Raymond Deane’s Journey Out of the Darkness of Alcoholism
Raymond Deane is one of Ireland’s most celebrated composers of contemporary music. His memoir tells that story, but it is also a grim account of the author’s descent into alcohol addiction. Part Two is on his teenage years in Dublin during the ’60s when he developed his musical education in tandem with a growing dependence on alcohol; Part Three recounts mainly how his alcoholism became a chronic and terrifying condition from the early ’70s onwards, until he quit alcohol and began his recovery in 1988.
Federal prosecutors are spending the summer preparing for trial against five medical professionals accused of a massive Oxycontin scam spanning Los Angeles, Orange and San Bernardino counties. The five defendants, mostly pharmacists, were snared by Operation Dirty Lake, a state and federal investigation that ended two years ago with the indictment of 20 people who allegedly diverted 900,000 pills of the powerful pain reliever.
Ohio Student Died From Caffeine Overdose Week Before Graduation
A northern Ohio coroner says a high school senior found dead a week before graduation died from a caffeine overdose. The 18-year-old was a senior at Keystone High School in LaGrange, southwest of Cleveland. An autopsy found that Logan Stiner had a lethal amount of caffeine in his system when he died at home on May 27.
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ATTENTION New Yorkers: Loft Prices Just Got HIGHER
Marijuana Growing Firm Looking at New York Locations VIDEO
A national medical marijuana grower is already looking at potential locations in New York, just days after the state legislature voted to legalizethe drug for medicinal purposes. The company, Terra Tech, has already looked at real estate in New York and has started talking to local farmers about setting up an operation in the state.
Laced Cocaine Eats Away Your Flesh 
From Addict to Entrepreneur: Woman Opens Recovery Center to Help Others 
Ohio Student Died From Caffeine Overdose Week Before Graduation 
Marijuana Growing Firm Looking at New York Locations VIDEO 