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December 1, 2015                   Treatment Industry & Recovery Community News                   Vol. 3., No. 16
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Testimonials
Stick With the Winner  VIDEO
How Cable News Reporter Laurie Dhue Overcame Alcoholism VIDEO     

“But yes I was drunk when I met President George W. Bush, and I think that really highlights the extent to which this disease affects people. You would think that I would be sober to meet the sitting president of the United States and yet it was a very conscious decision, ‘I’m going to have a buzz when I meet this guy.’ And that’s sad, isn’t it?”

CONTINUED @ Thirteen.org  

When I’m 64
Nearly Half Seeking Treatment for Opioid Addiction are Baby Boomers Over 50    

Focusing on New York City, however, which boasts one of the largest and most publicly accessible methadone systems in the country,  allowed the researchers to obtain a broader picture of who’s obtaining opioid abuse treatment, though they noted that their findings wouldn’t account for people receiving treatment in a more private setting.

AA Under Attack
‘Alcoholics Anonymous saved my life, but now I’ve lost my faith’     

I was sober, I felt spiritually awakened and I was spending time in the company of loving people who understood and cared about me…AA was founded off the back of a 1930s Christian revivalist movement in the US. Its doctrine hasn’t changed since that time, meaning that its approach to mental health is now, in my view, severely outdated.  This year Monica Richardson, an filmmaker and ex-12-stepper who was sober in AA for more than 30 years, won best documentary at the BH  Film Festival with The 13th Step – a feature-length critique of hidden sexual predation in AA.

CONTINUED @ TheGuardian.com 

Emerge And See
‘Addiction deserves all the same life-saving measures any other disease demands’    

Maia Szalavitz, a proponent of the use of Naloxone, the medication used to reverse drug overdose, recently wrote that opioid overdoses kill around 17,000 Americans each year … In New Hampshire, there were 326 fatal drug overdoses in 2014. But keep in mind, emergency responders also in 2014 administered Naloxone 3,275 times. If the medication had not been available, we would possibly have another 3,000 dead.

CONTINUED @ LedgerTranscript.com 

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Too Late?
ADHD Drug: Ritalin May Not Treat Symptoms     

A team of health experts warned via a new Cochrane Review that physicians should take caution in prescribing the drug methylphenidate, commonly known for its brand name Ritalin, to patients with Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder because despite the drug’s health benefits, it may also cause harmful side-effects.

CONTINUED @ TechTimes.com 

Lauren Stahl Takes Off
Why I Am Open About My Addiction Recovery     

Here are 5 reasons why:
1. Reduces shame.
I lived with shame and guilt running the show for years. I stuffed down every emotion I was feeling and got myself involved in dangerous and embarrassing situations. This cycle continued and fueled my addictions. By outing my addictions, I am able to give them less power and tap into the person I was truly put here to be.
2. It helps others. 3. …continue…

CONTINUED @ HuffingtonPost.com 

Pro-Life
GOP contenders are talking about drug abuse     

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, for instance, regularly compares the moral imperative to treat drug addicts with rehabilitation to cancer treatments for smokers like his mother. “No one came to me and said, ‘Don’t treat her; she got what she deserved,” Christie told a small group of voters in New Hampshire. “We need to start treating people in this country, not jailing them.”

CONTINUED @ WashingtonPost.com 

Is The Pope Catholic?
Does High-Potency Marijuana Do More Damage To The Brain?     

Skunk has higher levels of the psychoactive compound Δ9- tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) than “regular” pot, and has become much more prevalent in recent years, as people seek out more potent versions of the drug. The researchers scanned the brains of 56 people who had sought treatment for a first episode of psychosis, and 43 healthy controls.

CONTINUED @ Forbes.com 

It’s Complicated
BBC Engineer Described as a ‘Functioning Alcoholic’ Commits Suicide Via E-Cigarette     

We’ve heard of e-cigarettes exploding in someone’s face, but using it to commit suicide? That’s new. According to reports, a BBC engineer was found dead in his apartment after allegedly using the electronic smoking device to do that very thing. The Daily Mail reports that Jonathan Keen consumed a mixture of alcohol and the liquid used in e-cigarttes to end his life.

CONTINUED @ Complex.com 

Saving Lives
Norway considers medical heroin to curb alarming overdose rate     

 …trials in Denmark, the Netherlands and Germany all showed that supervised injectable heroin can be effective for targeting this marginal group … It said the therapy creates “major reductions” in their continued use of illicit street heroin, “major disengagement from criminal activities” and “marked improvements in social functioning.” Joesendal says this type of harm reduction is at the heart of the proposed policy.

CONTINUED @ TheStar.com 

Book Review: Memoir of Alcoholism
Pour Me: A Life by AA Gill 

Memories are often hard to retrieve at the best of times. But when alcohol contaminates, distorts and then washes away entire chunks of life, the prospect of digging into “the mille-feuille of experience”, as Adrian Gill describes it, might seem like an impossible challenge.

More Than A Hot Toddy
When Doctors Get Sick: Three Stories of Addiction     

While the public might expect doctors and nurses to be less vulnerable to addiction, given their knowledge of the condition and its risk factors, clinicians have roughly the same rates as everyone else, if not higher, at around 10%-15%, according to the Physician Health Program (PHP) website and the National Council of State Boards of Nursing.

CONTINUED @ MedPageToday.com 

Hope For Speed Addicts
Study to look at creatine in treating meth addiction     

A new researcher in Missoula is now recruiting participants in the first clinical trial conducted at Montana State University. The goal of the study is to determine whether a popular workout supplement can be used to treat methamphetamine dependence.

CONTINUED @ RavalliRepublic.com 

Synthetic Society
‘Spice’ sickens 16 downtown San Diego     

Most of the patients were in their late teens to early 20s. Eleven of them were taken to hospitals by medics, three in serious condition, he said. Their symptoms ranged from mild nausea, fast heart beat and agitation to difficulty breathing and unconsciousness.

CONTINUED @ SanDiegoUnionTribune.com 

2016 UPCOMING EVENTS

2016 Experience, Strength & Hope Awards – Honoring MACKENZIE PHILLIPS
Ed Begley Jr. HOST
Alonzo Bodden HEADLINER

Tuesday, February 16, 2016   

Skirball Cultural Center
2701 N. Sepulveda Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90049   
Call for more information:
818-762-0461
Catered Networking Reception: 5:30-7:30 
Show: 7:30-9:00

No Glass Ceiling Here
Equality: Women Are Closing The Gender Drinking Gap    

Women are drinking more alcohol and closing the historic booze gap with men, according to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA). Men traditionally drink more than women, says NIAAA, but habits are shifting with men slightly moderating the amount of booze they consume while women are moving starkly in the opposite direction.

CONTINUED @ DailyCaller.com 

Dr. Mel Pohl, Feeling No Pain VIDEO
Healing chronic pain without drugs VIDEO     

Foods that reduce inflammation include certain fruits like red grapes, cherries, blueberries and cranberries, walnuts, chia seeds, green vegetables including kale, water-cress, spinach and broccoli, green tea, oily fish and cocoa. It is imperative to drink enough water. I strongly recommend avoiding toxins such as nicotine and alcohol.

CONTINUED @ FoxNews.com 

Carrying The Message
Recovered alcoholic to carry huge log on charity trek     

Lee, 47, decided to use the world around him as his own gym after overcoming alcoholism two years ago. On his road to recovery, he found a 30kg tree log while in the park during the summer and took it home, sculpted it and used it as a weight. “I was very ill myself, I was a full-blown alcoholic and I ended up in hospital almost dead,” he said.

CONTINUED @ Gazette-News.co.uk  

Save The Children  AUDIO
California Youth Drug Overdose Deaths Increase  AUDIO      

The number of California kids who’ve died from drug overdoses has doubled over the last 12 years. But a new study from Trust for America’s Health finds other states have seen greater increases. Some have had their rates quadruple … California has several policies in place to prevent or reduce drug use. But he says more needs to be done … The study looked at people between ages of 12-25.

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Americans Dreaming
One in Four Americans has Been Addicted to Painkillers or is Close to an Addict    

A poll out today from the Kaiser Family Foundation adds a troubling new number to the accounting: 27 percent of Americans report that they either have been addicted to prescription painkillers or have a family member or close friend who has. That’s roughly 66 million U.S. adults for whom the opioid crisis has become intensely personal.

CONTINUED @ Bloomberg.com 

February 16th in Los Angeles…

Making Progress
‘Party pill’ test may help improve drug overdose treatment     

A new test can detect the drug ketamine at very low levels in urine and blood in just 30 minutes, which researchers said can aid in faster, more appropriate treatment of overdoses at emergency rooms. Recent waves of “new psychoactive substances,” synthetic club drugs, pose problems for law enforcement as they are difficult to analyze, and formulations keep changing to stay ahead of the law.

CONTINUED @ UPI.com 

One of the Promises?
NJ Governor Pardons Philadelphia Man Who Overcame Drug Addiction    

Christie’s pardon of now long time drug counselor John Berry, 61, on a shoplifting and robbery conviction in Atlantic County was meant, in large part, to drive home the point that drug addiction is a disease needing treatment and lives can be turned around. “Giving his story a broader stage, as uncomfortable as it might be for him a little bit personally, would be helpful to touch even more lives than he’s touched already”…

CONTINUED @ CBSPhilly.com 

How It Works? AUDIO
Preventing and Treating Narcotic Addiction – A Century of Federal Drug Control AUDIO    

The emergence of methadone maintenance in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and its validation by double-blind trials, seemed to resolve the debate in favor of supplying addicts with long-acting opioid agonists. But treatment providers in abstinence-oriented programs and their government allies never accepted indefinite maintenance, and their moral and political reservations kept the issue simmering.

CONTINUED @ NEJM.org  

Scare Tactic
E-cigarette explodes breaking bloke’s neck     

The Colorado college student is now in a stable condition – but his dream of becoming a fitness trainer lies in tatters. His sister Colessia Porter said: “There’s people that have lost limbs from this. “We cannot have something of this magnitude happening to people.” She added: “It’s devastating to see a healthy man with all his strength be put in a position where he can possibly be paralyzed from an e-cig.

CONTINUED @ DailyStar.co.uk  

Who’s to Judge?
Medication-Assisted Treatment and Drug Courts     

MAT is one of many standard-of-care treatments for addiction: the DATA 2000 Act allows qualified physicians to prescribe or dispense buprenorphine, for the first time allowing use of a narcotic for addiction treatment outside of the traditional methadone clinic system.

Darkness on the Edge of Town VIDEO
New Jersey ranks 6th for youth overdoses VIDEO    

“Overall, when we look at figures, when you see that numbers have doubled in a significant amount of states, tripled in a number of states and quadrupled in five states, that’s an epidemic,” Hamburg said. Overdose rates were the highest among young males in New Jersey. The only states that had higher rates in that category were Pennsylvania, New Mexico, Nevada and Utah.

CONTINUED @ PressofAtlanticCity.com 

Prisoner’s Delight  VIDEO
SUBOXONE: Boon or Bane VIDEO     

…officials at the Bucks and Montgomery county prisons say Suboxone has become the most commonly smuggled drug into the buildings. The reason why depends on perspective. Some say it’s due to the prisoners’ need to wean themselves from opiate dependence by curbing the urge to relapse, while others believe Suboxone, which also contains an opiate, is used to get high.

CONTINUED @ TheIntell.com 

Opiated Essay
From ‘Mighty Opium’ To Moral Crisis: Addiction As Cultural Cachet And Cautionary Tale  

Published in 1821, “Confessions of an English Opium-Eater,” by the Oxford-educated Thomas de Quincey, is an eloquent, narcissistic, convincing account of both the thrill and the misery of opiate addiction: “Confessions” appeared at the height of the West’s first opium crisis, fed first by the British East India Company’s monopoly on the opium trade and, later, after the Pharmacy Act of 1868 restricted the sale of opium in England, by the illicit and – lucrative – drug trade. 

Go Make a Movie
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.

Our Cities include: New York, Los Angeles, Denver, Houston, Ft. Lauderdale, Las Vegas, San Francisco, Vancouver.
If you would like to bring the REEL Recovery Film Festival to your area, please call 818-762-0461.

 

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Addiction/Recovery eBulletin Publisher & Editor:  
Leonard Buschel  

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December 1 Addiction Recovery eBulletin