Anonymous People and Greg Williams at Houston REEL Recovery Film Festival, April 3-6, 2014
Claiming that addiction is America’s most under-financed public health problem, the director, Greg Williams, blames a criminal justice system that chooses incarceration over treatment; a news media that revels in drug-fueled celebrity meltdowns while cold-shouldering the productively rehabilitated; and a populace that, by and large, tends to view dependence as the wages of sin rather than an illness. CLICK PHOTO
Community Gathers to Celebrate Art & Recovery
AA Isn’t the Only Way to “Take Alcohol Off the Table”
Women for Sobriety is an organization and a self-help program for women alcohol-abusers and/or any woman who suspects that she may drink too much too often. The program is uplifting and focused on the positive attributes of women in recovery. Based upon a 13-statement program of positivity, it encourages emotional and spiritual growth, which helps women to overcome addiction and learn a whole new lifestyle. CLICK PHOTO
Celebrity Sobriety Harpers Bazaar
Lara Stone Opens Up About Alcohol Abuse
She’s come a long way since her checking into rehab for alcoholism in 2009, and now Lara Stone is ready to open up about her experience in the April 2014 issue of Harper’s Bazaar magazine.
The 30-year-old supermodel looked absolutely incredible in a gorgeous Lanvin dress for the Daniel Jackson-shot front page while opening up about everything from her fight against alcoholism to her exciting career. Since then, she has also quit smoking, although she still allows herself a few vices, like the jar of Dutch licorice she keeps on her nightstand. Stone, who had been scouted on the Paris Métro while on a family holiday when she was 14, decided to move to the fashion capital and try her hand at modeling. She lived in an apartment with 10 other girls and skated by doing jobs in secondary markets until she got her big break at 22. CLICK PHOTO
Getting Covered
Does My Health Insurance Cover Substance Abuse Treatment?
Medical care for substance abuse, also referred to as substance use disorder, is one of the essential benefits health plans must provide to comply with provisions of the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Policies sold in the health insurance marketplace as well as individual and small group policies sold outside of the exchanges, must provide coverage for substance abuse care effective January 1, 2014. CLICK CBS LOGO
Welcome to Red Hook – but No Red Stripe
Brooklyn Community Board Gives OK to High-End Rehab Center
“I am beyond thrilled after all this time and effort that we finally got support from the board,” said Michael Mosberg, a lawyer whose Brooklyn-based company went before the community board five times since December. “It is very satisfying to know that all this time, effort and money spent has been worthwhile and it really paid off.” Mosberg and business partner Johan Sorensen called Red Hook perfect for their holistic rehab model, which they compared to the Betty Ford Center, both in California, where celebrities like Lindsay Lohan have gone to dry out. CLICK PHOTO
Video Of the Month VIDEO
Russell Brand Discusses ‘Seductive’ Addiction with Oprah
“The way that drug addicts regard the issue is that it never really goes away. That it’s always there dormant. And if something provokes it, you’ll be back out there. Now I know that about myself. I know that the reason why I won’t use drugs today or drink today is because I know I can’t manage it. “If anything positive can come out of the death of Philip Seymour Hoffman, it’s that. That his death doesn’t make sense unless you accept that addiction is an illness. It doesn’t make sense any other way. Otherwise, oh, why did he do that?”CLICK PHOTO
Rest In Peace Jeffery
Jeffery Corzine Dead in Apparent Suicide
The son of former New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine killed himself in a Mexico City hotel, sources told The New York Post on Thursday. Jeffrey Corzine, 31, was the youngest of Corzine’s three children with ex-wife and childhood sweetheart Joanne Corzine. In 2007, Jeffrey Corzine was present every day at Cooper University Hospital in Camden when his father spent 18 days there after a near-fatal car crash while governor. Jon Corzine emerged from that episode saying he held a newfound appreciation of family and that it had caused him to rethink his priorities. CLICK PHOTO
Past Issues
EVERY Past Issue of the Addiction / Recovery eBulletin
FDA Chief Dr. Margaret Hamburg Defends Zohydro Drug Strength VIDEO
Zohydro is the first single-ingredient hydrocodone drug ever cleared for U.S. patients. Each extended-release pill contains up to five times more of the narcotic than previously available combination pills, such as Vicodin. Hydrocodone is the most frequently abused prescription drug in the U.S., according to the Drug Enforcement Agency.
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What Are We Waiting HuffPost
Program Would Save Lives, Curb Disease And Save Money
Needle exchange programs could save thousands of American lives and reduce strain on the public health care system. But some politicians refuse to implement them, largely because of an old-fashioned stigma.Through a needle exchange program, drug users can receive clean syringes in exchange for turning in used ones. Such programs remain illegal in 26 states, predominantly in the South and Midwest.
The 21-year-old pop star has been open about her battle with drugs and alcohol and other self-harming tendencies.
But she couldn’t be happier after cleaning up her life, and told fans Saturday via Twitter she was celebrating her “2nd birthday” by getting a little body art.
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PTSD VIDEO
Child of PTSD: Book Offers First-hand Account of 2nd-Generation Trauma VIDEO
He didn’t start experiencing (PTSD) symptoms until I was 5 years old, and he found one of his best friends dead, at the side of the road. And the war just came rushing back to him,” Presley told CTV’s Canada AM from Atlanta Thursday.
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Doctors Being Doctors
Are We Overdosing Our Children with Pediatric Cocaine?
Every year more than 200 million prescriptions are written for children and teenagers in the United States. One in four insured children and nearly 30 percent of adolescents took at least one prescription medication for a chronic illness in 2009. Pediatricians are actively doping children with prescription pharmaceuticals that are potentially devastating. CLICK PHOTO
Media: Films of Relapse and Redemption
17 Fictional Drunks Who Got Sober … Then Gave Up
i.e. Jack Torrance, The Shining (1980) The critic Tom Shone has called Stephen King’s The Shining, which was written when its author had a drinking problem but before he acknowledged it, “one of the best books ever written about alcoholism… [because] it doesn’t know what it was about. It was an act of urgent self-diagnosis, conducted in the pitch dark. CLICK PHOTO
Science and Good Sense
Your Brain on Booze
Alcohol is a drug with two stories. There’s one story of feeling relaxed after a glass of wine and another of being unconscious after a bottle. There’s one story of feeling social after a margarita and another of feeling reckless after tequila shots. There’s one story of feeling alive and in the moment at sunset and another of feeling nothing at all by sunrise.
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Heroin and Narcissism HuffPost VIDEO
Documenting Addiction Through Self Portraits VIDEO
Artist Graham MacIndoe took candid self-portraits everyday while he was in the thralls of a deep heroin addiction. He joins HuffPost Live along with his girlfriend, Susan Stellin, to discuss the reality of addiction and how to help addicts. “Most documentary projects about addiction expose someone elses self-destructive behavior, but Graham MacIndoe took a very different approach: He photographed himself during the years he was addicted to drugs.”CLICK PHOTO
Battle of the Painkiller Dealers
Abuse-Resistant Hydrocodone Could Sink Sales of New Drug
Purdue Pharma, the maker of OxyContin, says it has completed testing of an abuse-resistant version of the painkiller hydrocodone, a surprise development that could derail sales of the recently introduced Zohydro, a powerful pain medication that has been heavily criticized for lacking such safeguards.
CLICK NY TIMES LOGO
Celebrity DUI
“Star Trek” Hunk Chris Pine Arrested For DUI
Authorities (who didn’t identify Pine by name) confirmed that an American man , 33, was taken into custody March 1 after his blood-alcohol levels tested over New Zealand’s legal limit. CLICK PHOTO
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No Alcohol-No Risk
Even Light Drinking in Early Pregnancy Raises Risk of Small or Preterm Baby
Effects of heavy drinking in pregnancy are well established, the effect of light drinking is not, and different studies have come to different conclusions about it, as have different health authorities.
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About Us
Writers In Treatment
501 (c)(3) nonprofit
WIT gets treatment for individuals who suffer from alcoholism, drug addiction or other self-destructive behaviors.
According to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, 1,800 college students are killed each year in alcohol-related injuries.Studies show that almost half of college students already admit to binge drinking, an at-risk level of alcohol consumption defined by five or more drinks within two hours for a man, and four or more for a woman. But, when it’s spring break time, drinking becomes even more extreme.
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2013 Highlight Reel from RRFF VIDEO
REEL Recovery Film Festival HIGHLIGHT Reel 2013
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
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Celebrity Recovery
Chris Brown booted out of rehab, taken into custody by LA sheriff’s deputies
Details were not immediately available about why Brown, 24, was kicked out of the Malibu facility where he has been treated for the past four months. He was “cooperative when taken into custody” as he was picked up from the facility and taken to the Los Angeles County men’s central jail where he was being held without bail Friday afternoon, a sheriff’s department statement said. CLICK PHOTO
Books Reviewed
Alcohol and writers: Two books take on the myths
The myth of the rakish drunk writer dashing off bons mots between martinis starts to teeter once you peel away the illusions and delusions of alcoholism, which two new books do with bracing clarity. Olivia Laing’sThe Trip to Echo Spring (Picador, $26) is a lively and free-flowing study of writers who swirled to the bottom of the bottle. Focusing on six American writers – John Berryman, Carver, Cheever, Fitzgerald, Hemingway and Williams. CLICK PHOTO
Back to the Future VIDEO
Is Coke Going Back to Its Cocaine Roots? VIDEO
Bloomberg Businessweek’s Emma Rosenblum and Platinum Rye Entertainment CEO Ryan Schinman discuss the new marketing strategy for Diet Coke. They speak with Alix Steel on Bloomberg Television’s “Taking Stock.” CLICK PHOTO
Therapy and Medication
How Psychotherapy Changes the Brain
When I first see patients for evaluation, they often tell me that they’ve debated starting a “biological” treatment such as medication, versus a “psychological” treatment such as psychotherapy. I’m happy to report that as brain imaging technology advances, we’re finding that this distinction may be obsolete.Psychotherapy is also “biological” in that it can lead to real functional and structural changes in the brain.In fact, sometimes psychotherapy and medication produce surprisingly similar changes in the brain.We still have a lot to learn about the topic, but below are some examples of what researchers have been finding… CLICK PHOTO
Health Warning
Driver ‘Admits to READING TEXT’ Before Fatal Crash, CHP Says
A pickup truck driver who killed two women when he slammed into the rear of a vehicle in Santa Rosa on Saturday evening admitted he was checking a text message on his cellphone before the crash.
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POP ROCK AUDIO
Sia Details Alcoholism on Explosive New Single “Chandelier” AUDIO
The haunting tale details the Aussie’s personal struggles with alcoholism and prescription drugs when she was still pushing her solo career. In a rare interview last year, she told Billboard, “I was really unhappy being an artist. I was always a drinker but I didn’t know I was an alcoholic. Then I got seriously addicted to Vicodin and Oxycodone.” Now clean, Sia is expected to drop her sixth studio album-the follow-up to 2010’s stomping pop-rock party We Are Born-in spring. CLICK PHOTO
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Going to Any Lengths
Woman Caught Smuggling $78k of Cocaine in Vagina
Brett, from Brockley, refused to have an X-ray but admitted she had swallowed the drugs and waited for them to pass through her system to collect during the flight. She then hid the cocaine in her vagina. The Border Force, told International Business Times: “This case shows the lengths smugglers will go to in their attempts to bring Class A drugs into the country. Those who swallow packages like this are effectively risking their own lives. CLICK PHOTO
Alcohol and writers: Two books take 
