| Drunk Mom Author Jowita Bydlowska On Alcoholism, Parenthood & Writing Drunk Mom is a discomforting read. It’s bare-naked honesty about addiction and families will make a lot of people uncomfortable, especially those with idealized versions of what motherhood and womanhood “should” mean. It’s by far one of the best memoirs that I’ve ever read (and yes, I’m including Wild in that) both for it’s candor and bravery and for her narration. I understand addiction all the better with once-again-sober Jowita Bydlowska as the Charon to this Hades, our guide to the underworld. READ MORE | | Substance Abuse Increases in Aging
Adults VIDEO Come retirement, there is plenty of down time and plenty of time to pick up unhealthy habits. “We might have been seeing people who’ve been dealing with alcohol issues throughout their life, or we might be be dealing with a population who’s just beginning to use alcohol in their later years after their retirement.” READ MORE | | This Could Save Some Lives | | Kaiser Permanente Pharmacists Threaten
to Strike Many Kaiser Permanente patients were scrambling to fill their prescriptions Friday night, as more than 1,400 Kaiser pharmacists have threatened to go on strike because of a labor dispute. “On Monday at 7 a.m., our pharmacists will not be showing up to work at all the Kaiser pharmacies in Southern California,” Guild for Professional Pharmacists President Robin Borden said. READ MORE | | Addiction Treatment Stops Family Fighting I’m an addict in recovery. I speak freely about it and without shame. I’m not the man I was before treatment. I am the self I was always meant to be. A huge part of my change was due to my kids. What happens when an alcoholic parent gets treatment? In this parenting season, between Mother’s & Father’s Day, a new study in the Journal of Addictive Behaviors looked at family conflict before and after a father’s treatment for alcohol addiction. READ MORE | | With Psychological Counseling Time Magazine
| | Medication Can Help People Stop Drinking ? Newly-developed medication can be an effective means of curbing alcohol dependence when paired with psychological counseling, according to a new study published in JAMA. Eight million people in the United States are currently alcohol dependent. Alcoholism can case liver and brain damage, as well as damage to other organs, and can increase the likelihood of dying early by three time. READ MORE | FDA Defends Zohydro VIDEO
| | FDA Responds to Criticism of Zohydro VIDEO Zohydro is a type of hydrocodone – the same opioid the Food and Drug Administration said is in Vicodin, Lortab and other painkillers often prescribed after surgery. Those drugs also contain acetaminophen, which in high doses can cause liver damage over time. “When you crush it, when you snort it, you are getting an instantaneous high. READ MORE | | Deaths From Fentanyl-laced Heroin Soar in Philadelphia Illicit fentanyl can be a white powder like heroin, but is 50 times stronger. It suppresses respiration receptors in the brain. That can make users stop breathing.The drug combo killed at least 28 people between March 3 and April 20, the Department of Behavioral Health and Intellectual Disability said Monday. The department is awaiting test results on 7 more people. The powerful narcotic, which is meant to treat extreme pain, was implicated in 269 deaths in 2006 in Philadelphia. It killed more than 2,000 people across the country that year. READ MORE | | Diary Of A People Pleaser: Recovery 101 “I’m on the patch right now, where it releases small dosages of approval until I no longer crave it, and then I’m gonna rip it off.”
~ Ellen DeGeneres
This chronic dependency on approval means I don’t trust myself. I trade my time, insight, energy and preferences for a stamp of approval from somewhere else. Doing so puts an excessive amount of importance on influences that may or may not have a vested interest in my well-being. A losing gamble at best. READ MORE | | 2013 REEL Recovery Highlight Reel | 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 | | Naltrexone Naltrexone Naltrexone ABC | | Unique Treatment for Alcohol Abuse Gaining Traction VIDEO “If you take alcoholics, the most notorious of non-compliant patients, they’re not going to take their medications. Even if they’re very dedicated and do, after three months doing pretty well, they delude themselves into thinking I don’t need this,” Fallieras said. READ MORE | | ‘I Went Out and P****d My Sobriety Away’: Admits Olivia Newton-John’s Daughter, Chloe, After Stint in Rehab She spent seven months in a rehabilitation facility to help her combat her drug and alcohol addiction. But Olivia Newton-John’s daughter Chloe Lattanzi has admitted to falling off the wagon. The 29-year-old model revealed she broke her sobriety on Tuesday in a candid admission posted to social media the following day. READ MORE | FOR EVERY
Past Issue of the
Addiction/Recovery eBulletin
| | 12 Black Celebs Who Succumbed to Drug Overdose Included in this list: Billie Holiday, celebrity drugs, celebrity overdose, Chriss Kelly, David Ruffin, Dinah Washington, Donyale Luna, Dorothy Dandridge, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Jimi Hendrix, Michael Jackson, Ol’ Dirty Bastard, Rob Pilatus and Whitney Houston. READ MORE | | Today’s Marijuana Is More Addictive VIDEO Whether or not you get addicted to marijuana is really a personal experience: It may not have the same addictive effects on certain people than it does on others. But Ball believes that things have changed, and marijuana is indeed more addictive now than before: “You’ll frequently hear people saying, the marijuana they smoke today is not the marijuana we smoked when we were kids,” he said. Watch the Video. READ MORE | | “With a Little Help From My Friends…” | | Marijuana Concerts Will Not Jeopardize Symphony’s Federal Grants The National Endowment for the Arts confirms to 9NEWS that a series of upcoming marijuana-themed concerts from the Colorado Symphony do not put the organization at risk of losing its federal funding.”The audience has been getting older and smaller,” said Colorado Symphony CEO Jerry Kern. “It’s innovate or die. It’s change or die. It’s reach new people or die, and we’re not going to die.” READ MORE | | Marijuana Food Trucks? Seattle Start-Up Going Gourmet With Pot SEATTLE – Marijuana food trucks? A Seattle company hopes to roll them out in the future after a prototype debuted in Denver this month featuring gourmet food infused with, as an option, marijuana. “And we’re very proud to say we’re the first company to have a cannabis food truck in the world,” said Executive Chef Jeremy Cooper of Magical Butter, a year old upstart company headquartered in an artsy warehouse in Seattle’s hipster Soho neighborhood. READ MORE | | How Pfizer Helped
Make ‘Spice,’ The Deadly Fake Pot A designer drug tied to the overdose of thousands partially initiated in the labs of one of the world’s biggest pharmaceutical companies. In 1979, three researchers at Pfizer, the pharmaceutical giant, came up with a synthetic cannabinoid. READ MORE | | Understanding How Alcohol Impacts Breast Cancer Risk Women who regularly consume alcohol increase their chances of developing breast cancer by 50 percent, a link that has been well established by epidemiological studies, and better understand how alcohol consumption affects breast cancer initiation, growth and aggressiveness. READ MORE | | | If at First You Don’t Succeed… | | Sober Ozzy Osbourne Honored By Metallica, Joe Walsh at MusiCares Event “It’s really a battle to get sober,” Walsh tells Billboard at the 10th annual MAP event. “Ozzy has his set of demons, but he’s stacked up some days of consecutive sobriety here and he’s never been better.
Daughter Kelly Osbourne may be biased, but her father’s successful battle with addiction was motivational for her. “I can definitely say that 100 percent. I’m your daughter and I’m saying that. I could not be more proud of my father regardless of sobriety or not I’ve always been proud of him because I adore him,” she said. READ MORE | | One of the Gifts of Sobriety | | The Unexpected Joy of Sponsorship In her experiences in recovering from her own life-spiraling alcoholism and sponsoring over one hundred alcoholic women in Alcoholics Anonymous, Andrea S. learned that being a good sponsor requires knowing about the nature of the AA Steps, the process of AA and the actions a person must take if he wishes to stay sober. READ MORE | | Emma Willis on Matt Willis’s Past in Rehab: ‘I Had to Stick by Him’ Emma Willis has tearfully reflected on her husband Matt Willis’s past stints in rehab. The couple began dating in 2005, shortly before the McBusted star checked into London’s Priory Rehab Hospital for alcohol dependency. Matt emerged from treatment 3 weeks later, but ultimately had to return to the facility in July 2006 and later sought additional treatment. READ MORE | | DO YOU LIKE OUR eBULLETIN? | We Welcome Your Feedback! If you have any comments, compliments or suggestions for our weekly Addiction/Recovery eBulletin, please contact us at:
Writers In Treatment | | Alcoholism Drugs Work in Study That May Dispel Doubts Four medicines to treat alcoholism worked to reduce addiction, a study found, providing evidence that may overcome skepticism and spur greater use of the drugs. In addition to lingering doubts about the drugs’ effectiveness, the medications aren’t used enough because most primary care doctors refer patients to specialists, such as drug counselors, or community programs, such as Alcoholics Anonymous, that aren’t able to prescribe these medicines. READ MORE | | Judge: How Heroin Addiction Starts at the Doctor’s Office Most people believe heroin users are adults who have been addicted to other drugs and alcohol, right? Not true. The average age of a heroin user is under 21 years old. Many started their drug use with legally prescribed, prescription pain killers. Some 85 percent of the teens who became addicted to heroin abused opioid painkillers, like Vicodin and Oxycodone, before trying heroin. READ MORE | | Buy This Stock and Feel No Pain NY Times | | Doubts Raised About Off-Label Use of Subsys, a Strong Painkiller The drug, Subsys, is a form of fentanyl, a narcotic that is often used when painkillers like morphine fail to provide relief. The product was approved in 2012 for a relatively small number of people – cancer patients – but has since become an outsize moneymaker for the obscure company that makes it. The company reported that Subsys sales continued to grow in the first quarter of this year, to $40.7 million, from $9.7 million a year ago. READ MORE | | Health Warning of the Week | | Parents Guilty of
Overdosing Children
On Sugar “The best drinks for school-aged children are water and low fat milk. Fruit juice is also a good choice as it can be included as one of your five portions of fruit and vegetables per day. “However, it should only be drunk once a day and with a meal because it can be high in sugar and cause tooth decay. READ MORE | | Program of Attraction & State Coercion VIDEO | | Defensive End Greg Hardy Ordered To Attend AA Meetings (without weapons we hope) VIDEO Carolina Panthers defensive end Greg Hardy has been ordered to attend three Alcoholic Anonymous meetings a week. A waitress at an area restaurant, Holder also told investigators the 25-year-old Hardy bragged that “all the assault weapons were loaded” and “threatened to shoot me if I went to the media or reported his assault to anyone.” READ MORE | 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.
| Publisher: Leonard Buschel | | Heavy Social Drinkers
Have A Higher Risk Of Developing Alcoholism Researchers found that those in the high alcohol addiction symptom group reported far higher stimulation and pleasure from alcohol effects than members of the low or intermediate groups. Tolerance to alcohol’s fatiguing effects was less predictive of the future course of addiction. READ MORE | | DEA Chief
Should Resign DEA Administrator Leonhart is virtually the only person left who still zealously supports the failed war on drugs. The U.S. and the rest of the world are moving toward an approach that prioritizes public health and legal regulation – but she remains hopelessly committed to the failed war-on-drugs approach. She is plagued with scandals, out of touch, and increasingly an embarrassment to Attorney General Holder and President Obama. READ MORE | | MEDIA: Measuring Which Drugs Talked About Most | | From Heroin to Cocaine, This is
How the Media Talks About Drugs Andrew Larson loves to hear people talk about drugs.So much so that he created a tool that tracks Twitter conversations about marijuana, alcohol, LSD, and meth in real-time. Weed tweets generally dominate the other vices, with alcohol placing second. On the other end of the spectrum, almost nobody tweets about LSD, and honestly if you’re on acid you should probably be outside playing, not staring at a screen. READ MORE | | WCSAD Conference: May 29 – June 1, 2014 | 10 Scholarships Available for the West Coast Symposium on
Addictive Disorders Conference,
Courtesy of Writers In Treatment & WCSAD. Call for more information 818-762-0461
| | Over The Counter, Over the Line… | | FDA Halves
Lunesta Dose Lunesta may help you doze off at night, but it’s the morning after that has officials concerned – which is why on Thursday they halved the recommended dosage for the well-known sleep aid. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration cited data showing that a person may be less alert and do things such as driving less safely the day after taking Lunesta. READ MORE | | Great for Sauces and Teas | | Help Fight Alcohol Addiction with a Plant To fight alcohol addiction and alcohol cravings, some of the options include medication, attending Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, checking into a rehab facility, or a combination of these efforts. However, one approach that is routinely overlooked is the use of a plant called kudzu. READ MORE | | Fatal Stabbing Followed Argument Over Last Beer When Durham was dying, Trent said, he told him to stab the dog, which had been with him for since they met. Trent said he stabbed the animal once in the stomach. The two had been drinking Natural Ice, and Trent said they first drank a 24-pack purchased at a nearby store. Then, Trent said, they went back and got an 18-pack of beer. They both “chipped in,” he said, to buy the beer. As they came to the last can of beer, Durham claimed it. Then came disaster. READ MORE | | New Book – Teenage Depression vs Me, Documents Bullying Victim’s Journey From Overdose To Author A young man who tried to kill himself after being bullied at school has written a book to help others cope with depression and anxiety. At the age of just 15, Matthew Clifton, of St Neots Road, Abbotsley felt he had nothing to live for and overdosed on sleeping pills. READ MORE | MARIANNE WILLIAMSON at Milestones Ranch Malibu | | |