U.S. Taxpayers Fund Addicts Drug Use | Painkillers Mean Big Business For Medicare in Nevada Statistics compiled by the nonprofit newsroom ProPublica show Nevada medical professionals prescribed more than $14.5 million worth of major pain relievers oxycodone, OxyContin and hydrocodone to Medicare patients in 2011, the latest year data is available. Nevada medical professionals in 2011 wrote $390 million worth of prescriptions on behalf of Medicare patients for the 500 most popular drugs. Read More | CNN Reporter Acting Like High Times Columnist When CNN’s Randi Kaye headed out to Colorado to report on the budding marijuana business, she shared a career HIGHlight. | Health Warning The Atlantic | The Case for Health-Warning Labels on Soda Imagine you are at the beach in Malibu. The weather is perfect, the ocean is shimmering, and you are thirsty. You buy a Coke from a nearby bodega and prepare to take a hefty swig, only to be met with the following text: “STATE OF CALIFORNIA SAFETY WARNING: Drinking beverages with added sugar(s) contributes to obesity, diabetes, and tooth decay.” Read More | Where Drug Use Is Still Encouraged PBS AUDIO | Adderall not cocaine fuels the lives of the young wolves of Wall Street on PBS The stereotype is that they’re all on cocaine all the time. But actually, the most common drug I heard about people using was Adderall. These people are not taking drugs to go out and party; they’re taking drugs so that they can stay up longer and work more. So that shocked me, and I just thought how sad: if you’re going to be doing drugs in your early 20s, you might as well make it a fun one. Read More | Addiction/Recovery eBulletin website . | STARTS THIS FRIDAY Feb. 28, – March 1, 2014 | The 6th Annual
“It Happens to Boys, Too” Conference with Jerry Moe-John Lee-Patrick Carns-Judy Crane-Allen Berger February 28, March 1, 2014 Pasadena Hilton. Read More | Politician Fights for Stigma Reduction | Removing the Stigma of Substance Abuse by MA Governor candidate “Within in three months, he was addicted and taking painkillers on a daily basis. He started buying the powerful painkiller Oxycotin on the street and stealing money from his parents. He stopped playing sports and barely graduated high school. Within a year of graduating from high school, he was sniffing heroin and entered his first rehab. Over the next several years his addiction worsened; he eventually began injecting heroin and contracted Hepatitis C as a result. He has spent the last few years bouncing from jail to rehabilitation facilities.” Read More | Doctors Cater to Aging Addicts | Seniors Get Prescription Painkillers From Multiple Doctors Feb. 19, 2014 (HealthDay News) — About one-third of Medicare patients who get prescriptions for powerful narcotic painkillers receive them from multiple doctors, which raises their risk for hospitalization, according to a new study. The researchers said they were surprised to find that 30 percent of the patients were prescribed narcotic painkillers by more than one doctor. Read More | YOUR BANNER AD will also appear on our website | The Addiction/Disease Question VIDEO | Doctors: Addiction is a Chronic Disease VIDEO Addiction to any illicit substance or drug is a disease, and it’s one doctors say can take a lifetime to cure and can often be deadly. “It’s got as much to do with chemical changes in your brain as any other disease like cancer, or heart disease or any other illness that you can think of.” “There’s a lot of shame in this disease and shame kills more alcoholics and addicts than anything else,” Jenkins said. Read More | States Maintain Status Quo | Request for state drug initiative funding in Md. mostly denied Moore and Collins came to the work session to go over the letter Moore received from the state about two weeks ago regarding funding requests for five initiatives to help the county combat an increasing drug problem. “We have some good news and some bad news,” Moore said. A lack of decorum at Tuesday morning’s council work session prompted County Executive Tari Moore and Ken Collins, her assistant on drug issues, to abruptly leave a presentation on the state’s response to a request for funding of various drug-related initiatives. “The bad news is that we didn’t get most of the money we were requesting,” she said. “But, we did get a letter saying they would match our money for a forensic analyst.” Read More | Hip Hop Artist Comes Clear | ScHoolboy Q Describes Percocet Addiction & Previews “Oxymoron” IThe TDE artist details how his daugher could not wake him from sleep comas caused by perscirption pills. ScHoolboy Q previewed six tracks from his forthcoming Oxymoron album yesterday (February 17) at SONOS Studios in Los ANgeles, California. DUring the Q&A session, the TDE artist described the album as much darker than the initial singles indicate. Read More | VIDEO of the MONTH with Dr. Gabor Maté | Dr. Gabor Maté on the Stress-Disease Connection, Addiction and the Destruction of American Childhood In December 2012, Amy Goodman, host of Democracy Now!, did a one-hour interview with Dr. Gabor Maté. It’s old, but Because it’s not on Vimeo or YouTube, this can’t be added to the video section. Democracy Now! special with the Canadian physician and bestselling author, Dr. Gabor Maté. From disease to addiction, parenting to attention deficit disorder, Maté’s work focuses on the centrality of early childhood experiences to the development of the brain, and how those experiences can impact everything from behavioral patterns to physical and mental illness. Read More | Meditation–Center for Healthy Sex APHRODISIACS | “An aphrodisiac will disappear, delusional, like permanence or wealth-a shimmering, as if love were ghost.” ~ Lauren Lipton Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love and beauty, is the namesake of aphrodisiac. For centuries people have believed in the erotic… Read More | Chris Brown Staying In Rehab Despite Finishing His 90 Days “He wants to stay there a little while longer to make sure he’s absolutely ready to be back in society. He doesn’t want any issues with his temper to flare up when he’s in public so he’s taking a few more days to work on some anger treatments so that he keeps his buttons under control.” Read More | | Bree Walker talks about her sobriety, her arrest, and that mugshot “I am nervous about coverage these days,” said Walker, a high-profile television news anchor in Los Angeles from 1988 to 1994 who was arrested last week on suspicion of driving under the influence. “I didn’t expect this story would have traction. I feel like I have been in shock and don’t trust the decisions that I am making even though I am trying to be lucid.” | Big Pharma Huffington Post | How A Big Drug Co. Got Americans Hooked On Heroin Between 1996 and 2011, the number of people who ended up in substance abuse treatment centers in Suffolk County, where Arielle lives, as a result of heroin jumped 425 percent, according to a 2012 special grand jury report from the county’s Supreme Court. During the same period, the number of people who landed in substance abuse treatment for opioid pill use spiked 1,136 percent, the report found. Read More | Drinking age of 21: Review confirms it saves lives But in 2006, this federal law was challenged. A nonprofit organization called Choose Responsibility began campaigning for a reduction in the legal drinking age, stating that young adults between 18 and 20 years old should have the ability to make mature decisions regarding the place of alcohol in their lives. In 2008, presidents of universities and colleges over the US created the Amethyst Initiative. This group called for a re-evaluation of the legal drinking age. Read More | 501 (c)(3) nonprofit WIT gets treatment for individuals who suffer from alcoholism, drug addiction or other self-destructive behaviors. | Publisher: Leonard Buschel | Not An Exact Science The Herald Scotland | Can drug partnership gurus admit they have a problem? “The uncertainly hinges on issues of abstinence, on whether the objective of our policy is to get people off drugs completely. That is why there is a lack of enthusiasm from those with a much wider notion of recovery. “We are not where we might have hoped to be more than five years after launching a strategy based on recovery. One might have expected that we would have made substantially more progress. That is a matter of some regret: we should be much further down the road to recovery.”Read More | 2013 Highlight Reel from RRFF VIDEO | REEL Recovery Film Festival HIGHLIGHT Reel 2013 See clips from last year’s Award Winning REEL Recovery Film Festival with Paul Williams, Russell Brand, Robert Blake, Barbara Eden and Phillip Seymour Hoffman. See VIDEO | Addicted to Love 2014 Style Daily Mail | Why love was my drug: Could you be in the grip of a dangerous addiction ? It’s hard to beat the thrill of falling head over heels, or the closeness of a loving relationship – but if you’re constantly putting your happiness in other people’s hands, warns Lucy Fry, you could be suffering from a dangerous addiction. And it’s not just me who has felt this way. Love addiction, a fairly recent phenomenon (at least in terms of its labelling), is now widespread enough that treatment centres all over the world offer programmes to tackle the symptoms and bring patients back to a state of ongoing health. Read More | Not Really Part of Arizona | SEDONA: March 28 – 30, 12 Step Yoga for the Soul: Heal Your Addictions Retreat 12 Step Yoga for the Soul is a healing Kundalini yoga weekend workshop focusing on the 12 Steps of Recovery. This retreat focuses on awakening Kundalini energy through meditation, pranayama (breath), mantra, yoga asana, and sound healing. Kundalini is known as the yoga of awareness, which drives attention inward to cultivate spiritual potential. Philly T. (Puran Kaur) is a certified Kundalini Yoga Teacher as taught by Yogi Bhajan and a Registered Yoga Teacher, recognized by Yoga Alliance. She has earned yoga certifications including Kripalu Partner Yoga, Yoga Fit,and the Barkan Yoga Method. Read More | Health reform law drove Hazelden-Betty Ford merger Two motivations drove the recent marriage of Hazelden and the Betty Ford Center, addiction treatment giants whose network spans 15 care sites in nine states. By joining together, the institutions think they will be able to run more efficiently, with greater capital investment capabilities. But they also aim to position themselves to capture a greatly expanded market, as the Affordable Care Act requires insurance coverage for drug and alcohol abuse treatment. Read More | Link Between Child Abuse and Alcoholism Psychotherapist Examines Links Between Child Abuse and Alcoholism. “That’s simply not true. In a home with an alcoholic parent, everyone suffers, the most vulnerable being the children,” Golay says. “They live in an insecure and unstable home, and because the alcoholic parent’s behavior is unpredictable and terrifying, the children learn to be constantly on guard.” Read More | Tip leads to addiction counselor’s arrest on drug charge A counselor for the stateDepartment of Mental Health and Addiction Services here filled prescriptions for 2,370 narcotic painkiller pills in December alone, according to documents filed in federal court. A further investigation determined that just the day before that text, Earl filled prescriptions at a CVS in Hamden for 300 oxycodone 30 mg tables; 240 Oxycontin 10 mg tables; 300 oxycodone 10 mg; and 1,200 oxymorphone 10 mg tablets. Read More | There are no ‘safe’ alcohol limits when it comes to cancer You increase your risk of cancer if you start to drink early in life, or if you keep drinking over a long period of time, or if you drink heavily. Alcohol can cause cancer of the mouth, throat, voice box (larynx) and foodpipe (oesophagus). It can also cause cancer of the breast, large bowel and the liver. Read More | Drugs and Brain Chemistry | Brain changes in an addict made it hard for Philip Seymour Hoffman to resist heroin Drugs such as heroin also trigger this response, but the dopamine surge from drugs is faster and long-lasting. When a person repeatedly subjects his nucleus accumbens to this narcotic-induced flood, the nerve cells that dopamine acts upon become exhausted from stimulation. Read More | No Easy Answers For DUI Concerns As Marijuana Gains Support The Lodo Wellness Center in Denver has been selling medical marijuana for several years. But since Jan. 1, when marijuana in Colorado officially moved from underground to behind the counter, the center has also been selling legal, recreational pot. Meanwhile, the public health community is warning of a potential safety problem: more people driving while stoned. But health officials and law enforcement don’t yet have the data or the tools to address the concern. Read More | | |