Answer Addiction

Author: The Fix

  • Cannabis Use Disorder Rising In The US

    Cannabis Use Disorder Rising In The US

    Cannabis use disorder affects 30% of the people who use the drug.

    It has been a popular misconception that you cannot become dependent on cannabis. It’s called cannabis use disorder and it is a lot more common than people think. Cannabis use disorder affects 30% of people who use the drug, a number that is steadily rising in states that have legalized it.

    What Is Cannabis Use Disorder?

    Here’s the definition of cannabis use disorder, according to drugabuse.gov:

    People who use marijuana frequently often report irritability, mood and sleep difficulties, decreased appetite, cravings, restlessness, and/or various forms of physical discomfort that peak within the first week after quitting and last up to 2 weeks. Marijuana dependence occurs when the brain adapts to large amounts of the drug by reducing production of and sensitivity to its own endocannabinoid neurotransmitters.

    Over the past decade, cannabis has become increasingly more potent. THC content in cannabis went from 3.8% in the early 90s to a whopping 12% in 2014. Federal prohibition has limited the research surrounding the effects of marijuana use on the brain and body. And researchers fear that the growing potency could have an unhealthy impact on the brains of underage users.

    A new study published in JAMA Network, explored how cannabis use and rates of cannabis use disorder changed from 2008 to 2016 after a number of states legalized the sibstance.

    Breaking Down The Stats

    • Cannabis use rose from 2.18% to 2.72% among those aged 12 to 17
    • Frequent cannabis use rose from 2.13% to 2.62% among those 26 and older
    • Cannabis use disorder rose from 0.90% to 1.23% among those 26 and older

    Compared to opioid use disorder, the rates of cannabis use disorder are incredibly low but the growing potency and availability of the drug suggests that the rates will conintue to increase especially if cannabis is descheduled and the federal prohibiton ends.

    The study’s authors found that while legalization and decriminalization have helped some non-violent marijuana offenders of color receive justice and shined a light on the racial disparity in marijuana-related arrests, cannabis use disorder still remains a concern that needs to be addressed. 

    Currently, medical cannabis use is legal in 33 states, DC and almost all US territories. Recreational cannabis is legal in 11 states and DC. 

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Comedian Gary Gulman: Opening Up About Depression Has Been "A Reward"

    Comedian Gary Gulman: Opening Up About Depression Has Been "A Reward"

    “The easiest way and the most comfortable way for me to address anything real is to make jokes about it.”

    Back in October comedian Gary Gulman released a vulnerable and inspiring HBO special called The Great Depresh where he discussed his lifelong struggles with depression. Critics and fans alike applauded Gulman for being so open and honest about what depression looks like and how it has changed his life.

    Gulman recently sat down with People magazine to discuss how the special has affected his life and how he treats his chronic depression.

    “The easiest way and the most comfortable way for me to address anything real is to make jokes about it,” the comedian explained.

    “Depresh” is a cutesy nickname that Gulman gave depression to make it easier to digest for those who have never battled the mental health disorder. For Gulman, it’s all about starting a conversation about mental illness in an effort to end the stigma surrounding it.

    “I had called it that to sort of lighten the impact of the illness,” Gulman said. “I mean, I either consciously or subconsciously figured out that people would feel more comfortable if you were immediately making fun of it.”

    Normalize It

    Gulman feels as though using his voice to normalize the disorder that affects more than 300 million people globally. 

    “I got such a reward for opening up about this,” the 49-year-old told People. “I thought that this was a great way to sort of redeem the experience and exact some revenge on the time lost and that it was actually a way to, I guess, make the two-and-a-half years that I had suffered not be just useless.”

    Though Gulman has lived with depression since his childhood, the disorder hit him hardest in 2015 when he was placed in a psychiatric hospital for treatment.

    “By the time I did go in, there was no question that that’s where I belonged. I wasn’t functioning on any level.”

    Sleep changes are one of the most common symptoms of depression. During his lowpoint with the disorder, he was sleeping 18 or 19 hours a day and when he wasn’t sleeping, he was experieincing anxiety and suicidal ideation.

    His Darkest Moments

    “I was spending every moment I was awake — which was sometimes only like five or six hours a day — … in pain from anxiety and also just contemplating painless suicides and ruminating on mistakes and regrets,” he detailed.

    Electroconvulsive therapy, meds, talk therapy and support from loved ones, Gulman was able to make it through his darkest days to tell his tale. 

    If you or someone you know is considering suicide, please contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255), text “STRENGTH” to the Crisis Text Line at 741-741 or go to suicidepreventionlifeline.org. 

     

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Upon Release from Prison, a New Kind of Nightmare

    Upon Release from Prison, a New Kind of Nightmare

    After staring at a wall for almost half of my life, being able to look out the windows of the halfway house at the world but not being able to go out and experience it was maddening.

    When you’re being escorted out of a federal court room in shackles and handcuffs, after being sentenced to almost two decades behind bars, you can almost feel the life ooze out of your pores. The pronounced slam of a gavel drives home the fact you’re not in Kansas anymore, while one hope creeps its way into your brain: the day those cuffs come off and you’re free. This image is your savior, your best and only friend to keep you company throughout the brutally unforgiving years of violence, isolation, and solitude. Visions of beautifully simple things like going to the park or eating strawberry pancakes shoot through your psyche in bright shining lights onto the faded white graffiti laced brick walls of your 9-by-6-foot cell of despair. 

    All this promise makes it all the more devastating when that magical day arrives for the nightmare to end, and you realize just how far you are from getting out of the rabbit hole.

    “Have you ever played a PlayStation? Hell, have you even used a cell phone?” These are the words the middle-aged Latino case manager told me through the battered food slot inside the cell door of the Special Housing Unit. 

    “Someone like you, I wouldn’t give more than 4 months. The world has passed you by…but good luck.”

    These words of encouragement came from someone who spent almost as much time in the Bureau of Prisons as I have. A man who has witnessed firsthand how hard it is to adjust to a world that will chew you up and spit you right back. He wasn’t talking about my transition back into the free world. He was talking about the federally funded center that was in charge of restoring my sanity. 

    Institutionalization, PTSD, and Post Incarceration Syndrome

    PTSD and its sister syndrome, PICS (Post Incarceration Syndrome), are disorders in which a person has difficulty recovering after experiencing or witnessing a terrifying event. The condition may last months or years, with triggers that can bring back memories of the trauma accompanied by intense emotional and physical reactions.

    During my 15 years of incarceration, I experienced and witnessed atrocities that would make most war veterans cringe. Divided racial lines and the total disregard for human life were the first things that greeted me behind the grimy walls down in the swamps of Louisiana, USP Pollock. The “slaughterhouse of the south” averaged 40 stabbings a month, while incurring 16 murders in an 18-month span. Desensitization set in rapidly when watching a stabbing was as common as watching a baseball game. This was just the first of four penitentiaries in which I was beaten, stabbed, isolated, and herded throughout half of my life.

    While President Bush was fighting his wars overseas, and smartphones, text messaging, and iPods were shaping humanity, I was envisioning a breathtakingly beautiful sun setting over the ocean. The sound of waves crashing danced through my ears, as I felt the cool wet sand beneath my feet. When President Obama was still fighting the war, and Google, Facebook, and YouTube took over society, I was sitting in solitary confinement, my stomach touching my ankles, as I dreamed of the family dinners at my parents’ house. The four cheeses of mom’s famous lasagna made my mouth water, as I imagined the smiling faces of better years sitting around the table listening to Dad’s old war stories. As President Trump was halfway through his reign of terror, the cuffs finally came off and I was released. But little did I know, the nightmare was far from being over.

    Institutionalization is a gradual normal reaction to the unnatural and abnormal conditions of prisoner life. The more extreme, harsh, dangerous, or otherwise psychologically taxing the nature of the confinement, the deeper the damage that will be done. During this process, a prisoner incorporates the norms of prison into their habits of thinking, feeling, and acting. It renders some people so dependent on external constraints that they gradually lose the capacity to rely on internal organization and self-imposed personal limits to guide their actions and restrain their conduct.

    When I was released from the SHU in Big Sandy Kentucky on July 29, 2017, the world seemed to be in hyperdrive. My parents and sister, along with the girlfriend I’ve never held, laughed as I bounced around the car like a dog in heat. The speed of everything left me spinning as I tried to comprehend the tiny screen in my hands that was speaking directions towards the home I’ve never seen. Inside that car I felt alive for the first time in over a decade and a half. Then we stopped a block short from my residence, and all the rules that I’d just broken by being with my family drove away with five minutes to spare, as a whole new nightmare began.

    Bait and Switch

    According to the Federal Bureau of Prisons: “Residential reentry centers provide a safe, structured, supervised environment, as well as employment counseling, job placement, financial management assistance and other programs and services. RRC’s help inmates gradually rebuild their ties to the community and facilitate supervising ex-offenders activities during this readjustment phase.” 

    When I walked into the reentry center in downtown Pittsburgh, I wasn’t greeted with a homecoming of old friends and relatives like in the movies. Instead, I sat in a drearily filthy break room as paramedics wheeled off a semi-conscious reentrant to a waiting ambulance. These overdoses, ranging from heroin to K-2, would become a normal part of my daily routine. Once I made my way to the seventh of eight floors, each floor packed to capacity with clueless ex-cons all trying to breathe free fresh air, the prison mentality quickly set back in.

    My case manager greeted me in her tiny cluttered office and gave me a list of all the rules and regulations that make readjustment damn near impossible. No smartphones, riding in cars, or being ANYWHERE without approval a week ahead of time. If I wanted to stop at 7-Eleven for a cup of coffee in the morning on my way to work, I would be in violation of my release. I also received the bonus of not being allowed to publish any of my writing or leave the city limits. She concluded her orientation with the added kick to the nuts of twenty five percent of my pay getting kicked back to the house for the opportunity to feel the sunshine on my face for the first time in a decade and a half.

    I also was given the one-time warning about being late. If I was more than 5 minutes late back from a pass, whether it be a late bus or a broken leg, it was back to the box to finish out the remainder of my sentence. Just riding on public transportation is enough to give me a panic attack after years of isolation. The need to sit with my back against the wall is uncontrollable while my hypervigilance runs wild surveying everyone and everything. When you add a traffic jam to that equation, it’s almost debilitating. Going from a world with nothing but time, to one that will literally put you in a cage if it’s mismanaged, was and still is one of the hardest things to deal with after my release.

    During the 15 years of my incarceration, I lived with a lot of different people. A redneck from Wyoming to a skinhead from Seattle, I’ve been forced to share a bathroom with the best of them. No matter where they were from, there was one thing in common: I didn’t like any of them. Even Mother Teresa is going to get on your nerves if you’re stuck in a broom closest with her 24 hours a day for months on end. 

    Standing on the Edge of Freedom

    In the late 70’s, psychologist Bruce K. Alexander conducted his Rat Park study. In this study he took lab rats and housed them in two different environments. In the first, “skinner boxes” (solitary confinement), they were completely deprived of everything, even movement was difficult. The second environment housed the rats in a space 200 times bigger, with wheels, and boxes and other rats to interact with. Inside both settings were two different water bottles. One filled with narcotics to numb the pain that will run through any being under such harsh conditions, and the other without. Each time when the rats are housed in skinner boxes, they go right for the drugs. But, when they’re in rat park with all their friends, free to make decisions and live a good life, they always chose the clean water.

    After staring at a wall for almost half of my life, being able to look out the windows of the halfway house at the world below but not being able to go out and experience what I’ve been dreaming about for so long was maddening. Having that freedom dangling in my face, after coming so far, was heartbreaking. After years of dreaming about what you want to do, where you want to go, who you want to see, and then discovering you won’t be doing any of those things for a long time, it absolutely puts you right back into that ‘I don’t give a fuck’ mentality.

    Institutionalization can be taken to extreme lengths or become chronic and deeply internalized so that even though the conditions of one’s life have changed, many of the once functional but now counterproductive patterns remain.

    I spent 14 months inside the halfway house after my release. It almost seemed to last as long as the 15 years that I did behind the walls of our fine penal system. During that time, I wasn’t allowed to go to the park, or take my girlfriend out on a date. I couldn’t sit down for those family meals or see that sunset on the beach, but I made it through it. 

    I absolutely know that I suffer from PTSD and PICS as a result of my incarceration, and I’m far from the only one who suffers from these syndromes. Anyone would feel the same way as I do if they grew up deep inside the belly of the beast. Who knows if the hypervigilance, paranoia, and anxiety will ever allow me to be at ease when I’m out in society. It took me getting out of the system completely before I could even begin to heal.

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Police, Thieves Keep Confusing Hemp For Marijuana

    Police, Thieves Keep Confusing Hemp For Marijuana

    There are over 50,000 ways to use hemp but chances are incredibly slim that it will get you high.

    To the untrained eye hemp closely resembles marijuana. From its outward, fuzzy appearance to its smell, it could be easy to make this mistake but smoking hemp will more than likely not get you high, seeing as the plant contains less than .03% or less of THC.

    According to Medium, there are over 50,000 ways to use including food, textiles, paper and even buidling materials. Some believe that hemp may also have been one of the first crops. 

    “Weed” Thieves

    While there may be thousands of uses for hemp, the one thing it won’t do is give you a psychotropic experience if you smoke it. Something that a few “weed” thieves in Philly found out after stealing some from a local grower, The Inquirer reports.

    “I thought I was in pot heaven,” said one young man who was caught stealing hemp from a crop owned by Ashleigh Baldwin on Halloween. This wasn’t the first time that somene has “lifted” hemp from Baldwin’s dairy farm.

    “There’s a lot of these dumb 18-year-olds out there doing this,” Baldwin said. The farmer uses the hemp oil from her 50-acre crop to make CBD-infused soda call CBDelight. 

    In 2018, the Trump adminsitration legalized the growing of hemp with the passage of The Farm Bill late last December. According to Fortune, marijuana supporters viewed the bill’s passage as a “an important first step in legalizing marijuana at a federal level.”

    But even though it’s federally legal, many don’t know the difference between the plants including the police.

    Police Continue To Seize Legal Hemp Plants

    Since hemp has been legalized there have been a growing number of seizures of the plant by police who are mistaking it for marijuana and the field tests they use don’t seem to know the difference. New York police received flack for seizing a 106lb hemp crop (which they thought was weed) and celebrating it on Facebook.

    In Idaho, a 6,700 pound shipment of hemp was confiscated by police in January.

     

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Dr. Phil Says Occasional Marijuana Use Will Drop IQ, Experts Call Him Out

    Dr. Phil Says Occasional Marijuana Use Will Drop IQ, Experts Call Him Out

    “When you smoke marijuana, it’s like opening your computer up and pouring water inside,” McGraw said.

    Dr. Phil is no stranger to controversy or making big making claims. But on a recent episode of Dr. Phil, the 69-year-old host made some unfounded claims about marijuana that have left some people irate, High Times reports.

    On an episode which aired last week, Dr. Phil was on a mission to help JJ, an 11-year-old, alleged pot smoker who, in a video clip, was described as violent, out of control and threatening. His mother says she is fearful that he may “hurt himself or someone else.” 

    It’s Like Opening Your Computer Up And Pouring Water Inside

    JJ then talks about his bouts of anger and says he’d like to learn to control it. After the clip, Dr. Phil offers come big claims on marijuana that left some experts scratching their heads.

    “When you smoke marijuana, it’s like opening your computer up and pouring water inside,” McGraw states. “A lot of things short out and it connects where it’s not supposed to and really creates problems. And this isn’t my opinion, this is hard, solid scientific research.”

    Experts Dispute The Claims

    The problem with this bold statement is that it is not “hard, solid scientific research.”

    “Pouring water into a computer would destroy the computer and kill all the connections,” Michael Verbora, a doctor with the Aleafia Total Health Network, told Vice CA. “I’ve treated 5,000 patients and 5,000 out of my 5,000 say cannabis makes them feel relaxed and calm.”

    “it’s ludicrous to equate smoking cannabis with pouring water on a computer,” David Juurlink, the head of clinical pharmacology and toxicology at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre in Toronto, told Vice.

    “Maybe Dr. Phil should redirect hyperbole to alcohol, tobacco, opioids, and benzos, all of which are considerably more harmful, as is exploiting your troubled preteen on national television,” Juurlink added.

    But Dr. Phil was not done driving his point home.

    “Even occasional marijuana smokers will look at a multi-point drop in IQ, even with just occasional use, like once a week or two or three times a month, you’ll see IQ drop and motivational drop across time. It changes your brain,” McGraw told 11-year-old JJ.

    The study in which Dr. Phil is referring was actually focused on “clinically-dependent” teen marijuana users.

    The Child Mind Institute reported in response to the study, “There’s no way to know if the loss in IQ is related to the cannabis itself, or what the persistent pot user is doing — or not doing — with his time (like zoning out instead of studying) or who he’s hanging out with (like-minded pals).”

    Three other studies on heavy teen marijuana use and cognitive disfunction found that marijuana use had “little impact on cognitive function or IQ decline in adolescents.”

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • "Full House" Star Andrea Barber Details Anxiety Struggles In Memoir

    "Full House" Star Andrea Barber Details Anxiety Struggles In Memoir

    “I thought there was something wrong with me. I just thought I was this idiot who couldn’t get it together.”

    Andrea Barber, who played the lovable, sassy next-door neighbor Kimmy Gibler on Full House, is opening up about her experience with postpartum depression and anxiety in her new book, Full Circle: From Hollywood to Real Life and Back Again.

    In the memoir, Barber describes how she became a child star by accident, becoming a mother and her lifetime battle with depression and anxiety.

    “I am an introverted, anxious, quiet person who plays a very extroverted, confident, loud character on television. And often, during the eight-year run of Full House, I would go to the bathroom before tapings to vomit,” Barber revealed in the book that hit shelves on Tuesday.

    The First Signs

    “At the time, I thought getting sick before performing was something everyone did,” she added. “I didn’t realize that these were the first signs of a lifelong battle with anxiety and depression, something I would hate about myself for years to come.”

    Barber spoke to USA Today about how depression brought her life to a standstill.

    “It was several months of this long slow spiral of my vomiting every morning at 3am getting worse and worse and taking longer and longer to get out of bed. And I slowly stopped eating,” she said.  “It was when I made that 5am phone call to my dad and said, ‘I need you to come pick me up. I don’t know how I am going to get through the next minute of this day, much less the whole day.’ “

    “I Thought I Was An Idiot Who Couldn’t Get It Together”

    Anxiety has a variety of symptoms that can present differently in each indiviuual. Symptoms range from agitation, restlessness and lack of concentration to fatigue, loss of memory and vomiting. 

    Vomitting was a persistent symptom for Barber.

    “I would spend an hour in the bathroom in the toilet,” she said. “I thought there was something wrong with me. I just thought I was this idiot who couldn’t get it together. That’s honestly how I felt. And it makes me sad to think that now.”

    By sharing the personal details of her struggle, Barber believes she can help others become more open to sharing their experience with mental health issues.

    “I’m hoping to create a culture of sharing stories, and it’s not just sharing a hashtag,” Barber said. “It’s more important when you’re ready to share your own personal story. Writing my story was very cathartic, but sharing my story – even a glimpse – people respond. And it creates this culture of openness and this tribe of people with this shared experience and shared pain that we’re all in this together and we can heal.”

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • How Diet Culture Harms Women in Recovery

    How Diet Culture Harms Women in Recovery

    Overlooking the physical impact that substance use disorder has had on our bodies will exacerbate disordered eating and poor mental health. As many as 72% of women with alcohol use disorder also have an eating disorder.

    Diet culture is insidious. We spend our lives obsessed with our bodies — always wishing for a smaller shape, scrutinizing the size of the portions on our plates, and unscrupulously comparing ourselves to thinner people. It’s damaging because it leads us to equate our worth with our appearance. For people in recovery, that is especially harmful. We experience physiological changes quickly — including weight gain — once we find recovery, and we can often leap to the assumption that we have a food addiction and reach for harmful, quick-fix solutions.

    But what if that weight gain is actually the inevitable evolution of our bodies in early recovery?

    When we stop taking drugs and drinking and instead prioritize basic human needs that we previously neglected, like eating, we often gain weight. Unfortunately, before allowing our bodies and appetite to achieve homeostasis, we seek to avoid feelings of discomfort which makes us vulnerable to the pervasive messaging from diet culture.

    What Is Diet Culture?

    Diet culture affects people of all body sizes, but it is particularly harmful for people who have larger bodies. It also perpetuates eating disorders because being seen as fat is believed to be one of the worst things that can happen to a person. And in many ways, it is: we’re treated differently, we’re stigmatized, and we’re valued less.

    The National Eating Disorders Association states: “Diet culture creates the belief that it’s okay to risk the life of a fat person in order to make them a thin person.”

    In order to overcome diet culture, however, we must first create awareness of what it looks like. NEDA identified the key tenets of diet culture as:

    • Encouraging rules about what, when, and how much to eat. This can manifest as restrictive diets — perhaps marketed as juice cleanses or liquid diets — and the trend to label food “good” and “bad.” We can also see it demonstrated in fasting diets and not eating within certain time frames.
    • Suggesting that people are more or less good/moral/worthy based on their body size. As a culture, we reward people for thinness. Compliments are almost always based on how someone looks, and we’re particularly congratulatory if the person we’re complimenting looks like they’ve lost weight. Conversely, we stigmatize, oppress, stereotype, shame, and harass fat people because they don’t meet our perception of how we think they should look. Fatness is the butt of many jokes, it is the source of much ridicule, and it is the reason we make assumptions about people in larger bodies. We assume that fat people are lazy, that they sit in front of the TV favoring binge-eating over exercising, and that they are probably depressed.
    • Creating thin privilege. Weight becomes a barrier to jobs, benefits, support, comfort, and accommodation. Expecting that public transportation, amusement park rides, medical facility waiting rooms, and exam rooms will accommodate you is thin privilege.
    • Using exercise as punishment. Instead of exercise being joyful, movement is seen as a means of punishing ourselves for eating too much, or a way to “earn” a “cheat meal.”
    • Viewing fat people as higher risk medically. Clinicians often recommend restrictive surgeries or prescribe medications to fat people, even though there are serious (sometimes fatal) and lifelong risks associated with these treatments. These invasive and drastic measures are often favored by doctors over evidence-based interventions, completely overlooking the patient’s quality of life and the associated risks.

    The Risks of Diet Culture for People in Recovery

    We often overlook our physical needs in early recovery, instead focusing on getting and staying sober. But programs focused solely on spiritual well-being aren’t enough. Overlooking the physical impact that substance use disorder has had on our bodies will only exacerbate disordered eating and poor mental health. Prioritizing proper nutrition, however, has been shown to significantly improve rates of recovery.

    Substance use disorder can cause considerable damage to our bodies that can take years to even out. It can disrupt metabolic and hormonal processes leading to poor calorie consumption and nutrient deficiencies. These deficiencies can be serious as they impact our mental health, vital organs, and immunity — that’s why we often feel depressed, agitated, and out of sorts in early recovery. What we eat during this crucial time has the potential to impact our mental well-being and how our bodies heal. Part of that healing often includes weight gain, whether we like it or not.

    Once we remove drugs and alcohol, we experience biochemical changes that can lead to an increased appetite and a desire to boost our low mood. Our brains are now wired to seek that pleasure externally, so we look to highly palatable foods: candy, fried foods, fast food, cake, cookies, and sugary caffeinated drinks.

    People in recovery often lack sufficient nutritional education about the right foods to eat. We also move less in early recovery, sitting in meetings, spending a lot of time in coffee shops, or sleeping. The combination of increased consumption of highly palatable foods, disrupted bodily processes, poor food choices, and a lack of exercise inevitably lead to weight gain.

    However, despite the fact that many of us were underweight when we came into recovery, we still treat any weight gain as a negative. That’s because of diet culture. We are quick to label our sudden increase in appetite and desire for highly palatable food as a problem. Some jump to the conclusion that they are addicted to sugar or food.

    Many women in recovery have a disordered relationship with food. As many as 72 percent of women with alcohol use disorder also have an eating disorder. This makes it even more crucial that we allow the process of recovery to take place and eat a balanced diet free from restrictions.

    Carbohydrates are needed to produce the neurochemical serotonin to balance our mood, help us sleep, curb food cravings, and sustain energy. Protein is crucial to healing and mental health: a lack of dopamine can trigger a return to substance use to improve mood. Fat is essential for mental health and also plays a role in stabilizing mood and reducing symptoms of anxiety and depression.

    It can be hard to accept weight gain. It leads us to look at our bodies and our relationship with food more critically. But this hyper-focus on our appearance leads to further harming our already damaged self-esteem.

    “Women in recovery have already been through a tremendous amount of shame,” says intuitive eating coach and RN Tiffany Thoen.

    “Feeling that we are not good enough or that there is something wrong with us is familiar and contributes to the desire to change ourselves to be ‘better,’” she says. “Diet culture preys on these feelings of low self-worth for profit. For women in recovery, this adds to self-loathing by becoming one more way we aren’t good enough.”

    Rather than acknowledge that our bodies need food in order to heal and what we are experiencing is a normal part of recovery, we try to reverse that weight gain by going on restrictive diets, which only undermines the healing process. It can also have disastrous consequences: it can inhibit the healing process and our ability to function, trigger co-occurring conditions like eating disorders, and risk a return to using substances.

    How Do We Combat Diet Culture?

    In order to focus on our healing, we must allow for the process of recovery and not get sucked into diet culture. Thoen recommends that we empower ourselves to reject diet culture by taking these steps:

    • Cultivate awareness around negative self-talk
    • Notice where you might see messages promoting diet culture: on TV, in magazines, or on social media
    • Consider who is benefiting from your believing these messages
    • Set boundaries with friends and family around diet talk and commenting on bodies
    • If you use social media, follow people of all shapes and sizes doing a variety of things, such as the hashtag #womeneatingfood
    • Cultivate respect, acceptance, and gratitude for your body as it is today, because our bodies are doing their best to support us
    • Do the inner work around value, worth, and self-forgiveness
    • Get support from the many available resources, books, podcasts, online groups, coaches, etc. so you don’t have to do it alone

    Don’t lose hope. As Thoen says, “Diet culture is insidious and can keep up in a cycle of self-loathing. Healing your relationship with food and body is possible.”

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Chipotle To Offer Mental Health Benefits To All Employees

    Chipotle To Offer Mental Health Benefits To All Employees

    Chipotle employees and their family members will be able to meet with a licensed counselor via phone, online or in-person.

    Chipotle recently announced its newly expanded 2020 employee asistance program. The company which has around 80,000 employees, will be expanding its 2020 employee asistance program to include mental health support, financial wellness and discounted gym memberships.

    Employees and their family members will have access to the programs even if they don’t have health insurance through the company. 

    “This is just the beginning of how we’re strategically investing in the well-being of our employees and their families,” said Chipotle’s Chief People Officer Marissa Andrada in a statement.  “Our vision for people is to create a culture where employees can thrive and pursue their passion and by extending access to all levels and enriching our Employee Assistance Program, we are ensuring that our employees can build mental fitness and bring their best selves to work every day.” 

    Chipotle employees and their family members will be able to meet with a licensed counselor via phone, online or in-person.

    Starbucks To Offer Headspace

    Coffee giant Starbucks made headlines in September when CEO Kevin Johnson announced that the company would be putting the spotlight on mental health.

    “The more thoughtful we are about creating a range of benefits that matter to our partners — that helps us attract new partners,” Johnson told CNN Business. “Over this past year, one of the things that partners have highlighted is the need for increased focus on mental health.”

    The company’s current employee asistance program offers short-term mental health assistance. By January, the company plans to offer employees’ subscriptions to Headspace, an app that teaches users how to meditate. 

    More Needs To Be Done

    While these efforts are a step in the right direction, they are merely a drop in the bucket for fast food workers who are put in a high-stress situation for mininum pay. Inadequate staffing, and unrealistic drive thru times add to the mental health strain felt by these workers. 

    A study from Mental Health America found that out of 17,000 employees, the food service industry ranks among the top 3 unhealthiest workplaces along with retail and manufacturing.

    A report by SAMHSA found that food service workers have high rates of subsatnce abuse and heavy drinking as a result of their high-stress jobs.

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Drake Launches "More Life" Cannabis Brand

    Drake Launches "More Life" Cannabis Brand

    Drake began teasing the launch in downtown Toronto last week.

    Rap superstar Drake has thrown his hat into the cannabusiness ring with a recent announcement that he will be launching his own line of cannabis-based products.

    The “Nice For What” rapper is partnering with the Toronto-based Canopy Growth Corporation to launch the More Life Growth Company, named after his 2017 mixtape More Life, Pitchfork reports. 

    Teaser Alert

    The honorary Toronto Raptor began teasing the launch of More Life Growth Company earlier this week with billboard teasers and handing out Drake More Life flower bouquets in Downtown Toronto. 

    “The opportunity to partner with a world-class company like Canopy Growth on a global scale is really exciting,” Drake said in a statement about the launch. “The idea of being able to build something special in an industry that is ever growing has been inspiring. More Life and More Blessing.”

    CNBC reported that Martha Stewart joined the Canopy Growth in as an adviser earlier this year. Stewart will help the Canadian-based company create products for people and pets.

    “I am delighted to establish this partnership with Canopy Growth and share with them the knowledge I have gained after years of experience in the subject of living,” said Stewart, in a statment. “I’m especially looking forward to our first collaboration together, which will offer sensible products for people’s beloved pets.” 

    Other Celebs With Cannabis Wellness Brands

    Drake and Martha aren’t the only celebs in the cannabis wellness business. In 2017, Whoopi Goldberg launched her Whoopi & Maya line of cannabis products for women’s health. The products.

    “Our goal is to make you feel better, not get you high. There are plenty of products out there that will get you high, but we want to make sure you are feeling OK. We want to help women who have bad cramps be able to work a full work day without excruciating pain,” The Sister Act star said about her Whoopi & Maya Line.

    “Come To My Window” singer Melissa Etheridge was an early cheerleader for medicinal marijuana after using it for pain management during her bout with breast cancer. In 2014, she launched her own line of cannabis-infused wine in partnership with Greenway Compassionate Relief.

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Matt Damon Gives Update On Ben Affleck's Recovery Journey

    Matt Damon Gives Update On Ben Affleck's Recovery Journey

    The A–list pals are teaming up for their first collaboration since Good Will Hunting. 

    At a UNICEF masquerade Halloween ball in West Hollywood, Ben Affleck, who recently left rehab for alcoholism, appeared intoxicated leading many to wonder if he had fallen off the wagon. Affleck wasted no time in confirming that he had relapsed but that his sobriety remained of the utmost importance.

    “It happens, it’s a slip, but I’m not going to let it derail me,” Affleck told paparazzi the day after the party. Since the high-profile slip, Affleck has laid low but his long-time friend and collaborator gave an update on his Good Will Hunting co-star.

    Damon Speaks

    “He’s looking great, and he’s doing great,” Damon said, according to The Blast. “We’ve been working together on this screenplay, and … he’s just doing great.”

    The duo are working on their first project since Good Will Hunting, which earned the duo an Academy Award for  best screenplay and a place in Hollywood’s A-List. According to Deadline, the duo are co-writing The Last Duel based on the book 

    Affleck has been transparent with the public about his battle with alcoholism. In 2018, Affleck addressed his decision to open up about his journey to sobriety on Today while promoting his Netflix movie Triple Frontier. 

    “Being an alcoholic, it’s part of my life, it’s something that I deal with,” Affleck told host Hoda Kotb. “It doesn’t have to subsume my whole identity and be everything but it is something that you have to work at.”

    His Rehab Stints

    The Argo director first entered rehab in 2003 for alcohol addiction. (He was driven to the Malibu rehab by pal Charlie Sheen.) Ater completing a 30-day program, Affleck returned to movie-making and found love with actress Jennifer Garner. The Daredevil stars married in 2005 and began their family. After a decade of marriage, they parted ways but Garner remained an important person in Affleck’s life.

    A couple years after they parted ways, Affleck entered rehab for the second time in 2017, with the support of Garner.

    “I’m lucky to have the love of my family and friends, including my co-parent, Jen, who has supported me and cared for our kids as I’ve done the work I set out to do,” Affleck wrote in a 2017 statement. “This was the first of many steps being taken towards a positive recovery.”

    Navigating superstardom, family life and sobriety is particularly difficult but Affleck understands that the addiction struggle doesn’t end after 30 days in rehab.

    “Battling any addiction is a lifelong and difficult struggle,” the actor wrote on Instagram in 2018. “Because of that one is never really in or out of treatment. It is a full-time commitment. I;m fighting for myself and my family.”

    View the original article at thefix.com