Author: The Fix

Kanye West: Mental Health Intervention Led to 'Scream Therapy'

Kim Kardashian staged an intervention for West’s anxiety and enlisted the help of famed motivational speaker Tony Robbins, who then turned him on to scream therapy.

Most people know the term “primal scream,” but they may not know that it was named after a type of therapy created by a psychotherapist named Dr. Arthur Janov. Now scream therapy is back in the news, thanks to Kanye West, and it may indeed be an effective way to shout away anxiety and depression.

West told the New York Times that Kim Kardashian staged an intervention for his anxiety and enlisted the help of famed motivational speaker Tony Robbins. Robbins turned him on to scream therapy, and West recalled, “He could look at me and you know, I don’t know why he mentioned suicide, but he could tell I was very low. Really medicated, shoulders slumped down, and my confidence was gone, which is a lot of the root of my superpower because if you truly have self-confidence, no one can say anything to you.”

Robbins had West stand in a warrior pose, and West screamed his head off. “I was so self-conscious about the nanny and the housekeeper that I didn’t want them to hear me screaming in the living room. I think that’s such a metaphor of something for the existence of so-called well-off people that they’re not really well-off—they won’t even scream in their own house.”

As Yahoo reports, Dr. Janov treated John Lennon and James Earl Jones, and called his research, which is called Primary Therapy, as “the most important discovery of the 20th century.”

Screaming can indeed be therapeutic, and as psychotherapist Gin Love Thompson explains in Shape, “For the inner-child that was silenced by being repeatedly intimidated, the domestic abuse survivor that couldn’t scream back when attacked, anyone who has suffered severe bullying, anyone dealing with grief or common psychological issues such as depression and anxiety, ‘scream therapy,’ or ‘primal release’ has the potential to be therapeutically beneficial.”

Thompson recommends that people should not perform scream therapy unsupervised, or rely on it as the only tool in fighting off anxiety and depression. “The client must be taught coping tools before such a therapy is implemented in order to manage what it may very likely stir up,” Thompson continues. “If attempted before the client is ready, or in poorly managed situation, it could potentially be psychologically damaging… The key is learning healthy ways to express our anger and the vital tools responsible for the processing of it.”

View the original article at thefix.com

18 July 2018
The Importance of Women’s Recovery Spaces

Women’s meetings gave me the space to talk about the unspeakable, allowing me to move closer to becoming free from the fear that has kept me shackled.[Content Note: Discussions of IPV]

I started my sobriety journey in a foreign city where there was one English speaking 12-step meeting daily, and a relatively small number of attendees. During part of the year, there were few travelers coming through the city, which meant fewer attendees. It wasn’t out of the ordinary to be the only female in the room. I was struggling to accept the gendered language of the literature we read, and had difficulty relating to the stories of the men in that space. I appreciated their support and camaraderie, but I didn’t see myself often reflected in their experiences. I didn’t know it at the time, but what I needed was to connect with other women in sobriety.

When a recovery meeting for women was suggested by a few ladies who had recently moved to the area, it was met with some resistance. The same happened when I later moved and suggested a women’s meeting in the new city where I was living. The resistance wasn’t a force in numbers, but there was a strength of conviction in the small number of people who had a problem with it. I’ve been told that a women’s-only meeting (that is also open to all non-binary, gender non-conforming, and trans identifying folks) can’t possibly be considered part of a [insert 12-step group name here] program because Tradition Three states, “The only requirement for membership is a desire to stop [drinking/using/overeating/etc].”

When it comes to recovery from addiction, gender-aware spaces are important and there has been a long history of them within 12-step programs. Identity-focused groups have existed for decades, including men’s meetings. The first meeting for Black folks began in the 1940s in Washington DC. In 1971, the first gay and lesbian AA meeting began in the same city. While some binary-gender-specific meetings are open to trans folks, there are many that are not. The transgender community still struggles to find a place to recover safely, but there are some meetings in some large cities that are specifically for people who identify as trans.

The first women in Alcoholics Anonymous (AA)–the first and most common of the 12-step programs–didn’t have other women in recovery to guide them and would receive support and sponsorship from non-alcoholic women. The founders originally disagreed on whether or not to admit women into the fellowship, at all. The first women-only AA meeting began in 1941 in Cleveland, Ohio. By 1947 there were more than a dozen women-only groups throughout country and that number has since grown exponentially, worldwide. In 1965 the first forum for women alcoholics was held as the National AA Women’s Conference. Every February since, the International AA Women’s Conference has held a conference “just for women in AA.”

The gender we identify with and the gender we were assigned at birth both play major roles in how we are socialized growing up and how society treats us as adults. Our experiences and choices are, without a doubt, guided and influenced by these societal gender norms. Men and women (generally) benefit in different ways from participation in 12-step programs. According to a paper published in the journal Addiction which looked at AA specifically, women seem to benefit the most from “improved confidence in their ability to abstain during times when they were sad or depressed.” Men tend to benefit more from an increased “confidence in the ability to cope with high-risk drinking situations and [an increased] number of social contacts who supported recovery efforts.” In this study, men benefited from experiencing less depression and having fewer drinking buddies hanging around. Women needed the confidence to experience depression and still not drink.

Women’s meetings can foster validation for feelings of sorrow, and women share their experiences on not drinking despite those feelings. Men, on the other hand, frequently cite the need to combat “self-pity” and credit tough love for their early success in sobriety. For women, it’s often about learning to abstain while in the dark feelings, not escaping from the dark feelings altogether.

The majority of people entering into treatment for addiction are victims of trauma and they present trauma-related symptoms to a significant degree. It’s a vicious cycle: trauma increases the risk of developing a substance use disorder and substance use disorders increase the risk of experiencing trauma. Johanna O’Flaherty, a psychologist specializing in trauma, says that over the course of her career she’s seen people admitted for addiction treatment and “80 to 90 percent in the case of women, have experienced trauma.” Most of the trauma is related to physical and sexual abuse.

The most common trauma in the world is sexual violence and intimate partner violence. Active substance use disorders are positively correlated with an increased risk of domestic violence. Alcohol does not cause domestic violence, but someone who is controlling and abusive is more likely to carry out violence when under the influence. The interconnections of violence, traumatic disorders, and addictions are profound.

The truth is, most sexual violence is carried out by men. A 2010 National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey found that “90 percent of perpetrators of sexual violence against women are men” and 93 percent of perpetrators of sexual violence against men are also men and overall “men perpetrate 78 percent of reported assaults.” Asking women to talk about their sexual traumas in front of men is a violent act. Yet, trauma must be worked through or it will never heal. The only way to do that is to provide safe options for people to talk about things they wouldn’t otherwise feel comfortable discussing.

Google “women in AA” and the results are heavily saturated with critiques of the program. There are suggestions for alternatives and articles on predators in the rooms of AA and NA (Narcotics Anonymous). It happens, 12 step groups are not utopias and the people in the rooms aren’t there because their lives have always been amazing and their choices ethical. It is possible to meet manipulative and abusive predators there. Strong connections between women can be a buffer and a safety net for other women who might become entangled in an unhealthy or abusive relationship in early recovery.

As a paper written by Jolene Sanders in the Journal of Groups in Addiction & Recovery explains, “Women also feel more comfortable speaking about issues not directly related to their immediate concern of alcoholism. For example, women may talk about childhood abuse, sexual abuse or harassment, and other forms of assault. Similarly, women speak more candidly than men about their relationships with significant others and tend to focus on emotions more than men. Finally, women tend to discuss mental health issues, such as depression, more than men and focus more on building self-esteem, rather than deflating pride or ego, which are primary concerns for men in AA.”

When the women’s 12-step meeting began in the city where I got sober, it was a game changer for me. I had been in a state of traumatic symptom overload. I was experiencing intrusive and vivid recollections of my traumas. I was being triggered all the time about the emotional, psychological, and physical abuse in my past. There are some things my body will not allow me to speak about in certain scenarios. It’s a physical reaction, neurological in origin, and uncontrollable. My body becomes hell bent on protecting me from past danger, literally preventing me from talking.

If I attempt to speak when my body wants to protect me, I begin stuttering and tripping over each utterance. Unbeknownst to me, what I needed was the company of people who were not men. Women’s meetings gave me the space to talk about the unspeakable, allowing me to move closer to becoming free from the fear that has kept me shackled to the past.

Women’s only spaces in recovery from trauma and addiction can help people to express things they may have been taught to not talk about in front of people outside of their gender. Or about events that they have gone through or acts they have carried out or things that have been done to them in relation to their gender identity. I’ve heard rumors suggesting that women’s meetings are not good because they’re just “man-bashing.” This is unequivocally false; just because something isn’t for you doesn’t mean it is against you.

Victims of domestic violence often stay in their situations for financial reasons. To help with this issue, Credit Cards created a guide to help victims gain the financial independence needed to get away from their abusers safely and effectively.

View the original article at thefix.com

18 July 2018
Mom & Daughter Pair Teens with Mentors to Support Mental Health

“Through that process I found out there is a humungous community of people suffering here in my own backyard.”

Today Maddie Jenkins is a thriving 17-year-old, but three years ago she was struggling–the Virginia native attempted suicide twice within 18 months.

“When you’re suffering from something that could be the smallest bit of loneliness or stress and there’s seven other people in the house, you start to feel super unimportant,” Jenkins told NBC 4 Washington. “Eventually, I got to a point when I hit rock bottom and I couldn’t take much more. I felt like there was no purpose.”

Her mother, Danielle Renken, realized that not only did she need to help her daughter, but also encourage other families to have difficult conversations about mental health.

“Through that process I really found out there is a humongous community of people suffering here in my own backyard,” Renken said

Their experience led Jenkins and Renken to start 12 Great Dates. The organization facilitates “dates” for teen girls and a trusted adult. Each date covers a different topic, ranging from bullying, social media, make-up and more. The events encourage teens and adults to come together to discuss tough topics. The hope is that this will help prevent mental health crises among teens.

Renken said that it is more than just a suicide prevention program: It’s also helping prevent self-harm and other symptoms of mental illness.

“There’s a lot of attention right now on suicide, but there are thousands more struggling with self-harm, with isolation, with depression,” she said. “And sometimes those can lead to an attempt or a suicide, but sometimes they’re just left lonely right where they are.”

Jenkins and Renken also hope that by initiating conversations they can help chip away at the stigma surrounding mental illness.

“Mental health is no different than diabetes or anything else,” Renken said. “You get them the support they need, you get them the help they need and you learn as much as you can to make sure you’re three steps ahead of whatever is coming next.”

Jenkins knows firsthand that this can make all the difference for teens who are struggling.

“It’s just that, being like I said, to take the overwhelmance off your shoulders and just come and have a good time and feel like you’re normal,” she said.

By hosting dates, she is helping provide other teens with support that they can rely on when they need a bit of extra help.

“I think we’re building, like, a little family, so that if you come in, you’re welcome,” Jenkins said. “Like, this is like, ‘Wipe your feet on the mat and come on in.’”

View the original article at thefix.com

18 July 2018
Parents Sue The Man They Say Provided Their Daughter With Heroin

“It’s time we hold these people accountable. If law enforcement has a hard time doing it, and I understand it’s a big task, we need to help them.”

Municipalities across the country have launched lawsuits related to the opioid crisis, and now in a first-of-its-kind move, the parents of a Colorado woman have filed a multimillion dollar lawsuit against the man who they say provided their daughter with heroin that nearly killed her.

“It’s time we hold these people accountable,” mother Gail Sistrunk told The Gazette. “If law enforcement has a hard time doing it, and I understand it’s a big task, we need to help them.”

Sistrunk is suing Kyle Monson, 25, the former live-in boyfriend of her daughter Carla Pena, 29. Sistrunk and Pena’s father, Carlos Pena Jr., say that Monson endangered their daughter by providing her heroin, even when she was in the hospital with a deadly infection caused by the drug.

Monson and Pena are both currently in jail pending hearing on theft charges. Pena’s parents hope that by launching the lawsuit they will be able to keep Monson away from their daughter and help their child stay sober if she is released from custody.

“This isn’t only the money, we are trying to fashion a tool to help people take back control of their communities and control this plague,” Sistrunk said. “(Carla) is obviously very important to me, but who she is, is less important. (She’s) a human being. (She) could be your sister or your friend or niece. This has to stop.”

The lawsuit says that if Pena should die of her addiction her parents would be seeking a wrongful death lawsuit. The parents tried to have criminal charges brought against Monson, but were told that they did not have enough evidence. After that, they decided to pursue the matter in civil court.

“My client is a loving parent trying to use appropriate legal processes to save her daughter from the kinds of influences, including the influence of the defendant, that have resulted in her daughter’s addiction,” said Peter Krumholz, Sistrunk’s attorney.

Pena was hospitalized this spring for an infection and eventually needed open heart surgery. The health problems were believed to be caused by her heroin use. Even during the time she was in the hospital, Pena was using heroin. Sistrunk says that Monson brought the drugs in, but Pena insisted that she brought them in herself. Eventually, the hospital banned Monson from visiting, and Pena left against medical advice.

“The staff tried to make (Monson) understand that it was likely the heroin itself that was contaminated with staph bacteria and that injecting it into (Carla’s) bloodstream was directly pumping a fresh bacteria load into her body, making it nearly impossible for her to recover,” the complaint said.

For her part, Pena seems to still be in denial about her addiction.

“I don’t think I need (rehab),” she told The Gazette from jail. “I’m a functioning addict.”

“I can’t get mad at her because it isn’t her,” Sistrunk said. “I know my daughter is in there still. She’s buried deep, but she’s in there and I just have to let her come back out.”

View the original article at thefix.com

17 July 2018
World Health Organization Adds Sex Addiction to Disease List

However, there is still some controversy among clinicians about whether it should be included.

A new mental health disorder has been added to the World Health Organization’s International Classification of Diseases list—compulsive sexual behavior disorder.

According to CNN, the inclusion came in the June update of the list, which is called the ICD-11, and is the “foundational document that clinicians and scientists around the world use to identify and study health problems, injuries and causes of death.”

The list states that compulsive sexual behavior disorder, also referred to as sex addiction, as “persistent pattern of failure to control intense, repetitive sexual impulses or urges resulting in repetitive sexual behaviour.”

WHO states that the disorder has to do with a person’s sexual behavior becoming a “central focus” of their life to the point that it becomes detrimental to “health and personal care or other interests, activities and responsibilities.” The organization also states that in order to be classified as this disorder, a person must have been struggling with it for six months or more.

Though WHO has included this disorder in its list, there is still some controversy among clinicians about whether it should be included, CNN states.

Dr. Timothy Fong, clinical professor of psychiatry at the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior at the University of California, Los Angeles, tells CNN that studying the disorder from an “academic perspective” is relatively recent.

“For centuries, people have been trying to understand what is the cause of hypersexuality,” he said. “It has been called all sorts of names over the years, but it’s really only been in the last 40 years that we’ve tried to understand it from an academic perspective.”

In 2006, CNN states, Fong authored a paper having to do with the scientific definitions of compulsive sexual behavior disorder and ways to potentially manage the disorder. He says some experts do not agree that the disorder can be classified as an addiction since no substance is abused.

“Some people would say if it looks like an addiction and smells like an addiction and there are 12-step groups to help people with the addiction, then it is, but the psychological community is split into different camps,” Fong told CNN. “Some say it is addiction, and some of those say people just have different libidos.”

Despite WHO’s inclusion of the disorder, CNN states there is no national data depicting how many people could have this disorder. It states that some regional and local data suggests it could be about 5 percent of the population, which Fong says means more people would struggle with this disorder than bipolar disorder, schizophrenia or pathological gambling.

Robert Weiss, addiction specialist and author of “Sex Addiction 101” and “Always Turned On,” tells CNN that he is happy about WHO’s decision. Weiss says he has treated more than 1,000 people with compulsive sexual behavior disorder and success in treatment comes from addressing underlying problems and creating a healthier relationship with sex.

“You don’t want to repress the desire. Sexuality is a part of being human, but you want to guide it,” Weiss told CNN.

View the original article at thefix.com

17 July 2018
Mom Charged with Homicide, Accused of Causing Infant's OD Through Breast Milk

An autopsy found methadone, amphetamine and methamphetamine in the 11-week-old’s system.

A Pennsylvania woman was charged with homicide after her infant son allegedly died of a drug overdose from drinking drugs through his mother’s breast milk.

Samantha Jones was charged Friday and held on $3 million cash bail for the tot’s April death after an autopsy found methadone, amphetamine and methamphetamine in the 11-week-old’s system, according to Bucks Local News.

At the time, the 30-year-old New Britain Township woman was prescribed methadone to help kick a painkiller addiction. She’d been breastfeeding the boy until three days before his death, when she switched to formula, she allegedly told investigators.

But around 3 a.m. the morning of April 2, the baby started crying and Jones decided to breastfeed, according to court records. It was late and she was tired, and she didn’t want to go downstairs for a bottle, she allegedly told investigators.

She wasn’t sure whether the child actually fed at all before she fell back asleep, she said. But when her husband woke up for work three hours later the child was crying, and his mother was in the other room. So he made the boy a bottle of formula, then Jones fed him, putting the child back to bed before falling asleep again herself.

When she woke up an hour later, the child was white, with bloody mucous dripping from his nose.

Jones shouted for her mother, who called 911 and tried saving the child with CPR. First responders rushed the baby to the hospital where he was pronounced dead an hour later in the emergency room.

The jailed mother also has a 2-year-old son, who is with his father, according to Jezebel. Jones is due back in court on July 23, though her lawyer argued for lower bail in the meantime, saying the death was accidental and she’s not a flight risk. Prosecutors asked for no bail at all, citing the possibility of a mandatory life sentence if the charge is upgraded from homicide to murder.

Although prosecutions for drug-laced breast milk appear to be rare, they’re not unprecedented. In 2014, a South Carolina mom was sentenced to 20 years behind bars after her baby girl died of a morphine overdose from breastfeeding.

View the original article at thefix.com

17 July 2018
Jeff Sessions Blocks MMJ Research, Despite Congress’ Approval

The DEA has been accepting applications for new growers of research cannabis for two years, but the program has not moved forward at all thanks to Sessions.

It’s been two years since the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) opened up applications for new growers of research cannabis, but two dozen applicants haven’t heard a peep from the federal government for one simple reason: Jeff Sessions doesn’t want it to happen.

The DEA decided to end the federal monopoly on growing cannabis for research purposes in 2016, opening up the opportunity to applicants from all over the United States. However, the licensing process has come to a standstill because Sessions has taken the unprecedented step of intervening in the DEA’s decisions.

Historically, the attorney general of the United States has not been involved in the regulation of scheduled drugs. Instead, the DEA has been in charge of such affairs, including “investigat[ing] the diversion of controlled pharmaceuticals and listed chemicals from legitimate sources while ensuring an adequate and uninterrupted supply for legitimate medical, commercial, and scientific needs.”

Objections to Sessions’ actions have come from both sides of the aisle, with Senators Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) and Kamala Harris (D-California) sending a bipartisan complaint letter asking Sessions to provide a timeline for processing and potentially licensing these applicants.

“Expanded research has been called for by President Trump’s Surgeon General, the Secretary of Veterans Affairs, the FDA, the CDC, the National Highway Safety Administration, the National Institute of Health, the National Cancer Institute, the National Academies of Sciences, and the National Institute on Drug Abuse,” wrote the senators in their letter. “In order to facilitate such research, scientists and lawmakers must have timely guidance on whether, when, and how these manufacturers’ applications will be resolved.”

Sessions’ Department of Justice (DOJ) missed the March 15, 2018 deadline to provide this timeline and doesn’t seem to want to cooperate.

Four applicants contacted by Reason say they haven’t heard back from the DOJ or the DEA for months. Responses included:

“‘No formal communication,” “Hoping to hear more soon,” and “Just silence.”

Sessions has suggested that the DEA isn’t prepared to supervise these proposed cannabis manufacturers despite the DEA regularly supervising dozens of new non-marijuana drug manufacturers this year.

Senators Hatch and Harris have set a new deadline for Sessions to act on these applicants: August 11, 2018.

View the original article at thefix.com

17 July 2018
Puddle of Mudd’s Wes Scantlin Celebrates 11 Months Sober

Though his past is plagued with substance-fueled meltdowns, Scantlin is ready to stay clean and move on.

Wes Scantlin, the lead singer of the band Puddle of Mudd, is celebrating 11 months sober following his public struggle with substance abuse.

“The last year has been… Getting out of incarceration and then going to CRI-Help in Burbank, California, in North Hollywood, that was awesome — it was really great,” Scantlin said in an interview with Rock Titan. “I’m 11 months sober now almost to the day, and I feel great. And we’re just playing shows and rocking.”

Prior to these clean 11 months, Scantlin was raising all kinds of trouble with the law. Last September he was arrested at Los Angeles International Airport for trying to bring on board a BB gun, resulting in being banned from LAX unless he absolutely had to travel for work. In January of 2016 he was arrested for allegedly breaking into a house he used to live in and vandalizing it. Compounding his legal troubles, he managed to miss court dates for both of these incidents.

Scantlin also had a drug- and alcohol- fueled meltdown on stage during a March 2016 concert in England. In a video of the event, Scantlin can be seen sitting on a wooden chair shirtless and flicking off his band mates as they abandoned him on stage. He rambled into the microphone as the crowd, growing increasingly annoyed with his antics, yelled expletives at him. Eventually, someone cut off his microphone but the damage had been done. These meltdowns, which reportedly included the singer taking swigs of liquor from a bottle and bragging about being high on cocaine, were a regular feature of Puddle of Mudd shows during that year, enraging fans and provoking a crowd in Ohio into booing the band off the stage. In Versailles, he was so intoxicated they forced him to sit down and lip sync most of the show.

In 2015, Scantlin was arrested six separate times, including one incident where he led sheriff deputies in Minnesota on a high speed car chase with speeds reaching 100 miles per hour before he was arrested for DUI. The breath test revealed a blood alcohol level over four times the legal limit.

But now that he’s clean, he reflects on where the idea of being a rock star came from.

“I saw Van Halen in 1984, on the ‘Jump’ tour, and I was, like, ‘I wanna do that,’” he said. “But you don’t see all the other stuff that goes with it. So I’ve learned to deal with it. And I’ve got a great family, and they’ve been behind me and supportive the whole time. And all the fans are all supportive. It’s good to stop doing something that’s killing you.”

View the original article at thefix.com

17 July 2018
Dating While (Newly) Sober

When my sponsor told me about the suggestion to not date for a year, that I should just concentrate on getting sober, I said: “I’m a really good multi-tasker.”

I thought that when I got sober, I’d get into the best shape of my life, start going to the gym all the time, train for a triathlon, become super successful and meet the man of my dreams. Basically, my version of what advertising says is the perfect life. I wasn’t thinking along the lines of what some people say: the gift of sobriety IS sobriety. Boring. I mean, I was and I wasn’t; I mostly just wanted to stop being miserable. I did a 90 and 90, got a sponsor, joined a gym, took a class in my career of choice, slept a lot, and met a guy.

When my sponsor told me about the suggestion to not date for a year, that I should just concentrate on getting sober, I said: “I’m a really good multi-tasker,” and “I can get sober and date at the same time.” Luckily for me, she didn’t say it was a rule, because there are no rules in the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous. Nowhere in the Big Book does it say: “no dating allowed in the first year.” It just talked about some people prefer a little more pepper in their sex life or whatever (page 69) and who are we to tell people what spices to proverbially cook with?

So thank god for that because in my first 90 days, I met a guy. He was a friend of a friend and when we met, he told me that he was going through a big transition in his life.

“What kind of a transition?” I asked, while thinking Oh my God! We have so much in common! We’re both going through transitions! As if a relationship could be built on that alone. Or even a marriage, because I thought that now that I had opened the book of sobriety, everything would change in the blink of an eye. It would be like I just woke up to a new life. That’s how it happens, right? I mean, don’t you kinda hear that all the time? The person’s life was shit and then they got sober and now they’re in this awesome marriage/job/house/car/babies and it all like happened in a year or maybe two? I’m smart and attractive. That shit should happen for me too! I can make that happen. I. CAN. MAKE. THAT. HAPPEN. Higher power who?

So, when I asked the guy what kind of transition, he said poetically, “It’s like my house was taken away so now I have no house, but at least I can see the moon.” And I was like “Wow, coooooool. I totally love the moon.”

For our first date, we went on a bike ride along the river, had lunch where I did not order a glass of wine (the first time that has ever happened) and ordered a coffee instead. I didn’t tell him that I was newly sober. I just told him I didn’t drink, and he said that was cool and he’s thought that maybe he should quite drinking too (uh oh); that he meditates and when he meditates, he feels super clear and drinking gets in the way of that (uh yeah). Then he walked me home and I remember feeling very sensitive and insecure. It was like I was eight years old again with a crush on a boy at school and I forgot how to walk my bike. Or talk. I felt awkward. Which is why, at 16, drinking and boys went hand in hand. Less feeling. More yay.

When I got home, I realized there was no way I could date right now. I knew that if I was rejected or even felt rejected, it would probably cause me to drink. I didn’t have the emotional tools. I talked to my sponsor about it and then called him up and said, “I really like you, but I’m going through something right now where I need to take a year off of dating. I hope you understand.” And he said, “Wow. I should probably do that, too.” Turns out he was going through a divorce and was in no place to be in a relationship or be the man of my dreams/dysfunction right now.

For the rest of the year, I concentrated on going to meetings, fellowship, making new AA friends, eating cookies and milk, binge watching Netflix at night, and it was the most awesome/horrible year of my life. I highly recommend it. I gained 10 or 20 pounds which was weird. Dudes can go through a rough time and get fat and grow a beard and still be considered likeable — but as a woman, it’s harder to hide behind a beard and 50 pounds and be cool. But a girl can dream.

So, a year later, guess who I ran into? No-house-moon dude. And yay! I was like a year sober so totally awesome and fixed, right? It. Was. On. We went on a few dates, and I honestly can’t remember if we had sex. It was only seven years ago and I know we did sexy things but I cannot for the life of me remember. I don’t think we did, because we would have needed to have the talk and well, let’s just say that the time I chose to have the talk was not a good time to have it. Take it from me when I say DO NOT ATTEMPT TO HAVE THE TALK WHEN HIS HEAD IS BETWEEN YOUR LEGS. That should be in the Big Book. It’s a real buzz kill for one and all. And our relationship (if you can call it that) ended shortly thereafter which was okay because he was seriously still mourning the loss of his ten-year marriage.

So that’s my take on dating in the first year. I do know a couple people who hooked up in their first year of sobriety and 30 years later are still married. That might happen to you. I knew that wasn’t going to happen for me. It wasn’t until year two that I met the man of my dreams AKA qualifier who really brought me to my knees (not in a good way) and into Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous which is like the nicest thing a guy can do. Kidding. But not in a way because Girrrrrrrl, I needed some of that SLAA in my life. Since then, I’ve moved to a place that I am happy to call home, am “healthy” dating and more will be revealed. But the best thing is that I like myself – dare I say love myself? I love my friends, my career, and my life and I don’t expect a man or any person or thing to save me. Because I don’t need saving any more. Thank god. Thank HP. Thank program. And thank you.

View the original article at thefix.com

17 July 2018
Nation's First-Ever Execution Using Fentanyl Halted

A New Jersey drug company filed a lawsuit claiming the state had tricked a drug distributor into selling one of the drugs to be used in the execution.

What could have been the nation’s first-ever execution using fentanyl was called off Wednesday, after a New Jersey-based drug company filed suit over the planned use of one of its drugs in the Nevada death house.

After months of begging for death and waiving appeals, double murderer Scott Dozier was scheduled to die by lethal injection using an untested three-drug cocktail in what would have been the state’s first execution in more than a decade.

“I think it’s awesome. I mean, it’s killing people all over the place,” he told VICE News before his unwanted last-minute reprieve. “You guys get pharmaceutical grade fentanyl and just bang me up man.”

But the courts intervened, after drugmaker Alvogen accused the state of using “subterfuge” to secure one of the drugs in spite of the company’s insistence that it didn’t want its product used in “botched” executions.

It appears to be the first time a pharmaceutical company has successfully stopped an execution, experts told the Associated Press.

The challenge comes as death penalty states across the nation have struggled in finding ways to carry out their most severe punishment, sometimes switching methods or drugs as pharmaceutical companies become increasingly reluctant to see their drugs used in executions.

The current Nevada execution protocol—newly implemented after previous drug stocks expired—includes the controversial sedative midazolam, the opioid fentanyl and the paralytic cisatracurium. Midazolam has been linked to allegedly botched executions in Ohio, Arkansas, Alabama and elsewhere.

In Tuesday’s lawsuit, Alvogen said the state had tricked drug distributor Cardinal Health into selling them midazolam by having it sent to a pharmacy in Las Vegas instead of to the prison, according to CBS News.

“While Alvogen takes no position on the death penalty itself,” the company wrote in court filings, “Alvogen’s products were developed to save and improve patients’ lives and their use in executions is fundamentally contrary to this purpose.”

A state solicitor general pushed back against the lawsuit, saying Nevada didn’t do anything wrong and regularly has its drugs shipped to Las Vegas.

This wasn’t the first controversy Nevada faced over its execution drugs. Last year, Pfizer asked the state to return any drugs it planned using to kill prisoners—but prison officials refused. And this year, another pharmaceutical company voiced objections to the use of its drugs in lethal injections, though they didn’t take the step of filing a legal claim.

Dozier’s death sentence stems from a 2002 slaying when he lured 22-year-old Jeremiah Miller to the Las Vegas strip in order to rob him of $12,000 that he planned to buy ephedrine with, one of the ingredients needed for making meth. After shooting Miller in the head, police say Dozier let him bleed out in a bathtub before dismembering him, stuffing his torso and some limbs into a suitcase, then tossing it in a dumpster.

Afterward, Dozier’s friends started coming forward with tips about the case. One even told police he’d spotted a body holding its own head inside Dozier’s hotel room. A jailhouse snitch alleged that he’d helped Dozier bury a man in the middle of the Arizona desert in 2001—and he led investigators to a dismembered body. Dozier was convicted in the Copper State case before he was transferred back to Nevada to stand trial for the would-be meth-maker’s slaying.

While in jail for the Arizona murder—one in which he still maintains his innocence—Dozier tried killing himself by overdosing on antidepressants, which landed him in a coma for two weeks.

“I’m not looking for mercy,” he told the Marshall Project. “Nevada said stop behaving this way or we will kill you, and I kept behaving that way.”

So, in 2016, he penned a letter to the judge, waiving his appeals and begging for execution. So-called “volunteers” are a death row rarity, and Dozier’s gregarious pursuit of death attracted national attention.

Now, it’s not clear when he might face another death date, though a Clark County judge this week scheduled a hearing for September.

View the original article at thefix.com

17 July 2018