Author: The Fix

Marijuana Theft Grows Rampant In Washington

The state’s attempt at keeping the industry transparent may be helping thieves stake out a “laundry list of targets.”

Marijuana theft is a problem in Washington state.

Recreational marijuana was approved in 2012 by Washington voters, and the legal marijuana industry was built on the promise of transparency.

Washington marijuana producers are required to report on every step of the process. “We plant a seed, we report it. You take a cutting, you report it. How long you dry. What the final weight was. How soon did it go out [the] door? What did you sell, who did you sell it to, for how much? What did they mark it up to? Easily 25% of our time is given over to tracking,” Regina Liszanckie, a producer-processor in Seattle, told Politico.

All of this information is posted online and available to the public.

The Targets

Some suspect that the state’s attempt at keeping the budding industry transparent may be leading thieves to businesses, by providing a “veritable laundry list of targets,” according to one Seattle cannabis grower who has lost $200,000 worth of marijuana to multiple burglaries last summer.

They came to suspect that the availability of the public record was causing the repeat burglaries, upon analyzing the pattern of burglaries among marijuana growers in the Seattle area.

They noticed a similar pattern in each case. The businesses tended to be smaller and less likely to afford the surveillance and security tools to protect against thefts. They would also somehow be hit at peak inventory and robbed of thousands—“even tens and hundreds of thousands”—of dollars worth of product.

Now faced with a burglary problem, marijuana businesses say they are suffering for the sake of industry transparency. What’s worse, the state does not properly track marijuana thefts.

“It’s a huge risk for us to have that out in the public domain,” said Spencer Shrote of Royal Tree Gardens in Tacoma. “It puts a target on our backs. It makes things less safe.”

Despite the state taking steps to clamp down on cannabis diversion to the illegal market, Shrote does not have much hope that the problem will be resolved any time soon. “We’ve just accepted it’s going to happen,” he told Politico, “because of the state of industry and the amount of public data that’s available.”

View the original article at thefix.com

27 August 2019
Dax Shepard Speaks On 15 Years Of Sobriety: I'm On Fire To Be Alive

Shepard says that being sober for so long has allowed him to recapture an energy and a joy for life that he hasn’t felt since he was a child.

Dax Shepard of Punk’d and various comedy films including Hit and Run and CHiPs sat down with Talib Kweli on a recent episode of People’s Party and talked about his former cocaine use and how he feels after spending 15 years sober.

After being asked about the subject by Kweli, Shepard began by crediting his sobriety to his current marriage to actress Kristen Bell and their two daughters.

“I wouldn’t have a family without sobriety first and foremost,” he said. “Bell would’ve never signed up for the old version of me.”

Beyond that, Shepard says that being sober for so long has allowed him to recapture an energy and a joy for life that he hasn’t felt since he was a child.

“I just thought if I could ever get back to the point where when I walk out my door I’m thrilled to go on an adventure with nothing in me but oatmeal? That’s the goal, and I can honestly say for about the last seven years, I’m on fire to be alive.”

In spite of his enthusiasm for sobriety, Shepard believes that everyone should try certain drugs at least once, if they can.

“I don’t think anyone should leave planet Earth without doing mushrooms and ecstasy. I hope my children do mushrooms when they get older.”

He stressed that he does not, however, want his children to do cocaine, as he feels that the intense stimulant “will make you not allowed to do all the other things.”

Moderation & Marriage

Shepard has expressed support for moderate drug use in the past, hitting back at a tweet from CBS’s The Talk that questioned Kristen Bell’s smoking cannabis around her sober husband.

“That would be like a diabetic expecting their partner to never eat dessert,” Shepard replied. “Get real!”

Shepard first started using drugs in high school, though he maintains that he did not have a problem until after he turned 18. In 2012, he opened up to Us Weekly about his drug use in young adulthood, saying he took “cocaine, opiates, marijuana, diet pills, pain pills, everything,” along with drinking.

“Mostly my love was Jack Daniel’s and cocaine,” Shepard said. “I lived for going down the rabbit hole of meeting weird people. Of course, come Monday I would be tallying up all the different situations, and each one was progressively more dangerous. I got lucky in that I didn’t go to jail.”

After fighting frequently with Bell over his substance use, Shepard got sober in 2004 and has been going strong ever since.

View the original article at thefix.com

27 August 2019
Bam Margera Back To Rehab For Third Stay In A Month

Sources told TMZ that Margera voluntarily entered the facility on August 22 and was intent on staying sober with this visit.

Bam Margera reportedly returned to a rehabilitation facility to seek treatment for dependency for substance abuse issues, which was the third such check-in in less than a month. TMZ claimed that the former Jackass and Viva La Bam star entered a new treatment center on August 22, 2019 one day after being seen drinking at a bar at Los Angeles.

Margera’s previous attempts were borne out of a meeting with television personality and psychologist Dr. Phil that was part of an intervention by his wife and mother. Margera entered a treatment facility as part of the conversation, but left soon after, and was arrested on trespassing charges at the Luxe Hotel in Los Angeles. He then checked into a second facility, but reportedly left over cell phone restrictions.

Sources told TMZ that Margera voluntarily entered the facility on August 22 and was intent on staying sober with this visit. Footage of Margera drinking at a bar in Los Angeles was posted on the TMZ site on the same day.

Past Visits

Margera has been to rehab facilities on numerous occasions in the past few years, including three stints in 2018 and early 2019 alone. He checked out of a facility after a few days in early January 2019, and posted a message to Dr. Phil on Instagram in which he sought help for his condition and for the alleged chaos in his home.

TMZ reported that Phil McGraw reached out to and met with Margera and his family on August 5. The three-hour face-to-face culminated in Margera’s agreement to return to treatment, but he again checked out of the facility after only a few days and later turned up at the Luxe Hotel, where he was detained on August 14 by a hotel staffer due to disruptive behavior and a refusal to leave the hotel. Police arrived and placed Margera under arrest; after posting bail, he again returned to treatment for the second time in August 2019.

However, Margera refused to honor the facility’s request to surrender his cell phone, and again exited treatment. In an Instagram post from January 2019, Margera wrote that he did not “do well with not being allowed to Facetime by wife and kid” or being unable to “answer important calls with important people.”

The treatment center Margera entered on August 22 is a different facility that the one employed in his previous attempts. According to TMZ, this third try still carries Dr. Phil’s support.

View the original article at thefix.com

27 August 2019
In Recovery, on Suboxone, and in the Weed Business

In print and online, I preached cannabis. In life, I practiced therapy and Suboxone.

I had a few days left on my Suboxone script when I interviewed Justin “Bong King.” He was a professional bong-racer and self-described champion of the competitive smoking circuit. An affable guy, nonetheless his was an image of American cannabis long past, pushed aside by marketing grads and stay-at-home moms who sold branded CBD and touted the benefits of micro-dosing.

But Justin drew a crowd, and an entourage to boot. And his natural talent for hitting the fastest gram of weed would corner me into compromising my recovery.

Throughout my career as a cannabis journalist, I’ve kept silent about my sobriety. Finding freelance gigs is hard enough without the added burden of having to be that guy. Besides, if I learned anything from active addiction, it was how to lie at my job.

Covering Cannabis Events and Lying About My Sobriety

But as time passed, I felt withdrawn and disconnected. My recovery had no place in the cannabis industry. Moreover, medication-assisted treatment (MAT) seemed anathema to its goals, according to experts and the news. Rep. Matt Gaetz openly questioned whether buprenorphine and methadone are “a more effective offramp [to opioid use disorder] than medical cannabis.” CNN announced that CBD cures heroin addiction. And the editors of Leafly figured out how to combat the opioid crisis with medical cannabis two years prior.

After 20 years, recovery had finally become routine. As a cannabis journalist; as an editor in chief — so had my lies.

Some lies were easy. Weekly therapy appointments usually coincided with editorial meetings or deadlines. I worked from home, my boss was lax, and anyway, I kept hours around the clock. Monthly visits to my psych and 30-day Suboxone refills upped the number of undisclosed appointments I logged, but still, no one seemed to care.

On assignment was a different story. I covered cannabis expos or dispensary openings — events where the drug laws were lax and the supply was liberal. At a hotel in Hell’s Kitchen, I spent three nights alone avoiding networking galas and after-parties hosted by music moguls turned industry entrepreneurs. In the world’s largest dispensary off the Las Vegas strip, I dodged more questions than I asked when leaving empty-handed. With hand waves and head shakes and less-than-assertive no’s, I passed over pot by lying about my sobriety.

But face to face with Justin “Bong King,” there was nowhere to hide — no hotel room to run to, no door from which to make a quick exit. There was a crowd around us, boxing us in as he finished his gram smoking demonstration. I shook his hand and stumbled over my words as I signed off the segment on camera.

It was either a contact high or placebo effect, or maybe just panic anticipating the piss test I would take in the next few days.

Intensive Outpatient: 12 Steps and Scoring Drugs

When I had about two months left in my treatment program, I walked out of group for good. It was an intensive outpatient program; a six-month IOP run by Philly’s NHS that championed the Big Book and 90 days. For a minute it worked, but it’s drug rehab mired in a puritan past. The 12 steps are great, but they shouldn’t be a front-line defense.

Besides, all I did there was make friends and score drugs. Thirty addicts in a room is an excellent opportunity to network and learn.

By Easter Sunday that year, I felt broken. I was in a dirty motel on Route 1, hopped up on Benzedrex cottons and a $60 baggie of hex-en I purchased online from China. After 20 years of addiction, I had no drug of choice, save for anything that made me high.

My wife and kids back home slept together in one bed, a little less worried than the last time I disappeared. I was out of work and estranged from everyone. My best friend joined AA and realized I was one of his people, places, and things.

All I had was my family, and I was losing them too.

One lie allowed my addictions to grow without the worry of what would happen tomorrow. It’s the lie I told myself when I stole my ex-wife’s Dilaudid two days after her shoulder surgery. It’s the lie that made me laugh when I snorted enough Adderall to make my nose blue. And it’s the same lie that made me indignant when my ex-girlfriend’s brother became angry that I was a sloppy drunk in front of his small children.

On the Monday after Easter, I drove home before sunrise. It was dark and muggy and difficult to see through my tears and dilated pupils. When I got home, I faced my wife and children and ended the lie that had followed me through two decades of addiction.

“I can’t stop,” I whispered. That week, I discussed MAT options with my doctor. I’ve been in recovery since that day.

Cannabis as the Magic Bullet for the Opioid Crisis?

Tyler Sash won the Super Bowl in his rookie year with the New York Giants. At the time, he didn’t know he only had a few years left to live. A sixth-round draft pick out of Iowa, he overdosed on a combination of methadone and hydrocodone at the age of 27.

“[He] asked if he could smoke marijuana for his pain like the other players,” recalled his one-time girlfriend, former Miss Iowa and reality-show contestant Jessica VerSteeg. I interviewed VerSteeg when she was promoting a new blockchain-bitcoin something-or-other product in the cannabis space. She recounted Sash’s tragic tale during our interview, explaining how it became the backbone of her business.

“I wanted to change the way that other people saw cannabis,” she said.

VerSteeg’s article drew in readers, as did most CEO and celebrity interviews. Her story reminded me of how lonely my secrecy about my recovery had become. I often wished I could reach out and say that I understood. There are millions of people with substance use disorders, and we’re all so alone.

But like most of the executive class in the cannabis industry, her hot take on opioids ended up being bullshit. Conventional wisdom in the cannabis industry had run somewhat amok on this topic, and it forced me, I felt, into compromising everything.

There was the DEA agent who was so disgusted with opioids that he became a cannabis executive. Without irony, he told me that more research would prove the plant’s medicinal value. The head of an “innovation accelerator” in my city held a conference on the role of medical cannabis in the opioid crisis. He quoted research showing that states with medical cannabis laws have lower rates of opioid overdose deaths. Cannabis, they were convinced, would solve the opioid epidemic.

But Where’s the Evidence?

“Morphine, when it was introduced, was promised to cure what they called alcoholism at the time,” Dr. Keith Humphreys told me. A professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford University, he’s also worked at the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy under Presidents Bush and Obama. “Then, people got addicted to morphine, and cocaine was introduced.”

He continued: “In general, there’s been this enthusiasm of if we just add a different class of addictive drug on top then that will drive the other addictions out. Generally, what happens is we get more addiction to that drug, and we still have the original problem.”

I spoke with Dr. Humphreys after reading his research on cannabis laws and opioid overdose mortality rates. Contrary to conventional wisdom, he found the correlation to be spurious at best. It’s alarming — though not unsurprising — to see the industry ignore his findings. Several states, including Pennsylvania, where I live, approved opioid use disorder as a qualifying condition for medical cannabis.

“I couldn’t recommend something medically without clinical trials, well-controlled by credible groups [and] checked for safety,” Dr. Humphreys said. He explained that in the case of cannabis, there was little more than these state-level correlational studies. “None of that has been done.”

“I’m amazed and disappointed that we don’t care more about people who are addicted to heroin [and other] opioids, that we would wave through something like [medical cannabis] without making sure that it will help people, not hurt them,” he continued, noting that cannabis has shown no efficacy as either a replacement for or an adjunct to any MAT therapy.

Listening to Dr. Humphreys made me realize how little I stand up for what I believe. Sometimes, when you’re an addict and you lie so much, you lose any sense of truth.

Tyler Sash’s family asked Jessica VerSteeg to stop using his name to promote her business. According to a report in the Des Moines Register, they didn’t want his name associated with drugs anymore, neither opioids nor marijuana. VerSteeg refused, repeating the story she told me to several news outlets.

For two years, I wrote about and reported on the emerging cannabis industry while hiding my ongoing recovery. In print and online, I preached cannabis while practicing therapy and Suboxone.

Even in recovery, you can still have regrets.

View the original article at thefix.com

27 August 2019
Johnson & Johnson Ordered To Pay $572 Million For Role In Oklahoma Opioid Crisis

According to the ruling, the pharmaceutical company “engaged in false and misleading marketing of both their drugs and opioids generally.”

In a decision that may have far-reaching implications for pharmaceutical companies across the United States, an Oklahoma judge has ruled that Johnson & Johnson must pay more than $572 million for its alleged role in helping create the state’s opioid crisis. Cleveland County District Judge Thad Balkman wrote in his ruling that the company and its pharmaceutical subsidiary, Janssen, “engaged in false and misleading marketing of both their drugs and opioids generally,” which he deemed a “public nuisance.”

Johnson & Johnson denied the allegation and plan to appeal Balkman’s verdict, which observers on both sides of the argument have been closely monitoring to determine its impact on a federal trial involving nearly 2,000 cases against opioid manufacturers slated for the fall of 2019.

Deceptive Marketing Practices

As both NBC News and CNN noted, final filings submitted earlier this month and statements in court by Oklahoma Attorney General Mike Hunter and other attorneys for the state argued that Johnson & Johnson had aggressively pursued medical professionals to prescribe opioid medication while minimizing the potential risk of addiction and/or overdose death through deceptive marketing practices.

Testimony from some of the relatives and friends of the more than 6,000 Oklahomans who died from opioid overdoses underscored Hunter’s assessment that the company had ignored scientific research in pursuit of a “magic pill” that would produce major profits.

The result, as Hunter said, was the “worst man-made public nuisance this state and our county has ever seen: the opioid crisis.”

Attorneys for Johnson & Johnson argued that the state failed to prove any elements of its case, from Janssen’s specific role in contributing to the opioid crisis to the impact of their marketing promotions. They added that the public nuisance accusation was nothing more than “potshots taken from promotional statements” and a misinterpretation of a law initially employed in property cases.

But Judge Balkman sided with the state, noting that the allegedly misleading marketing was “more than enough to serve as the act or omission necessary to establish the first element of Oklahoma’s public nuisance law.”

Major Public Health Crisis

The state initially asked for an abatement plan of approximately $17 billion, which would be applied to addiction treatment and prevention programs over a period of 30 years. The plan, calculated by Christopher Ruhm, a professor of public policy and economics at the University of Virginia, included the costs of addiction treatment, physician education plans, care for babies born with neonatal abstinence syndrome, prescription tracking programs, grief support and more over the next three decades.

“It is a lot of money. It’s also a major public health crisis,” Ruhm said.

Balkman’s verdict called for an abatement program of $572,102,028 – about one year’s worth of payments under the state’s proposals. In his ruling, he wrote that “The state did not present sufficient evidence of the amount of time and costs necessary, beyond year one, to abate the opioid crisis.”

Johnson & Johnson Plan to Appeal

Johnson & Johnson’s executive vice president and general counsel, Michael Ullmann, said in a statement that his company was innocent of any wrongdoing and planned to appeal.

He also wrote “The unprecedented award for the State’s ‘abatement plan’ has sweeping ramifications for many industries and bears no relation to the Company’s medicines or conduct.”

But as CNN noted, the case could also have considerable impact on the numerous lawsuits filed against drugmakers by states, cities and communities across the country. Carl Tobias, a professor of law at the University of Richmond in Virginia, said in early August that attorneys have been “watching and learning from the case Oklahoma has assembled, while defendants have been watching for vulnerabilities.”

View the original article at thefix.com

27 August 2019
What Tech Addiction Treatment Looks Like

Though the treatment has been described as intense, patients with gaming disorder say it has allowed them to regain control over their lives.

About 90 minutes south of Amsterdam, Jan Willem Poot helps treat young people who have gaming and other technology addictions at the Yes We Can clinic, one of the few facilities dedicated to helping youth overcome tech addictions.

“It is safe here,” Poot told The Guardian.

Poot, who is in recovery himself, recognized the need to provide treatment for gaming addiction, especially with few other options around. His patients come for a 10-week intensive treatment, with the option for four weeks of aftercare. They’re not allowed any tech devices, or any contact with the families during the first five weeks.

Although it is intense, patients like Tom, 17, say that the treatment at the Yes We Can clinic has allowed them to regain control over their lives.

“I changed through the course of the program, slowly but surely,” Tom said. “At first I was super anxious and I could not talk to anyone, but slowly I started to open up and became comfortable. I started to face my avoidant behavior and understand why I do it. I started to open up about my past and figure things out.”

Tom, like any person with addiction, still copes with residual effects of his condition even now that he is in recovery.

“I still have a hard time. Life is not easy but I have learned to cope through the suffering and tough times,” he said.

Another patient at the clinic, Victor, 24, said that although people may be skeptical about gaming addiction, it was very real to him.

“It was helpful having treatment with other addicts. I recognized a lot of stories,” he said. “One time I heard a story from a guy who was an alcoholic, and without mentioning the word alcohol everything was my story. By seeing that it also helped me see that addiction is a wide and broad subject to talk about.”

Poot said that more and more people are seeking treatment for gaming and other tech addictions. Last year he treated 90 people for gaming addiction, up from just 30 in 2016. Halfway through 2019, 55 people have come through the program. Poot says that with screens everywhere, it’s easy for technology to become an unhealthy coping mechanism.

“They have found a way to feel better just by being in the online world because it is escapism,” he said.

He’s even seeing more people come in for treatment for social media addiction, especially teenage girls.

“That has a lot to do with personality disorder, where they are so insecure they need confirmation by sending 20-30 selfies or Instagram posts a day—they need the likes to get confirmation that they are still attractive or liked,” he explained.

View the original article at thefix.com

27 August 2019
How Audiobooks Improved One Man's Mental Health

“By simply listening, I easily get transported elsewhere and beyond. Audiobooks are such wonders of life,” the man describes.

Audiobooks have become an industry unto their own. They’re an easier way for people to digest a great story, and many top actors have made a great living narrating them. Now one journalist, Arvyn Cerezo, is telling Book Riot how listening to audiobooks improved his mental health.

As Cerezo relates, he made a commitment to read everyday for what’s known as “bibliotherapy,” which means reading becomes part of your mental health program. Yet it was hard to make reading part of his everyday routine when life got hectic.

At first, Cerezo used to be what he called “a purist and elitist,” and thought that actually “reading books was the only thing that counted. But then I remembered one of my university lessons about the ancient and beautiful tradition of oral storytelling… [It’s] not much different from the audiobooks that we have been enjoying for decades.”

Once Cerezo started listening, he loved it, and wished he started listening to audiobooks sooner. He also discovered that audiobooks calmed him down and made him “placid” before doing freelance writing assignments that made him anxious.

Another wonderful discovery was that audiobooks were great for blocking out outside noises and distractions. “It’s a total immersion for me because I get to read along with the narrator…I’m the type of reader who wants total silence while reading. I always lose focus when someone’s blasting music or talking nearby. I’m very grateful that audiobooks block all of them and more. By simply listening, I easily get transported elsewhere and beyond.”

“Audiobooks are such wonders of life,” he raves. “With them, I still get to continue doing my bibliotherapy to boost my mental health and enjoy wonderful stories from different cultures while still pursuing life’s opportunities.”

As it turns out, bibliotherapy has been around for a long time. As a report on Medical Xpress explains, the concept has been around since World War I, and the term was invented by a writer and minister named Samuel McChord Crothers. A woman named Helen Mary Gaskell took the concept even further, and once she built a sizable library, it became affiliated with the Red Cross in 1915.

Gaskell said, “Surely many of us lay awake the night after the declaration of war, debating… how best we could help in the coming struggle… Into the mind of the writer came, like a flash, the necessity of providing literature for the sick and wounded.”

View the original article at thefix.com

27 August 2019
"A Million Little Pieces" Director Sam Taylor-Johnson Talks Addiction

Johnson described how she connected to the controversial addiction memoir in a recent interview.

A Million Little Pieces, written by James Frey, was a harrowing account of addiction that became a huge bestseller once it was anointed by Oprah Winfrey’s Book Club. But it wasn’t long before it all came crashing down around Frey, when The Smoking Gun website uncovered a number of untruths in his book.

Now A Million Little Pieces has been adapted into a film, directed by Sam Taylor-Johnson, who also helmed the big screen adaptation of Fifty Shades of Grey. Like millions of others, Johnson read the book in 2003, and it stayed strong in her memory.

“I remember reading it and being really overtaken by it,” she told The Guardian. “I was in the world with him and on the journey.”

Johnson, whose actor-husband Aaron Taylor-Johnson stars in the film, told Vogue the book “really shook my DNA. The years went by and that feeling never diminished, nor did the experience of re-reading the book…A Million Little Pieces is a book you can laugh and cry with in equal measure. This isn’t just the tale of recovery, it’s a story about hope, life and a community that supports each other through the process of recovery.”

Becoming A Feature Film

There were previous attempts to turn A Million Little Pieces into a film that fell apart, but as Frey told Vogue, when Johnson contacted him, he let her have the rights for free, and gave her free license to make the film however she wished.

“I did visit Hazelden (where I went to rehab) with Sam,” Frey explained. “I showed them all the real locations where the events of the book took place. They met a number of people who were at the treatment center when I was there 26 years ago and talked to them. But for the most part, I was exceedingly hands-off.”

When asked about the Oprah controversy, Johnson said, “It’s obviously something that’s part of its history and that history has been chequered, but it wasn’t anything that we were going to deal with. We did talk about whether we should address it within the movie, but I just wanted to make a film purely of the book, what that meant to me.”

“As a writer, I don’t feel a particular responsibility to do anything but write the best book I can,” Frey told Vogue. “I continue to work in that grey area between fact and fiction. The core of the story is what happened: I went to rehab, I’ve been sober for 26 years, and all my friends but one in that facility are now dead. I often draw the analogy of what I do and what painters do when they paint a self-portrait – it’s never a perfect photographic representation of their own image, and A Million Little Pieces isn’t the prefect photographic representation of my own image. But it’s true to who I am, it’s true to the experience I’ve lived and it’s true to my life.”

Johnson previously had a drinking problem, which is why the book “resonated with me on a personal perspective having lost people very dear to me through troubles with addiction. And the pain of the loss of friends never diminishes really.”

View the original article at thefix.com

26 August 2019
Open-Air Crack Market Plagues Paris Neighborhood

A local police chief said that the crisis came to a head when low-income apartments were gentrified, forcing many people onto the streets.

Each week, in a neighborhood on the outskirts of Paris—caught between turmoil and progress—police clear out a well-populated “open-air market” for crack cocaine, only to have it reappear almost instantly.

The neighborhood, La Colline, has long had challenges brought by poverty, but the flourishing crack market has made it unbearable, say drug users and residents alike.

Charly Roué, a drug user in the neighborhood, told The New York Times that drug users “compare La Colline to hell.” He continued, “The locals who live nearby and suffer from the chaos we bring must call it hell too.”

Rafia Bibi, an immigrant from Tunisia, said that the drug use has destabilized the neighborhood that she moved to. “We had our share of burned cars, weed trafficking and prostitution, but the violence and misery among migrants and drug addicts have made this neighborhood barely livable,” she said.

A homeless immigrant, Nivmud Singh, said that crack cocaine, which sells for about $17 for a rock, permeates the area of La Colline.

“Crack is everywhere here, it’s impossible to escape from it,” Singh said.

What Led To The Crisis

Emmanuelle Oster, a police chief in the area that includes La Colline, said that the crisis came to a head when low-income apartments were gentrified, forcing many people onto the streets. That, she said, transformed “an invisible phenomenon into an apocalyptic situation.”

“That just can’t exist in a city like Paris in the 21st century,” she said.

Oster is using a heavy police presence in the area to try and fight the crimes, but it is an uphill battle. She said that more drug traffickers have been arrested in the first half of 2019 than in all of the previous year, but despite that the problems still exist.

Aid groups are also working to try to help the situation, but to little avail.

“We urge them to come see us in our offices so they can find some rest, but they say we’re too far from them” said Yves Bouillet, a social worker in the area. The office of the charity that Bouillet works for is about two miles away.

Officials plan to open a safe use facility for drug users, but local residents, including Toufik Aouchiche, worry that will not solve the epidemic.

“After all we’ve been through, city officials want to let the drug addicts stay by setting up a drug room here,” Aouchiche said. “But have they asked us what we think about it?”

Still, drug users like Roué say that the only way to stop using is to get away.

He said, “The only way to stop smoking crack is to leave Paris. We should all stay away from La Colline.”

View the original article at thefix.com

26 August 2019
Ben Affleck, One Year Sober, Is “In A Great Place”

The Triple Frontier actor, who completed a 40-day stay in treatment for alcoholism last year, is doing well.

Actor Ben Affleck is officially one year sober, after a long-time battle with alcoholism. After a successful 40-day stint at a treatment center, the actor-director is now healthy, happy and dedicating himself to his loved ones.

“Ben is in a great place both in his recovery and life,” someone close to Affleck told People. “He continues to want to be the best father and friend he can be.”

This is especially true for actress Jennifer Garner, Affleck’s ex-wife, and the three kids they had together: 13-year-old Violet, 10-year-old Seraphina, and 7-year-old Samuel.

“He and Jen do amazingly well at co-parenting the children,” reveals People’s source. “They have shared a great summer with the kids doing outings, travels, etc. They have a very trusting and special relationship… Ben’s relationship with Jen is strong. She’s really supportive of Ben, and they work very closely on parenting their kids.”

Self-Care

The key to his happiness lies in being able to find time to take care of himself.

“Ben has found balance between his work and home life,” told the source. “He remains committed to a number of treatment and wellness methods that focus on his health.”

Affleck’s most recent leg of rehab became public knowledge when he was spotted in a car with Garner, who was driving him to a treatment center on August 22 of last year. It would be Affleck’s third time in.

The actor went public about his struggles the following October in a post on Instagram.

Going Public

“This week I completed a forty-day stay at a treatment center for alcohol addiction and remain in outpatient care,” wrote Affleck in the post. “Battling any addiction is a lifelong and difficult struggle. Because of that, one is never really in or out of treatment. It is full-time commitment. I am fighting for myself and my family.”

He spoke more about his struggles on Today earlier this year, speaking about how he lives with alcoholism but is determined to not let it define him.

“It doesn’t have to subsume my whole identity and be everything but it is something that you have to work at,” he said.

Now, he’s clear-minded and spending more time with his children.

“He is really enjoying his summer with the family,” another source told People. “Ben was just doting over his kids.”

View the original article at thefix.com

26 August 2019