Category: Addiction News

Actress Lily Collins Details Bulimia Battle In New Memoir

Collins reveals in her new autobiography how divorce played in a role in her eating disorder.

British actress Lily Collins has published a new memoir in which she addresses a long and debilitating struggle with an eating disorder during her teenaged years.

Collins, who is the daughter of rock veteran Phil Collins and the star of such films as Mirror Mirror, wrote in Unfiltered: No Shame, No Regrets, Just Me that her desire to control her weight began with an addiction to exercise and laxatives and progressed to bingeing and purging.

Collins also addressed her father’s alcoholism, which took hold as she was battling her eating disorder. Support from their family members helped both Lily and her father gain perspective on their respective diseases and as a result, grow closer. “It doesn’t define how I live my life daily any more,” she said.

By Collins’ account, her childhood was marked by upheaval: Her father split from her mother, Jill Tavelman, in a costly divorce when she was five, and married his third wife, Orianne Cevey. Collins said that she “couldn’t handle the pain and confusion surrounding [her] dad’s divorce” and longed for his presence and approval. His absence left Collins feeling that she “wasn’t enough,” and she plunged into a punishing regime of extreme exercise and diet moderation through chewing gum and drinking coffee.

By her mid-teens, Collins had turned to diet pills and laxatives to keep her weight down, and she began bingeing and purging on junk food. “I’d be in tears on the floor, jamming my hand down my throat and trying desperately to gag,” she wrote. Her menstrual cycle stopped for a period of two years, leaving her feeling like “a young woman in a little kid’s body.”

As Collins continued to battle her disease into her early 20s, she saw that her father had spiraled into alcoholism, a condition he also fought for years. “Once I was aware, it was all I could see,” she wrote. “I was convinced that one day, I would wake up to a phone call from halfway across the world, saying that it had finally gone too far.”

During this period, Lily also found herself in a revolving door of relationships with men consumed by their own dependency issues. The toxicity of these interactions reached its lowest point when a boyfriend pressured her to isolate herself from her friends and family and even threatened her with verbal and physical violence. That incident provided Collins with the impetus to make crucial changes to not only improve her health but also her relationship with her father, who also took control of his life and dependencies.

With her newfound health and happiness also came stardom as an actress in such films as The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones and an upcoming BBC television adaptation of Les Miserables; Collins also tackled the issue of eating disorders head-on in the 2017 Netflix film To the Bone, in which she played a young woman struggling with anorexia.

Collins is keenly aware of her past struggles but also acknowledges how far she’s come since that time. “It’s never going to be erased because it’s a part of who you are,” she said. “But it doesn’t define how I live my life daily any more.”

View the original article at thefix.com

7 January 2019
Rage Bender: Addicted to Anger

Anger can be an addiction: it’s energizing and makes you feel powerful. When I was using and even afterwards, I used my rage to control, bully, and manipulate people.

“Anger is a short madness.”
– Horace

I just got off a rage bender. Two full weeks of terrifying my friends and family. Days of driving around and like some deranged queen in Game of Thrones ordering (to absolutely no one): “Destroy her.”

“I’ve never heard or seen you like this,” I kept hearing. Yep. Because this was an old part of me I thought I’d gotten rid of, or at the very least, tamed. Boy was I wrong.

At first I thought it was a bout of agitated mania from a little med fiddling. “This definitely feels chemical,” I kept saying to everyone as I continued to engage in behavior that fueled my rage: talking about my archenemy, reading about her personal and legal problems, feeling righteous indignation and then, more divinely, vindication as her fall escalated.

That’s where my old buddy Dr. Wetsman caught me. “Do you think you’re using your ex-colleague’s demise as a drug?” he asked.

Long pause. “Yes,” I answered sheepishly.

“Okay. Well every time you get a dopamine spike from your schadenfreude, guess what happens after?”

“A crash.”

“And then,” he concluded, “you’re left scrambling to find more dopamine.”

Ahhh, so that’s why I was craving cocaine, sex and cigarettes. Cocaine, really? At almost six years sober, having become some fucking pseudo-icon of sobriety that I never asked to be thanks to my book, I was shocked that getting loaded was still on the table. But there it was: romantic imaginings of bags of crystalline white powder and syringes with clean steel tips twinkling in the twilight.

Here’s the thing about anger: it’s energizing. Anger can make you feel powerful. When I was using and unfortunately even afterwards, I used my rage to control, bully, and manipulate people. And once I’m this angry, it just bleeds over. First I’m pissed at her, then him, and now all of them and you. The storm has been unleashed and my mind can come up with evidence that anybody has fucked me over. Isn’t that our superpower as addicts?

“Anger is energizing,” agrees Amy Alkon, science writer and author of the “science-help” book, Unf*ckology: A Field Guide to Living with Guts and Confidence.

“Your amygdala mobilizes the bodily forces you’d need to run or win a physical fight with someone. So, your adrenaline courses and blood flows away from your reasoning center of your brain, the prefrontal cortex, and to your arms and legs, which makes you better equipped to punch or run.”

We all love a nice dose of adrenaline, right? It’s like shitty coke. So I’m getting high off my anger and the drug dealer is right inside of me. Anytime I wanted another hit I could dredge up some old scenario where an ex-colleague (or anyone, really) viciously screwed me over, and boom! Out came another surge. But aside from stomping around and spitting fire, there’s a real downside to this “drug.”

According to Alkon, when the amygdala is activated, a chemical reaction takes place that releases cortisol which helps to mobilize the aforementioned physical response so you can fight back. “However, there’s a problem if there’s no need for any sort of physical response from you, which would burn off the cortisol. If you’re just standing there fuming, the cortisol simply pools. So, effectively, you’re being poisoned by your anger. Over time, this is associated with very detrimental physical effects, including lowered immune function and heart disease.”

So resentment really is the poison you drink expecting the other person to die. Here was the science. And I realized something weird: the more I talked about it, the angrier I got. I didn’t “get it out.” There was no catharsis. Why?

“It’s a myth that ‘venting’ your anger is a way to diminish it,” Alkon told me. “The more anger you vent, the angrier you get. Darwin was the first to observe that the expression of an emotion acts to amplify the emotion, and modern research has confirmed this.”

Great! So I was on some rage loop, fucking up my immune system and giving myself heart disease. But how to stop? I knew the anger was just the top layer, the mask of something deeper and more painful that I was trying to avoid.

Liz Palmer writes “Angry is just sad’s bodyguard.” And of course she’s right. Underneath the rage was hurt and ultimately sadness. But who wants to feel that way? Who wants to listen to LP’s “Lost on You” and scrawl heartbreaking poems in blood? Not I. I’d much rather do weighted squats and listen to Tool and talk about how I will “fucking bury you.” You might think 115 pounds of desert Jew isn’t that frightening. But I learned early on in my childhood how to be verbally brutal. I’m sure growing up watching Scorsese movies and idolizing mobsters didn’t help either. But I assure you crazy and angry is a terrifying combination, even if you are a featherweight.

My sponsor urged me to find compassion for my ex-colleague. Nice dream, dude. That was NOT going to happen right now.

So then I decided to attack this emotional monster via the body. I called Nathaniel Dust, my breathwork wizard, and booked a private session. Waiting for our time, I caved and bought a pack of cigarettes after almost eight months off of vaping. Well done, fuckhead. I smoked one and it felt–I’m not going to lie–great. I immediately felt calmer. Oh sweet dopamine, there you are! I walked into Nathaniel’s place smelling like an ashtray with palpable anger radiating off me.

“Where are those cigarettes?” he demanded. “They’re going in the trash.”

“Purse,” I answered petulantly. $10 down the tubes….ugh.

I knew I was in trouble. If I let myself cross the line back into smoking, what was next? Tinder? A drink? Sober border patrol was obviously asleep on the job.

There are those few lines in the Big Book which I always thought were bullshit: “If we were to live, we had to be free of anger. The grouch and the brainstorm were not for us. They may be the dubious luxury of normal men, but for alcoholics these things are poison.” It was true and I was living it.

“My former colleague and friend fucked me over,“ I said, “and she should pay.”

Nathaniel laughed. “Are you really going to be a victim your whole life?”

And then my tears came.

“There’s the real shit,“ he said. He hugged me while I howled in his arms like a small child. “Now get on the table, lady, and let’s do some breathing.”

I cried and screamed and cried and shook and then it was over. I felt some relief. I vowed to stop talking about my enemy or reading about her. In the end it was none of my business. Whatever payoff I thought I was getting was costing me dearly.

So I guess my point is this: we shouldn’t prevent ourselves from getting worked up just because it’s not the “spiritual” thing to do. Whatever with that. Scientifically we want to stay calm so we don’t jack up our adrenaline and cortisol or, for those of us who get high off anger, we don’t want to chase that big dopamine spike that always ends with us crashing down.

So embrace the AA platitude of “let it go,” if only for the sake of your physical and mental health, serenity, and…oh yeah, your sobriety.

View the original article at thefix.com

7 January 2019
Program Gives Colombian Farmers An Alternative to Cocaine Crops

A former government official has spent seven years helping the farmers of the coastal town of Chocó – where he grew up – transition their efforts from cocaine to cacao.

A new feature on NPR profiles Joel Palacios, a former member of Colombia’s Ministry of the Interior who is working with farmers in his country to replace their financial dependence on growing coca – a primary ingredient in the manufacture of cocaine – with a safer, legal alternative: cacao, which is used to make chocolate.

Palacios has spent seven years helping the farmers of the coastal town of Chocó – where he grew up – transition their efforts to cacao, and pays them for their efforts through sales of chocolate from his artisanal chocolate company, Late Chocó.

But, as NPR noted, Palacios’ efforts face steep competition from cocaine production, which increased significantly in 2017, and lack of government support for farmers who give up their coca crops.

Palacios grew up in the region of Chocó, which is comprised predominately of Afro-Colombians; more than half live below the poverty line, which makes the cultivation of coca difficult to turn down for basic sustenance.

After his tenure with the government, he returned to the region in 2010 to implement the cacao-for-coca project – or as Palacios described it, “Mas cacao, menos coca” (more cacao, less coca) – and in the past seven years, has persuaded enough Chocó farmers to grow cacao for his chocolate company. As the NPR feature detailed, his campaign faced a host of challenges during that period.

The region is extremely poor and remote, with no roads and virtually no cellphone reception. Palacios said that his operation also lacked practical know-how about managing and harvesting cacao crops. “We didn’t have technical knowledge – how to manage the harvest, how to make it more productive or how to control diseases,” he said. “We’d only collected what nature, in its generosity, would leave for us.”

With the help of the National Cacao Producers Federation and cacao growers in the western region of the country, Palacios learned about cultivation and purchased a plot of land outside of the area’s capital, Quibdó. There, he established a training center for local farmers and, more recently, Late Chocó, which uses nearly 1,000 pounds of cacao per month to make its chocolate bars. The profits from sales of its bars are used to fund the training center and pay farmers a better rate per pound for their crops.

Despite these efforts, Palacios still faces an uphill battle in converting coca crops to cacao.

As the NPR piece explained, farmers in the region felt abandoned by a similar federal program, which was established as part of a 2016 peace treaty between the Colombian government and FARC, a revolutionary group that controlled much of the country’s cocaine industry. More than 83,000 families joined the program, but lack of support by current president Iván Duque has left available funding limited.

Farmers like Francisco Ramírez want to participate in the program.

“We don’t want to grow more coca,” he said. But the government and outside organizations needed to give them a replacement crop, and aside from efforts like the one established by Palacios, that has yet to happen.

Support from the sales of Late Chocó has made a small but significant impact in filling that gap, one that Palacios hopes to keep active. “Projects in Chocó fail because the [nongovernmental organizations] go and donate money and leave. I went and got them in this cacao project – it’s all of our project.”

View the original article at thefix.com

4 January 2019
New Year's Baby Highlights Mom’s Sober Year

The mother of the child, who is in early recovery, said that her daughter’s birth was the final step in what had been “a life-changing year.”

Babies born on January 1 are always heralded as symbols of new beginnings, but one New Year’s baby’s arrival was especially powerful, signifying the year that her mom got sober.

Ayla Rodriguez, the first baby born in Portage County, Ohio, arrived on Jan. 1 at 12:56AM to Nicole Mansell, according to The Record-Courier.

Mansell had gone to the hospital because she thought she had the flu, and was surprised when her daughter arrived four weeks early. She said that her daughter’s birth was the final step in what had been “a life-changing year.”

The mother found out that she was pregnant earlier in 2018, when she was in jail. She said that learning she was expecting prompted her to take her sobriety seriously, although she already had plans to stop using drugs.

“The way I looked at it, she was inside me, and I wasn’t going to destroy her,” Mansell told The Record Courier. “Finding out that I was pregnant with her helped me stay on the right track.”

It was a meaningful challenge in a state that has been hard-hit by the opioid epidemic, although Mansell didn’t elaborate on the specifics of her history of substance abuse. She completed one rehab program after learning about her pregnancy and is now in an after-care program.

Although she had the option to participate in the county’s drug-court program, she chose not to, saying that the program’s requirements were too much to handle during her pregnancy. Instead, she is on probation from the charges that had her in jail early in the year.

Mansell had been getting extra care during her pregnancy in order to prevent pre-term labor, although she didn’t say if the complication stemmed from her drug abuse. On New Year’s Day, she was ready to start 2019 with her new daughter, in recovery, hoping that the newborn’s quiet streak would continue.

“Seriously, she doesn’t cry,” she told the Courier.

Ayla was born weighing 5 pounds, 1 ounce, and was 18 and three quarters inches long. She was too small to fit in special New Year’s garb that a nurse at the hospital had prepared for the first baby of the year.

Mansell has another daughter, Ariana, who is 11. She says that Ariana was a small baby and was born early, just like Ayla. Ayla’s father, Joe Rodriguez, has three other children: brothers Cayden, Kilynn and Carson Rodriguez, ages 6, 5 and 2.

“I’ve made it known that my children are going to know this child,” Rodriguez said. “She’s their sister.”

View the original article at thefix.com

4 January 2019
Demi Lovato's Sober New Year's Celebration

The “Sober” singer took to Instagram to share her celebration with fans.

For Demi Lovato, 2018 was a rough year but she made it through and is now sober.

After singing about relapse and suffering a nearly-fatal overdose in July the singer spent 90 days in rehab, getting out just in time to spend the holidays sober. Despite the ups and downs of the year, the singer took to Instagram to say that she’s looking at 2018 in a positive light.

“So grateful for the lessons I’ve learned this year,” Lovato wrote on her Instagram story on New Year’s Eve, according to USA Today. “I will never take another day in life for granted, even the bad ones.”

Later in the evening, she posted a picture of herself ringing in 2019 with a virgin drink: Martinelli’s sparkling apple cider. Beneath the photo she put the caption #sober.

Lovato, who has expressed gratitude for her supportive fans throughout the year, once again thanked everyone who has been by her side through her relapse and recovery.

“Thankful for my fans, friends, family and everyone who supported me through this year,” she wrote. “God bless.”

Lovato stayed away from social media during the time she was in rehab, but during the past month she has again been posting. Before Christmas she expressed frustration with the endless news cycle around her recovery.

“People will literally make up stuff to sell a story,” she wrote on Twitter. “Sickening. If I feel like the world needs to know something, I will tell them MYSELF. Otherwise people stop writing about my recovery, because it’s no one’s business but mine.”

Lovato said that despite the fact that she is famous, she needs space to work through her relapse and recovery on her own.

“I still need space and time to heal… someday I’ll tell the world what exactly happened, why it happened and what my life is like today.. but until I’m ready to share that with people please stop prying and making up shit that you know nothing about,” she wrote. “I am sober and grateful to be alive and taking care of ME…All my fans need to know is I’m working hard on myself, I’m happy and clean and I’m SO grateful for their support.”

Lovato has been very open about her addiction and mental health issues in the past, and in July she promised she would share again in the future — once she knew her health was secure.

“I have always been transparent about my journey with addiction,” she wrote. “What I’ve learned is that this illness is not something that disappears or fades with time. It is something I must continue to overcome and have not done yet.”

View the original article at thefix.com

4 January 2019
Bam Margera Enters Rehab For The Third Time

Margaret’s last went to rehab in early 2018 after a DUI arrest in California.

Former Jackass star Bam Margera is going to rehab for alcoholism again, just as he did this time last year after being arrested for a DUI.

“Off to alcohol rehab for the 3rd time. I am hoping the term 3rd time is a charm is true,” Margera wrote on his Instagram account on Tuesday (Jan. 1).

Last year, Margera also went to rehab in January after he was arrested for DUI in California. He received three months of probation for the charge. In August, Margera explained what happened when he was arrested.

“Last fall, I attended a surprise Jackass reunion at the Rainbow Bar and Grill in Hollywood where, as you can imagine, the beers flowed all night,” he said. “Long story short, as I drove away from the party, not knowing where I was headed, I pulled over to try and figure it out. That’s when I noticed the police lights behind me. I was like, ‘Fuck, I’m pulled over.’ As it turned out, the police had actually pulled someone else over right behind me, and then came to my car to see why I was just sitting there. So yeah, I had the pleasure of getting a DUI that night that led to my being in a treatment center for a month.”

After completing rehab Margera was reportedly sober for seven months until he was robbed in a taxi in Colombia. Margera recounted the incident in a video.

“I just arrived in Cartagena alone and I took a taxi, a random one, from the airport to here and I wouldn’t speak Spanish, they couldn’t speak English, and they translated on their phone to read ‘empty your wallet’ as they put a gun on their lap to show it to me. So I did and I had 500 bucks. They let me go. Welcome to Colombia.”

At the end he’s seen cracking a beer. However, former colleague Steve-O said that he’s skeptical that Margera was sober until the robbery.

“I mean, I don’t know. And I don’t want him to [feel like] I’m attacking him or calling him out, I just think that there were signs that, if he hadn’t already drank, it was evident that he was going to,” Steve-O said. “The signs were there. I think if you’re a sober alcoholic that you kind of can tell.”

Steve-O said there were signs that Margera wasn’t committed to a sober lifestyle.

“When people are on the path, sort of doing the things that sober people do, it’s evident,” he said. “It’s evident that he’s not been ready or willing to do the simple things that sober people do that make our lives really great. It’s sad, and I wish that I could somehow force him to want to do these things and get healthy and have a great life, but it doesn’t work that way. You can’t push people into it.”

View the original article at thefix.com

4 January 2019
What 8 Days of Silent Meditation in Sri Lanka Taught Me About Myself

I wanted to get something out of this week of mindfulness meditation. I wanted to live mindfully, feel spiritually connected, to be less of a disconnected, frenzied entrepreneur run by self-will and ego.

When we arrived at the meditation center in the middle of the Sri Lankan jungle during a downpour, we were greeted by leeches. The first victim, a tall German girl, started screaming and flailing when she noticed the mini monster stuck to her hand. Truth be told, I would have reacted the same way had I been the first victim, but she got it out of the way so I could steel myself.

“Oh, you will definitely get zem,” the white-haired German meditation instructor informed us in his grandfatherly accent. “You just pluck zem up and put zem back into zee nature.” He demonstrated this, gently removing the leech and lovingly transferring it to a leafy plant, more compassionate towards the creature and more amused by its human victim.

“What have I gotten myself into?” I wondered.

After filling out paperwork, we were shown to our rooms. They were closet-sized, blank, and crumbly, with two tiny, thinly mattressed beds and a couple nightstands. Of course, Leechy Screamer was my roommate. That would be okay, I thought, because this was a silent retreat and we wouldn’t have to talk to each other. Except, she didn’t seem to get that memo…

She was “Chatty Cathy” as we unpacked our things. I let it slide, responding in just one or two word answers, hoping she’d get the point about this being a SILENT meditation retreat after our meditation sessions began that evening. As an introvert, the lack of social pressure to talk to new people, even when sharing a closet-sized room with them, was refreshing. But it was weird not talking to my husband, who was staying in the men’s section on the other side of the retreat center. Throughout the week, we’d pass each other entering the Meditation Hall or the Dining Hall; he usually piously avoided eye contact, while I jumped to conclusions about how he was obviously “doing so much better than me” at this, as my brain likes to make even meditation retreats into a competition.

After the initial shock of the first day wore off, what did I realize on day two? Eight days is a long time. Eight days are a lot of days. Why did I think I would breeze through this eight-day-long experience like an ultra-zen fairy princess? By day two, I started questioning: “Is this really necessary for my life?” Obviously, I had deemed it so when I had signed up a couple months before. Just over two years sober and a newbie yoga teacher, I thought this intense meditation training seemed like the next right step. Disconnecting from technology and the demands of our constantly-connected world, diving deeper into my meditation practice to silence my chaotic thoughts, doing nothing but 100% spiritual personal development work for a week? This sounded thrilling and important and like something I was ready for, but that was before I actually tried to do it.

Struggling to Stay in the Moment

The sitting was the hardest part. Five hours a day of seated meditation (although broken into five separate chunks) was enough to drive my “go go go” ego into full-on rebellion mode. I’d be sitting on my meditation cushion, trying to do nothing but observe my breath as instructed, when I’d realize I’d been chasing the craziness of my random thoughts around my head as if I was watching a pinball machine for the last 15 minutes! Why, at 5 a.m. during morning meditation, does my brain need to start spontaneously planning how I’m going to hike the Pacific Crest Trail to celebrate my 40th birthday? I’m 31 so it’s not like it’s around the corner. My obsession with planning and controlling every detail of my life was ridiculous. Why was it so hard for me to stay in the moment? The harder I tried to silence my brain and meditate, the more I felt like my thoughts had their own individual thoughts and my brain was capable of splitting itself into infinitesimally small segments all at once, each thought wave following its own path of distraction.

And that is why I sorely needed this retreat. The disconnection from the outside world, lack of external stimuli, and plodding routine of each day forced me to turn inward and reckon with the darker parts of my ego. I’ve heard some say that addiction is the “disease of more,” and I realized that the objects of my addictive personality had switched from substances and codependency to adventure and overthinking. Just as I had always wanted more alcohol, now I wanted more stimulation, more work, more travel, and more excitement. I usually don’t want more of the things that really serve my growth and bring me balance. More meditation and quiet? No thank you.

Sitting on those cushions hour after hour, I realized just how much of my mental capacity I was spending “creating suffering” as our Buddhist instructor taught. By not accepting the true nature of reality, I create mental anguish for myself. I’m a specialist at avoiding the present moment, either living in past memories or projecting myself into the future — obsessing about the next meal, the next time I’d get to check my phone, my next trip home to see my family, etc. Even when I’m thinking about happy times, I’m removing myself from the present moment and denying myself the gift of seeing things for how they really are. Meditation trains us in non-attachment and non-identification with our thoughts. Being cloistered away from “the real world” on this retreat, with no phone or laptop or work or even anyone to talk to, struggling with the leeches jumping onto my feet and the rain and the other Sri Lankan insects constantly invading our space, and not being able to talk about it with anyone? My struggle with mindfulness emerged in all its large and ugly reality.

The retreat also helped me realize just how judgmental I am. There’s really nothing like being alone in silence with my own thoughts to expose me for the Judgey Mcjudgerson that I truly am. When faced with limited entertainment options? “OMG, why is she putting so much sugar in her tea?” I’d catch myself thinking as I noticed someone in the breakfast line. Or, “Really, he’s wearing the SAME SHIRT AGAIN????” I even wrote these judgements into my journal sometimes. On Day 3 I wrote, “My roommate just asked me for a pen. She is so unprepared. I am so judgmental!” Well, at least I caught myself. “Loving kindness!” I next wrote, as if writing it in bold with an exclamation point would make me practice the spiritual qualities our instructor had been teaching us about.

Finding Clarity and Learning to Detach

Throughout the week we were taught lessons about Buddhism and meditation twice a day. I started to see many similarities between the Buddhist “dharma” (teaching) and the 12 Steps of AA. Non-attachment, non-reactivity, and non-indulgence in every craving or story my brain starts to tell me are basic tenets of Buddhism. These are in essence the same lessons I had to learn in my initial trudge through the steps with my sponsor. But now, two years later, living in Sri Lanka, and many months removed from my last AA meeting, the universe was handing me the same lesson in a different context more relevant to my life now. I found this pretty cool, yet still pretty hard to grapple with.

One of my favorite parts of each day was our closing mantra, which echoed the “nightly review” concept of Step 10:

“I do admit all my failures on this day
And promise to learn from them
Should I have hurt somebody through thoughts, words, or actions
I ask for forgiveness.”

On the third full day, I started to get space, little glimpses of a clear mind in between thoughts, as if my brain had finally dropped down to a lower gear. The walking meditation was also becoming easier than the sitting meditation. Walking through the meditation garden, every plant and flower seemed more vibrant and enthralling each day; bird sounds seemed louder and more distinct, as if all my senses were heightened. Rather than getting bored with the walk, every pass through the same garden revealed more natural wonders in intricate detail. It was as if by finally shutting off all the external stimuli, I was waking up to the free beauty the universe surrounds us with every day.

The rigorous meditation schedule still stayed hard though. My husband and I started passing each other notes like middle school kids, “I’m struggling today, urgh!” he said, to which I responded “If you want to call it quits, I’m down. Just kidding!…maybe….?” Neither one of us wanted to crack first, so we stuck with it. Our next notes shared the nicknames we’d come up with for our fellow meditators — his descriptive names such as “Gentle Walker” and “Sings in Shower” and my 7 Dwarves variations such as Sneezy, Twitchy, Chatty, and so on. Like I said, I’m judgmental.

I realized that my obsessive tendency towards multi-tasking and overthinking probably began at a young age. In high school I would only half-listen in most classes while doing as much of my homework as possible during class time so I could have after-school hours free for a myriad of extra-curricular activities. This efficiency was praised and rewarded so I just continued. My nickname should be Queen of Doing Too Many Things at Once and Inefficient Future Over-Planning. Thus what should have been so easy, to follow a strict timetable from 4:45am-8:45pm, was challenging because the content of each activity — meditative mindfulness — was too simple. “You’ll never get this week of your life back,” I heard myself think multiple times. “STOP TRYING TO SPEED UP YOUR LIFE!” I’d argue back at myself, every time I caught my ego wishfully counting the days left on the retreat.

Acceptance

Eventually, faced with no other option, I started to accept the fact that maybe I couldn’t kill my cravings and silence my thoughts in only eight days. But, perhaps everything I was craving would still be there when I got back from my week in the jungle: work, people, the busy world. I suspected all of it would be waiting for me, largely unchanged. My To Do list would still be never-ending and my goals still large and vast. I wanted to be a person who could do this week of silent meditation. I wanted to get something out of it. I wanted to live mindfully, feel spiritually connected, to be less of a disconnected, frenzied entrepreneur run by self-will and ego. And yes, by the end of the week I did realize that all of those “wants” were indicative of the problem itself: my desire-filled ego. But at least now the things I wanted were good things?

The end of the retreat came, and I was right, the “real world” was more or less the same when I got back to it. My roommate and I finally got to have a real conversation (about how much of a struggle the week was for both of us, of course) and became good friends. Although I don’t think I made a miraculous transformation on this retreat, I made progress. By the end of the week, in a squirmy, uncomfortable way, I started to accept a little more easily the cyclical nature of life. I had to allow the rain and the leeches to lead to the sunshine and birdcalls. I had to be a drunk for years in order to be sober. I had to take this week of quiet introspection in order to be ready for the thrills and opportunities I know will come to me when the time is right. What is the point of rushing it all? Especially if, as Buddhism teaches, all is one. As our nightly mantra ended each evening: “We are all flowers in the same soil in the same garden.” Now take a deep breath and love the cycle.

View the original article at thefix.com

4 January 2019
Fisherman Reels In Cocaine

The fisherman found a bale of cocaine worth a reported $500,000.

A south Florida fisherman got a surprise catch when he spotted a bale of cocaine after returning from a day on the ocean.

According to the Monroe County Sheriff’s Office, which covers the Florida Keys, a fisherman noticed something floating beneath the docks when he returned from a day out at sea. When he cut into the package and saw white powder, he alerted authorities.

Sheriff’s Office Deputy Martin Digrius and Coast Guard officials responded, and the US Border Patrol also arrived on the scene. Inside the plastic package, authorities found 25 smaller packages, which contained 40-60 pounds of cocaine, the sheriff’s department said. According to The Miami Herald, the cocaine was worth about $500,000.

Cocaine use has been rising, especially as the drug becomes more commonly used alongside opioids. The amount of cocaine seized by the Coast Guard has been increasing: In 2015, the agency seized 145 tons of the drug and detained 503 people; by 2017 those numbers had risen to 225 tons and 708 suspects, according to The Miami Herald.

Intercepting cocaine in the ocean — or even washed up on beaches — isn’t wholly unusual in Florida and on the West Coast, but it still makes headlines.

In December of 2017, Coast Guard sailors rescued a sea turtle that was floating amid 1,800 pounds of cocaine, worth about $53 million.

“After a period of lengthy questioning, it was determined the turtle did not have any useful information. We released him on his own recognizance after he agreed not to return to these waters again. #turtlesmuggler,” the agency posted on Twitter.

They followed up with a more somber note:

“In all seriousness, we love our sea creatures and do everything we can to help them when we see them in distressed situations. Additionally, during this patrol nearly seven tons of illicit narcotics with a street value over $135 million was confiscated.”

Intercepting cocaine in the ocean before it lands in the US can help save lives, Acting US Attorney Alana Robinson said in September 2017.

“The seizure of this cocaine means tens of thousands of pounds won’t make it to our communities and hundreds of millions of dollars won’t make it into cartel coffers,” she said.

“To drug traffickers who may think they are invisible in the middle of what seems to be a vast, empty ocean: You are not alone. We are doing everything we can to prevent you from using the high seas as your personal freeway.”

View the original article at thefix.com

4 January 2019
"Glee" Star Jesse Luken Arrested For DUI

The 35-year-old actor was released on $5,000 bail.

Jesse Luken, who played Bobby “Boom Boom” Surette on the TV musical Glee, allegedly crashed his car after driving drunk last month.

Police in Glendale, California. responded to a call about a single-car crash and found Luken in the driver’s seat of his Toyota, which was driven up onto the curb. The front tire was damaged and the airbag was deployed, according to TMZ.

Citing law enforcement sources, TMZ reported that Luken smelled strongly of alcohol, which prompted police to administer a field sobriety test. Luken failed that, and was arrested on suspicion of driving under the influence.

Fox News reported that the actor, 35, posted a $5,000 bail and was released from jail.

Glee, which aired on Fox, was a hit between 2009 and 2015. However, since the show ended the former cast has had a series of legal entanglements and tragedies. In 2013, the show’s star, Cory Monteith, died of an overdose of heroin and alcohol shortly after completing a 30-day stint in rehab.

Prior to his death at age 31, Monteith had been open about his addiction, saying that he had been struggling with substance abuse since he was 13.

“I don’t want kids to think it’s OK to drop out of school and get high, and they’ll be famous actors, too,” he said. “But for those people who might give up: Get real about what you want and go after it. If I can, anyone can.”

In 2016, Glee actress Naya Rivera wrote in her memoir about Monteith’s death, and how it affected the cast.

“I doubt I’m alone in feeling a lot of regret about his death,” she wrote, according to E! News. “Since he died, a lot of us have spent time wondering and talking about what would have happened if someone had stepped in or confronted him about what was going on. Or what if he’d been trying to talk to someone about what was going on and just thought no one cared?”

Glee’s director, Adam Shankman, sought treatment for substance abuse disorder in 2013.

“His friends and family support him and wish him well on his journey to recovery,” a representative said at the time.

In January of 2018, another Glee actor, Mark Salling, was found dead by suicide. Salling pleaded guilty in October 2017 to possession of child pornography. He was facing four to seven years in prison, as well as fines and registration as a sex offender.

View the original article at thefix.com

3 January 2019
How Hard Is It To Quit Vaping?

A new report offers multiple firsthand accounts of the difficulties of quitting vaping.

Many people are concerned about young adults and vaping. Juul, the biggest e-cigarette company around, has come under fire for being popular with teens and for making their products attractive to young people with their ad campaigns.

Now a report in USA Today has revealed that withdrawing from vaping can be very difficult, and it can lead to symptoms of depression and anxiety.

A mortgage banker named Andrea “Nick” Tattanelli told USA Today that quitting vaping was “hell” and that he suffered from depression for three days. “It’s delicious. It’s too attractive,” Tattanelli explained. “You don’t make something you can vape in a watermelon flavor and think people aren’t going to do it all the time.”

Tattanelli is 39, and he turned to vaping to wean himself off cigarettes. Tattanelli had been a smoker since he was 17, and he did finally leave cigarettes behind, but the withdrawals he, and many others, have suffered, have made the FDA question if vaping is a good way to quit cigarettes.

As one rehab director, Dr. Malissa Barbosa, said, “The studies aren’t fully available around vaping and I’m very conservative. This is new, and I say, ‘Why aren’t we thinking of traditional means of quitting?’”

Another smoker, Kevin Kee, also tried vaping as a way to stop smoking, but he realized vaping was a harder habit to break. And yet another vaper, Elvijs Arnicans, wrote on Facebook that he had been off vaping for two weeks, and he wished he knew how tough it was going to be before he stopped.

He experienced “intense tiredness for the first three days, and then the cravings intensify as the brain fog clears.” He also felt “no enjoyment in pleasurable activities experienced until about day three.”

Barbosa told USA Today only one patient she treated has been able to stop vaping, and the patient suffered headaches, agitation and nausea.

In a first person account for The Fix, Amy Dresner recalled that her first two days after quitting vaping weren’t bad, “but on day 3 or 4 it got gnarly. Unlike quitting cigarettes, I didn’t feel so much agitated as I felt physically ill; nausea, mouth sores, sore throat, achy and incredible lethargy. And then a mild depression came over me. As somebody who has ferociously struggled with clinical depression for over 20 years, just the hint of it popping back up alarms me.”

On January 19, the FDA will be holding a hearing about teens and nicotine addiction. The FDA has good reason to be concerned, and regulators are now calling vaping an “epidemic.”

The current stats report that 3.6 million people in middle and high school are using e-cigarettes, and close to 21% of high school seniors have confessed they’ve vaped in the last 30 days, an 11% jump from 2017.

View the original article at thefix.com

3 January 2019