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Category: Addiction News

  • "Apprentice" Contestant Claims Trump Snorted Adderall On Set

    "Apprentice" Contestant Claims Trump Snorted Adderall On Set

    Actor Tom Arnold took to Twitter to back up Celebrity Apprentice contestant Noel Casler’s allegations about Trump’s Adderall use.

    During a stand-up set earlier this month, comedian Noel Casler claimed President Donald Trump used to snort Adderall on the set of The Celebrity Apprentice.

    It’s not immediately clear that the comic actually worked on the show, but other comics – mostly ardent Trump opponents – quickly came to Casler’s defense on Twitter, calling him “professional” and “discreet.”

    The six-minute routine at the Gotham Comedy Club drew plenty of laughs on Dec. 1, but it didn’t start going viral until a few days later.

    “He’s a speed freak,” Casler told the crowd. “He crushes up his Adderall and he sniffs it, ’cause he can’t read, so he gets really nervous when he has to read cue cards. I’m not kidding. This is true.”

    He went on to describe a “24-page nondisclosure agreement” – then apparently dismiss it.

    “I didn’t know then he was becoming president,” he continued. “Now it’s, no way, dumbass. I’m telling you everything I know. So he gets nervous and he crushes up these pills, and that’s why he’s sniffing when you see him in debates and when you see him reading. It’s why he’s tweeting, you know, it’s like he’s out of his mind.”

    Riffing on the allegations, he continued.

    “It makes sense if you think about it,” he said, “methamphetamine was invented by the Nazis to keep the fighter pilots up all night on bombing runs, so it makes sense that Trump would use it to hate-tweet.”

    When HillReporter.com followed up to ask whether Casler was serious, he reportedly said he wouldn’t discuss his work off-stage or on the record.

    But actor Tom Arnold took to Twitter both to declare the statement accurate and to imply that the whole skit may have been a way to get around the alleged NDA.

    “Because First Amendment Mark Burnett MGM & Donald Trump cannot hold a stand up comic performing onstage in public to their BS 10 year $5 million NDA,” he wrote. “Finally figured out a way to tell these true stories. Tapes too. Noel Casler, American Hero. Funnyman with impeccable credentials.”

    It’s not the first time a comment about Trump’s alleged drug use has drawn widespread attention. Back before the 2016 election, former presidential candidate Howard Dean dinged Trump for sniffling his way through his first face-off with Hillary Clinton.

    “Notice Trump sniffing all the time. Coke user?” he tweeted. A few days later, Dean apologized.

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Fentanyl Officially The Deadliest Drug In America

    Fentanyl Officially The Deadliest Drug In America

    According to a new report, fentanyl is responsible for more US deaths than any other drug.

    Fentanyl has become the most deadly drug in the nation, involved in more overdose deaths than any other illicit substance, according to a new report. 

    According to the National Center for Health Statistics’ “Drugs Most Frequently Involved in Drug Overdose Deaths: United States, 2011–2016” report, fentanyl was involved in 18,335 overdose deaths last year, far surpassing heroin, the second most deadly drug, which was involved in 15,961 deaths.

    Overall, fentanyl was present in 28.8% of overdose deaths in 2016, the report found. 

    Often, fentanyl was present alongside other drugs, including opioids and cocaine. The prevalence of fentanyl in the opioid supply and now the cocaine supply across the country is striking fear into health care workers and drug users alike, since the powerful synthetic opioid can cause an overdose in tiny amounts. In 69% of the deaths that involved fentanyl, another drug was also found, according to the report. 

    “We’ve had a tendency to think of these drugs in isolation. It’s not really what’s happening,” Dr. Holly Hedegaard, lead author of the report and injury epidemiologist at the National Center for Health Statistics told The Huffington Post.

    Oftentimes, drug users don’t even know they’re being exposed to the drug. This can be particularly problematic for people who don’t typically use opioids and therefore don’t have a tolerance built up. That can leave them more vulnerable to overdose, but participants in one Rhode Island survey said the drug is nearly impossible to avoid.  

    “It’s like you notice that there’s fentanyl and it’s not the drug you’re going for. It’s like, what’s the point, unless you have a little lab kit or something. That’s the only way you can tell,” a user said.  

    “I don’t think you can avoid it now,” another user said.

    The government report examined overdoses between 2011 and 2016 by looking at the data on death certificates to see which drugs were present in the most deaths. In 2011, fentanyl was the 10th most deadly drug in the country, present in just 1,662 deaths. In 2012 and 2013 it was the ninth most deadly, before moving to the fifth spot in 2014, when it was involved in 4,223 deaths.

    By 2015 it was the second most deadly drug, involved in 8,251 deaths, before its impact grew massively in 2016. 

    “Fentanyl is so deadly, in the geographic regions where it’s been flooding in, deaths soared like we’ve never seen before,” Dr. Andrew Kolodny, co-founder of Physicians for Responsible Opioid Prescribing, told CNN.

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Confetti Company Gives Work To Women In Recovery

    Confetti Company Gives Work To Women In Recovery

    “I want it to do some good because everything gets chucked at the end. My confetti is disposable, but it is made by women to help improve their lives,” said the owner of Leonetti Confetti.

    Kylee Leonetti was inspired to start her confetti-making company after the overdose and near-death of her beloved brother. After a weeklong coma, he awoke. To his family’s great relief, he has been sober ever since. Leonetti was full of gratitude for her family’s good luck, and she wanted to give back to the addiction recovery community.

    “I wanted to spread it around,” Leonetti told MINNPOST. “I wanted to be there for people at a time in their lives when they aren’t experiencing all that much happiness.”

    When Leonetti looked around for a way to contribute, she was struck by how difficult finding and maintaining employment was for so many people in recovery from addiction. Leonetti’s husband, Christian Jensen, saw that potential employers weren’t sure if they could trust someone who had a known past of addiction.

    Even for people without a known history, those who have been in the throes of addiction often have spotty or non-existent work histories. The emotional and physical challenges of early recovery can also make consistency with attendance and production a challenge.

    Leonetti had already been considering starting a confetti-making company, and she realized that cutting confetti – something that could be done at home – could be the perfect job for someone newly clean.

    Jensen and Leonetti already had a business and income and were able to make the confetti company a non-profit, dedicated to giving back. Only the confetti cutters make money.

    After pinpointing women recovering from addiction as the most financially vulnerable population, Leonetti Confetti was born.

    “Empowering women in recovery” is the company slogan, as the company hires and pays only women recovering from addiction. Leonetti Confetti is partnered with Wayside Recovery Center, a comprehensive addiction treatment program for women, and primarily hires women from this center.

    The women confetti cutters work from wherever they can, and when they can, and make $10 an hour.

    Teresa Evans, Wayside’s senior director of development and communications, offers, “Not all of our women are employable. They are all working on building relationships and trust. This is a huge thing for our women to overcome because of the trauma they’ve all experienced. . . . Kylee is a very passionate and compassionate business owner who is willing to put up the right kind of boundaries, help educate them on soft skills and be understanding when they struggle.”

    Leonetti works closely with her non-profit company and the women they employ. “I want it to do some good because everything gets chucked at the end,” Leonetti told MINNPOST. “My confetti is disposable, but it is made by women to help improve their lives.”

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Cocaine Deaths Are On The Rise

    Cocaine Deaths Are On The Rise

    “From 2014 through 2016, the number of drug overdose deaths involving cocaine nearly doubled from 5,892 to 11,316,” states a recent report on cocaine-related deaths.

    Overdoses caused by cocaine have increasingly been in the news cycle, and a new report released this week shows just how dangerous cocaine abuse has become, with overdose deaths linked to the drug rising almost 18% each year between 2011 and 2016. 

    According to the National Center for Health Statistics’ “Drugs Most Frequently Involved in Drug Overdose Deaths: United States, 2011–2016” report, cocaine-related overdoses have been increasing sharply.

    “Throughout the study period, cocaine ranked second or third among the top 15 drugs,” the report authors wrote. “From 2014 through 2016, the number of drug overdose deaths involving cocaine nearly doubled from 5,892 to 11,316.”

    Of course, that still pales in comparison to the number of people killed by opioids. Deaths involving fentanyl, for example, rose from 1,662 in 2011 to 18,335 in 2016, when 29% of fatal overdoses involved the drug. 

    Still, researchers found that cocaine was a significant danger, involved in nearly 18% of overdose deaths in 2016. That could be due in part to the fact that fentanyl is increasingly being found in the cocaine supply. 

    “Drug combinations often involved drugs of different drug classes,” study authors wrote. “For example, the opioid fentanyl and the stimulant cocaine were mentioned concomitantly in nearly 4,600 deaths.”

    In those cases, authors counted the deaths in both categories. 

    The report also showcased how the opioid epidemic has changed over time. In 2011, the prescription opioid oxycodone was present in the most deaths (5,587). By the next year, heroin was the most deadly drug in the country, present in 6,155 overdoses. Heroin remained the most deadly drug for 2013 (8,418 deaths), 2014 (10,882 deaths) and 2015 (13,318 deaths).

    In 2016, fentanyl was the most deadly drug in the country, present in 18,335 deaths. This data mirrors the progression that researchers have talked about: The opioid crisis started with prescription drugs, and when those were too expensive, users turned to heroin. When fentanyl entered the drug scene, providing a cheaper and more powerful hit, it was widely used. 

    However, cocaine has consistently been causing overdose deaths, either as the second or third most deadly drug each year for the time period researchers measured. 

    Meth — another stimulant whose use has been increasing — has gradually become involved in more deaths. In 2011 and 2012 it was the eighth most deadly drug; in 2013 and 2014 it was the seventh. In 2015 it rose to the fifth spot when it was involved in 5,092 overdoses, and in 2016 it was the fourth most deadly drug, involved in 6,762 deaths.

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • New York Should Use Marijuana Taxes to Repair Subways, Report Says

    New York Should Use Marijuana Taxes to Repair Subways, Report Says

    One NYU professor makes the case for why the state should use marijuana tax revenue to fund the MTA’s Fast Forward plan to fix the popular transportation system.

    For New York City residents, the simple act of taking the subway can come with a host of problems: long delays in crowded, poorly ventilated and aging cars, and stations without basic elements of accessibility, such as elevators.

    Delays can impact the schedules of the more than 1.7 billion individuals that use the subway each year, and late employees can cost businesses more than $380 million per year. The Metropolitan Transit Authority announced a “Fast Forward” plan to address these concerns, but the project is expected to take a decade and cost more than $40 billion.

    New York University (NYU) professor Mitchell L. Moss has a possible solution; use the tax revenue from legalized marijuana sales to fund the subway project.

    Moss’s plan, outlined in a report published by the NYU/Wagner Rudin Center for Transportation Policy and Management, suggests that legalizing marijuana could add between $110 and $428 million in annual tax revenue to Empire State coffers. That figure is lower than a projection by New York State’s health department, which suggested that taxes from legal marijuana could yield $670 million per year. 

    Figures like those – as well as growing dismay over the subway system’s woes by the public – have generated interest from city officials, including the Metropolitan Transportation Sustainability Advisory Workgroup, a panel assembled by New York Governor Andrew Cuomo and Mayor Bill de Blasio to conceptualize ways to pay for the subway project.

    Some members of the panel, including former City Council speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito, as well as current City Council speaker Corey Johnson, have voiced their support for the plan.

    With Democrats currently in control of the state Senate, Governor Cuomo suggesting that a legalization bill is in the draft stage, and subway riders voicing support for the plan in an informal New York Times poll, Moss’s proposal appears to be gaining traction.

    But as Vox pointed out, exactly how much marijuana tax revenue can be diverted to transportation remains unclear. 

    Colorado, which has earned $862 million in total revenue from legal marijuana since 2014, is one of the few states that use those funds for transportation issues. According to the Denver Office of Marijuana Policy, the city will put $9 million into “mobility projects,” like sidewalk repair and the creation of bike lines, in 2019. But the majority of tax funds will go towards regulation of the city’s marijuana sales, as well as education and safety.

    The $9 million is just part of the remaining funds left after those issues are paid.

    Eric Escudero, who serves as director of communication for the Office, said that the funds are welcome, but “it’s not going to solve every issue that needs financial or taxpayer support.”

    He noted that changes to the marijuana market – specifically, when new states initiate legalization – might impact how much tax revenue can be earned. As a result, Denver does not look at their marijuana tax as a silver bullet.

    “It’s important that you don’t promise the streets are going to be paved with gold because of marijuana, because that won’t happen,” he said.

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Does Empathy Play A Role In Relapse?

    Does Empathy Play A Role In Relapse?

    Scientists examined whether empathy can push a person in recovery to relapse for a new study. 

    Having empathy — being able to relate to other people’s emotions — is generally considered a positive trait, but new research suggests that empathy could lead to relapse for people who are in recovery. 

    Dr. Jonathan Gewirtz, a professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Minnesota, led a team of researchers who found that mice who witnessed another mouse in a scary situation were more likely to seek out drugs afterwards. The findings were presented during the 57th Annual Meeting of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology, being held this week in Florida. 

    Gewirtz says his lab studies the biology of fearful memories and drug dependence, “since negative affective states are a prominent feature of drug withdrawal and likely play a critical role in the persistence of drug addiction.”

    To set up the empathy experiment, mice were placed in a two-sided container, where they got a dose of saline solution on one side, or morphine on the other, according to EurekaAlert and a press release by the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology.

    Over several days, the mice associated a specific side with the drug. Then, two weeks later the mice received only saline on either side. This was meant to mimic a period of sobriety after addiction. 

    Next, the mice were exposed to seeing another mouse in a frightening situation. Following that, they were put back in the two-sided compartment. 

    “Consistently, the sober mice preferentially selected the compartment that was associated with morphine, demonstrating drug-seeking behavior in response to witnessing a traumatic event,” according to the press release. 

    During the experiment, the researchers measured the mice’s fear response. 

    To strengthen the connection between empathy and drug-seeking behavior, scientists then treated some of the mice with oxytocin, a chemical that is associated with social bonding and thus empathy. They found that these mice had a greater fear response than mice that were not treated with oxytocin. 

    “[Researchers] conclude that mice, and potentially people, that witness a stressful event are negatively emotionally affected, which may lead them to seek drugs, even after a period of sobriety,” according to the press release. “Oxytocin treatment exacerbates this response, indicating that social bonding (and empathy, by extension) is a driving force in this behavior. The researchers say these findings are the first to demonstrate the direct link between empathy and drug relapse, as well as to suggest oxytocin may play a role in enhancing this response.”

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Timothée Chalamet Discusses The Message Of "Beautiful Boy"

    Timothée Chalamet Discusses The Message Of "Beautiful Boy"

    “The movie shows how devastating it can be to everyone around the addict,” Timothée Chalamet explained during a recent panel on Beautiful Boy.

    Timothée Chalamet knows that Beautiful Boy, based on the memoir Tweak written by Nic Sheff (played by Chalamet) and Beautiful Boy written by Nic’s father David Sheff (played by Steve Carell), is obviously about drug addiction.

    However, he says the real message lies in the relationships at the heart of the movie.

    “The ‘don’t do drugs because they will ruin your life’ narrative, which is very true and very important to know, is out there as effectively as it should be, so this movie tried to address things around it and not that direct message,” People reported Chalamet saying to a crowd of teens at a New York screening of the movie.

    In a separate interview, Nic Scheff agreed with Chalamet’s interpretation, saying, “You have to realize that there have been so many movies about addiction that show the downward spiral of a person as the drugs overtake their life. Many of these films show these people hitting bottom, then end with them dying or getting into rehab and ending on a hopeful note. Although there have been some great movies like that, our idea was to do something different. We wanted to show the effect the addiction has on the family because my dad had written about it so amazingly in Beautiful Boy. We wanted to combine the family narrative with the addiction narrative.”

    Chalamet had recently joined Sheff in a screening of the film for New York City high school students. On a panel Sheff and Chalamet answered questions, and one student asked if there was any lesson Chalamet thought the movie got across outside of not to “get too mixed up in drugs.”

    Chalamet responded thoughtfully. “It’s supposed to portray David and Nic’s story as a firsthand warning of how addiction can ruin one’s life in the personal context, but perhaps more eye-opening, the movie shows how devastating it can be to everyone around the addict.”

    The parents of those addicted to a substance often undergo extreme and ongoing trauma. Many times the parents of those with addiction end up struggling with PTSD from the effects of the path of addiction and their child’s numerous close calls with death and prison. 

    After the Q&A session Chalamet told People, “Our hope is that it’s not a glorification of drugs or a warning against the glorification of drugs because that’s not what the movie’s about.” 

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Charlie Sheen Is One Year Sober

    Charlie Sheen Is One Year Sober

    Charlie Sheen announced his sober milestone on Twitter this week.

    After one of the most well-publicized relapses in history, actor Charlie Sheen revealed this week that he has been sober for one year. 

    Sheen, 53, posted a picture of his one-year AA chip on Twitter, writing, “so, THIS happened yesterday! a fabulous moment, in my renewed journey. #TotallyFocused.”

    It’s an important step for Sheen, who has a long and complicated history with both substance abuse and recovery. In 2016, Sheen spoke with Dr. Mehmet Oz, who asked how many times the actor has tried to stop drinking. 

    “About 2,000,” Sheen said, according to People. “There was a stretch where I didn’t drink for 11 years. No cocaine, no booze for 11 years. So I know that I have that in me.”

    Sheen said he initially relapsed after receiving an HIV diagnosis in 2012. 

    “It was to suffocate the anxiety and what my life was going to become with this condition and getting so numb I didn’t think about it,” Sheen said. “It was the only tool I had at the time, so I believed that would quell a lot of that angst. A lot of that fear. And it only made it worse.”

    Sheen told Oz then that he is committed to helping find a cure for HIV and wants his children to see that he inspired others, despite his demons. 

    “They’re going to see that dad is a true hero. That he helped a lot of people and continues to help people who can’t help themselves,” Sheen said.

    He added that when he was using he was “hammered, fractured, crazy,” but in recovery he is “focused, sober, hopeful.”

    Sheen’s father, Martin Sheen, who is in long-term recovery himself, has spoken about supporting his son through the tough times but also knowing when there is nothing left to do. 

    “What he was going through, we were powerless to do much, except to pray for him and lift him up,” Martin said in 2015.

    However, once Sheen was ready for help, his father was able to draw on his recovery and AA experience to help his son. 

    “The best way to heal is to help healing someone else, and it takes one to know one, so you can appreciate what someone’s going through if you’ve gone there yourself,” Martin said in September of this year. 

    He added that getting sober in the spotlight adds another challenge to an already fraught situation. 

    “The bigger your celebrity, the more difficult it is to lead an honest life, because your past is always present,” Martin said. “I think today makes it that much harder for people because there’s no privacy. I think that the idea of anonymity is very important to the [recovery] program, and it has an energy all its own.”

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • An Addict’s Love Song to Her Son

    An Addict’s Love Song to Her Son

    He has seen me, his addicted mother, disappear into the night on wobbly ankles, drunken feet; he has seen me being calmed down by the police; he has seen me fall. “I love you” is my answer, my promise that I will not die.

    Our love for each other is overwhelming, addicting and addictive. The love starts as early as 5 a.m., when I sometimes wake up in pain from my body getting twisted into accommodating his— his long, impossibly thick, long hair and strong knees, and feet that keep on growing. He likes to sleep in my bed and I don’t mind—I know we’ve only a couple more years left before he stops coming to nest himself into that small space, with his dinosaur-printed pillow, and his dinosaur feet wrapping around my legs.

    Some mornings he’s holding me so tightly, I don’t move and lie there with my bladder full, smelling his head—I can still get a whiff of the baby that he was only a short time ago. Hello: We will now open our eyes—he always opens his eyes right after I open mine; we’re like a wound-up toy.

    The first thing we say when we wake up is “I love you.”

    We repeat it a dozen times before we get to school: at breakfast, walking to the bus, on the bus, getting off the bus.

    When I drop him off at school, he shouts it—“I love you”—so unabashedly, again, above the heads of boys his age—the cruel age that’s right on the brink of childhood and snarkiness.

    He repeats his declarations whenever we are together and he texts me like a stalker boyfriend when I drop him off at his dad’s: I love you. Why don’t you text back. Where are you. I love you mummy. What are you doing. I love you.

    In person, he is angry and superior if I don’t reply right away or just volley it back too blatantly absentminded, with my fingers dipped into my iPhone and its drama.

    “Mummy. I said I love you.”

    “I love you too. I love you so much,” I will often add if I realize that I need to make up for the iPhone.

    Does this strike you as excessive and crazy? It is not. It is necessary, it is life-saving, life-affirming. Our words to each other are a spell we cast. So often, when we confirm that we love each other, it feels as if we’ve staved off darkness for another few hours. It seems we are safe: not from having our love unconfirmed and spent, but from losing each other.

    We need this assurance.

    “I love you” is a question.

    “I love you” is my answer, my promise. I promise him me when I say I love him. I promise him a mom. I promise him that I will pick him up from school; that I will feed him; that I will not die.

    He has seen me stumbling arm-in-arm with death too many times and I have let him go as if I didn’t love him at all, and I’ve left him for a terrible thing—a monster that closes my heart and opens my mouth, and drinks.

    What he has seen was not actual death—I have never overdosed in front of him—but its possibilities: death proxies. He has seen me disappear into the night on wobbly ankles, drunken feet; he has seen me being calmed down by the police; he has seen me fall into the street. An ambulance has been called.

    And lately, every time he looks at my right shoulder, he sees the pink burn scar from the road rash. I wish I could just bite off that shoulder—instead, I say “I love you” when I catch him staring at it.

    “I will tattoo roses over it once it heals,” I say. Those are the only type of apology flowers I can offer my boy.

    Big Feelings and Addiction

    I look at my son for signs of addiction: his neediness and his possessiveness—I don’t know if those are signs but I recognize them from my childhood. I think of my old dog that I used to dress in doll clothing and squeeze and kiss and kiss (and kiss) while she’d try to squirm out, her golden-blonde body like too much sunshine trapped and exploding out of my girl arms. She hated being confined. She wanted to run. She was a dog, not a doll. She didn’t feel the same way about me. (They design dogs for people like me now—seemingly catatonic creatures that resemble small purposeless and curious furniture—that you can carry in your purse, dogs that have anxiety bred out of them when it comes to their owners’ affections but that react with fury to small things—small leaves.)

    I know that addiction is not about the substance—it is about feelings. It is about the inability to regulate emotions properly. My love song with my son is loud and intense; we are consumed by the bond between us and although it’s a beautiful bond, I know that maybe we should dial it down. But we can’t. What am I supposed to do? Tell him to feel less strongly, less urgently? When I myself cannot model that, when I cannot repress the beauty of that?

    My son has always had Big Feelings the way I did as a child. He has always been intense with his friends; he can play in groups but he is possessive of his closest friends, he is a little desperate. He creates deep bonds with his buddies the way I did, and as it was with me, his friendship is a gift of complete loyalty and an invitation to a mind that is creative and capable of creating universes that go beyond any video game. His friends follow him, his games and his rules and he dominates them, and he has a hard time letting them go—he is heartbroken when the play dates are over. I worry that once my son gets to the age when hormones take over, he too, will find the maladaptive kind of coping mechanism that almost destroyed me.

    As a first-generation immigrant who had to leave her country behind, unasked, I’m unfortunately familiar with having to let go when I don’t want to.

    I’m familiar with the internal destruction of an unexpected event, a strike my feelings go on, demanding explanation.

    But what is the point of explanation? There should only be adaptation. But I did not adapt easily. I drank easily.

    Any major change in my feelings still always sends a seismic shock through my sobriety—I might not react right away but by the time the shock registers, I’d better be ready to stabilize. In the past I have relapsed instead so I know how precarious the addict’s sanity is. Is my son as sane or as insane as me? Will my son be able to withstand the shocks?

    Maybe I shouldn’t be so negative. Exercise helps. Exercise is good way to release your anxiety and he loves soccer. He is obsessive about it. He plays it all the time and he knows all the stats. He has found an outlet for now.

    God, let him have his soccer, let him remain passionate about it, about the stats, the games, the intricacies of transfers of Neymar Jr or Ronaldo between different soccer clubs.

    Don’t let a girl or a boy break his heart in the way that he will have to reach for a drink or a drug. Don’t let the memory of the horror divorce, my horror drinking, or moving away make him want to numb his sadness in a way that’s not soccer, that’s not innocent.

    Don’t let him become like me.

    For now we deal the best we can. There is still so much sadness but we have come up with a new strategy: When our “I-love-yous’” are not enough and he feels a bad feeling coming on, he squeezes my hand tight. He reaches for my hand and he clasps it till it hurts both of us. Most of the squeezing has to do with flashbacks of my drinking. Some of it has to do with the divorce.

    I hold his hand and feel his grip, feel him not letting go. I squeeze back, unable to let go either.

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • New Website Helps People Find Addiction Treatment Services

    New Website Helps People Find Addiction Treatment Services

    The live, online resource helps connect individuals and family members seeking addiction treatment options and related services throughout Pennsylvania.

    A series of simple questions may be a crucial link for Pennsylvania residents struggling with drug dependency.

    The Drug and Alcohol Referral Tool (DART) is a live, online resource that can connect individuals and family members seeking addiction treatment options and related services in their area. Visitors answer 9 yes-or-no questions on age, county, history of dependency on drugs or alcohol, military service and other criteria. Their answers then generate contacts for county-specific treatment or support, which has been an ongoing goal of Governor Tom Wolf’s administration.

    As The Daily Item noted, DART is an extension of Pennsylvania’s Get Help Now Hotline (800-662-HELP), which connects individuals in need with trained professionals. Though the hotline received 35,000 calls over the last two years, Department of Drug and Alcohol Programs Secretary Jen Smith said, “What we’ve heard was the hotline wasn’t really enough.”

    To accommodate the need for resources, the department, working in conjunction with the Pennsylvania Department of Human Services, launched DART on December 6, 2018. The online questionnaire, which is anonymous and can be translated into more than 100 languages, asks visitors if they are inquiring for themselves or a loved one.

    From there, they are asked to click yes or no to answer nine questions, two of which – age and county – are mandatory. The rest, which cover the individual’s military service, history of drug, alcohol or gambling abuse, and need for legal and/or transportation services, are optional.

    Upon completing the questions, respondents are then provided with a list of resources in their area, based on their answers. These include substance dependency and mental health office phone numbers, links to health and human services programs through the state’s COMPASS network based on income and a map of Drug Take Back boxes, among other options. Eligibility for programs is not assessed by DART, but users can be directed to additional information on qualifications.

    Income, transportation and living situation are included on the questionnaire because the problems are often hand-in-hand. “Substance use disorders often occur when a person experiences other medical and behavioral health concerns, and they may need additional resources to live stable, healthy life in recovery,” said Human Services Secretary Teresa Miller. “Connecting people seeking treatment to comprehensive services that can help meet all of their needs from the start is critical as they work towards recovery.”

    Inclusive tools like DART are a crucial part of Wolf’s plan to aid his state, which as of 2017 had the highest rate of drug overdose mortalities in the United States. DART is just one of several initiatives being rolled out to promote Stop Overdoses in PA: Get Help Now Week, which takes place December 10 through 14, 2018.

    “A common concern that we have heard throughout the commonwealth is that individuals aren’t aware of the services and supports available to them,” said Smith. “[DART] will allow individuals to have critical information on where to go and how to access the services they need.”

    View the original article at thefix.com