Category: Addiction News

Amanda Bynes Talks Being Four Years Sober, Reflects On Past Drug Use

Amanda Bynes credits her parents with helping her “get back on track” after her past issues with problematic drug use.

Amanda Bynes is moving on from her past. The actress, now 32, was a popular target of the paparazzi during her twenties, racking up DUIs and a reputation for drug abuse and bizarre behavior.

But she’s now sober and studying at the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising (FIDM) in Los Angeles.

In a new interview with Paper magazine, the former Nickelodeon star relives her hectic past.

As a child, Bynes landed a place on the Nickelodeon sketch comedy show All That, alongside Kenan Thompson and Nick Cannon, and quickly became a fixture of the network. As a teenager, Bynes appeared in films like Big Fat Liar, What a Girl Wants, and She’s the Man.

Despite her success, Bynes began having issues with her self-image. She recalled being thrown “into a funk” after seeing herself in She’s the Man. In this 2006 film, Bynes plays a teenage girl who disguises herself as her brother in order to play on the boy’s soccer team. “When the movie came out and I saw it, I went into a deep depression for 4-6 months because I didn’t like how I looked when I was a boy,” she said.

Still, she continued to churn out hits on the big screen like Hairspray (2007) and Easy A (2010). But she couldn’t shake her self-image issues. While watching herself at a screening of Easy A, Bynes said, “I literally couldn’t stand my appearance in that movie and I didn’t like my performance. I was absolutely convinced I needed to stop acting after seeing it.”

Bynes “never liked the taste of alcohol” and “never really liked going out that much. I [only] started going out around 25 years old,” she said.

While she couldn’t stomach alcohol, Bynes did start using marijuana when she was 16. “Even though everyone thought I was the ‘good girl,’ I did smoke marijuana from that point on.”

However, this progressed to molly, ecstasy and Adderall. The combination of drugs that she was abusing did not agree with her.

Bynes announced that she was retiring from acting, and found herself out of work with not much to do. “I just had no purpose in life. I’d been working my whole life and [now] I was doing nothing. I had a lot of time on my hands and I would ‘wake and bake’ and literally be stoned all day long,” she said.

This cycle of being “just stuck at home, getting high, watching TV and tweeting,” eventually spiraled out of control. Bynes began “hanging out with a seedier crowd and I isolated a lot… I got really into my drug usage and it became a really dark, sad world for me.”

She explained that her bizarre behavior was truly “drug-induced, and whenever I got off of [drugs], I was always back to normal.”

Bynes, with her past behind her, is now looking forward to earning her fashion degree and returning to acting. “I’ve been sober for almost four years now.” She credits her parents with “really helping me get back on track.”

“Those days of experimenting [with substances] are long over. I’m not sad about it and I don’t miss it because I really feel ashamed of how those substances made me act,” she said.

With everything she has been through, magnified by the relentless pursuit of the paparazzi, Bynes says she’s now able to live fearlessly.

“I think that’s kind of how I go about [life] now—like, what’s there to lose? I have no fear of the future. I’ve been through the worst and came out the other end and survived it so I just feel like it’s only up from here.”

View the original article at thefix.com

28 November 2018
"Dopesick Nation" Shows Reality of Treatment Professionals Who Struggle with Addiction

Dopesick Nation explores addiction treatment and the thin line between interventionist and client, recovery and relapse.

Note: This piece contains spoilers for Dopesick Nation

As a former social worker in recovery from addiction, I was initially skeptical of the VICELAND Series Dopesick Nation because I thought it would follow the familiar formula of A&E’s Intervention and TLC’s Addicted. I was wrong. Dopesick Nation is different from these other shows for many reasons, but it’s especially good at illuminating the unique difficulties of being a recovering addict while also working with and helping other people struggling with addiction. Dopesick Nation explores the thin line between interventionist and client, recovery and relapse. This is a common struggle, as 37 to 57% of professionals in the addiction field are in recovery themselves. Due to stigma, there is sparse data on how often people working in this field relapse, but I found a preliminary study that found 14.7% of addiction treatment professionals relapse over their career lifespan. I can relate: I’ve relapsed twice while working in the field.

Let me start by saying that I commend all people working in addiction and recovery treatment. While I have mixed feelings about Intervention and Addicted, I have deep respect for the interventionists who have made it their mission to help people with addiction while also navigating the daily struggles of their own recovery. The traditional interventionists of Addicted and Intervention appear so stable; each of their stories follow a typical trajectory from drug addict to helper. On the opening montage of Addicted, interventionist Kristina Wandzilak says: “By the time I was 15, I was addicted to drugs and alcohol. I robbed homes, I sold my body, I dug in dumpsters to pay for my habit. Today I am an interventionist…”

Yes, Wandzilak and the other interventionists’ stories are all inspiring to people like me in recovery, but the reality is that many of us relate more to Dopesick Nation’s leads, Allie and Frankie. Both are candid about the difficulty of working in the field and later Frankie is open about his relapse. But we’ll come back to that.

Addiction Treatment on TV: Intervention, Addicted, and Dopesick Nation

One of the first stark differences between these shows is the more relatable, down-to-earth way that Allie and Frankie approach their clients. From my experience as a social worker with eight years of experience in the field, I know that the first step is building rapport and earning the trust of vulnerable people who are skeptical of helping professionals. Allie wears yoga pants and hoop earrings, Frankie is covered in tattoos and wears a backwards black hat and a t-shirt with the logo of his nonprofit, “FUCK HEROIN FOUNDATION.”

This may seem surface level, but first impressions matter. Trust should be earned, not expected. I had a client who refused to open the door to staff for weeks, in part because she felt social workers were elitist and unrelatable. When she finally let me in, she said, “You’re not one of those preppy ass bitches.” My boss joked that all the staff should get tattoos, a lip ring, and blue hair like me even though technically it was against dress code policy.

In Addicted and Intervention, the interventions are staged in the carefully controlled environments of beige hotel conference rooms. Wearing business casual clothes, neatly ironed polos and chinos, the interventionists sit on comfy chairs in a U-shaped circle, then conduct a carefully orchestrated, seemingly scripted intervention.

In Dopesick Nation, Allie and Frankie meet their clients where they are, which is a foundation for building a helping relationship. The show takes place in sunny, touristy Florida, where glimmering sandy beaches are dotted with tourists in Hawaiian shirts playing shuffleboard next to the swirling tides of the turquoise ocean. But Allie and Frankie don’t meet on the beach. Instead, they talk to clients on park benches, and curbsides in bad neighborhoods, braving torrential downpours and scorching heat. This method of “meeting people where they are at” is supported by years of social science research and was a cornerstone of my work as part of an outreach team to help people with severe mental illness and addiction. We left our office bubble, braving blizzards and arctic cold, because we knew clients were more likely to go to detox or another facility after a course of meetings in their homes.

Fast forward to Frankie admitting he’s relapsed and is taking Suboxone, a medication to deal with opioid cravings. Wringing his hands, itching his sweat-glazed skin, Frankie tells his sponsor Gary: “90 to 95% of my day helping other people find their recovery. Sometimes I’m not taking care of my own recovery. And how am I gonna help other people get something that I don’t have? A lot of people rely on me, that pressure weighs on me.”

Gary encourages Frankie to go to detox. “When you’re working in treatment, you’re around sickness all day long and you’re absorbing it… You need to work a righteous program.”

Treatment Professionals Who Relapse

I want to tell Gary that even though Suboxone is sometimes shunned by the recovery community, many studies support its efficacy. Suboxone is a valid form of recovery. I want to reach across the screen, hug Frankie and tell him he deserves the same care and compassion that he gives to clients, that it’s okay to take a break from the field to take care of himself. I want to tell him that I admire him even more because he let his guard down and was honest. I want to tell him that more of us relapse than he may realize and assure him that he is not a hypocrite for relapsing and taking Suboxone. I want to tell him my story.

Three years ago, I was working at a day center with people who had struggled with homelessness and addiction. I remember one day when a client who was an IV heroin and meth user told me about his struggles to get clean. My years of experience taught me the art of self-disclosure, specifically if and when it was appropriate to disclose to clients that I too was in recovery. Since I’d known him seven months and even been trusted to store his dead cat’s ashes (a story for another day), I told him about my addiction as though it was in the past tense, although it was very much in the present tense. Steeped in denial, I told myself that my nighttime and weekend benders wouldn’t bleed into daytime. Looking back, I feel ashamed, but I know that denial is also a powerful drug. For a while, I thought I juggled my work life and secret life well. I thrived at my job, until, surprise— the benders bled into my work days.

One day this client told me he was worried about me. He’d noticed my weight loss, blue circles under my darkened eyes, and change in personality. That’s when I knew I needed help. It was time to take a break from being a social worker. I went to detox for five days, then resigned and decided to move home. Like Frankie in Dopesick Nation, I realized that I couldn’t take care of others until I took care of myself.

Eighteen months later, I miss social work and helping people. I hope to one day return to the profession, but in the meantime I’m using writing as a means to fight the stigma of addiction and shame of relapse. The reality is that relapse rates vary between 50 to 90%, and even treatment professionals are not immune to the realities of addiction. My hope is that one day more helping professionals like me can come out about their relapses and be commended for our honesty.

What are your thoughts on Dopesick Nation and Frankie and Allie? How should people who work in addiction treatment make sure they’re taking care of their own recovery? Let us know in the comments.

View the original article at thefix.com

28 November 2018
New Non-Opioid Treatment For Back Pain Heads To Clinical Trials

Researchers hope the non-opioid treatment for back pain will be approved by the FDA so that it will be eligible for coverage by Medicaid and Medicare.

Researchers at West Virginia University (WVU) are taking part in a clinical trial for a non-opioid, non-steroid treatment of a common form of back pain that is usually treated with opioid painkillers.

The Rockefeller Neuroscience Institute is the first site to enroll a patient in a randomized trial, currently in its third phase, that uses a micropellet injection of clonidine—a treatment for blood pressure and pain—to alleviate pain caused by sciatica. The participation of WVU is part of what the university described as its ongoing commitment to fight opioid addiction in a state that had the highest rate of opioid-related overdose deaths in the nation.

The Institute reported on November 15 that it had successfully injected the clonidine micropellet, which is approximately half the size of a grain of rice, into a patient’s lower back. The micropellet dissolves in the body and is expected to provide relief from acute pain caused by sciatica, a common form of back pain that radiates from the sciatic nerve down the lower back through the hips, buttocks and down each leg.

As the West Virginia Gazette noted, 60% of sciatica patients—which include some five million U.S. residents—are treated with opioid medication.

“We hope that the patients that have sciatica will have very good and prolonged pain relief from this formulation of this medicine,” said Dr. Richard Vaglienti, principal investigator for WVU’s site of the study and director of the Center for Integrative Pain Management. “This is a medicine we’ve used for many years for pain in anesthesiology, and now it’s been formulated into these pellets that we’re injecting into the patients’ epidural space in hopes of finding a better treatment than what we have now.”

Currently, one patient from WVU has been enrolled, though others have signed up and are ready for treatment. The study itself will enroll 200 patients nationwide; if effective, the study authors hope to have it approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) so that it will be eligible for coverage by Medicaid and Medicare.

Making the drug available to all Americans, and especially those in West Virginia, is key to WVU’s participation in the study.

“Sadly, West Virginia, in 2017, had the highest drug overdose mortality in the nation, followed by Ohio,” said Dr. Ali Rezai, executive chair of the Rockefeller Neuroscience Institute, and scientific adviser to Sollis Therapeutics, which developed the clonidine micropellet.

“It’s important that we also explore solutions to deal with the opioid crisis, and in this case, be the first in the country to use this technology so we can stop opioid addiction at its roots.”

View the original article at thefix.com

28 November 2018
Sexual Orientation Tied To Increased Risk Of Opioid Abuse

A new study examined the link between sexual orientation and opioid abuse.

People who identify as gay, lesbian or bisexual are more likely to misuse opioids, and bisexual women are at a particularly high risk, according to a study published this week.

The study, published in The American Journal of Preventive Medicine, found that bisexual women were about twice as likely to misuse opioids as members of the general population who identify as heterosexual.

Lead study author Dustin Duncan, an associate professor in the Department of Population Health at NYU School of Medicine, told The Washington Post that these findings are consistent with previous studies that have showed people who are not heterosexual have poorer health overall.

“I think the findings speak to the life experiences of people in society,” he said. “People who have less privilege and power generally have worse health. This isn’t a fluke or a one-time finding. It tends to be systematic.”

For the study, researchers analyzed data from more than 40,000 individuals who took the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, an annual study conducted by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.

In 2015, questions were introduced asking about sexual orientation for the first time, allowing researchers to see the connection between sexual orientation and substance abuse, particularly focused on prescription opioids.

Joseph Palamar, an associate professor in the Department of Population Health at New York University’s School of Medicine and another author of the study, said that he was surprised to see that bisexual women were most at risk for opioid abuse, since the opioid epidemic is usually associated with men.

“Typically women are more protected against drug use,” he said. “It’s usually the men we worry about.”

Palamar theorized that bisexual woman might be more open to experimentation — both sexually and with drug use. However, Duncan pushed back on that idea, instead suggesting that the “minority stress model” can explain the increased risk factor for bisexual women. The minority stress model suggests that the stress of being a member of a minority group can contribute to negative health outcomes.

Bisexual woman, he said, are minorities in many ways: they are female and not heterosexual, but they also don’t fit in fully with members of the lesbian or gay communities.

“These things together create further stress, less ability to cope and give rise to poor health,” Duncan said.

The National Survey on Drug Use and Health does not include questions about gender identity, so researchers were not able to study any potential links between transgender or non-binary individuals and drug abuse. However, Duncan said that doctors can use the study to better serve people who are at increased risk of abusing opioids.

“We need to continue documenting who is at risk,” he said. “This study is really the first step.”

View the original article at thefix.com

27 November 2018
New York's Opioid Prescription Monitoring System Needs Improvement

The newly re-elected State Comptroller has found some major issues with the opioid prescription monitoring system.

An audit of the New York State opioid prescription monitoring database found that patients in treatment for opioid dependency may have received potentially dangerous opioid prescriptions outside of their treatment programs.

Newly re-elected State Comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli issued a statement indicating that some treatment programs were not cross-referencing patients’ treatment with other opioid prescriptions, or coordinating with health care professionals.

The audit showed that a third of Medicaid recipients in treatment received opioid prescriptions outside of their program; of that number, nearly 500 were said to need medical treatment for an opioid or narcotic overdose within a month of receiving the prescription, and 12 died as a result of said overdose.

The Internet System for Tracking Over-Prescribing (I-STOP) is a database of records for all controlled substances dispensed in the state and reported by either a pharmacy or dispenser. Treatment programs are not required to disclose the medication they give to patients, but in some cases, are required to check I-STOP to determine if a patient is receiving opioid prescriptions from other sources.

If outside prescriptions are found, the program can consult with health care professionals to determine the appropriate response, after consent from the patient is obtained.

According to the statement, DiNapoli’s auditors looked at state Department of Health (DOH) records from October 1, 2013 to September 30, 2017 and found 18,786 Medicaid patients who were receiving opioid treatment—usually methadone—through a recovery program as well as additional opioid prescriptions. Of that group, 493 required medical attention as a result of 691 opioid or narcotic overdoses that occurred within a month of receiving the opioid, and 12 died while under medical care.

The statement also reviewed medical records from a sample group of 25 Medicaid recipients from three treatment programs. Data from Medicaid showed that these individuals had received 1,065 Medicaid opioid prescriptions while undergoing treatment; additionally, these treatment programs only cross-referenced the patients’ data on 18 occasions, and did not check if a medication-assisted opioid was prescribed for take-home use, which is required by state law.

Consent forms to coordinate care with prescribers were required of only 13 of the 25 in the sample group, of which three did not sign the form. The programs were aware of only 53% of those Medicaid prescriptions for these patients, while consent to care was coordinated for just 8% of those prescriptions.

“New York and the rest of the country are facing an opioid addiction epidemic, and people’s lives are at stake,” said DiNapoli in the statement. “Programs designed to get individuals off highly addicted opioids can only be effective with proper vigilance. The state Department of Health should take steps to help treatment programs and health care providers work together to prevent overdoses that could lead to hospitalizations or death.”

DiNapoli’s statement also included a list of recommendations for the DOH to improve I-STOP, including a report that notifies treatment programs when recipients are receiving opioid prescriptions. The DOH did not agree with all of the audit’s conclusions, but added that actions would be taken to address the suggestions.

View the original article at thefix.com

27 November 2018
Inside The Mental Health Crisis In Federal Prisons

At some federal prisons in the midst of a mental health crisis, the number of inmates receiving care has fallen by 80% in the past four years.

Despite promises for better health care and oversight, the Federal Bureau of Prisons has dramatically cut the number of inmates on its mental health caseload, according to an investigation by the Marshall Project.

In part, that’s because the prison system didn’t add more employees while officials promised more care, increasing the workload for the existing mental health staff without providing the resources to do it.

“The catchphrase in the bureau was ‘Do more with less,’” Russ Wood, a long-time federal prison psychologist, told the Marshall Project. “The psychologists were getting pulled off to work gun towers and do prisoner escorts. We’re not really devoted to treating.”

As of February 2018, only 3% of federal prisoners were classified as mentally ill enough to need treatment. At some facilities, the number of inmates getting mental health care has fallen 80 or more percent in the past four years.

Afterward, suicides and self-harm increased, data shows. Between 2015 and 2017 the figures for suicides, suicide attempts and self-injuries rose by nearly one-fifth. And, having fewer prisoners on the proper medication or receiving the care they need could have other effects on the prison system; the average monthly rate of prison assaults bumped up 16% between 2015 and 2016.

FCI Hazelton in West Virginia—the lock-up where Whitey Bulger was killed earlier this year—had among the largest decreases in mental health care treatment, accompanied by a sharp increase in the assault rate which rose from 29 per 5,000 inmates per month to 40 per 5,000 inmates per month.

In addition to failing to hire mental health providers, the federal prison system has come under scrutiny for reassigning non-security staff to cover for guards—who also face understaffing problems. Using a practice called augmentation, federal prisons routinely force teachers, medical workers, counselors and cooks to work as correctional officers, a USA Today investigation found earlier this year.

The paper reported on the problem two years ago, but since then it seems only to have gotten worse, according to prison workers.

“The problems have only escalated,” said Eric Young, president of the union for prison workers. “Some of the facilities are making those assignments every day to avoid paying overtime to corrections officers.”

View the original article at thefix.com

27 November 2018
"Teen Mom" Star Leah Messer Reveals Past Addiction

“It almost cost me my children. Everything was crashing down on me. I became suicidal,” Leah Messer said about her past addiction to pain medication.

Reality television star Leah Messer spoke candidly about her past addiction to prescription drugs on an episode of her podcast.

During a November 14 episode of her Life Reboot series, the Teen Mom 2 personality said that she understood “how it feels to become dependent on anything given by doctors,” and discussed how a botched epidural given during the birth of her second child led to a dependency on pain medication, which her ex-husband, Jeremy Calvert, said she received from her father, who was himself struggling with addiction.

Messer, who also discussed a battle with depression that left her feeling suicidal in 2015, declared herself “in a much better place now” and feeling no shame for her past struggle.

On the podcast, Messer said that while preparing to deliver her daughter, Adalynn, in 2013, she was given multiple injections during the epidural. “I couldn’t, like, feel my body,” she said. “I couldn’t get up and they just put me on morphine. I kept telling Jeremy, ‘Something’s not right.”

Messer claimed that the hospital kept her for observation over the course of seven days, but never determined what the cause of her physical condition. She was eventually sent home with “three different drugs.” Calvert, who was a guest on the podcast, said that the post-hospital experience was “a nightmare.”

“It was hell,” he explained. “She couldn’t move out of bed… it was just a messed up situation… and she was in pain.”

Things became much worse when Messer’s father, who was himself addicted to pain medication and living with the couple, gave her pain medication. “It was easily available [to her] with him living in our basement.”

Messer said that by this point, she was already dependent on pain meds. “Then they put me on Diazepam (the generic form of Valium), and it had me nodding off. I didn’t even know what it was!”

Despite her struggle, Messer denied claims that she was struggling with dependency and depression. But in a 2018 episode of her podcast, she admitted that this period in her life was among her most difficult.

“I wasn’t in the greatest place mentally, and then it was affecting me physically,” she said. “It almost cost me my children. Everything was crashing down on me. I became suicidal.”

Messer would go on to complete a 30-day treatment program for depression and anxiety in 2015 and declared herself “in a much better place now.” She is also reluctant to give her children any prescription medication.

“We do the numbing gel (for pain) and that’s it,” she said. “I don’t want them to become dependent on or even go through that. I do know how it feels to become dependent on anything given by doctors.”

View the original article at thefix.com

27 November 2018
Paramore's Hayley Williams Talks Mental Health, Social Media Break

Paramore’s Hayley Williams opened up about mental health in a candid Instagram post.

Hayley Williams is taking a break from social media. The lead singer of Paramore announced Saturday that she will be focusing on her side project, Good Dye Young, a line of vegan and cruelty-free hair products, in lieu of posting on Instagram and Twitter.

“Hey friends. It’s holiday season… but I’m working a lot from home,” she said in a lengthy collage-style message on Instagram. “There’s… a lot… going on. It’s exciting and it’s also a lot.”

While she is taking “another extended break” from social media, she will be managing Good Dye Young’s social media accounts, she assured fans.

“I am careful not to sensationalize issues around mental health as it’s such a sensitive and very layered conversation for every individual,” she continued in her Instagram post.

Williams confessed that she “could never fully admit to nor bring myself to go get a true diagnosis for my own issues until recently.”

“I’m working really hard on getting strong for myself. I am so grateful to people who have kept this conversation safe and sacred for me in the last couple of years.”

With the release of the album After Laughter in the spring of 2017, after a dry spell since 2013, Williams revealed that her mental health had suffered for a while as a young artist in the public eye.

“I don’t feel as hopeful as I did as a teenager. For the first time in my life, there wasn’t a pinhole of light at the end of the tunnel. I thought, I just wish everything would stop,” she said in a Fader interview.

But with the release of After Laughter, Williams said she’s moving on from feeling hopeless. “[After Laughter] helps me mark this time as a significant turning point in my life. I’m noticing similar movement in my friends’ lives too,” she said in Paper Magazine earlier this year. “More presence and awareness. More tenderness. I’m alive to both pain and joy now. I have my old laugh back, as my mom says… And only a couple years ago, I had hoped I’d die.”

Williams urged fans to take mental health seriously. “It’s important to do what you can to find a solution that works for you. Be it therapy, medication, fighting the tendency to isolate and asking people you trust to keep you accountable,” she said in her recent Instagram post.

The singer-songwriter said that she’s done feeling “okay” and ventured to want more for herself. “I know it is very popular to say ‘it’s okay to not be okay,’ but please give me the grace to admit that as I am quickly approaching 30 I am just not okay with not being okay anymore,” she said. “I am interested in living out a much more fulfilling life than just ‘okay’ could ever offer. I think that you are worth more than ‘okay’ has to offer too.”

“Please take care of yourselves and try to believe that you are worth more than just ‘okay’ or ‘been better’ or ‘can’t complain.’ I think we are all worth experiencing joy. We are worth feeling hope.”

View the original article at thefix.com

27 November 2018
My Journey from Heroin to Prison

As soon as I was out of prison, it took one argument with a girlfriend for me to go running right back into the arms of the one that always made me feel better: heroin.

I have been a man of many realities. I’ve been a son, a student, a friend, a lover, a brother and finally a drug dealer. Well, at least, I thought that was my final phase. But then I shot heroin for the first time and I entered a new world. I felt warmth comparable to a mother’s embrace. It was something in my life I no longer received. It was a feeling I craved desperately, setting me on a course of destruction and pain that I tried to blot out with even more heroin. And every time I came to, the pain seemed to get worse.

I didn’t start off as a heroin user. I found my niche in high school selling weed. But when I was forced out on my own, I knew I needed a better source of income. So, I started selling the Adderal and Atavan that I was prescribed. In that life, it really was only a matter of time before I started abusing the drugs I was selling. To support my growing habit, I started selling cocaine. It was fast and easy money from an older crowd. I didn’t plan on using it myself; my biological mother was addicted to crack cocaine and I was afraid of following in her footsteps.

But there came a day when I gave in to temptation. Coke took me to another level. After cocaine it was Percocet and then, eventually, at the prompting of the girl I loved, I tried heroin. As I pushed the plunger, I felt all of the pain in my life fade away as the warmth of the dope enveloped me. It was a night of warmth and sex. When I woke up in the morning, all I felt was sadness that the feeling was over. Reality came crashing over me and all of the feelings that I had so desperately tried to bury came rushing back to me. It was a toxic mix of guilt and anger and disappointment. Pain.

I never liked dealing with my feelings, and heroin helped me to avoid them. But I tried to avoid them too much. Two nights before Christmas 2009, I overdosed for the first time. The life I had been living took its toll on me, mentally and physically. I was alone and the pain of losing my family and my friends to my addiction became too much for me to handle. All I wanted was to keep running from it. I ended up using too much heroin to blur out the pain.

I didn’t want to die but I just didn’t know how to live.

When I opened my eyes, it was like a dream. Ambulance lights flashing, people overhead asking questions. All of the voices seemed as if they were under water. Christmas morning, when I came to in the hospital, my family was there at my bedside. I hadn’t seen my brothers and sisters in a long time because my mom wanted me to stay away. She wasn’t my biological mom, of course. The woman that gave birth to me was too in love with crack to be a mother to me. She abandoned me when I was five. But my mom, she took me in and looked after me until I was 14. Then she kicked me out too.

When I woke up in the hospital bed and saw her face and the looks on my siblings’ faces, I broke down. At that point in my life, I thought I had forgotten how to cry. But I cried because they cried. I cried because I realized my siblings were seeing their hero at his worst. I cried because I felt bad for all the things I did to my mom. I always wanted to make my adopted parents proud. I felt like I owed them my successes because they gave me a second chance at a decent life. I had to show them it wasn’t for nothing. But looking into my mom’s eyes that morning, all I saw was the pain and disappointment I had caused her.

When I was released from the hospital, I was too ashamed and embarrassed to show my face to my brothers and sisters. I didn’t want to deal with the pain of what I had done. Instead, I crawled backed into bed with my new love, heroin, who kept my emotions nonexistent as long as I stayed with her. I turned away from my family and searched for a new one – a family that would accept me without me having to change my destructive behavior. I found that sense of belonging with the Latin Kings.

My “Original Gangster” – the Latin King member who took me under his wing – showed me a side of gang life that I hadn’t ever expected. He told me the Nation was dedicated to uplifting the Latin community from poverty, oppression, and abuse. He showed me broken families, homeless people and how my life would be if I continued on the path I was on. He was a man who didn’t owe me a thing but tried to show me a better way. At least, that’s what I thought at the time. And I wanted what he had: respect, power, and the ability to make a difference in the lives of the people who looked up to him. I had no direction and nothing going for me so I agreed to be a part of his world, with no consideration of what that really meant.

I began living a lie. I pretended to be clean, but anyone who stayed around me long enough could see that I was on drugs. My OG would ask me occasionally if I was using and I would always make up a story. He never pushed me any further on it. But the other Kings knew. They didn’t care, though, as long as I did what they asked of me. Some of them even supplied me with drugs to make sure I was ready for a “mission.” In our world, a mission involved shooting at the opposition or robbing someone.

In my heart, though, I was never a gangster. I never wanted to hurt people. The things I did on my missions made me feel like I was a losing a part of myself. My life became an endless cycle: wake up, get high, complete my mission, get high, be with my girlfriend, get high, black out, wake up, repeat. Then one day I was given a mission that no amount of drugs could ever convince me to do.

I had sworn loyalty to my gang but when they told me to kill my OG for being a suspected police informant, I couldn’t do it. Three members of my gang beat me unconscious for violating their order. When I came to, I was in the hospital with a concussion and my phone was ringing. My OG’s wife was crying on the other end. He was dead. My heart sank and hardened at once. I detached myself from the machines and left against medical advice. I needed to get back to heroin. It was my love, and at that point, it also became my life.

Supporting my habit got harder. I was using too much to be able to sell and still have enough left for myself. So, I found a new profession as a male escort. It was during that time that I was raped by one of my drug dealers. I was unable to live with myself after that happened. For the first time, I intentionally overdosed and ended up on a friend’s front porch. He brought me back to life. Throughout the night, he talked to me about life. He told me “life is good, good is life.” I eventually had those words tattooed on my forearms to serve as a reminder. He not only gave me a second chance at life but also a new outlook. From that day forward, I tried to fight my addiction.

It wasn’t easy and I didn’t manage it very well. I tried my first stint at rehab at 17. That lasted two weeks. Soon after rehab, I caught my first case for armed robbery. Strangely, when they put me in the cop car, I was relieved. My first night in jail put me in a bad place mentally. All the pain I was running from was suffocating me. I had the phrase “life is good, good is life” in my mind but, at that moment, I had no idea what was actually good in my life. All I knew is that I wanted to live.

I served three years and change on my first sentence. I was in the best shape of my life, both physically and mentally, and I thought I had everything figured out. But nothing had really changed for me. As soon as I was out, it took one argument with a girlfriend for me to go running right back into the arms of the one that always made me feel better: heroin. I wasn’t out of prison four hours before I had a needle in my arm.

Seven months later, I caught my second case and that’s what I’m serving now. Since going back to prison this time, I’ve worked hard to better myself, gain an education and become someone. But I still carry around the fear that I might not be strong enough to stay clean and make something of myself when I get out. In the past, that fear would have stopped me from even trying. But during this sentence, I’ve learned that the only way for me to succeed is to have the courage to fail and pick myself back up without having to turn to my old love for support. I used to believe I was nothing and that meant my life would amount to nothing. But I don’t believe that anymore. I believe that I have the tools I need to succeed. And that gives me hope that, maybe this time, everything will be different.

View the original article at thefix.com

27 November 2018
Do Problematic Facebook Users Make More Impulsive Decisions?

A small-scale study examined the impulsivity of problematic Facebook users.

Impulsive decision-making may be added to the list of negative effects of too much Facebook use, according to new research.

The study, published in Addiction Research and Theory, was done at a Midwestern university and consisted of surveying 75 students. In doing so, researchers discovered that students who scored higher on the Bergen Facebook Addiction Scale had a higher probability of exhibiting “delay discounting.”

According to PsyPost, delay discounting is when a person is more inclined to take a smaller reward that they can have immediately, rather than waiting for a larger reward. For the study specifically, students were asked whether they wanted $70 immediately or $200 in two weeks.

According to the research, many of the students who said they would choose the $70 were also the students who reported utilizing Facebook to forget about personal issues, who tried to decrease Facebook use without success and used the social media platform so much that it impacted their jobs and studies in a negative way.

“Steep delay discounting, or a preference for smaller immediate rewards instead of investing in a larger payout in the future, has been an observed behavior across addictions,” researchers wrote. “This finding thus strengthens the proposition that [Facebook addiction] may share neurocognitive processes similar to other addictions.”

Licensed psychologist Tyler Fortman told Guy Counseling that for those in the field such as himself, the results of this study were expected. “I’m not surprised to see the results of this study. We’ve known for some time now that frequent social media usage has a negative impact on delayed gratification,” he said.

In their conclusion, the researchers acknowledge that in the future, such a study would benefit from having more participants from more diverse backgrounds.

“More advanced and better powered research on this topic is warranted,” researchers wrote. “Although Facebook can be innocuous for many users, and even provides apparent benefit to users by maintaining social connections, for some persons, Facebook use may be problematic.”

This research supports a prior study’s findings that measured impulsivity with a “go/no-go” task and found that Facebook addiction aligned with impulsive decision making.

“The findings indicated that at least at the examined levels of addiction-like symptoms, technology-related ‘addictions’ share some neural features with substance and gambling addictions, but more importantly they also differ from such addictions in their brain etiology and possibly pathogenesis, as related to abnormal functioning of the inhibitory-control brain system,” that study’s researchers wrote.

View the original article at thefix.com

27 November 2018