Category: Addiction News

Get Rid Of Benzodiazepines Once And For All
Despite the fact that benzodiazepines are taken by illicit drug users, many people became dependent on them as a result of medical treatment. When trying to discontinue benzodiazepines the most important thing to have into consideration are the withdrawal difficulties. Benzodiazepine withdrawal can be quite dangerous mainly because of the shock to the nervous system through inappropriate and dangerous tapering methods such as detox and abrupt discontinuation.

Considering to free yourself from taking benzodiazepine, but don’t know how? In this article, we review the safe ways to get rid of benzodiazepines once and for all. Then, your questions are welcomed at the end of the page.

Is Benzodiazepine Addiction Normal?

Regardless of recommendations to limit benzodiazepines to short-term use, in the timeline of 2 (two) to 4 (four) weeks, doctors are still prescribing these medications long term, for months or years. The over-prescribing benzodiazepine trend has resulted in large populations of long-term users who have become dependent and has also led to the increase of illicit benzodiazepine drug traffic.

Anyone can become dependent and/or addicted to benzodiazepines. Individuals who take bezos more than several weeks risk to develop tolerance and physical dependence. After repeated use for months users and/or abusers develop benzodiazepine addiction. Coming off benzodiazepines can be challenging resulting with feelings of losses, isolation. Most benzodiazepine abusers feel misunderstood and unsupported when they decide to quit these medication. The extremely uncomfortable and dangerous withdrawal is what leads so many people to the emergency rooms.

If you want to get rid of benzodiazepines once and for all, it’s best to go through a medically supervised detox to ensure your life and health safety.

What Are The Characteristics Of Benzodiazepine Dependence?

Benzodiazepines are medications with high level of dependency. Medical practice has shown that 50-80% of people who regularly take low doses of benzodiazepines for longer than a few months will develop a physical tolerance and become dependent. As the lack of recognition of benzodiazepine dependency is common, it often goes undetected or is misdiagnosed. Be alert for dependency, even though it may not be initially identified as a problem. Benzodiazepine dependence is usually visible through physical and psychological signs. Individuals with benzodiazepines dependency usually have the following symptoms:
- Experience withdrawal symptoms when they try to quit
- Find it extremely difficult to stop taking benzodiazepines
- Have cravings for their benzodiazepines
- Lose their ability to respond to the effects from benzodiazepine, so they increase their dose to be able to achieve
- The same effect
- Need benzodiazepines to function normally
- Unable to cope without their benzodiazepine pills
Unless users are well informed about the risks associated with long term benzodiazepine use, they are likely to continue to use them and end up developing dependency. In the short-term, benzodiazepines are very effective in relieving the symptoms of anxiety and promoting sleep. People who use them will feel much better and will often choose to continue using them because they have not been warned about the risks.

What Do The Experts Say About Benzodiazepines?

Dr. Jennifer Leigh, Psy.D. says that Benzo withdrawal can take years and they can kill you. Benzodiazepines kill people. They can totally obliterate people’s lives when they try to stop taking them. Granted, not every benzo user will experience extreme benzo withdrawal, but a good proportion will. Benzos are dangerous at any dose and even when used for a few days. Poll a group of benzo survivors and you’ll hear horror stories from people who took them for a handful of days, and then took years to heal.

Benzodiazepines destroy lives. That’s the bottom line. For those of us in the trenches healing from their damage, we are busy trying to put our lives back together again from the debilitating emotional and physical symptoms benzo withdrawal causes. Add in the bankruptcy, abandonment, divorce, and homelessness that withdrawal can cause, and you understand our grumbling when the media doesn’t portray the real reasons why benzos are dangerous.

Jillian Jesser talks about hope in the treatment of benzodiazepines. The new data did confirm impaired cognitive abilities persist six months after the detox/withdrawal period of chronic benzo use. However, there is an important “but” to that statement. Some of the specific cognitive skills need a longer period of recovery to improve, so six months should not be used a benchmark for “full recovery.”

Another important area of hope in treating the thinking, reasoning and other impairment issues that result from long-term benzo use is the new area of neuroplasticity. This means that the brain can be retrained and that the brain can actually change in structure resulting in cognitive improvement.

How Can You Get Rid Of Benzodiazepines?

Addiction counselors and doctors treat benzodiazepine dependence with gradual reduction of the doses people usually take.

Doctor’s advice is that benzodiazepine dosage should be tapered gradually in cases where the individual was a long time users/abuser. Abrupt withdrawal, especially from high doses, can cause convulsions, acute psychotic states and panic reactions. Even with slow withdrawal from smaller doses, psychiatric symptoms sometimes appear and anxiety can be severe.

Withdrawal from Benzos is different in every dependent individual, but it usually last from 6-8 weeks to a few months and some for some people it may last even up to a year. Addiction professionals advise that very slow rates of withdrawal might prolong the agony, and that although symptoms may be more severe with more rapid withdrawal, they do not last so long. But the tapering dynamics should be in accordance with the individual case of the person.

The size of each dosage reduction depends on the starting dose. Individuals who used higher doses can usually tolerate larger dose reduction than those on lower doses. The reduction would of course vary according to the type of the abused benzodiazepine. But the scariest thing for addicts is stopping the last few milligrams. This is so mainly because of fears about how they will cope without their Bezos at all. However, doctors and addiction counselors constantly provide psychological support and encouragement to addicts reminding about the new sense of freedom when you completely come off Benzos.

Guide on best practices and psychotherapy treatment for benzodiazepine treatment. What are the exact ways that counselors or mental health professionals treat benzodiazepine dependence? Describe the steps and/or treatments.

Residential Vs Counselling Treatment: What Works Best?

There are divided opinions on the matter of should you choose residential setting or home setting for benzodiazepine withdrawal. Some favour treating people in a counselling setting rather than treating them in hospital or a residential withdrawal facility. Benzodiazepine addiction treatment results show slow reduction of as the safest, most cost effective and most successful way for people to become pill-free. Slow reduction is best achieved in a counselling or home based withdrawal setting.

Residential withdrawal is recommended only in the following cases:
- Cases of more severe medical problems
- History of withdrawal seizures
- Psychiatric disorder as well as benzodiazepine dependency
- If the person is a high dose user
- In case the individual feels that they will be able to reduce their dose more successfully in residential setting
- If the individual is a polydrug user
Who Can Help You With Benzodiazepine Dependence?

When facing benzodiazepine dependence and looking for help, you can always trust this issue into the hands of:
- Addiction counselors
- Doctors
- Licensed psychiatrist
- Physicians
Reference sources: Benzo: The diagnosis and management of benzodiazepine dependence
Benzo: Beyond Benzodiazepines
Benzo: The Treatment of Benzodiazepine Dependence

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22 November 2018
Florida Sues CVS, Walgreens For Their Alleged Roles In Opioid Crisis

The suit claims that the companies failed to stop “suspicious orders of opioids,” and dispensed “unreasonable quantities” of such drugs.

The state of Florida has named two of the largest drugstore chains in the United States—Walgreens and CVS—as well as Insys Therapeutics, in a lawsuit that alleged that they “played a role in creating the opioid crisis.”

Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi issued a press release stating that the pharmacy giants and Insys, which manufactured the fentanyl-based medication Subsys had been added to a state-court lawsuit filed on May 15, 2016 against Purdue Pharma, L.P.—the manufacturer of OxyContin—and other pharmaceutical manufacturers for allegedly contributing to the opioid epidemic with their opioid-based products.

The suit against CVS and Walgreens alleges that the companies failed to stop “suspicious orders of opioids,” and dispensed “unreasonable quantities” of such drugs from their locations.

In the complaint, the Attorney General’s Office alleged that Walgreens Co.—the largest drugstore chain in the nation—has distributed vast amounts of opioids throughout the state of Florida, and in some cases, reportedly distributed millions of pills that far outnumbered town populations.

The suit cites an unidentified Florida town where the Walgreens location is alleged to have sold 285,000 pills in a single month to a town with just 3,000 people.

According to the suit, some stores reportedly experienced six-fold sales growth for pills in just two years time. Walgreens previously paid a record settlement of $80 million in 2013 for violations of record-keeping and dispensing regulations that allowed oxycodone and other pain medications to be diverted for black market sales.

The accusations against CVS Healthcare Corp. and CVS Pharmacy, Inc.—the second largest U.S. drugstore chain—claim that the company sold more than 700 million opioid products between 2006 and 2014, including three towns that received and dispensed “huge quantities” of opioids during that time frame.

CVS also paid $22 million to resolve allegations by the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) that retail stores in the town of Sanford, Florida sold painkillers that were not prescribed for “legitimate medical purposes.”

The suit’s allegations against Insys Therapeutics echo similar charges levied against the troubled pharmaceutical firm, which has been accused of paying doctors to prescribe Subsys, a medication for patients with breakthrough cancer pain, to patients without cancer or similar diagnoses.

The suit cites public records that showed that Insys paid $18.7 million to doctors between August 2013 and December 2016, including one Florida physician who received $270,000 from the company.

According to data from the Center for Medicaid and Medicare Services, more prescriptions for Subsys were written in Florida than in any other state.

A spokesperson for CVS labeled the lawsuit “without merit” and said that in recent years, the company “has taken numerous actions to strengthen our existing safeguards to help address the nation’s opioid epidemic.”

View the original article at thefix.com

22 November 2018
Inside The Methadone Clinic Boom

“We haven’t seen such a dramatic increase in the industry since the 1970s,” says one expert.

The methadone treatment industry has exploded from 2014 to 2018, growing more in those four years than in the past two decades, the Boston Globe reports.

In the past four years, according to Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) data, the industry has added 254 new clinics. The clinics allow for the administration of methadone, which is a type of long-acting opioid that can help short-acting opioid users manage withdrawals and allow them more time to detox, WebMD states.

“We haven’t seen such a dramatic increase in the industry since the 1970s,” Mark Parrino, president of the American Association for the Treatment of Opioid Dependence, told the Globe.

Critics of methadone treatment say it is just replacing one substance for another. Yngvild Olsen, an addiction doctor in Baltimore and board member of the American Society of Addiction Medicine, tells the Globe that needs to change.

“There has been an underlying stigma against methadone for so many years that the industry naturally maintains a low profile,” she said. “Even now, access to methadone is highly geographic. It depends on where you live.”

Indiana, Maryland, and New York have been at the forefront of states with access to methadone treatment, implementing dozens of new clinics in the past two years alone. Ohio and Florida plan to follow suit with expansions in the works.

There are some states where laws limit the availability of such clinics. These include Georgia, Indiana, Louisiana, Mississippi, West Virginia, and Wyoming.

Even so, the clinics are becoming more common, as in the past four years Medicaid has expanded its coverage and reimbursement for such services for low-income adults. And, in 2020, Medicare coverage of the treatment for those 65 and older will begin as part of the Opioid Crisis Response Act, meaning the need could become even greater.

If a state wishes to open such a clinic, they must apply for a license, Parrino tells the Globe.

While there are other medications to assist in curbing opioid withdrawals, such as buprenorphine, methadone is the most highly regulated.

The Globe reports that often, patients are given methadone through a plexiglass shield. Patients are often screened to make sure they are not combining methadone with other drugs. At first, they are only given the medication in the clinic, under the watch of a professional. Eventually, some patients are allowed take-home doses.

In contrast, buprenorphine can be prescribed for 30 days at a time by doctors, nurse practitioners, and physician assistants and is viewed as the more obvious treatment by some.

“There’s no question that better access to methadone maintenance would save lives,” Andrew Kolodny, co-director of opioid treatment research at Brandeis University, told the Globe. “But for an addiction epidemic that is disproportionately rural and suburban, an intervention that relies on people visiting a clinic every day isn’t the best option. Buprenorphine would be better, but it’s not growing quickly enough.”

View the original article at thefix.com

22 November 2018
One Simple Decision: Gratitude and Sorrow

My sobriety cost too much; I have always believed this and now, after 15 consecutive years, I am sure that I always will believe this.

It’s eight o’clock in the morning and I am sitting at the desk in my office. I’m not at work officially yet, won’t be for another hour or so. Then the race will start. Kara had asked me if I wanted to go to a meeting this morning, to pick up my 15 year coin. I didn’t.

She said, “The day can look however you want. I have a babysitter, so if you want to go out after work and celebrate, then we can do that…or nothing.”

I said that I thought that this year I just wanted it to be a day, just to be a day like any other day. Sometimes I really want the celebration, but this year, this is what I wanted to do. I wanted to come in here and sit and think and spend some time alone. So, I woke up early, my daughter’s warm, tiny body next to me through the night sleeping heavily after a late evening of trick-or-treating excitement, costumes, candy, and other children running wildly through the streets. Kara, still exhausted, is next to her, a new puppy sleeping soundly at her shoulder. There is a cat at her feet curled up contentedly as all cats sleep. Last night we went to bed laughing about this — the animals, our child, about the busy place that our bed has become. I pointed out that nine years ago this would have been an absolute dream come true.

Kara said, “Nine years ago this couldn’t have even been imagined!” and we laughed together at our own amazement.

Today is the 15th anniversary of my sobriety. It is a date that is perpetually entwined with gratitude and sorrow. This is a date that I will always celebrate and mourn. My sobriety cost too much; I have always believed this and now, after 15 consecutive years, I am sure that I always will believe this.

Sobriety always comes at a cost. I’ve been around enough 12-step rooms and other sober support communities to know this.

It is veritably impossible to hear a person’s recovery story without being very often stunned and amazed by the levels of grief and despair that their recovery has cost. The cost of my own sobriety was lives. I still shake my head 15 years later even as I write those words. It just doesn’t seem possible still. I can just never make it better. Not ever.

I am Sysiphus, eternally condemned to pushing a boulder to the top of this mountain.

But it is also great, which is an odd dissonance. It’s a perpetual mourning, but also an absolute celebration, and discovery, and adventure.

I work with people daily in very early recovery. They sit in my office and cry and are angry and are desperate and scared. They sit across from me and I see myself. It would be impossible not to. The words they use, the language they use, is a close memory hermetically sealed forever in my mind. I listen to them and I hear myself. I feel sad for them, and grateful that for me that the chaos has ended. It has finally ended. I remember how it felt to have the heavy fog of eternal delusion lift and what it felt like to start to see for what felt like the first time ever. And I am so grateful for the utter simplicity of today’s problems.

But again, I question the cost.

One simple decision.

One very simple, very wrong, decision.

And some poor soul never gets to see their child again, their parent again, someone they love ever again, and there is no way to ever make that better. That can never be made better again.

After taking Story trick-or-treating last night, she climbs excitedly into her car seat and asks for her bounty, her new treasures, her bucket of goods scored on a lively Hallows Eve. Kara tells her that she doesn’t want Story to eat all of that candy and make herself sick. Story insists that she won’t. We relent and let her have her reserve. On the way home we are absolutely charged. What a great night! We tell Story what a good kid she was and how much we appreciated her saying “thank-you” to all of the people that gave her candy. And because I never want her to forget it, I remind her of all of the great things we did leading up to this night. I ask her to join in with me, and we laugh about corn mazes and hot apple cider. We talk about apple picking and candy corn. We revel in her having been read the entire first Harry Potter book not once, but twice! We remember carving pumpkins and roasting pumpkin seeds.

Occasionally, Story asks if she can turn the light on in the van so that she can carefully pick her next treat. Kara says she can do it as long as she does it quickly, and I can hear the crinkling of tiny brown wrappers behind me and I am filled to the brim with love and joy and just Life!

And then I wonder…

Was this what it was like for them?

Fifteen years later this is what I have to offer not just my own victims, but the world. This is what I owe:

My boundless gratitude.

My eternal apologies.

My diligence and determination.

My thankfulness.

My joy.

My promise.

My sobriety.

Thank you to everyone, friends, and families, my victims, just everyone, who has made this incredibly magical, and far too meaningful journey possible. Thank you all. And please don’t drink and drive. Please. Just don’t.

Peace.

View the original article at thefix.com

22 November 2018
Naloxone Price Spiked 600% During Opioid Crisis By Drug Maker

One drug manufacturer reportedly increased the price of its naloxone drug Evzio from $575 per dose to $4,100 per dose.

Naloxone, the opioid overdose reversal drug, has been heralded as a lifesaving intervention credited with helping stem the death toll of the opioid epidemic. However, one drug manufacturer reportedly saw the demand for the drug as a lucrative opportunity, raising its price 600% over the past four years.

According to a report commissioned by Sens. Rob Portman (R-OH) and Tom Carper (D-DE), drug manufacturer Kaléo “exploited the opioid crisis” by increasing the price of its naloxone drug Evzio from $575 per dose to $4,100 per dose.

Naloxone can save people’s lives during opioid overdoses by reversing the effects of opioids. Sometimes, in the case of powerful synthetic opioids like fentanyl, multiple doses need to be administered.

According to the report, Kaléo intentionally increased the price of Evzio, in addition to manipulating how the drug was processed by insurance companies to take advantage of a money-making opportunity.

“In conjunction with the price increase, Kaléo launched its new business plan,” the report reads. “The Evzio Commercial Update Executive Summary, pictured here, dated April 2016, noted ‘2016 is critical to long-term success.’ With the increased price and new business model, Kaléo sought to ‘[c]apitalize on the opportunity’ of ‘opioid overdose at epidemic levels—a well-established public health crisis.’”

The report concluded that Kaléo’s aggressive pricing cost taxpayers $142 million through payments made through Medicare and Medicaid, according to a press release from Portman’s office.

“Naloxone is a critically important overdose reversal drug that our first responders have used to save tens of thousands of lives,” Portman said. “The fact that one company dramatically raised the price of its naloxone drug and cost taxpayers tens of millions of dollars in increased drug costs, all during a national opioid crisis no less, is simply outrageous. The Subcommittee will continue its efforts to protect taxpayers from drug manufacturers that are exploiting loopholes in the Medicare and Medicaid system in order to profit from a national opioid crisis.”

Carper agreed, saying, “We know that naloxone can save lives. We need to take the necessary steps to ensure that drugs like this are affordable and accessible to those in need, especially during a public health emergency of this magnitude.”

In response to the report, Kaléo issued a statement pointing out that it has donated thousands of doses of Evzio, and claimed that it has never turned a profit from the drug.

“Patients, not profits, have driven our actions,” the company said.

Read more about the report’s findings and how Kaléo manipulated pricing here.

View the original article at thefix.com

22 November 2018
Michael Douglas Discusses Addiction With Marc Maron

“I got sober. I was in rehab in 1991. Probably more alcohol but drugs were a part of it.”

Academy Award-winning actor Michael Douglas is no stranger to substance use disorder. The Basic Instinct star has been to rehab, his son has battled heroin addiction and he also lost a brother to an overdose.

Yet in a recent interview on the WTF with Marc Maron podcast, Douglas admitted that he’s currently “not really” sober.

“I got sober. I was in rehab in 1991. Probably more alcohol but drugs were a part of it,” he explained, according to Radar Online.

The 74-year-old actor says that today, “Everything is a question of moderation and all of that but just not the way you wake up in the morning anymore (wanting more). You have to be careful of the fact that… I have had addiction issues in my family. I have lost a brother, Eric.” (In an interview with the Daily Mail, Douglas said, “I drink in moderation, I don’t get drunk, I monitor myself pretty well.”)

Douglas then spoke about his son Cameron, who was addicted to heroin and served time in prison for selling meth and heroin possession in 2009. While he was incarcerated, four-and-a-half years were added to his sentence when he was caught smuggling in drugs for his “personal use.”

“He is fine,” Douglas says. “He is doing really well. But I think you learn about genetics amongst other things that you have to be careful.”

When Douglas went to rehab in the early ’90s, he also reportedly went in for sex addiction.

In 2015, he told the Daily Mail, “I had an alcohol issue—I’d just lost my stepfather and it was a good rehab session; it certainly helped me find out a couple of things. Basic Instinct had just come out and I don’t remember who the clever editor was in London, but they came up with ‘sex addiction.’ It became a new disease. No one had heard of that up until then, but it’s stuck with me ever since. And it still pops up now and again.”

With his son Cameron’s incarceration, Douglas realized that he followed the same path as an absentee father, much like when his own father Kirk wasn’t there for him when he was growing up.

He told Today in 2010, “I’ve taken blame about being a bad father—if being a bad father is working your butt off trying to create a career at one time.” Douglas said that Cameron’s mother, Diandra Luker, had alcoholism in her family as well.

“Then you finally end up with who you choose to hang out with,” Douglas continued. “In Cameron’s position, he took a lot of lowlifes and he was a very attractive target to hang out with, and I don’t think that helped, either… I’m willing to take the hit.”

View the original article at thefix.com

22 November 2018
Is New York City Handing Out Harsher Penalties For THC Oil Possession?

A new report reveals a major contradiction in the city’s ongoing efforts to reform marijuana enforcement.

Getting caught with a cartridge of THC oil can land you in jail in New York City—despite city officials’ promise to decriminalize marijuana offenses.

A new report by The Appeal highlights the disparity in the city’s enforcement of possession of THC oil versus marijuana in its raw form.

“Cannabis oil possession carries a harsher charge than regular marijuana possession,” The Appeal reports.

“Because the oil is classified as a controlled substance, the charge is a Class A misdemeanor, the same class used for low-level heroin and crack possession. Those convicted of the charge can be sentenced to up to a year in jail.”

The fact that police officers are still treating THC oil possession as a criminal misdemeanor contradicts the city’s ongoing efforts to reform marijuana enforcement.

On Sept. 1st, the city enacted a new policy to ticket instead of arrest people for public marijuana smoking. Mayor Bill de Blasio claimed that the new policy would reduce marijuana possession arrests by 10,000. Each year, about 17,500 people are arrested in New York City for marijuana possession.

Neither the mayor’s office nor the NYPD agreed to comment on its policy regarding THC oil.

“The DA’s office has prosecuted at least 22 THC or cannabis oil cases since Sept. 1, according to public defenders in Brooklyn… In 13 of those cases, people were charged with possessing cannabis oil alone, without any other misdemeanor or felony charges,” The Appeal reports.

Oren Yaniv, a spokesperson for the Brooklyn district attorney’s office, says the DA is working to reduce marijuana convictions.

“New York law categorizes THC oil not as marijuana, but as a controlled substance… However, recognizing that THC is the active ingredient in marijuana, we believe that the two forms of marijuana should be treated similarly,” said Yaniv.

Meanwhile, NY Governor Andrew Cuomo is working on the bigger picture. The state is currently exploring legalizing marijuana for adult use. New York already has a medical marijuana program. However, home cultivation, smokable medical marijuana, and edible products are not allowed under the program.

This month, during a recent appearance in Buffalo, Governor Cuomo said that marijuana legalization legislation is in the works.

“We now have a working group that is putting together a piece of legislation that would do it, because the devil is in the details: How do you do it, where do you do it, what are the ages, etc.? What is New Jersey doing? What has Massachusetts done? So that legislation is being crafted. I expect it to be introduced next year. The when and the how, we’re not clear,” Cuomo said.

View the original article at thefix.com

22 November 2018
The High Cost Of Alcohol Misuse In The US

A USA Today editorial explores how the US can save lives and money by reducing alcohol consumption.

Public health campaigns reduced cigarette smoking in the United States by more than half since 1964, according to the CDC. Can the same be done with alcohol?

A new report in USA Today reminds us that drinking alcohol—while it is socially acceptable and promoted widely—is no benign matter.

Alcohol is attributed to approximately 88,000 deaths every year in the U.S. About half of alcohol-related deaths involve binge drinking. According to a 2015 national survey, 15.1 million American adults were reported as having alcohol use disorder, with just about 6.7% of them receiving treatment for it.

“It’s just so socially acceptable, especially among the people who write the laws. It’s the drug of choice and incredibly normalized for upper income people in the USA,” says David Jernigan, a professor at Boston University School of Public Health.

In 2010, the public health cost of alcohol misuse in the U.S. was $249 billion—most of it involved binge drinking.

Alcohol-related deaths are reportedly on the rise. So what can be done about it?

USA Today explores several approaches to reducing alcohol consumption, and thus its public health costs:

Raising taxes

“Alcohol taxes are a win, win, win. States get more money and people drink somewhat less,” says Jernigan. According to the CDC, a 10% increase in taxes leads to a 5-8% decline in drinking. But critics of this policy say that state coffers will suffer while drinking levels remain the same. They claim that instead of giving up booze, people will opt to travel to other states where taxes aren’t as high.

Restricting sales

Municipal governments have the option of limiting the number of liquor stores per region, and the days and hours of operation. With fewer liquor stores per capita, the idea is to reduce sales and thus drinking.

Expanding access to treatment

Psychologist Ben Miller says that integrating mental health care in the practice of primary care physicians can “begin to change the culture of care to be more comprehensive.” This may improve early detection of drinking problems.

Teaching coping skills

Teaching resilience, coping skills and mental health literacy at a young age are important and can be effective in preventing kids from seeking an unhealthy relationship with mind-altering substances.

“The most important substance we should be looking at is alcohol, because it leads to so many things, including physical abuse and rape, that shouldn’t happen,” says Jernigan. “We need to stop accepting that there isn’t anything we can do about it.”

View the original article at thefix.com

22 November 2018
Herbert Fingarette, Controversial Author Of "Heavy Drinking," Dies At 97

Fingarette argued that heavy drinking was willful and that moderation is an option in his book Heavy Drinking: The Myth of Alcoholism as a Disease.

Herbert Fingarette, the well-known, controversial philosopher who wrote that alcoholism was an issue of willfulness and not a disease, died at age 97 in Berkeley, California on Nov. 2, according to the New York Times.

Fingarette was a prolific author of philosophy and law, well-known for his book Heavy Drinking: The Myth of Alcoholism as a Disease, which argued that despite cultural belief, there is no hard science proving that alcoholism is a disease. Fingarette believed that many people labeled “alcoholics” were actually not.

Despite this argument, Fingarette was hardly cold-blooded when it came to the suffering of people with alcoholism and those who loved them.

In Heavy Drinking, he wrote, “There is no reason to see heavy drinking as a symptom of illness, a sign of persistent evil, or the mark of a conscienceless will. Rarely do people choose a destructive or self-destructive way of life. On the contrary, we shape our lives day to day, crisis by crisis… We each share the propensity to choose opportunistically when under stress. So, on a series of occasions, a drinker chooses what seems the lesser evil, the temporarily easier compromise, without a clear appreciation of the long-run implications.

“If our righteous condemnation is not in order, neither is our cooperation in excusing heavy drinkers or helping them evade responsibility for change. Compassion, constructive aid, and the respect manifest in expecting a person to act responsibly—these are usually the reasonable basic attitudes to take when confronting a particular heavy drinker who is in trouble…”

Fingarette was born in Brooklyn in 1921 and wed his wife Leslie in 1945. Leslie predeceased him in 2011. They had one daughter (and eventually two grandsons). Fingarette taught philosophy at the University of California, Santa Barbara for 40 years. Some of his coworkers were angered when his book on alcoholism was published; one coworker went so far as to write an entire rebuttal which was distributed as a pamphlet.

Fingarette wrote in his book that moderate drinking was ignored as an option in the recovery community, when in fact it could be a viable option for those struggling with heavy drinking.

At the end of his life, Fingarette was writing an essay on how the dead continue to shape the lives of the living. In his book Death: Philosophical Soundings, he had written, “People hope never to know the end of consciousness. But why hope! They never will.”

View the original article at thefix.com

22 November 2018
Teen Mom’s Butch Baltierra Is One Year Sober

“I had 365 days clean yesterday but I just want to tell you it’s not all that easy, and it ain’t all that hard.”

For as long as the cameras have been rolling, fans of MTV’s Teen Mom series have watched Butch Baltierra struggle with his sobriety. Butch is the father of Tyler Baltierra, who stars on the show with his wife Catelynn.

This week, the elder Baltierra took to Instagram to share that is he one-year sober.

On Nov. 15, Baltierra posted a screenshot from a sobriety tracker, showing that he had 366 days sober with the caption #IDOSTRUGGLE. Then, he posted a video talking about his first year of sobriety.

“I had 365 days clean yesterday,” Butch shared. “I didn’t post anything because I was pretty busy, but I just want to tell you it’s not all that easy, and it ain’t all that hard. Am I struggling? Yeah. I struggle. I struggle every day. I struggle every day that I don’t work a program or I keep in communication with my sponsor or follow direction. I struggle. Do I have obsessions? Yes, I do. Yes, I think about smoking marijuana, I think about drinking every now and then. I’m not a big drinker, but I been thinking about it. But it’s not all that easy, but I know it’s easy when you work a program… That’s all I wanted to say.”

Viewers first got to know Baltierra and his family when Catelynn and Tyler appeared on a 2009 episode of 16 and Pregnant. The couple soon became fan favorites. They talked about how having unstable parents—including Butch who was living with addiction—caused them to want better for their daughter.

Since then, Butch’s sobriety continued to be a secondary storyline as Catelynn and Tyler appeared on Teen Mom and Teen Mom OG.

Butch has been in and out of prison and battling to stay sober. Last January, Tyler talked about wanting to send his dad to rehab, according to Radar Online, even though Butch claims to have been sober at that time, according to his social media posts.

In one episode, Tyler talked to Catelynn about the hurt that his father’s addiction has caused him, and about the importance of maintaining healthy boundaries.

“I think I’ve just come to the conclusion that I’m always going to feel angry about it,” he said. “When I was younger, I used to like calling him a crackhead. I used to like seeing him [get] angry about that. You can’t help it. You just get angry and you remove yourself from the situation. We know what’s going on here. We’re in control of what’s happening in our environment.”

View the original article at thefix.com

22 November 2018