Mike ‘The Situation’ Sorrentino congratulated co-star Ronnie on staying with his recovery on Jersey Shore: Family Vacation.
Jersey Shore became a big hit on MTV, and now that it’s returned as Jersey Shore: Family Vacation, Mike ‘The Situation’ Sorrentino is congratulating Ronnie Ortiz-Magro on his sobriety.
Sorrentino had to make the call from prison, where he’s currently serving an eight-month sentence for tax evasion. The scene was captured for Family Vacation, when Sorrentino’s wife Lauren shows up at Ronnie’s Vegas home to help celebrate the one-year birthday of his daughter.
One Day at a Time
Ronnie’s wife Jen explains that “everything’s good” in her relationship with Ronnie. “Everything is super chill now” that he went to rehab. Jen then told Lauren, “You went through kind of what I’m going through. It’s just good because [Ronnie is] very calm now. It’s completely changed him. And it’s changing me, because I’m not on edge. Everything has just been really good.”
“Listen, it’s hard on him and it’s hard on you,” Lauren replied, “because it’s a new world. When you first start recovery, you’re like a newborn. Sometimes the relationship has to take a back-burner.”
Once ‘The Situation’ speaks to Ronnie on the phone, he congratulates him for getting sober. “I heard that you have a sponsor, you’re doing meetings, and you’re working day at a time at the program, so I’m very proud of you. It works if you work it, buddy.”
“It’s been good so far,” Ronnie replied. “One day at a time.”
Life After Rehab
Early this year, Ortiz-Magro revealed that he entered rehab because he was suffering from depression and alcoholism. “I decided to go to treatment because I wanted to be a better person, a better father for my daughter,” he explained. “Eventually, all the bad decisions I was making were going to lead me to places I didn’t want to be. I wanted to be led to the place that I am now – that’s happy, healthy, and the best role model for my daughter.”
The Situation himself hit his three-year sobriety mark on December 22 last year. Sorrentino had struggled with painkiller addiction, and he went to rehab in 2012 and 2015. “Being sober really taught me how to just be at peace,” he said. “I live my life today at peace…I mean, everything in my life has changed. I really feel awesome today.”
Jason Wahler reconciled with his ex-girlfriend and former The Hills co-star Lauren Conrad as part of his recovery.
Jason Wahler, along with his girlfriend Lauren Conrad, became reality TV stars on Laguna Beach and then The Hills. Wahler also had a major downward spiral from drinking and drugs, but he finally turned himself around and even opened up his own sober living home.
As Wahler explained on the E! show Just the Sip, he used to be a “sad lost individual” who “got to a really, really dark place.” In fact, he even tried to take his own life. “The depths of my addiction took me to not contemplation, but attempting suicide.”
From The Hills to Recovery
Wahler felt his downfall began about ten years ago when The Hills first hit MTV. “I’m not proud of it, but 10 to 12 years ago I was the drunk, womanizing alcoholic,” he says. “I was very lost. After we shot Laguna Beach going into season one of The Hills is when my addiction took full force. Drugs and alcohol were my solution.”
Wahler got sober after hitting bottom, and he did the standard 12-step process of making amends to people you hurt in your addiction. He of course reached out to former girlfriend Lauren Conrad, and back in 2011 he confessed, “There’s stuff that happened in the past with my drunken ways that I need to address.”
Now he says, “Part of the process of recovery and living your life sober is making amends and I made amends to Lauren. It’s freeing. When you can take ownership of your actions and let people know you truly want to make things right and you apologize and you take the actions to fix what you did, it feels good.”
In the past, Wahler said that Conrad was “a big part of my life,” and that “she’s an incredible person and so supportive of anything I do to stay clean.”
Wahler added that he’s “definitely transformed. I’m happy to be able to say that. I’m content in my own skin. I can sit here and look you in the eye and I’m comfortable, I’m confident, I’m happy. I have a great group of people around me.”
Celebrity Rehab
After starring on The Hills, Wahler did a stint on Celebrity Rehab, and he told The Fix, “I think Dr. Drew kind of nailed it on the head. I don’t necessarily agree with everything he says, but I’ve been to a lot of rehabs and seen a lot of doctors, and he’s definitely up there with the best. He said that being young, and being on the TV and limelight and stuff kind of ignited [my alcohol use disorder]. It’s going to come up at some point if you have it, but this lifestyle kind of set fire to it and made it come up a hundred times faster.”
“By simply listening, I easily get transported elsewhere and beyond. Audiobooks are such wonders of life,” the man describes.
Audiobooks have become an industry unto their own. They’re an easier way for people to digest a great story, and many top actors have made a great living narrating them. Now one journalist, Arvyn Cerezo, is telling Book Riot how listening to audiobooks improved his mental health.
As Cerezo relates, he made a commitment to read everyday for what’s known as “bibliotherapy,” which means reading becomes part of your mental health program. Yet it was hard to make reading part of his everyday routine when life got hectic.
At first, Cerezo used to be what he called “a purist and elitist,” and thought that actually “reading books was the only thing that counted. But then I remembered one of my university lessons about the ancient and beautiful tradition of oral storytelling… [It’s] not much different from the audiobooks that we have been enjoying for decades.”
Once Cerezo started listening, he loved it, and wished he started listening to audiobooks sooner. He also discovered that audiobooks calmed him down and made him “placid” before doing freelance writing assignments that made him anxious.
Another wonderful discovery was that audiobooks were great for blocking out outside noises and distractions. “It’s a total immersion for me because I get to read along with the narrator…I’m the type of reader who wants total silence while reading. I always lose focus when someone’s blasting music or talking nearby. I’m very grateful that audiobooks block all of them and more. By simply listening, I easily get transported elsewhere and beyond.”
“Audiobooks are such wonders of life,” he raves. “With them, I still get to continue doing my bibliotherapy to boost my mental health and enjoy wonderful stories from different cultures while still pursuing life’s opportunities.”
As it turns out, bibliotherapy has been around for a long time. As a report on Medical Xpress explains, the concept has been around since World War I, and the term was invented by a writer and minister named Samuel McChord Crothers. A woman named Helen Mary Gaskell took the concept even further, and once she built a sizable library, it became affiliated with the Red Cross in 1915.
Gaskell said, “Surely many of us lay awake the night after the declaration of war, debating… how best we could help in the coming struggle… Into the mind of the writer came, like a flash, the necessity of providing literature for the sick and wounded.”
Johnson described how she connected to the controversial addiction memoir in a recent interview.
A Million Little Pieces, written by James Frey, was a harrowing account of addiction that became a huge bestseller once it was anointed by Oprah Winfrey’s Book Club. But it wasn’t long before it all came crashing down around Frey, when The Smoking Gun website uncovered a number of untruths in his book.
Now A Million Little Pieces has been adapted into a film, directed by Sam Taylor-Johnson, who also helmed the big screen adaptation of Fifty Shades of Grey. Like millions of others, Johnson read the book in 2003, and it stayed strong in her memory.
“I remember reading it and being really overtaken by it,” she told The Guardian. “I was in the world with him and on the journey.”
Johnson, whose actor-husband Aaron Taylor-Johnson stars in the film, told Vogue the book “really shook my DNA. The years went by and that feeling never diminished, nor did the experience of re-reading the book…A Million Little Pieces is a book you can laugh and cry with in equal measure. This isn’t just the tale of recovery, it’s a story about hope, life and a community that supports each other through the process of recovery.”
Becoming A Feature Film
There were previous attempts to turn A Million Little Pieces into a film that fell apart, but as Frey told Vogue, when Johnson contacted him, he let her have the rights for free, and gave her free license to make the film however she wished.
“I did visit Hazelden (where I went to rehab) with Sam,” Frey explained. “I showed them all the real locations where the events of the book took place. They met a number of people who were at the treatment center when I was there 26 years ago and talked to them. But for the most part, I was exceedingly hands-off.”
When asked about the Oprah controversy, Johnson said, “It’s obviously something that’s part of its history and that history has been chequered, but it wasn’t anything that we were going to deal with. We did talk about whether we should address it within the movie, but I just wanted to make a film purely of the book, what that meant to me.”
“As a writer, I don’t feel a particular responsibility to do anything but write the best book I can,” Frey told Vogue. “I continue to work in that grey area between fact and fiction. The core of the story is what happened: I went to rehab, I’ve been sober for 26 years, and all my friends but one in that facility are now dead. I often draw the analogy of what I do and what painters do when they paint a self-portrait – it’s never a perfect photographic representation of their own image, and A Million Little Pieces isn’t the prefect photographic representation of my own image. But it’s true to who I am, it’s true to the experience I’ve lived and it’s true to my life.”
Johnson previously had a drinking problem, which is why the book “resonated with me on a personal perspective having lost people very dear to me through troubles with addiction. And the pain of the loss of friends never diminishes really.”
While Belushi’s family and friends would prefer that “Wired” be forgotten, the book provides a fascinating glimpse into how we didn’t understand addiction and harshly judged people who struggled with it.
“Woodward – that cocksucker!”
You can’t blame Jim Belushi for being upset. In fact, many of John Belushi’s friends and family members were infuriated with the book Wired, which was written by Bob Woodward, the legendary Watergate reporter.
Published by Simon and Schuster two years after Belushi’s death from an overdose, Wired was a stark and frightening portrait of drug addiction, but those close to Belushi felt its focus was too narrow, that it didn’t contain any of Belushi’s humanity or good qualities. Woodward put together the cold hard facts of Belushi’s addiction and piled up a number of horror stories, without capturing the whole picture of who the man really was.
“Exploitation, pulp trash” – Dan Akroyd Describing Wired
A swift counter attack on the book came from Belushi’s widow, Judy Jacklin. Dan Aykroyd denounced the book as “exploitation, pulp trash,” and Al Franken told Variety, “I hated Woodward’s book because I don’t believe he made an honest attempt to understand John, who despite his sometimes gruff exterior was a gentle soul. My former partner Tom Davis put it this way: ‘It’s as if someone did your college yearbook and called it ‘Puked.’ And all it did was say who puked, when they puked and what they puked. But no one learned any history, read Dostoevsky for the first time, or fell in love.’”
The controversy made Wired a major best-seller, and the people close to Belushi, who spent untold hours telling all to Woodward, felt burned and betrayed. Woodward was seemingly befuddled by the controversy, and many found his obtuseness infuriating. Woodward told Peoplehe was sorry that Jacklin was upset, but “what is important is that Judy is not alleging inaccuracy.”
While Belushi’s family and friends would prefer that Wired be forgotten, the book provides a fascinating glimpse into how many of us, like Woodward, didn’t understand the nature of addiction and harshly judged people who struggled with it.
Today, the rise and fall of John Belushi would be written differently, and much more sympathetically.
Robin Williams once joked that if you remember the seventies, you weren’t there. Not only was it an exciting time for comedy, but many in the entertainment business were out of their minds on cocaine. No one thought the high times would ever end.
Belushi: A Regular Guy Who Became a Star
John Belushi was a regular guy who became a star, thanks to the success of Saturday Night Live and Animal House. He was relatable and appealing. The public loved him.
But his private life was more complicated. Belushi could be brusque and awful, and like many people with addiction, there was a terrible Mr. Hyde that came out when he used. But just as frequently he was kind, decent, and generous.
Despite his talent and confidence as a performer, offstage Belushi was vulnerable and unsure of himself. Bernie Brillstein, Belushi’s manager, once said that the comedian was “sometimes good, sometimes bad, sometimes in need of a swift kick in the ass, more often in need of a hug.”
When Belushi died at age 33, it shocked the public. In the pre-internet, pre-TMZ eighties, Belushi’s addiction to cocaine and heroin was mostly hidden from the public.
Belushi’s death hit hard. He was a major counterculture hero and a whole generation felt the loss. It was also a big indicator that the seventies were finally over. As Paul Schrader, screenwriter of Taxi Driver and American Gigolo, told journalist Peter Biskind, “The game was up. Some people quit right away, but the feeling was, the rules have changed.”
In the world of journalism, Bob Woodward was a major star in his own right. He came from the same hometown as Belushi, Wheaton, Illinois, and his reporting on Watergate turned him and his partner Carl Bernstein into household names. He was portrayed by Robert Redford in the big screen adaptation of All the President’s Men, further cementing his legendary status.
Was His Death a Sting Operation Gone Bad?
As a political writer, drugs and the Hollywood fast lane were not in Woodward’s usual wheelhouse, but when Judy Jacklin reached out shortly after her husband’s death, he was intrigued. Jacklin felt there was more to her husband’s death than a simple drug overdose, and she believed Woodward, who was already admired by the counterculture for bringing down Nixon, could get to the bottom of it.
Michael Dare, a former dealer and film critic who knew Belushi well, started asking around to find out what happened. There was apparently a rumor going around that Belushi’s death was “a sting operation gone bad.” Cathy Smith was a groupie who sold heroin to Belushi and gave him the speedball injections that killed him; some believed she was an informer for the LAPD.
Robin Williams and Robert DeNiro were with Belushi briefly at about 2 a.m. the morning he died, and some suspected the LAPD were hoping to set up a big bust where all three would get nailed. According to the rumor, the drugs that killed Belushi were given to Smith by the police. Dare even claimed he heard that a cop “prepared the scene the way he wanted it to be found, then went down the block and waited for the body to be discovered.”
Woodward never found any evidence of this, “not even as a wacko theory,” Dare said, and in retrospect the theory does seem ludicrous. But this was the primary reason Jacklin reached out to Woodward in the first place, and Wired is the result: a hard rebuke to that “wacko theory.” (Where Deep Throat told Woodward to “follow the money,” Dare told the reporter to “follow the drugs,” which he probably now regrets.)
As far as personalities, Woodward and Belushi couldn’t have been any less alike. Many who worked with Woodward found him cold, aloof, an uptight authoritarian workaholic without much of a sense of humor. In other words, he was the wrong person to write Belushi’s story from the get-go. But could be disarming, and many people confused the real Woodward with the version of him they knew from the big screen: Redford-as-Woodward.
In fact, when one of Belushi’s friends, Anne Beatts, was contacted by Woodward, “my secretary thought it was Robert Redford on the phone. Woodward was so charming, such a good listener, and we were so impressed meeting him. It was like, would Robert Redford lie to you?”
Woodward was so good at getting sensitive information out of people, most of Belushi’s friends didn’t catch on to him until it was too late. (“None of us knew what he was really up to,” Aykroyd recalled.) In hindsight, Belushi’s peers realized they were naïve. Considering Woodward helped topple the White House, what made them think he could be trusted not to reveal anything they didn’t want to see in print?
Woodward Wasn’t the Best Person to Write About Belushi…or Addiction
There were other reasons why Woodward wasn’t the best person to capture a complicated personality like Belushi, or the complexities of addiction. Jacklin said that he took a complicated story “and made it very simple,” and one of Woodward’s colleagues told Rolling Stone that he “isn’t all that introspective. He’s a wonderful machine for gathering facts. He’s not good at insight…He wanted to go beyond the facts, and the gray areas were too immense…the facts about Belushi became his only refuge.”
What was especially infuriating to Belushi’s survivors was that Woodward blamed the Hollywood system and many close to him for enabling his death. But for Woodward, who was accustomed to tackling American corruption, condemning Hollywood came naturally: “There was no friendship and a safety net in that circle to save him,” Woodward told journalist Alicia Shepard. “I think it would have been morally offensive for me to try to please.”
Bernie Brillstein was one of Belushi’s peers who objected to Woodward’s characterization of show business. In his memoir, he wrote, “Woodward blamed John’s death on what he thought was a morally corrupt business that indulges its stars with reckless disregard for their well-being because so much money is on the line. That really offends me. We’d have to be scum. Inhuman. No amount of money in my pocket would have made me ignore John’s health for my own gain.”
When celebrities like Belushi needed help, it was a different world. In the early eighties, we didn’t have rehabs on every corner or TV shows like Intervention. The underlying causes of addiction were not well understood by most doctors, and treatment options were still in the dark ages. (There’s speculation in Wired that Belushi’s addiction and mood swings could have been from a chemical imbalance like “manic depression,” but he was apparently never diagnosed.)
Belushi’s Death Signaled a Need for More Addiction Treatment
“We’d talked about institutionalizing Belushi but never did,” Brillstein explained. “The choices at the time were limited to hospital psychiatric wards and white-bread joints for alcoholics. Belushi’s death, perhaps the first high-profile cocaine casualty of the ‘80s, certainly signaled a need for drug rehab centers.” (The Betty Ford Center opened the same year Belushi died.)
Aykroyd added, “Intervention back then was not a tool that was used. Today if we had a problem like this, we’d get six to ten people together, we’d get the guy in the room, sit them down and say, ‘It’s gonna stop. You’re going into rehab and that’s it.’ Back then that was not a technique that was wide-spread.” For a while, Belushi had a sober companion hired from the Secret Service who did a good job keeping the drugs away, but it was a triple overtime job that wasn’t sustainable.
Years after the Wired fall-out, Jacklin and Tanner Colby wrote an authorized Belushi biography, and it’s fascinating to read both books back to back because together they give you a good idea of the intense highs and lows of John’s life. Jacklin’s book gives you the good memories, the brilliance of Belushi’s comedy, and the good side of his personality. Then when you pick up Wired, you realize what terrible, terrifying lows Belushi sank to in his addiction.
If Belushi had lived, he would be 70 today. His comedy still stands the test of time, but he had so much more to give. Not long after he died, a fan left a note on his grave: “He could have given us a lot more laughs, but NOOOOOOOOOO….”
If any good came from Belushi’s passing, it was that it scared a lot of people straight. SNL producer Bob Tischler recalled in the book Live From New York, “When John died, it changed me. I gave up doing drugs. And I haven’t done any since.”
He Made Us Laugh, and Now He Can Make Us Think
And while many felt that Wired gave an incomplete picture of Belushi’s life and legacy, Woodward definitely got one thing right: “Nonetheless, his best and most definitive legacy is his work. He made us laugh, and now he can make us think.”
Or as Brillstein summarized, “Four years of television, seven movies, and we’re still talking about him. Isn’t that amazing?”
The MMA fighter reportedly punched an elderly man at a bar in Dublin.
Conor McGregor is a UFC World Champion. On his Twitter page, he claims that he’s “making history EVERYDAY!!”
While he didn’t exactly make history this week, he once again made controversy when TMZ unearthed a video of him getting intp a bar brawl with an old man in Dublin.
As Yahoo reports, McGregor was offering sample shots of whisky to an elderly man at the bar. However, the man made it clear, twice, that he wasn’t interested. McGregor proceeded to pour shots for the other patrons at the bar.
Then the video skips forward a couple of minutes later. It’s unclear whether McGregor and the elderly man were arguing or not, but McGregor gives him a left hook to the face. Several people then jumped in and pushed McGregor away.
The police have reportedly seen this video, and TMZ reports there was an investigation after the incident took place, but they did not bring charges against McGregor.
Dana White Speaks
UFC president Dana White weighed in on the incident, saying on The Jim Rome Show, “That happened in April, and I knew that happened. They just got the video, and, yeah, it’s pretty bad… Conor has a whiskey now and it was an argument over the whiskey and Conor reaches out and hits him with a left hook. I don’t know the context of it. I don’t know the entire story but he punches a guy, an older man, in the face.”
White added, “When you deal with fighters, guys who fight for a living, there’s always something. If you look at some of the greatest [fighters], what Tyson went through at his peak. Every time you take a guy who is a professional fighter and you sprinkle a ton of money on top of it, get ready for a disaster.”
In addition to this incident, McGregor has also recently gotten into trouble for an alleged sexual assault in Ireland, and for destroying a fan’s phone outside a nightclub in Miami, which resulted in charges of felony strong-armed robbery and misdemeanor criminal mischief.
Another Lawsuit
McGregor is also facing a lawsuit for reportedly attacking other fighters on a UFC team bus. Fellow UFC fighter Michael Chiesa was reportedly injured in the attack, and is suing McGregor for suffering “severe emotional distress, mental trauma and/or bodily harm,” according to his suit.
A source close to the family alleges that Kyle Richards is urging her sister Kim to go back to rehab after a number of public setbacks.
While they were both child stars back in the Seventies, sisters Kyle and Kim Richards are best known today as reality TV stars on The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills. In the last decade, Kim has been through a number of incidents involving substance abuse and mental health issues, and now her sister Kyle is reportedly urging her to seek treatment again.
Kim’s Family Is Concerned
A source close to the sisters told Us Weekly, “Kyle became aware that Kim was struggling in recent weeks and got extremely concerned based on what she was hearing.” While Kyle “isn’t a doctor,” she feels her sister is not “doing well… which is why she is trying to get Kim into treatment.”
Then another report surfaced that claimed Kim’s children want her to check into rehab as well, because as a source close to the family put it, they’d been “watching [Kim] in a downward spiral for weeks,” which included a trip to the ER at UCLA. “Kim abruptly left against medical advice. No one could find Kim for hours… [her] kids are concerned.”
The sisters are reportedly on good terms, and as the source continued, “It’s going to be an ongoing conversation… the good news is that Kim is being extremely receptive to Kyle, recognizing she is coming from a place of love. Kyle isn’t giving up and is trying again to get Kim to agree. It’s more for mental health than sobriety issues.”
Meltdowns, Community Service, and Accountability
In the past decade, once becoming a reality TV fixture, Kim struggled with her sobriety and mental health in the public eye. After one rehab stint, Kim had a relapse in 2015, and was arrested for public intoxication after an incident at the Beverly Hills Hotel. She was then accused of stealing close to $600 worth of merchandise from a Target store.
Kim was subsequently put on probation, and had to complete 450 hours of community service and attend mandatory AA meetings before her probation was lifted in September 2018.
Despite the fact that Kim has had several meltdowns in the public eye, including an attempt at an intervention with Dr. Phil, Kyle told Jenny McCarthy, “If anything, being on [Real Housewives] made her accountable and [Kim] says that as well. She says that it saved her life because, you know, there’s nowhere to hide and everyone knows—now anywhere she goes, people know who she is. She can’t get away with anything! So it actually helped her!”
“I don’t think anyone could have said anything to make me stop. But your lungs will most likely look like this too if you’ve been smoking,” the teen warned.
A teen has posted photos of his collapsed lungs on social media to warn people against vaping.
Chance Ammirata, 18, shared his story with the New York Post. A year and a half ago, Ammirata started vaping. He had never smoked before, and he was under the impression that vaping was safe. Then he had to be rushed to the ER, and believes his collapsed lung was caused by toxic chemicals in the Juul pod he inhaled.
The Incident
Ammirata first had a pain in his side, and initially thought he pulled a muscle. The next day, “It felt like my chest was collapsing, like I was having a heart attack.” Once he was in the hospital, he had to have a tube put in his chest to keep his lung inflated.
After surgery, a doctor told him, “Whatever you’ve been smoking has been leaving these black dots on your lungs” and it would take years to potentially heal them.
Because of the black spots on his lungs, Ammirata won’t be able to do cross-country running or scuba diving, and he won’t be able to fly on a plane for a while either. He then went on social media with a warning:
“You thought Juuls were safe. So did I. The black dots on my lungs are all [remnants] of juuling. I’ve been doing it for a year and a half and can never do it again. You really shouldn’t either. I know how hard it is to change anyone’s mind who’s addicted because I was too. And I don’t think anyone could have said anything to make me stop. But your lungs will most likely look like this too if you’ve been smoking.”
Ammirata concluded his posts by pleading, “Don’t let it get worse. Please stop. Like really please. It’s so fucking scary.”
In response to Ammirata’s story, a spokesperson for Juul stated, “We have no higher priority than consumer safety… We have robust safety monitoring systems in place and will vigilantly monitor for any evidence of safety issues as we continue to combat youth usage and eliminate cigarettes, the number one cause of preventable death in the world.”
Access to marijuana dispensaries played a role in reducing opioid deaths by 21%, according to a new study.
With the opioid crisis in America still a major concern, many have been in search of a solution. While cannabis becoming legal across the country is certainly not a cure-all, according to a report in Leafly, cannabis dispensaries have reportedly reduced opioid deaths by 21%.
Economists at the University of Massachusetts and Colorado State University conducted a study on cannabis’ effect on the opioid crisis. As their report states, “Our principal finding is that recreational marijuana access significantly decreases opioid mortality, with the most pronounced effects for synthetic opioids. [This] stems primarily from access via dispensaries rather than legality per se.”
Leafly cited another report in 2014 from JAMA, which claimed that in states with medical marijuana laws, there were 25% fewer opioid deaths than in states without medical marijuana laws.
Studying the data, the current research showed that 47,600 people died from opioids in the U.S. in 2017. If dispensaries did indeed reduce the death rate, that means that close to 10,000 people were saved from opioid overdoses.
“Our results have direct relevance for policy, as they indicate that recent expansions to marijuana access have significant co-benefits in the form of reduced opioid mortality,” researchers wrote. “States with legal access to marijuana were far less affected by the opioid mortality boom of the past decade than those without. Thus, our work provides important food for thought for state and federal authorities that continue to mull medical and/or recreational legalization of marijuana.”
Lead author Nathan Chan thinks that people may be “dealing with pain through marijuana use, and therefore they’re less likely to take on addictive opioids.”
In a previous report in Leafly, Philippe Lucas, a cannabis researcher in Canada, said, “Whether it’s medical use or recreational use, cannabis appears to be having an impact on the rates of opioid abuse. If physicians start recommending the use of medical cannabis prior to introducing patients to opioids, those patients that find cannabis to be a successful treatment for their chronic pain might never have to walk down the very tricky path of opioid use that all too often leads to abuse or overuse or overdose.”
Not only is the opioid crisis a major concern in the U.S., but Lucas added that in Canada, “Opioid overdose is the most common cause of accidental death… Right now in Canada and in U.S. states with medical marijuana, physicians are encouraged to prescribe opioids first and if those don’t work, cannabis is considered as a third or fourth-line treatment option. We need to flip that around and make cannabis the second-line treatment option and move opioids to third or fourth option if cannabinoids are not successful.”
Bell revealed on Instagram that lately she’s been “feeling very off,” but she is utilizing resources and her support system to help her through it.
Kristen Bell, star of Veronica Mars, is one of many celebrities who has been open about her mental health. She recently posted on her Instagram story, “Lately I’ve been feeling very off.”
Bell added, “I’m checking in with my support systems and my resources and I hope you are too because we can handle whatever life throws at us if we ask for hope.”
Several days earlier, Bell posted a picture of herself in a split image. In one image, she looked happy, in another image, she looked depressed. “Ever feel like this?” she wrote. “Me too. Often. It’s okay to not feel ok. We’ll get through it together.”
On Instagram, Bell also suggested ways to battle back against tough mental health days, like going on Google and looking up “workouts near me, mental health resources near me, therapists near me, support groups near me.”
In previous interviews, Bell has been very open about her mental health struggles. She learned about her family’s difficulties with mental health when she was 18. Her mother told her that there was “a serotonin imbalance in our family line, and it can often be passed from female to female.” Her grandmother had endured electroshock therapy, and Bell learned how to take care of her own mental health through her mother.
When Bell decided to go on medication, her mother told her “the world wants to shame you for that. But in the medical community, you would never deny a diabetic his insulin. But for some reason, if someone needs a serotonin inhibitor, they’re immediately crazy or something.”
Last year, Bell participated in a campaign for the Child Mind Institute, where she posted a message to her younger self, saying, “People seem like they don’t have problems, but everyone’s human. Everyone has problems. Everyone feels yucky on the inside sometimes. I have suffered from anxiety and/or depression since I was 18. What I would say to my younger self is don’t be fooled by this game of perfection that humans play. Because Instagram and magazines and TV shows, they strive for a certain aesthetic, everything looks so beautiful, and people seem like they don’t have problems, but everyone’s human.”
