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  • North Dakota's First Lady Shares Her Addiction Story At Recovery Event

    North Dakota's First Lady Shares Her Addiction Story At Recovery Event

    The First Lady says she became a recovery advocate because of the stigma around addiction.

    Education, advocacy and empowerment were among the key topics of discussion at Recovery Reinvented 2018, a daylong event devoted to drug and alcohol dependency in Fargo, North Dakota.

    A host of speakers were featured at the event, including news anchor and recovery advocate Laurie Dhue and Addiction Policy Forum founder/CEO Jessica Hulsey Nickel, as well as a figure known to many North Dakotans, both in and out of the recovery community: Kathryn Helgaas Burgum, the state’s First Lady, who with her husband, Governor Doug Burgum, is a key sponsor of Recovery Reinvented.

    Burgum is also in recovery from alcoholism and fully understands the importance of such events. “I’m very passionate about addiction because it affects me personally,” she told the Fargo-based Forum. 

    Prior to her marriage to Governor Burgum in 2016, Burgum was a successful human resources and marketing professional for various companies. But her alcohol dependency required even greater time and attention than her employment; a self-described “high-functioning” alcoholic, Burgum told the Forum that she was “going to work hung-over almost every day and trying to conceal that.”

    Burgum sought recovery from the Mayo Clinic, but it took a relapse that lasted eight years for her to devote herself fully to gaining sobriety. “That’s really the miracle that happened for me,” she recalled.

    When her husband was elected governor in a landslide victory in 2016, Burgum decided to focus on advocacy for dependency and recovery. Chief among these was Recovery Reinvented, part of an ongoing series of initiatives that operates as a non-profit in association with the Dakota Medical Foundation; the event itself is produced in partnership with the state’s Behavioral Health Division.

    Its goal, as the website states, is to “eliminate the shame and stigma of addiction in North Dakota” through “proven prevention, treatment and recovery approaches.

    Among the issues that Burgum supports: increased access to the opioid overdose reversal drug naloxone, which will be provided, along with training in its use, to attendees at the event. Burgum also supports public-private partnerships to assist individuals in returning to society after treatment through providing them with places to live.

    “There are people that are willing to spend money sober houses,” she told the Forum. “Because at some point when people start getting sober, they start paying rent. They start becoming members of the community.”

    Most importantly, Burgum said that she wants to change North Dakotans’ perspective of people with dependency issues from, as the Forum noted, flawed or damaged individuals to ones with a chronic disease that needs treatment. 

    “Part of the reason I [got into recovery advocacy] was that there was so much stigma aroud the chronic disease of addiction, which affected me as well because I didn’t talk about it for 16 years,” she told Fargo Monthly. “I just decided that if I could help other people reach out for treatment and seek help and find recovery by talking about my experience, then I felt like it would be worthwhile and to be grateful for that opportunity.”

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Senate Considers Opioid Crisis Bill, But Critics Say It Isn’t Enough

    Senate Considers Opioid Crisis Bill, But Critics Say It Isn’t Enough

    “A little drama for little substance,” said one addiction advocate familiar with the bill. 

    The Senate is preparing to pass a bill to address the opioid epidemic, but critics say that the legislation skirts around the most important — and contentious — issues that could help change the way that opioid addiction is handled. 

    “A little drama for little substance,” one addiction advocate familiar with the bill told STAT News. 

    The bill addresses treatment and prevention, according to a copy reviewed by STAT. There are provisions that will better equip law enforcement to detect fentanyl being shipped in the mail system and that will help develop a have a better disposal system for unused opioids, in order to reduce the amount of opioids on the street. In addition, there are provisions to expand treatment by easing access to medication-assisted treatment with buprenorphine, training doctors to screen for substance use disorder and increasing access to treatment via telemedicine. 

    However, treatment advocates say that the bill will do little to affect how treatment is delivered because it does not take enough bold steps to change the status quo. 

    “Overdose rates continue to rise, and our response is still falling short given the mammoth size of the problem,” said Andrew Kessler, the founder of Slingshot Solutions, a behavioral health consulting group. “We are in the early phases of our response to this epidemic, and I can only hope that this bill is the first of many we can pass.”

    One big change that has a chance of passing is repealing the IMD exclusion, which prevents treatment centers with more than 16 beds from receiving Medicaid payments.

    An opioid response bill passed in June repealed the exclusion, but only for treatment for opioid and cocaine addiction.

    Despite the fact that the current Senate bill doesn’t mention the exclusion, Ohio Senator Rob Portman said that he is hopeful a repeal will be included in the final bill. He said that leadership has agreed on the repeal, but could not gather enough votes. 

    “We’ve worked out an agreement that I think most leadership on both sides agree with, but we weren’t able to get the signoff from everybody,” Portman said.

    The Senate bill also includes a call for the development of best practices in disclosing a patient’s history with substance abuse. The House bill would allow a history of addiction treatment to be disclosed without a patient’s expressed permission, but Senate lawmakers are concerned that this could lead to breaches of privacy and stigma. 

    With the coming November election, many lawmakers are hesitant to vote on anything controversial, meaning that the bill may languish. However, some Senators are pushing to make sure it gets a vote this month. 

    “As soon as both parties agree, we can have a roll call vote next week. When we do that, it’ll get virtually unanimous support, and then we’ll work with the House and put the bills together,” said Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), who has spearheaded the bill. 

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Older Americans Sorely Under-Informed About Opioid Risks

    Older Americans Sorely Under-Informed About Opioid Risks

    A new poll uncovered a major lack of communication between doctors and their older patients who use opioids.

    A new poll from the University of Michigan involved a nationally representative sample of 2,000 Americans between ages 50 to 80.

    According to The Atlantic, the results of the poll were an indication of why elderly patients at high risk of opioid overdose: 40% aid their doctor’s did not speak to them about opioid side effects or how to decide when to cut back on the medication.

    SAMHSA reports that the population of those 65 and older expected to use opioids will most likely double between 2004 and 2020.

    The University of Michigan National Poll on Healthy Aging asked the patients what their health-care providers discussed when prescribing opioid medication to them.

    Of the responders, 589 said they had filled an opioid prescription. While they indicated that they knew how often to take the medication, the majority said their doctors or pharmacists did not address the risk of addiction, the risk of overdose, or what to do with excess pills.

    Interestingly, the poll also showed that respondents overwhelmingly support policies that require providers to receive special training for opioid prescribing, as well as to review prescription records and requiring patients to disclose prior opioid medication.

    The populous of the poll include baby boomers (which CNN defines as people born from 1946 to 1964). Sheila Vakharia, a policy manager at the Drug Policy Alliance, told The Atlantic that this group “used alcohol and other drugs at higher rates compared to other generations of older people that have preceded them, which means these same people are at higher risk of overdose and adverse effects because they may be drinking a little bit more often and a little heavier than some folks who are in their 80s.”

    Doctors can sometimes find it difficult to communicate effectively with their older patients for a variety of reasons. Many doctors are overextended, “burnt out,” and simply don’t have enough time with each individual patient. In addition, doctors often don’t think patients’ of a certain age are at risk for addiction, Vakharia mentioned.

    “The messages that doctors give to patients are largely dictated by how they perceive patients,” Vakharia told The Atlantic. “You don’t often see the elderly as a population at risk for developing substance-use disorders.”

    Indeed, older patients who use opioids are not only at risk for addiction, but they are at a higher risk of overdose death than the younger population.

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • "Killing Pain" Docu-Series Spotlights Oklahoma's Opioid Crisis

    "Killing Pain" Docu-Series Spotlights Oklahoma's Opioid Crisis

    Oklahoma’s Attorney General, who is interviewed for Killing Pain, lauded its coverage of the “many tragic aspects” of the state’s opioid crisis.

    A new seven-part documentary focuses on the impact of the opioid crisis on Oklahomans.

    Killing Pain, which is free to watch online, is a multi-faceted exploration of the opioid crisis, from the perspective of Oklahomans.

    The seven-part series was produced by the Oklahoma City-based non-profit organization Fighting Addiction Through Education (FATE). The docu-series is just another arm of founder Reggie Whitten’s fight to spread awareness about the risks of opioid drugs.

    Whitten has been doing this for 16 years, since the death of his son Brandon. Brandon’s addiction to alcohol and prescription drugs led to his death in 2002 at the age of 25.

    “That’s when a part of me died and my life changed forever,” said Reggie Whitten. “I really don’t even remember who I used to be. It’s hard to believe the power of this little molecule called an opioid.”

    Whitten travels to Oklahoma communities to tell Brandon’s story and speak about the opioid crisis. “You can’t fight an enemy until you know everything there is to know about it and I’ve spent the last 16 years obsessively learning about the enemy,” said Whitten. “Addiction is a very difficult adversary.”

    Whitten noted that opioid-based prescription drugs are important for some, but that education about the risks is just as important. “For every one person that dies, we have tens of thousands who are living a life of misery,” said Whitten. “They’re highly addicted to this… drug.”

    FATE also offers various programs designed for specific audiences such as the Life of an Athlete program, Native Fate (designed for Native American communities), elementary schoolers, college students, working professionals, and everyone in between.

    Oklahoma Attorney General Mike Hunger, who is interviewed for Killing Pain, lauded the documentary’s coverage of the “many tragic aspects” of Oklahoma’s opioid crisis.

    “Although the reality of the story is painful, the good news is, Oklahoma is rising to meet this challenge,” said Hunger, according to News 4. “State officials, business leaders and community organizers are tired of watching our families suffer and are stepping up and doing something about it.”

    The entire Killing Pain series is available to watch for free on YouTube.

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Thrift Store Workers Uncover Massive Pot "Donation"

    Thrift Store Workers Uncover Massive Pot "Donation"

    The unusual donation was worth a few thousand dollars, according to police.

    Employees at a Florida thrift store found much more than the usual faded blouses and old shoes when they were sorting through donations this week and found five pounds of marijuana outside the store’s donation box. 

    According to Fox 13, employees at Pines Thrift Store in Sarasota found a large tote outside the donation box, where items for the store can be left after hours.

    Initially, employees ignored the tote, but when they opened it on Thursday they found a taped paper bag containing four plastic bags.

    When they cut into a bag it became clear what was inside: 2,100 grams of vacuum-sealed marijuana, according to 7 News Miami. That’s when they decided to call the police. 

    The unusual donation left area residents and store employees wondering about the motives of whoever left the cannabis behind. 

    “Somebody probably had a change of heart or something and wanted to turn it in, but didn’t want to get themselves in trouble,” said Bles Mclean, who was interviewed about the find. “So they just probably thought they were doing a good deed in donating it. I guess. I don’t know.”

    Mclean speculated that it could have been a joke gone wrong.

    “Maybe someone is being vindictive,” she said. “It doesn’t sound like a prank. I wouldn’t know, but it’s very shocking.”

    If it were a prank, it would be an expensive one. The drugs have a street value of a few thousand dollars. No arrests have been made, and no one knows where the drugs might have come from or how they came to be in the donation box. 

    “Either someone lost track of a really big package or someone didn’t calculate the numbers right or something,” Mclean said. “How it got in the donation box is definitely baffling.”

    Finding the drugs at the thrift store, which is part of The Pine Retirement Community, was jarring for some residents. 

    “That’s pretty shocking to hear about, to know it was in the donation box,” Jacueline Aguilera said. 

    Police have requested surveillance video from the store and from neighboring businesses, hoping that that might help them identify the person who left the tote outside the donation box.  

    Police are also doing testing on the drugs to try to identify where they may have come from, according to ABC News. 

    Although Florida does have a medical marijuana program, recreational use of cannabis is illegal under state law. 

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Kristen Bell Writes Message To Dax Shepard On Sober Anniversary

    Kristen Bell Writes Message To Dax Shepard On Sober Anniversary

    “I know how much you loved using. I know how much it got in your way. And I know, because I saw, how hard you worked to live without it.”

    Actress Kristen Bell took to Instagram to write a message to her husband, Parenthood star Dax Shepard, to celebrate his 14 years of sobriety. 

    “I know how much you loved using. I know how much it got in your way. And I know, because I saw, how hard you worked to live without it,” Bell wrote on Instagram. 

    Shepard has been open about his addiction and how it could have led to more severe consequences. 

    “I just loved to get fucked up—drinking, cocaine, opiates, marijuana, diet pills, pain pills, everything. Mostly my love was Jack Daniel’s and cocaine,” he told Playboy in 2012. “I was famous for going out on Thursday night to have a couple of beers and that just led all the way to Saturday night… Of course, come Monday I would be tallying up all the different situations, and each one was progressively more dangerous. I got lucky in that I didn’t go to jail.”

    In her post, Bell talked about the ongoing, daily work that it takes Shepard to stay sober. “I will forever be in awe of your dedication, and the level of fierce moral inventory you perform on yourself, like an emotional surgery, every single night,” she wrote. 

    She pointed out how Shepard puts the tenants of recovery into action, as a husband and as a father to their daughters, who are 2 and 5. 

    “You never fail to make amends, or say sorry when it’s needed. You are always available to guide me, and all of our friends, with open ears and tough love when it’s needed most,” Bell wrote. “You have become the fertilizer in the garden of our life, encouraging everyone to grow.”

    In addition, Bell said that she has learned from how open Shepard is about his recovery.

    “I’m so proud that you have never been ashamed of your story, but instead shared it widely, with the hope it might inspire someone else to become the best version of themselves,” she wrote. “You have certainly inspired me to do so.”

    Bell has spoken in the past about how Shepard’s experience has changed her perception of addiction and people who abuse drugs, making her more empathetic toward those who need help.

    “Seeing the world through his eyes has really opened mine to knowing that it is a disease and nobody is choosing to drink more than others,” she told The New York Daily News in 2016. “They are doing it because of a variety of reasons and they deserve the attention of a mental health professional, and not the county jail or however else we’re choosing to pretend we’re fixing the problem.”

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Lady Gaga Reflects On Drugs, "Loneliness" Behind Stardom

    Lady Gaga Reflects On Drugs, "Loneliness" Behind Stardom

    “There was a buffet of options. When I first started to perform around the country doing nightclubs, there was stuff everywhere.”

    Six-time Grammy-winning singer Lady Gaga makes her feature film debut as an aspiring performer who falls for a rocker (Bradley Cooper) with dependency problems in the upcoming A Star is Born.

    The confluence of substance abuse and fame is an issue with which Gaga (born Stefani Germanotta is familiar, having battled cocaine dependency early in her career. And in an interview about the film with the Los Angeles Times, Germanotta recalled how she traveled a path similar to that of her screen character, where drugs were frequently offered as a panacea to the emotional turmoil of striving to achieve your dreams.

    In the film—which is the third remake of the 1937 film, with previous iterations starring Judy Garland and Barbra Streisand in Germanotta’s role— Cooper is musician Jackson Maine, whose career is in crisis due to his drug and alcohol dependency. He finds what appears to be creative and emotional salvation in Germanotta’s Ally, a gifted singer. But as her star ascends, his substance issues threaten to upend their happiness. 

    In her interview with the Times, Germanotta said she fully understood the emotional turbulence that was part and parcel of the pursuit of a career in front of an audience. “It’s very lonely being a performer,” she said. “There’s a certain loneliness that I feel, anyway—that I’m the only one that does what I do. So it feels like no one understands.”

    Feelings of isolation and insecurity can spur some aspiring performers to seek comfort in the substances that can proliferate behind the scenes. “There was a buffet of options,” recalled Germanotta. “When I first started to perform around the country doing nightclubs, there was stuff everywhere, but I had already partied when I was younger so I didn’t dabble. I was able to avoid it because I did it when I was a kid.”

    As Us Weekly noted, Germanotta has spoken often about her struggles with cocaine in the past. The publication quoted her 2011 interview on The Howard Stern Show, where she said, “I think that I was lonely and there was something about the drugs that made me feel like I had a friend. 

    “I did it all alone in my apartment while I wrote music. And you know what? I regret every line I ever did.”

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Marijuana-Involved Traffic Death Report Shows Mixed Results For Colorado

    Marijuana-Involved Traffic Death Report Shows Mixed Results For Colorado

    The number of fatal crashes in which the driver tested positive for cannabinoids rose from 75 in 2014 to 139 in 2017.

    A new report on traffic deaths involving marijuana in Colorado has presented what seems like contradictory information: the number of fatal vehicular accidents involving Centennial State drivers who tested positive for marijuana rose in 2017, but the number of such fatalities in which the driver could be considered legally impaired by marijuana experienced an even greater decline.

    The dichotomy between the results underscored, as Reason noted as one of the primary challenges of ascribing marijuana use with traffic fatalities: that THC, the psychoactive compound found in cannabis, can be detectable in the system for up to 30 days, depending on a number of factors, so drivers who test positive at the time of a crash may not be legally impaired.

    The CDOT study essentially summed up the conundrum by noting, “The presence of a cannabinoid does not necessarily indicate recent use of marijuana or impairment.”

    According to the CDOT report, the number of fatal crashes in which the driver tested positive for cannabinoids rose from 75 in 2014—when legal recreational sales began in Colorado—to 139 in 2017.

    However, the number of fatalities in which the active THC level in the driver’s blood concentration could be considered legally impaired—which by state law is five nanograms per milliliter or more—dropped sharply during the same time frame, from 19 “cannabis-involved fatalities” in 2014 and 2015, which rose to 52 in 2016 before dropping again to 35 in 2017.

    CDOT spokesperson Sam Cole said that the department regards the number of traffic deaths in which the driver was legally impaired to be the most accurate means of measuring how the drug is impacting road safety in Colorado. As the Colorado Springs Gazette noted, that would indicate that marijuana-related deaths as a whole were on the decline.

    And while Cole reiterated the study’s assertion that the presence of THC does not necessarily indicate impairment, he told the Denver Westword, “Marijuana and driving is still a huge problem in Colorado. About 10% of our fatalities involve a driver who was at or above the legal limit for active THC, and we need to get that number way down. Any fatality above zero is one fatality too many.”

    Henny Lasley, co-founder of Smart Colorado, a non-profit that formed after the passage of Colorado’s recreational marijuana law, essentially echoed statements by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety, which noted, “The science of impairment is lacking.”

    What concerned Lasley in the report was an increase in the number of traffic fatalities involving drivers with more than one substance in their systems; drivers that tested positive for cannabis, alcohol and any other drug tripled from eight in 2016 to 25 in 2017.

    “The combination is very concerning,” she said.

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Meth Remains Greater Issue Than Opioids In Rural Minnesota

    Meth Remains Greater Issue Than Opioids In Rural Minnesota

    “In 2009 meth use shot upward and it’s been steadily climbing,” said one city official.

    While many areas of the United States are battling the opioid epidemic, parts of rural Minnesota are facing a different battle: meth. 

    According to the Mankato Free Press, a new study by the Center for Rural Policy and Development has found that treatment admissions for meth are increasing, as are fatalities from the drug.

    The study determined that in 2016, 7,664 people in Greater Minnesota entered treatment for meth, which was a 25% increase from 2015 and about double the amount of people seeking treatment for meth in the Twin Cities.

    “We’ve been bombarded with the news of all the deaths from opioids. Our job is to find out what may be the same or different in Greater Minnesota than in the Twin Cities,” Marnie Werner, interim executive director of the Center for Rural Policy and Development, told the Mankato Free Press. “As soon as we started talking to a few county administrators, we found that opioids are a problem, but meth is a bigger problem.”

    According to Werner, the state as a whole appears to have a large issue with opioids due to the size of the Twin Cities. “The Twin Cities is so large it skews the statewide data,” she said. 

    For Blue Earth County Attorney Pat McDermott, the report’s findings were not new information.

    “Meth continues to be the drug of choice and probably the primary controlled substance we deal with and the drug task force deals with,” he told the Mankato Free Press. “Meth crimes are what’s driving our numbers and the drug task force’s numbers. There are five times as many meth cases than cocaine… (and) four times more meth cases than prescription cases.”

    While Werner says that meth use dropped in the early 2000s—when it became required that pseudoephedrine cold medicines, often used to make meth, be sold behind pharmacy counters and be limited in quantity. However, she says, meth manufacturing then picked up in Mexico and entered the U.S.

    “In 2009 meth use shot upward and it’s been steadily climbing,” Werner told the Free Press. “The way it’s being mass produced, prices have dropped and it’s very affordable to people. So these people who have underlying addiction or mental health problems who maybe couldn’t afford drugs before can now.” 

    Blue Earth County has some initiatives in place to help combat drug issues, such as the Yellow Line Project, which allows first-time offenders to seek treatment rather than go to jail. 

    “If you get them connected to services sooner rather than later, you’re better off. If you put someone in prison for three years, they’re going to come out with the same mindset they had,” McDermott told the Free Press.

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Mom Accused Of Accidentally Killing Child With Drug-Tainted Breast Milk

    Mom Accused Of Accidentally Killing Child With Drug-Tainted Breast Milk

    Prosecutors argue that the child died because the mother had used methamphetamine and amphetamine.

    The homicide case against a Pennsylvania mother accused of accidentally killing her baby with drug-tainted breast milk will move forward, a judge ruled last week during an initial court appearance. 

    Samantha Jones was arrested in July after an autopsy found methadone, amphetamine and methamphetamine in the dead 11-week-old’s system. The Bucks County mother was charged with homicide from the start, but on Wednesday, Magisterial District Judge Lisa Gaier upheld the charge after hearing more from defense and prosecutors. 

    “They don’t know what happened here,” defense lawyer Louis Busico said, pointing out that investigators never tested his client’s breast milk. “I’m asking the court not to criminalize the death of this little child.”

    But prosecutors argued that the drugs “had no business being inside that baby,” according to a news release. 

    “We are not alleging that this was an intentional killing of this baby,” prosecutor Kristin McElroy said. “But it certainly was reckless to know these drugs were in your body and continue to breast feed.”

    The New Britain Township woman previously told investigators she was prescribed the methadone and that she’d stopped breastfeeding her boy three days before his death, when she switched to formula.

    But the morning of April 2, the baby started crying and Jones decided to breastfeed because it was late and she was tired, she told police. 

    When her husband woke up for work, the baby was crying, so he made a bottle of formula and Jones fed him. Afterward, she fell asleep—and when she woke up an hour later the baby was white, with blood around his nose. 

    Jones and her mother tried CPR and called 911, but first responders were unable to save the baby, who died that day in the emergency room. 

    In court last week, Jones’ lawyer tried getting the homicide charge dismissed, saying the woman would never have hurt her boy and that the breast milk hadn’t actually tested for drugs.

    “She was a wonderful mother to this little boy. I can tell you she was a loving mother to this little boy, and she was doing everything possible to improve herself and provide both her children and herself with a nice life,” Busico told ABC News. “She has another child who she loves dearly. She has an amazingly close and wonderful relationship with her own mom. But every day is a little piece of hell on earth, make no mistake about it.”

    View the original article at thefix.com