Tag: News

National Rating System For Addiction Treatment Being Tested In 5 States

West Virginia is the latest state to announce its partnership with Shatterproof to test the rating system.

According to the 2017 National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH), 1 in 12 American adults—that’s 18.7 million people—had a substance use disorder. Yet only a fraction of them will get help.

A pilot program is hoping to change that by setting a standard for quality addiction treatment.

Five states have teamed up with the non-profit organization Shatterproof to test this new rating system—Delaware, Louisiana, Massachusetts, New York and West Virginia.

“People who need help for addiction don’t know what to look for or where to turn. Right now, there is more transparent and credible information about the quality of your next refrigerator than an addiction treatment program,” said Samantha Arsenault, Director of National Treatment Quality Initiatives at Shatterproof. “We are taking rating system best practices from healthcare and other business sectors and applying them to addiction treatment. This will not only provide critical information to individuals looking for care but also drive a long overdue transformation of the addiction treatment industry.”

The goal of the Shatterproof Rating System is to take the currently fragmented treatment industry and make it more transparent and accessible.

“The quality of care varies widely among addiction treatment programs, and individuals looking for care can’t identify high-quality programs,” said Gary Mendell, founder and CEO of Shatterproof. “It is time a standard be set across all of addiction treatment, and the entire system aligns behind evidence-based care.”

Arsenault says that a majority of treatment programs in the U.S. do not offer evidence-based treatment like addiction medication. The Rating System seeks to bring this to light and encourage more access to drugs like buprenorphine within a comprehensive treatment program.

“One concrete example of that is that we are in the wake of an opioid epidemic and yet 60% of the specialty addiction treatment programs in the U.S. don’t offer a single medication to treat opioid use disorder,” she told Government Technology.

The Rating System will go live in 2020, according to Shatterproof’s website. All treatment facilities in the pilot states will be invited to participate by completing a Treatment Program Survey.

West Virginia was the latest state to announce its partnership with Shatterproof to test the rating system.

“The substance use epidemic continues to impact individuals and families across West Virginia,” said Cabinet Secretary Bill J. Crouch of the West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources. “We believe the results of this pilot program will enable us to ensure effective, quality substance use disorder services are offered across the state, which in turn will benefit those who need our help to combat this problem.”

View the original article at thefix.com

6 May 2019
Vince Vaughn Convicted Of Reckless Driving In DUI Arrest

The “Wedding Crashers” actor was arrested at a sobriety checkpoint in June 2018.

After being pulled over for driving under the influence last year, Vince Vaughn has been convicted of reckless driving and given probation time.

According to People, the 49-year-old actor recently pleaded no contest to the misdemeanor charge he received in Manhattan Beach, California in June 2018. The actor did not appear in court, but was represented by his attorney.

As a result, the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s office said in a statement, Vaughn was sentenced to three years of summary probation.

Additionally, the statement reads, Vaughn is required to participate in a three-month treatment program for alcohol and pay “an unspecified amount of fines.”

However, TMZ reported that he will pay “a $390 fine—plus various penalties which ups the payout to around $1,700.”

People also reports that while on probation, Vaughn must agree to alcohol screening tests. He reportedly also was warned that if he were to be involved in a fatal crash while driving under the influence, the resulting charge could be murder.

“The defendant was ordered to complete a three-month alcohol program, pay fines, and cannot refuse a preliminary alcohol screening test while on probation if requested by law enforcement,” the official statement read. “A Watson advisement also was given that states if he drives under the influence and a person is killed, he could be charged with murder.”

The June 2018 incident was Vaughn’s first DUI. People states that the actor was pulled over between Hermosa Beach and Manhattan Beach at 2:40 a.m. and apparently refused to exit his vehicle despite law enforcement officials’ requests to do so.

Vaughn and his passenger were both taken to jail, but released after paying bail.

At the time, Sgt. Tim Zins, a spokesman for the Manhattan Beach Police Department, told CNN that Vaughn was not “fighting with officers, but more of delaying the investigation.”

“There was no officer use of force or anything like that,” Zins told CNN.

According to People, Vaughn faced three misdemeanor charges at the time: driving under the influence, having a 0.08% or higher blood alcohol content and refusing to cooperate with law enforcement officials. If he had been convicted of all three, the District Attorney’s office stated, he could have had to serve up to 360 days in jail.

View the original article at thefix.com

6 May 2019
Goldie Hawn: Meditation Helped Me With Anxiety Attacks

The actress opened up about the anxiety she’s faced since childhood and her goal of helping others conquer it.

It’s a story that is becoming more familiar as mental health becomes a national conversation: actress Goldie Hawn might be an Academy award-winning actress, but she once struggled with anxiety.

Hawn told her story at The Child Mind Institute‘s 5th Annual Change Maker Awards, where she won her Activist Award.

“I lived with anxiety as a little girl,” said Hawn. “I thought the Russians were going to bomb us. I thought I could die without ever kissing a boy. I suffered anxiety every time I heard a siren.”

Even as she spent more time in the spotlight, she would begin to have anxiety attacks. “The next thing I know I’m doing a TV show and I was having nonspecific anxiety attacks,” she explained. “I didn’t know why I was feeling anxious or what was wrong with me, when I would go into public and feeling like I could vomit. I didn’t know why I wanted to sit on a couch while I was supposedly becoming something that everyone was so excited for me.”

Hawn soon realized she needed to take action.

“I suffered for about a year…[then] I took charge and saw a doctor,” she told the audience. “But that was the time when I was 21 and I realized that I had a mind, that I was going to fix that mind and I was going to make sure I knew and understood everything that was happening and why it was happening.”

Eventually, she found her key to happiness: meditation.

“I went for meditation because it was the thing to do, and when I did, it was like I can’t ever explain to you—it was the most joyful experience I’ve ever had,” revealed Hawn. “I felt like I returned back to my deepest part, to my heart, to my joy. It just hit this seed of joy that I always had as a young girl. Because all I ever wanted to be was happy. That was my goal.”

Hawn founded the MindUp program to help children deal with mental health issues through meditation, hopefully providing them with the tools that helped her find happiness.

She felt concern because of the statistics that suggest suicide is the second-leading cause of death for people ages 10 to 24.

View the original article at thefix.com

6 May 2019
New Bill Aims To Deregulate Buprenorphine & Other Addiction Treatment Meds

The proposed bill would remove the extra barrier that prevents all doctors from being able to prescribe opioid treatment meds.

The movement to deregulate drugs that treat opioid addiction is gaining steam in New York with the support of 18 state public health directors and U.S. Rep. Paul Tonko, who will soon introduce federal legislation to make it easier for doctors to prescribe medications like buprenorphine.

Currently, prescribers need special training and permission to give out addiction treatment drugs which they don’t need to prescribe opioid pain medications like oxycodone. The proposed bill would remove that extra barrier.

“These professionals can use their training and skill and ability to provide medication for treatment of pain,” said Tonko to STAT News. “But when it comes to addressing the illness of addiction, they have to jump through additional hoops.”

Buprenorphine, a major ingredient in medications like Suboxone, is an opioid initially designed to relieve pain without producing as many side effects as morphine. Though it is possible to abuse and become addicted to buprenorphine, opioid-tolerant individuals are generally unable to get high on controlled doses. It can therefore be used to treat cravings and withdrawal symptoms without getting patients high.

Opponents have expressed concern that deregulation could result in an increase in diversion and misuse of these drugs. However, addiction experts say that most illegal use of buprenorphine and similar drugs is used to treat addiction rather than for recreation. If access to addiction-treating drugs is expanded, they argue, non-prescription use should decrease.

“We want people to be getting medication from health care providers,” says addiction medicine specialist Dr. Sarah Wakeman. “The question with buprenorphine diversion is how you best reduce its non-prescribed use—and the answer is probably expanding access to treatment.”

Less than 7% of health professionals hold the DEA waivers necessary to prescribe addiction treatment medications. Currently, physicians need to go through an extra eight hours of training in order to obtain these waivers, and nurses and physician assistants have to complete 24 hours of training.

The lack of available prescribers means that even those who seek out addiction treatment may have to see a different health professional just to obtain a prescription for buprenorphine.

In March 2019, two physicians published a call for the deregulation of buprenorphine, saying that it could save thousands of lives. They cited the example of France, which removed additional restrictions on prescribing opioid addiction treatment drugs in 1995 and saw an 80% decrease in opioid overdose cases in the following years.

With opioid overdose deaths in the U.S. drawing close to 50,000 each year, even “just” a 50% decrease could save tens of thousands of lives.

View the original article at thefix.com

4 May 2019
Can Watching Intense TV Shows & Movies Relieve Stress?

A survivor described to The Fix how she felt empowered while watching a traumatic storyline on a season of “Dexter.”

Psychological research has shown that for some, watching high-stress drama can actually relieve feelings of stress.

One reason for this is that viewers watching a traumatic event that they themselves experienced can feel that their experience is being normalized—not in the sense that it’s common, but that it is a part of the human experience. This reduces feelings of shame and self-loathing that can be the result of post-traumatic stress disorder after a trauma.

Alaina Leary, an editor and communications manager in Boston, wrote about her own experience of this phenomena for Hello Giggles. After being raped in college, Leary found that watching crime shows such as Dexter or horror shows such as The Vampire Diaries actually had a sedating effect.

Leary spoke with The Fix about her experience watching Dexter in the context of her rape. “I could see a survivor (Lumen, the woman Dexter saved, played by Julia Stiles) onscreen dealing with her trauma. In season five, Lumen goes from a traumatized, terrified person to a strong, confident person who has done a lot of healing from what happened to her.”

Despite the unlikely plot turns that occurred, Leary still felt empowered by the story playing out on the screen. “Lumen experiences very real effects of trauma like nightmares, panic attacks, specific triggers, and difficulties with trust/physical touch,” Leary explains. “I experienced all those things as a survivor too and it was powerful to see that portrayed in a narrative where the survivor heals, moves on, and lives their life.”

Those who have experienced trauma may find themselves caught in what is called reenactment, where the adult person recreates a traumatic experience, with themselves in a position of mastery, in order to gain a feeling of control over the events. The publication Psychiatric Clinics of North America notes that, “The only reason to uncover traumatic material is to gain conscious control over unbidden re-experiences or re-enactments.”

In other words, in order for it to be helpful to provoke stress through watching TV, movies or theater, the viewer must be aware of what is occurring inside themselves. Leary was conscious of what was happening as she watched stressful shows, and found it healing.

“I could channel my emotions into the characters while getting my own sense of healing through therapy and art,” Leary told The Fix. “I am someone who lives with love, compassion, and vulnerability, instead of mistrust, anger, and resentment. Those are my active choices. I get to decide who I am today.”

View the original article at thefix.com

3 May 2019
Harvard, MIT Receive $9 Million Gift For Cannabis Research

The donation is the largest ever earmarked for marijuana research.

An investor who made millions investing in the medical cannabis market in Canada has donated $9 million to Harvard and MIT to find research on cannabis. The $9 million gift is the largest donation ever earmarked for marijuana research.

“Our desire is to fill the research void that currently exists in the science of cannabis,” Bob Broderick, a Harvard alumni, told the school.

Broderick hopes that the gift, which will be divided evenly between the two universities, will empower researchers to commit to studying cannabis, despite federal regulations and limitations on marijuana research.

“People take risks when they say, ‘I’m going to start doing cannabis work,’ ” Broderick told WBUR. “For a young researcher at MIT or Harvard to say, ‘I’m going to pivot my career and study the effects of cannabis,’ I don’t think that’s something that would have happened five years ago.”

Broderick said that it’s important for everyone that more research be done on cannabis and its health effects.

“And that’s going to be good for all of us,” he said. “A majority of Americans live in a regulatory environment that has either medical or recreational cannabis.”

Bruce Bean, a professor of neurobiology at Harvard Medical School, said that the gift will allow researchers to learn more about THC and CBD, but also begin studying the hundred other cannabinoid compounds in marijuana.

“Even for [THC and CBD], I have to say our knowledge is very, very sparse in terms of how they actually have their effects on the brain. But for many of the other hundred cannabinoids or so we know — we really know nothing,” Bean said.

MIT professor and researcher Myriam Heiman studies the effect of cannabis on symptoms of schizophrenia. Her lab will receive $1 million of Broderick’s gift.

“We were saying, ‘Wouldn’t it be great to study this?’” she said. “And then this gift comes along and really is enabling us to do everything we wanted to do.”

John Gabrieli, another MIT professor who studies marijuana, will use $1 million to help fund research into the effects of cannabis for people with schizophrenia and autism. He said that marijuana use is already widespread among people with mental illness, so it’s important that research catch up with this current use and understand the health effects for this population.

“That’s why we need the science,” he said. “Because right now, it’s happening without the science, and it’s likely to happen all the more as marijuana becomes highly available legally in many states.”

Broderick hopes that his donation will inspire other philanthropists to help fund cannabis research.

“My thought is that this is the largest gift to support cannabis research, but it’s not going to be the largest for long,” he said.

View the original article at thefix.com

3 May 2019
Drinking While Pregnant Becoming More Common In The US

More than 10% of women reported drinking alcohol while pregnant, according to a new survey.

Over one in nine pregnant women consume at least one drink per month and about 4% engage in binge drinking—consuming more than four drinks at a time—according to a new survey by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

These numbers come from between 2015 and 2017, and are up from 2011 to 2013. In the earlier period, a little over one in 10 women drank while pregnant with a bit over 3% engaged in binge drinking.

Any amount of alcohol consumption while pregnant is considered to be unsafe for the developing embryo or fetus by the CDC.

Rates of drinking while pregnant appear to be associated with stress levels. Unmarried women were found to be twice as likely to consume alcohol during pregnancy and three times as likely to binge drink, and researchers pointed to the “financial stress associated with being the sole provider as well as lack of social support” as a possible factor. The youngest age group surveyed, ages 18-24, were also the most likely to binge drink. However, the age group most likely to drink at all was the oldest, ages 35-44.

In spite of the many warnings against drinking while pregnant, the idea that it’s safe for pregnant women to drink small amounts persists. However, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics, even a single glass of wine increases the risk of health problems and fetal or infant death.

“There is no safe amount of alcohol when a woman is pregnant,” says their fetal alcohol syndrome FAQ page. “Evidence-based research has found that drinking even small amounts of alcohol while pregnant can increase the risk of miscarriage, stillbirth, prematurity, or sudden infant death syndrome.”

These risks increase substantially the more a pregnant woman’s blood alcohol level increases, making binge drinking even once during pregnancy more dangerous than an occasional single drink.

At the same time, a study published in JAMA Psychiatry in 2017 found that drinking and alcohol dependence are on the rise in the U.S., particularly among women and people of color.

The study found that “high-risk drinking,” defined the same as binge drinking in the CDC survey, increased by 58% among women from 2002 to 2013.

The CDC survey also found that women who engaged in binge drinking before becoming pregnant were more likely to do so during pregnancy.

To address the problem, the CDC recommends regulating the number of stores that sell alcohol in a given area, screening and counseling for “unhealthy alcohol use” for all adults 18 and older, and “alcohol use screening for all women seeking obstetric-gynecologic care, including counseling patients that there is no known safe level of alcohol use during pregnancy.”

View the original article at thefix.com

3 May 2019
Doctor Receives 20-Year Sentence For Reckless Opioid Prescribing

The Manhattan doctor was convicted on 10 counts of unlawful distribution of oxycodone without legitimate medical purpose.

A family doctor based in Manhattan’s Upper East Side was sentenced to 20 years in prison on Tuesday (April 30) for recklessly prescribing opioid painkillers that played a role in one patient’s fatal overdose.

Dr. Martin Tesher, 83, was convicted in July of 10 counts of unlawful distribution of oxycodone without legitimate medical purpose to five patients, including 27-year-old Nicholas Benedetto.

In March of 2016, two days after visiting Tesher and receiving prescriptions for oxycodone and fentanyl patches, Benedetto fatally overdosed on the drugs.

According to SILive.com, one month before his death, Benedetto’s mother called Tesher asking him to stop giving her son prescriptions because he needed treatment. She told authorities that her son was smoking the fentanyl patches.

Tesher prescribed oxycodone and fentanyl patches to Benedetto and four other patients “after he learned, or had reason to believe, that these patients were addicted to drugs,” according to the Justice Department.

An expert witness testified that none of them “had verified medical conditions that would require the prescription of Schedule II opioids.”

Benedetto, while under the doctor’s care, tested positive for cocaine, heroin, morphine and methadone in addition to the oxycodone and fentanyl prescribed by Tesher.

Twenty years was the minimum sentence Tesher faced for his crime. The maximum was life in prison.

“In the midst of an unprecedented opioid epidemic, Dr. Tesher used his medical skills to harm, not heal and in doing so he cost a young man his life,” said U.S. Eastern District Attorney Richard Donoghue. “Such criminal conduct is an utter betrayal of the trust our society places in doctors and it warrants the severe sentence imposed today.”

The DOJ has recently cracked down on health care providers and drug companies accused of playing a role in fueling the opioid crisis.

Also last month, 60 people were indicted for the illegal prescribing of painkillers including doctors, pharmacists, nurse practitioners and other licensed medical professionals.

According to the Washington Post, the indictment included “doctors who prosecutors said traded sex for prescriptions and a dentist who unnecessarily pulled teeth from patients to justify giving them opioids.”

View the original article at thefix.com

3 May 2019
David Carr’s Daughter Pens Memoir About His Life and Addiction

Erin Carr’s memoir details the pain and joy of life with her father, as well as her own experiences with alcohol dependency.

The loss of New York Times columnist and author David Carr, who died in 2015, was felt keenly throughout the journalistic world, as well as by those in recovery impacted by his powerful 2008 memoir The Night of the Gun, which detailed his lengthy and destructive dependency on drugs and alcohol.

But few felt the loss of Carr from their lives like his daughter, documentarian Erin Lee Carr, whose relationship with her father was marked by both complexity – in the depths of his dependency, he put Erin and her twin sister, Megan, into foster care before seeking sobriety – and deep emotional connection.

Carr has written her own memoir, All That You Leave Behind, which details the pain and joy of her life with Carr, as well as her own experiences with alcohol dependency.

Carr, whose work as a documentary director includes 2017’s Mommy Dead and Dearest and the upcoming I Love You, Now Die: The Commonwealth v. Michelle Carter, said that writing the book was a way of retaining a connection to her father, despite the emotional turmoil it produced.

“I was with him, in a way,” she told NPR. “I really wanted to educate myself in all things David Carr, not just the father which I experienced. But I found it to be so painful to, like, to get access to him in his words in these emails and yet not have him anymore.”

Delving deep into her father’s life in dependency, and by extension, her own life as a young girl during that period, also had its emotional perils. Carr recalled a similar experience while reading her father’s memoir, which reminded her that he had left her and her sister alone in a car while buying drugs. “I sort of choked on the emotion,” she said. “I thought how close I came to not being there anymore.

“It wouldn’t be the last time he would put my life at risk because of drugs and alcohol. We said something in our family: that drugs explain everything, and excuse nothing. So we had to reconcile that he was still the person that left us alone.”

But just as her father would be at the core of some of her darkest experiences, Carr said that he also served as a beacon for her to emerge from her own struggles with alcohol. After relapsing on the six-month anniversary of his death, Carr recalled telling herself that a life in addiction was not the life her father wanted for her.

“I took it very seriously, because I was trying to work towards him, what he did,” she said. “He was part of my decision to get sober, and I’ve been sober since August 23, 2015. And it is crazy what has happened since then. I could not have written this book if I was drinking. There is no way.”

Carr’s life and career have bloomed in remarkable ways since gaining sobriety – in addition to the book, she also completed At the Heart of Gold, about the sex abuse scandal involving former USA Gymnastics team doctor Larry Nassar, for HBO – but her success has a bittersweet patina.

“Just being able to call him and ask him a question – I mean, he was brilliant,” she said. “When I no longer had that, the only voice I could really listen to at the moment was myself. And so I think that he had to leave and pass away in order for me not to rely so heavily on him.

“But… I would completely rather have him be here and me have no work. I think that is the most profound loss I will ever experience, and nothing that has happened outweighs the pain of him being gone.”

View the original article at thefix.com

3 May 2019
Candidate Amy Klobuchar Wants To Reform Clemency

“The next president owes it to the people of this country to leave no one behind,” Klobuchar wrote in an op-ed.

Presidential candidate Amy Klobuchar, a U.S. Senator from Minnesota, wants to streamline the federal government’s clemency process, addressing criminal justice reform and helping free thousands of people who are serving long sentences for non-violent drug crimes.

“The next president owes it to the people of this country to leave no one behind,” Klobuchar wrote in an op-ed for CNN published in April. “Reforming the presidential pardon system through the creation of a clemency advisory board and the addition of a dedicated, criminal justice reform adviser to the White House would move us one step closer to an America that’s as good as its promise.”

Klobuchar’s plan would rely on executive action to establish a clemency advisory board. This body would consider clemency cases and make recommendations to the president on whether to grant clemency.

Today, clemency applications need to go through a long seven-step process, law professor and former federal prosecutor Mark Osler told Vox.

“The problem with the system we’ve got now is it’s vertical,” he said. “You got one person making a decision, passing it on to the next person who makes a decision, passing it on to another person who makes a decision. And there’s seven levels of review like that.”

In addition to being a faster process, Klobuchar’s advisory board would also be entirely separate from the Department of Justice, which handles most of the clemency application process today in what Osler said is a conflict of interest.

“It’s hard to imagine a stronger conflict of interest than leaving the idea of clemency to the people who had asked for the sentences in the first place,” he said. “And I say that as someone who was a prosecutor… What does it feel like to me to have someone tell me that I put someone in prison for too long? I’m going to be defensive about that, probably.”

Klobuchar’s staff said the clemency board would be bipartisan and comprised of people from a variety of different backgrounds, including law enforcement, prison reform and social justice. Her clemency campaign would focus mostly on non-violent offenders who have shown they’ve been rehabilitated during prison, her staff said.

Twelve percent of prisoners in the United States are in federal prison, and half of those are drug offenders, Vox reported.

Osler said that taking a strong stand on clemency would also change how prosecutors pursue drug cases that haven’t yet been sentenced.

“Clemency is a way that the president can signal to prosecutors where she is at,” he said. “When President Obama started to grant clemency to narcotics traffickers serving very long sentences, it sent a signal to prosecutors that this is not what we want to do. While clemency doesn’t directly affect, for example, statutes, it is important signaling to how prosecutors use their discretion. And how prosecutors use their discretion is kind of the whole ball game.”

View the original article at thefix.com

3 May 2019