Tag: News

Woman Testifies About Chronic Pain, Opioids From Cot

“We must invest in the discovery of new, effective, and safer options for people living with pain,” Cindy Steinberg said in prepared remarks.

It’s heartbreaking to see the faces of the opioid epidemic—young lives cut short by drug overdoses. Yet, this week another tragic but often overlooked face of the epidemic was on display when a woman testified before Congress from a cot, detailing her life with chronic pain.

Cindy Steinberg, national director of policy and advocacy for U.S. Pain Foundation spoke before the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions during a hearing entitled “Managing Pain During the Opioid Crisis.”

Steinberg’s chronic pain began 18 years ago when filing cabinets and cubical walls fell on her at work. Today, she isn’t able to sit or stand for long periods without experiencing muscle spasms and pain.

She told the committee that her life is like “being a prisoner in your own body and being tortured,” according to the National Pain Report.

Steinberg argued that substance abuse and access to pain management medications for those who need them are two entirely separate issues. She said that rising overdoses has highlighted an existing problem, “underscor[ing] our failure to provide adequate, safe, accessible treatment options for pain relief.”

“We can and must restore balance to opioid prescribing,” Steinberg said.

According to NBC News, Steinberg said in her prepared remarks, “In the near term, we can and must restore balance to opioid prescribing with depoliticized, rational and cleareyed recognition of the risks and benefits of these medications. In the long term, we must invest in the discovery of new, effective, and safer options for people living with pain.”

Others who advocate for pain patients, including Richard “Red” Lawhern, director of research for the Alliance for the Treatment of Intractable Pain, were happy to see Steinberg’s story in the spotlight.

“Steinberg directly challenged the lack of resident expertise on pain management at CDC, suggesting that Congress direct the much better equipped NIH to rewrite the guidelines based on recommendations of the HHS (Department of Health & Human Services) Task Force. This is a recommendation I support,” Lawhern said.

Committee Chair Senator Lamar Alexander of Tennessee seemed to empathize with Steinberg’s concerns, saying the “massive effort in reducing the supply of opioids has had the unintended consequence of hurting people who need them.”

This week, research emerged showing that current changes in access to prescription opioids are unlikely to reduce the number of opioid overdoses. The research shows that projected annual opioid overdose deaths will reach 82,000 by 2025.

View the original article at thefix.com

15 February 2019
New Bill Targets Pregnant Women With Addiction

“This bill’s intent is to protect babies, period,” said the Tennessee bill’s original sponsor.

A bill that calls for the punishment of women who use drugs while pregnant is being introduced to the Tennessee legislature.

House Bill 1168 was recently filed by Rep. Terri Lynn Weaver (R-Lancaster) and Sen. Janice Bowling (R-Tullahoma). The bill states that if a woman uses an illegal narcotic while pregnant and if the child is born harmed or drug-dependent, the mother could be charged with assault.

The bill does allow that if the woman completes an addiction recovery program, the charges may be lessened.

The term “addicted babies” is used in the bill but is considered inaccurate and stigmatizing.

Dr. Jana Burson, an opioid addiction treatment specialist and outspoken advocate for methadone and buprenorphine, explains the issue: “According to our definition of addiction… you have to have the psychological component of craving or obsession. By definition infants are not able to experience addiction.”

“This bill’s intent is to protect babies, period,” State Rep. Weaver said. “The number of babies born addicted to drugs, it has not decreased. It has exponentially increased.”

Voices raised against the bill include Erika Lathon, public relations manager of Addiction Campuses. “We believe that perhaps the bill is well-intentioned, we all want to compel pregnant women who have an addiction to reach out and get treatment and to get help to get into an effective program, but we believe this law could really do the opposite.”

Lathon would like to see money invested into addiction treatment rehabilitation centers and other drug addiction outreach programs. “Rather than throwing them into jail and then giving them a bunch of legal problems to deal with, a child going into foster care. All of these things is going to cost taxpayers more money on the back end,” Lathon pointed out.

“A pregnant woman who is battling an addiction is already facing a tremendous amount of stigma and has a number of problems to deal with and then you add on top of that the possibility of her being prosecuted and thrown into jail, we believe that is going to push them further away, make the woman less likely to say, ‘Yes I have a problem, yes I’m addicted, yes I need help,’” Lathon said.

WTHR reported that if the bill is made into law, it will go into effect on July 1.

View the original article at thefix.com

15 February 2019
Who Should Be Held Responsible For The Opioid Epidemic?

A new op-ed suggests that to receive “true justice” for the opioid epidemic, “we need to root out all the villains regardless of whether they have famous names.”

When it comes to the opioid epidemic, no name brings frustration and anger like Purdue Pharma. It is commonly accepted that the maker of OxyContin contributed to the growth of the opioid epidemic by using aggressive and misleading sales tactics meant to get more powerful opioids into the hands of more Americans.

The Sackler family, members of which founded the company that would become Purdue Pharma, have also come under fire for their perceived role in the epidemic. Not only did the family profit vastly from the sale of OxyContin, but new court documents assert that they were directly involved with pushing for more sales.

When it became clear that OxyContin was addictive they even considered making medications to assist in the treatment of addiction, which would have allowed them to double dip, profiting from both ends of the crisis.

The actions of Purdue Pharma were reprehensible, Robert Gebelhoff writes in an opinion piece for The Washington Post. However, he argues that in addition to punishing them, the country needs to seek punishment and retribution for others who contributed to the crisis.

“The opioid epidemic is one of the worst systematic failures of health care in our country. For true justice, we need to root out all the villains, regardless of whether they have famous names,” he writes.

Gebelhoff calls for holding the medical community and other accountable.

He writes, “Even if states are able to turn these latest charges into some form of punishment for the Sacklers themselves, what about all those who promoted their cause? What about the researchers who accepted funding from drug manufacturers and carried out campaigns to destigmatize opioid painkillers? What about the officials at the Food and Drug Administration who not only approved OxyContin without any clinical studies on how addictive the drug might be, but also approved a package insert declaring the drug safer than its rival painkillers?”

He also points to government officials who failed to intervene in the crisis, and even made it more difficult for the Drug Enforcement Administration to pursue concerning opioid sales.

At the same time, government policy made it difficult for people to access medication-assisted treatment, which is widely accepted as the best treatment for opioid use disorder. This pattern continues today, according to recent VA research that shows too few people are getting access to medication-assisted treatment.

“Who holds such practitioners accountable?” Gebelhoff asks.

Gebelhoff points out that the Sacklers and Purdue are a good target, because they have enough money to help fund access to treatment and other interventions into the epidemic. However, he says it’s important that other entities be held responsible even if they don’t have deep pockets.

“The opioid saga — stemming from prescription painkillers — has irreparably damaged the lives of countless Americans over the past few decades,” he writes. “Don’t they deserve better?”

View the original article at thefix.com

15 February 2019
Opioid Epidemic Will Get Worse, Researchers Says

Using computer modeling, researchers predicted that overdose deaths will kill 81 ,700 people in 2025 unless drastic changes are made.

Researchers from Massachusetts General Hospital have grim news about the opioid epidemic: It’s likely to continue worsening in the coming years, unless widespread, drastic policy changes are taken to address illicit drug use.

The study, published in the journal JAMA Network Open, showed that even with efforts to more tightly control access to prescription opioids, overdose deaths will continue to rise.

Using computer modeling, researchers predicted that overdose deaths will kill 81 ,700 people in 2025, most of whom will die from illicit opioids. Further restricting access to prescription opioids will only reduce that number by 3%-5.3%, researchers found.

“This study demonstrates that initiatives focused on the prescription opioid supply are insufficient to bend the curve of opioid overdose deaths in the short and medium term,” Dr. Marc Larochelle of the Grayken Center for Addiction at Boston Medical Center said in a press release. “We need policy, public health and health care delivery efforts to amplify harm reduction efforts and access to evidence-based treatment.”

Jagpreet Chhatwal, who co-authored the paper with Larochelle and others, said that more drastic measures are needed to target the use of illicit opioids.

“If we rely solely on controlling the supply of prescription opioids, we will fail miserably at stemming the opioid overdose crisis. Illicit opioids now cause the majority of overdose deaths, and such deaths are predicted to increase by 260%—from 19,000 to 68,000—between 2015 and 2025,” said Chhatwal. “A multi-pronged approach—including strategies to identify those with opioid use disorder, improved access to medications like methadone and buprenorphine, and expansion of harm reduction services such as the overdose-reversal drug naloxone—will be required to reduce the rate of opioid overdose deaths.”

Chhatwal said that while easy access to prescription opioids may have contributed to the crisis, today the epidemic is more about illicit opioids including fentanyl and its analogues. Because of this, efforts to reduce overdose deaths need to focus on addressing the population of people who are using illegal drugs.

“The opioid epidemic started with a sharp increase in opioid prescriptions for pain in the 1990s; but since 2010 the crisis has shifted, with a leveling off of deaths due to prescription opioid overdoses and an increase in overdose deaths due to heroin,” he said.

“In the past five years, deaths have accelerated with the introduction of the powerful synthetic opioid fentanyl into the opioid supply, leading to a continuing increase in overdose deaths at time when the supply of prescription opioids is decreasing.”

View the original article at thefix.com

15 February 2019
Nintendo President Addresses Gaming Addiction

Nintendo’s president Shuntaro Furukawa outlined the ways the company can help address gaming addiction during a recent Q&A.

As the debate about whether a dependency on video games qualifies as a legitimate medical condition continues to rage in both the gaming and mental health communities, the president of Nintendo spoke about his company’s efforts to address the issue at a recent investor meeting.

During a Q&A at a corporate policy and financial results briefing, Shuntaro Furukawa said that Nintendo has added features to its gaming products that will allow parents to reduce or limit the amount of time that children can spend with the game. Such features, said Furukawa, is “one way we can face the issues.”

Furukawa said that the core of the problem was “more about becoming overly dependent on video games than is about any issues with the games themselves,” and assured investors that Nintendo had taken measures to address the concerns. “One thing we have done as a company that creates games is to implement features that allow parents to limit the time that their children can play games.”

Such features, as well as making the public aware of them, is “one way” that the company can address concerns about gaming addiction, said Furukawa, though no additional measures were addressed during the Q&A.

Furukawa’s comments come on the heels of a fact-finding survey issued by Japan’s Ministry of Health to estimate the number of people who may be addicted to gaming as well as the impact on their lives.

According to the Japan Times, the ministry launched its investigation in late 2018 and will assemble data from medical institutions until March of 2019 at the earliest to provide statistics.

Current numbers of individuals in Japan who qualify as dependent on gaming are unknown, but the Japan Times article cited figures from Susumu Higuchi, director of the National Hospital Organization Kurihama Medical and Addiction, who said that 1,500 people annually seek treatment at the center for internet addiction, and 90% of that number were described as “gaming addicts” between the ages of 10 and 19.

In 2018, the World Health Organization (WHO) announced that it was including “gaming disorder” in its most recent revision of the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-11) compendium, and based its decision on “reviews of available evidence” and testimony from a “consensus of experts from different disciplines.” The decision was rejected by members of the international gaming industry, which cited the need for more research into the alleged disorder before it was included in the ICD-11.

The Entertainment Software Association also cited statements by the American Medical Association (AMA) that opposed its addition to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, though as PC Games Insider noted, the AMA also expressed concern about the “behavioral, health and societal effects of video game and internet overuse.”

View the original article at thefix.com

14 February 2019
El Chapo Trial Ends, Leaving Drug Lord Facing Life In Prison

El Chapo’s sentencing hearing is set for June 25.

The three-month long trial of El Chapo, whose real name is Joaquín Guzmán Loera, came to an end on Tuesday (Feb. 12), the New York Times reports. Guzmán was found guilty of leading a Mexican drug cartel, the Sinaloa cartel, and aiding in smuggling tons of drugs into the United States. He was found convicted on all 10 charges he faced.

The determination from the jury was given more than a week after the deliberations started in Federal District Court in Brooklyn, New York. During the trial, 56 witnesses spokes against Guzmán, 14 of whom had worked with him at one point.

“Confronting this onslaught, Mr. Guzmán’s lawyers offered little in the way of an affirmative defense, opting instead to use cross-examination to attack the credibility of the witnesses, most of whom were seasoned criminals with their own long histories of lying, cheating, drug dealing and killing,” the Times reports.

Guzmán’s sentencing hearing is set for June 25. He faces life in prison, though it is not yet determined where he will serve his time.

U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York, Richard P. Donoghue, spoke outside the courthouse. He stated that the verdict was a victory. “There are those who say the war on drugs is not worth fighting,” Mr. Donoghue added. “Those people are wrong.”

Guzmán’s lawyers say they plan to file an appeal.

“When he came here he was already presumed guilty by everyone, unfortunately. We weren’t just fighting evidence, we were fighting perception,” said A. Eduardo Balarezo, one of his lawyers.

Despite the fact that aspects of the cartel were uncovered and Guzmán was convicted, the Times reports that the Sinaloa cartel is still in operation. In fact, the Drug Enforcement Administration states that in 2016 and 2017, when Guzmán was taken into custody for the final time, heroin production in Mexico still grew by 37% and border seizures of fentanyl “more than doubled.”

Ángel Meléndez, the special agent in charge for Homeland Security Investigations, tells the Times that the outcome of this case drives home an important message to others involved in trafficking.

“One of the important things about this conviction is that it sends a resounding message,” he said. “You’re not unreachable, you’re not untouchable and your day will come.”

View the original article at thefix.com

14 February 2019
Sober Krew Turns Sobriety Support On Its Head

“The man above has blessed me with this talent to skate on my hands, so I use it to share my story in the skate parks,” said the founder of the Sober Crew.

Nate Provost has an unusual talent: he can ride his skateboard on his hands. Not just for a moment, but for up to half a mile. While that may seem like a useless, if impressive, party trick, it does have a purpose—Provost uses it to grab people’s attention and talk to them about sobriety.

“The man above has blessed me with this talent to skate on my hands, so I use it to share my story in the skate parks,” Provost, who lives in Oregon, told The Mail Tribune.

Provost’s story is not a particularly happy one. He started using drugs at a young age and estimates that he has lost most than 100 friends to overdoses and accidents caused by drug use. He himself almost died in a horrible car crash. Instead, he survived and vowed to get sober.

Today, Provost is more than three years sober, and has started a thriving Facebook group to support people in recovery. The group, Sober Krew, has more than 9,000 members, all of whom come to get and give support. Provost and his sponsor, David Genesis, started the group as a way to give back.

“As we found recovery and turned our lives around, we knew we wanted to give back. We want to provide a bright, supportive environment when people are in need of support in recovery,” Genesis said.

Provost, 33, says he keeps a close eye on the page so that the tone remains upbeat.

“There is no negativity allowed,” he said. The group is an important lifeline for many, and has even reached out to people who were contemplating suicide. The group also welcomes people who are still struggling with addiction but are trying to get sober.

Provost and Genesis said they grew up middle class in loving families, but still fell victim to drugs.

“I came from a great family. I just chose a dark path. (Because of it) I had a rough life and eventually pushed my family away,” Provost said. Luckily, in recovery he has reconnected with his family, including his three kids.

When he was using, Provost did virtually any drugs he could get his hands on.

“I would go to parties and immediately head to the bathroom or the kitchen. That’s where it all goes down. I wasn’t there for the party. I was there for the drugs,” he said.

However, today he realizes that his life is better without substances.

“My life’s good right now,” he said. “I am not numb anymore. I hear birds chirp… which I never did before. I am grateful.”

View the original article at thefix.com

14 February 2019
Inside North Korea’s Meth Epidemic

“Ice has become a best-selling holiday gift item. Drug dealers don’t have enough supply for their buyers,” said one North Korean source.

One might assume that one of the harshest dictatorships on earth would have a zero-tolerance policy for drugs, but reports suggest that North Korea has a thriving methamphetamine market, and that the drug is even a popular gift for the Lunar New Year.

“Ice has become a best-selling holiday gift item,” a North Korean source told Radio Free Asia. “Drug dealers don’t have enough supply for their buyers.”

According to the New York Times, methamphetamine has long been associated with North Korea. A 2014 report found that the state began manufacturing and exporting methamphetamine in the 1990s as a way to access currency despite trade restrictions.

Most of the meth was exported through China or given at sea to criminal organizations from Japan and China. The production was “clearly sponsored and controlled” by the government, the report found, but it began to decline in the mid-2000s.

With no government-sanctioned channels to export the drug, many manufacturers began selling to locals. Over time, meth became a popular gift used at celebrations, including New Year’s.

“Since the mid-2000s, drugs have become commonplace and the people now think that the holidays are not a joyful time if there are no drugs for them to enjoy,” the source told Radio Free Asia. “Social stigmas surrounding drug use [have disappeared], so people now feel that something big is missing if they don’t have ice or opium prepared as a holiday gift.”

It’s become so mainstream that people no longer try to hide their use, the source said.

“In the past, ice users would try to be discreet, not wanting others to know that they were buying, but these days nobody seems to care.”

Political scientist Justin Hastings, who studies North Korean drug trafficking, said that so many officials take bribes that the country’s economy benefits from looking the other way when it comes to meth use.

“Over time, this has resulted in a culture where people are willing to take risks to make money, and official state prohibition has little meaning,” he said.

In addition, the culture doesn’t view meth as a powerful and harmful addictive drug, but rather sees it as a small indulgence. North Korea expert Andrei Lankov says that there is a “significant underestimation” about the risks of drug use in North Korea.

“Meth, until recently, has been largely seen inside North Korea as a kind of very powerful energy drug—something like Red Bull, amplified,” he said.

Despite this attitude, more North Koreans are becoming addicted to the drug, according to a second source who spoke with Radio Free Asia.

“An increasing number of people are becoming addicted, and ice is sold even in rural and remote areas,” they said.

View the original article at thefix.com

14 February 2019
Jersey Shore's Ronnie Ortiz-Magro Breaks Silence On Rehab Stay

Ortiz-Magro said he decided to get help because to be a “better person, a better father for my daughter.”

One of the original stars of Jersey Shore, Ronnie Ortiz-Magro, revealed his battles with depression and alcohol addiction in an interview with Us Weekly on Tuesday. The 33-year-old reality TV celebrity spoke on his recent decision to enter rehab, motivated by his desire to be a good role model for his daughter.

“I decided to go to treatment because I wanted to be a better person, a better father for my daughter,” Otiz-Magro said. “Eventually, all the bad decisions I was making were going to lead me to places that 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.”

Ortiz-Magro has a little girl, Ariana Sky Magro, with his on-again-off-again girlfriend Jen Harley. Around the new year entering 2019, the couple had a violent fight that ended in a bloody face for Ortiz-Magro. Us Weekly reported that a source described their relationship as volatile.

In the interview, the reality star admitted to not being proud of many of the things he’s done over the years, that he was making the wrong decisions, and was “very depressed.” Going into addiction treatment, he described himself as depressed, angry, and “resentful to myself about a lot of things I’ve done over the last year, or even years.”

Like many individuals involved in the fast-paced life of stardom, Ortiz-Magro developed problems with drinking over a period of years and found himself feeling increasingly out of control.

“I think it’s a chronic disease. It’s a progressive disease. I’m still struggling,” he explained. “You stop and you start up again, and it’s worse than when you stopped. You’re just like, ‘Wow, I thought I had this under control,’ but at the end of the day, it has full control over you.”

Ortiz-Magro is not the only person involved in the Jersey Shore franchise to face addiction. Mike “The Situation” Sorrentino spoke in 2018 about the drug use that led to some of his reckless behavior. In season four, Sorrentino landed himself in the hospital after intentionally slamming his head into a concrete wall that he thought was drywall.

“For a couple of years, from season two on to five, I was really pushing the envelope on my behavior,” Sorrentino told The Asbury Park Press of New Jersey. “I was very wild, very careless, reckless.”

He checked himself into rehab in 2012 in order to get treatment for his addiction to oxycodone. He has since married his college sweetheart and appears to be doing well.

View the original article at thefix.com

14 February 2019
Are "Night Owls" More Prone to Depression?

Researchers examined if burning the midnight oil could put you at higher risk for mental health disorders.

New research has found that a genetic link may exist between individuals who prefer sleeping later, or “night owls,” and mental disorders, including depression, anxiety and even schizophrenia.

A study of genomic data—information culled from an organism’s genetic and DNA material—from thousands of participants in a UK health survey found that while differences in sleep timing did not impact sleep quality of “night owls” or “morning people,” it did reveal a causal link between night owls and the aforementioned conditions.

While the reason for the connection remained unclear, researchers indicated that its presence underscored the need for greater research into genetics and mental health.

The study, published in the journal Nature Communications, reviewed genomic data from nearly 700,000 participants culled from two sources: the private, U.S.-based genome analysis company 23andMe and the non-profit UK Biobank.

Participants were given a health survey in which they would answer if they were “morning people” or “night owls” based on sleep timing and tendencies. The researchers compared information from the survey with data from wristband activity trackers worn by 85,000 participants in the UK Biobank.

The data yielded two significant findings. First, the researchers determined a vastly larger number of regions in the human genome—351—associated with early rising than previously identified; prior to the study, only 24 of these regions were known to science. Study participants with more gene variants connected to early rising typically went to sleep up to a half hour earlier than individuals with fewer variants.

These variants also appeared to be linked to both the retina and the body’s circadian clock, which is the body’s means of monitoring sleep, wakefulness, digestion and other bodily functions.

As study lead author Samuel Jones noted, “Part of the reason why some people are up with the larks while others are night owls is because of differences in both the way our brains react to external light signals and the normal functioning of our internal clocks.”

But what the scientists also found was that those individuals whose genomic data identified them as night owls also had a greater propensity for the risk of depression and schizophrenia, among other conditions.

Sleep quality or lack of sleep did not appear to play a role in this causal link, and while the researchers were unable to determine a specific reason for the link, study co-author Jacqueline Lane suggested that a combination of physical stimuli, such as morning light, societal pressures—the need to feel awake in the morning and midday due to work schedules—and genetics may play a role.

“Our current study really highlights the need for further study of how chronotype is causally linked to mental health and, until these studies are done, we can only speculate on the mechanism,” said Lane.

View the original article at thefix.com

14 February 2019