Tag: News

Man Who Shared Drugs That Caused Fatal Overdose Appeals Conviction

Two friends pooled money to buy heroin. Should the one who made the run be held responsible for the other’s fatal overdose?

In October 2013, Jesse Carillo, a college student at the University of Massachusetts, headed south to New York, where he purchased heroin before returning to campus. Back at home he shared the drugs with his friend Eric Sinacori.

Two days later, Carillo made the same run, and again brought drugs back for Sinacori. The next day, Sinacori died at age 20 from a heroin overdose.

Carillo was charged in connection with the overdose, and sentenced to a year in jail for involuntary manslaughter and drug distribution. However, he appealed his conviction and on Monday (Feb. 4) the Supreme Judicial Court in Massachusetts heard the case over whether people should face charges when the drugs they share lead to a fatal overdose.

“When Jesse and another addict pooled their funds to purchase this heroin, it should not constitute manslaughter when the other addict overdosed,” Jay Carney, Carrillo’s lawyer, told The Boston Globe before the hearing. “We are asking the SJC to reassess the approaches taken in heroin cases given the opiate crisis in Massachusetts… These addicts should not be treated the same as drug dealers selling heroin for profit.”

Before the SJC, Carney emphasized that Carrillo, who now works at a recovery center, was not criminally responsible for his friend’s overdose.

“Jesse Carrillo was not a drug dealer. He didn’t profit from getting Eric the heroin, he didn’t benefit in any way. He just pooled the money, went to the dealer, purchased it, and gave Eric exactly what he had paid for,” the lawyer said, according to WBUR.

In Massachusetts, officials including the governor and attorney general have called for stricter penalties for people who provide the drugs that lead to an overdose. However, Carney insisted that these calls should focus on dealers, not people like Carillo who merely purchased the drugs for friends.

“I realize that I raised the hackles of the attorney general, who filed an amicus brief saying heroin is wicked bad. It’s wicked bad. We know that,” Carillo said. “What we have to determine is, is a person acting as a possessor of heroin when he buys heroin in a joint venture with another person?”

Justice Scott Kafker seemed to take the point, especially since Carillo and Sinacori had purchased drugs together before from the same dealer that they used in October 2013.

“He’s bought this heroin multiple times, used it himself, he’s not died on any of these occasions. Isn’t that about as safe a drug delivery as we’re going to hear about when you’re dealing with heroin?” Kafker said.

However, Northwestern Assistant District Attorney Cynthia Von Flatern, who was prosecuting the case, said that Carillo was acting recklessly by supplying drugs to someone with a severe addiction. The case hinges on whether Carillo was acting in a “wanton and reckless” manner by giving Sinacori the drugs.

Around the country, drug users often face charges when the people they are using with overdose. In Massachusetts, the case is expected to have policy implications when the SJC issues a ruling, which is expected within 130 days.

View the original article at thefix.com

8 February 2019
Depression Might Make You Angry

Some medical experts would like to see anger added to the list of symptoms for depression.

Depression is associated with fatigue and melancholy, but there’s another often-overlooked symptom of depression, professionals say: anger.

Some medical providers, including psychiatrist Maurizio Fava, who practices at Massachusetts General Hospital and teaches at Harvard Medical School, would like to see anger included as a symptom of depression in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM).

“[Anger is] not included at all in the adult classification of depression,” Fava told NPR, despite the fact that it is a listed symptoms of depression for children and teens. “Why would someone who happens to be irritable and angry when depressed as an adolescent suddenly stop being angry at age 18?”

Because anger isn’t listed as a symptom of depression, people present with anger as a primary symptom can be misdiagnosed.

“We see in our clinics patients who are labeled as having other diagnoses because people think, ‘Well, you shouldn’t be so angry if you are depressed,’” Fava said.

Still, he said about 1 in 3 patients have told him about angry outbursts associated with depression, something Fava calls “anger attacks.”

“They would lose their temper, they would get angry, they would throw things or yell and scream or slam the door,” he said.

Fava would like the medical community to study anger more closely in order to fully understand depression.

“I don’t think that we have really examined all the variables and all the levels of anger dysregulation that people experience,” he said.

Mark Zimmerman, who teaches psychiatry at Brown University, conducted a poll in which two-thirds of people seeking first-time psychiatric treatment reported feelings of anger. The fact that anger associated with mental illness, specifically depression, hasn’t been studied means that it is hard to know what treatment might work to alleviate this symptom.

“The most frequently used scales to evaluate whether or not medications work for treating depression don’t have any anger-specific items,” Zimmerman said.

Kevin Einbinder, who handles communications for the Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance, said that looking back over his life he can see that anger played a big role in many of his relationships, although he didn’t realize it until a journalist posed the question.

“I thought of all the people in my life who have interacted with me — my family, the counselors, psychiatrists, even employers, significant others, and I realized that anger was an underlying factor in all those relationships,” Einbinder said.

If he had realized this at the time, or if his providers had known to ask about this symptom, he could have learned to cope with it earlier on, he said.

“I think that would have provided a tremendous amount of context for what’s adding to my depression and in helping me, early on in my life, with more effective coping mechanisms.”

View the original article at thefix.com

8 February 2019
Great White's Mark Kendall On Sobriety: I Won't Drink Today No Matter What Happens

“I don’t care if I have guns pointed at me — I’m not drinking. That’s how serious I am,” the Great White guitarist said at a recent recovery event.

Mark Kendall, founding guitarist for the legendary rock band Great White, doesn’t say that he’ll never drink again, despite his decade of sobriety. Instead, he focuses on staying sober just for today.

“Nobody’s ever gonna hear me say, ‘I’ll never drink again,’ or, ‘I’m done.’ I just don’t go there. I don’t put these impossible tasks [in front of me]. ‘Cause I don’t know if I’ll never drink again; I can’t tell you if that’ll happen. But what I can tell you is that I’m not gonna drink today no matter what happens,” Kendall said as part of the No More Heroin Survivor Stories.

“I don’t care if I have guns pointed at me — I’m not drinking. That’s how serious I am. And I know it sounds stupid simple to some of our audience out there, but when I do it this way and just leave the task to be today…I’m just not gonna drink today. Yesterday, whatever happened, I don’t know; I don’t wanna think about it. I probably didn’t drink though.”

As for tomorrow, Kendall says he’s not concerned with it.

“I’m not concerned about something that takes care of itself. Time takes care of itself. Years are gonna go by all by themselves. The only thing that I can control with confidence is being sober today only — that’s my task. If I make it to midnight, I’ve made it through another day. That’s the way I’ve done it, and 10 years rolled by. It’s not like I sat there one day and [went], ‘You know what? I think I’m gonna be sober for 10 years. I’m just gonna go for it.’ I never did that.”

Kendall struggled with alcoholism and started toying with sobriety in 1991, according to Blabbermouth. However, he didn’t give sobriety his all until 2008, which is when it clicked for him, he said.

“I’d try it and then I’d quit again. So I’d literally keep starting and stopping and keep trying it again — try to drink like the normal guy that just watches the football game on the weekends with his buddies and has, like, four beers. I wanna be that guy and not wake up the next day and have to drink again. So I’d force it and not drink, so I could tell myself that I’m normal now. But then again, here it comes again — I’d end up in pain,” Kendall said. “So I kept trying and trying and trying — going two years, a year and a half, a year, another two years. And keep trying and trying.”

View the original article at thefix.com

8 February 2019
Hawaiian Lawmaker Wants To Raise Smoking Age To 100

In 2016, Hawaii raised the legal smoking age to 21.

A state representative in Hawaii wants to take a hardline approach to cigarettes, by banning their sale and raising the legal age to 100.

“The state is obliged to protect the public’s health,” state Representative Richard Creagan told the Hawaii Tribune-Herald. “We don’t allow people free access to opioids, for instance, or any prescription drugs. This is more lethal, more dangerous than any prescription drug, and it is more addicting. In my view, you are taking people who are enslaved from a horrific addiction, and freeing people from horrific enslavement. We, as legislators, have a duty to do things to save people’s lives. If we don’t ban cigarettes, we are killing people.”

Creagan, a physician, started smoking when he was a teenager and used cigarettes to stay awake through medical school. However, he said he now realizes just how dangerous cigarettes are.

“Basically, we essentially have a group who are heavily addicted—in my view, enslaved by a ridiculously bad industry—which has enslaved them by designing a cigarette that is highly addictive, knowing that it is highly lethal,” he said.

In Hawaii the legal smoking age is 21, already higher than in much of the country. However, Creagan said this is not effective at stopping young smokers.

“It’s slowing it down, but it’s not stopping the problem,” he said.

Creagan’s proposal—which has two other sponsors—would gradually raise the legal age to purchase cigarettes. Next year it would rise to 30, to 40 in 2021, 50 in 2022 and 60 in 2023. By 2024, the legal smoking age in Hawaii would be 100.

The plan does not include cigars, chewing tobacco or vapes, which Creagan sees as less harmful alternatives to cigarettes.

However, Creagan’s efforts may seem slightly misguided in light of current research about tobacco and nicotine use among youth. Although tobacco use remains relatively low among teens, the Monitoring The Future survey released in 2018 found that the use of vapes is increasing dramatically.

“Vaping is reversing hard-fought declines in the number of adolescents who use nicotine,” said Richard Miech, the lead author and investigator of the study. “These results suggest that vaping is leading youth into nicotine use and nicotine addiction, not away from it. If we want to prevent youth from using drugs, including nicotine, vaping will warrant special attention in terms of policy, education campaigns, and prevention programs in the coming years.”

View the original article at thefix.com

8 February 2019
AI May Soon Be Trained To Diagnose Mental Illness

Some scientists believe that AI-diagnosed mental illness will be a reality in the space of years, not decades.

Scientists in multiple fields of psychology are actively gathering data and undergoing testing in an effort to teach artificial intelligence programs to diagnose mental illness in humans. This is according to a report in The Verge written by B. David Zarley, who himself has borderline personality disorder, as part of its Real World AI issue.

Zarley met with multiple scientists who are each taking their own approach to machine learning in the service of finding a better way to diagnose psychological disorders.

The current model, based on referring to the DSM to guide psychiatrists to make diagnoses around a patient’s self-reported symptoms, is inherently biased and considered by many in the field of psychology to be flawed. The current director of the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), Dr. Joshua Gordon, feels that way himself.

“We have to acknowledge in psychiatry that our current methods of diagnosis—based upon the DSM—our current methods of diagnosis are unsatisfactory anyway,” Gordon told Zarley in an interview.

Diagnosing people based on purely physical data is not yet within reach the way that diagnosing people with physical illness is. With advances in computer science, however, it is finally possible to train AI software to compile data and recognize patterns in a way that a human brain simply could not handle.

“Machine learning is crucial to getting [Psychologist Pearl Chiu’s] work out of the lab and to the patients they are meant to help,” Zarley writes. “‘We have too much data, and we haven’t been able to find these patterns’ without the algorithms, Chiu says. Humans can’t sort through this much data—but computers can.”

Additionally, scientists envision using MRI technology to help discover the root of certain mental illnesses or their symptoms and even treat them by allowing patients to directly see the results of their thoughts and better understand how their brains function.

“[Research coordinator Whitney] Allen was asked to project her brain into the future, or focus on the immediate present, in an attempt to help find out what goes on under the hood when thinking about instant or delayed gratification, knowledge which could then be used to help rehabilitate people who cannot seem to forgo the instant hit, like addicts.”

Many of the scientists Zarley spoke with believe that AI-diagnosed mental illness will be a reality in the space of years, not decades. However, there are both practical and ethical concerns to be considered.

AI built and taught by humans, who are biased, cannot help but be biased itself. Zarley points out that “different cultures think of certain colors or numbers differently.” Data for the AI program also must be collected from human samples, and that is much easier done from a developed nation in an area with a university. That leaves entire populations from poorer nations and even rural populations in the U.S. largely out of the picture.

There are also numerous ethical concerns any time the idea of artificial intelligence is raised. In their paper The Ethics of Artificial Intelligence, Nick Bostrom of the Future of Humanity Institute and Eliezer Yudkowsky of the Machine Intelligence Research Institute address multiple concerns.

“Responsibility, transparency, auditability, incorruptibility, predictability, and a tendency to not make innocent victims scream with helpless frustration: all criteria that apply to humans performing social functions; all criteria that must be considered in an algorithm intended to replace human judgment of social functions; all criteria that may not appear in a journal of machine learning considering how an algorithm scales up to more computers.”

Regardless, AI is on its way, and the scientists Zarley interviewed are optimistic about future results.

View the original article at thefix.com

7 February 2019
Did Abuse-Deterrent OxyContin Lead To Uptick in Hep-C Cases?

Researchers examined a possible link between the arrival of abuse-deterrent Oxy and the increase in hepatitis C cases for a new study.

In 2010, concern about the opioid epidemic was largely centered around the misuse of OxyContin. That year, Purdue Pharma, which manufactures the opioid painkiller, reformatted the drug to make it harder to misuse.

However, researchers say this caused people to use heroin instead, which ultimately let to an increase in cases of hepatitis C.

Officials have known that cases of hepatitis C (HCV), which can be passed through intravenous drug use, had increased rapidly beginning in 2010. In a recent study published in Health Affairs, researchers found that HCV spread more quickly in states that previously had higher than average rates of OxyContin abuse. This confirmed the connection between the reformulation of OxyContin and the higher rates of HCV.

David Powell, the study’s lead author, said that the findings prove that well-intentioned policies can have serious effects on public health.

“These results show that efforts to deter misuse of opioids can have unintended, long-term public health consequences,” he said, according to Science Daily. “As we continue to develop policies to combat the opioid epidemic, we need to be careful that new approaches do not make another public health problem worse.”

Previous research has shown that the reformulation of OxyContin—which made it harder to crush, snort or inject—led some people to turn to heroin.

In the recent study, researchers solidified the connection between the reformulation and HCV rates. They found that in states with above-average misuse of OxyContin before the reformulation, rates of HCV increased 222% between 2010 and 2015. In states that had lower than average rates of OxyContin misuse, there was a rise of just 75%.

Rosalie Liccardo Pacula, a study co-author, said that this steep increase in infections was concerning, although it has tapered off in recent years.

“Even with recent advancements in the treatment for hepatitis C, the dramatic increase in infections represents a substantial public health concern that can have tremendous long-term costs if infected people are not identified and treated,” she said.

Pacula cautioned that lawmakers need to consider the unintended consequences that certain drug policies may have, and plan for how those risks will be addressed.

“It is important that strategies that limit the supply of abusable prescription opioids are paired with policies to ease the harms associated with switching to illicit drugs, such as improved access to drug treatment and increased efforts to identify and treat diseases associated with injection drug use,” said Pacula.

View the original article at thefix.com

7 February 2019
Anti-Diarrhea Medication Abuse Continues To Skyrocket

Cases of loperamide exposure are up 90% over a five-year period.

People who are trying to avoid opioid withdrawals or get a high are more frequently turning to an over-the-counter diarrhea medication, leading to an increase in overdoses from the drug.

Researchers from Rutgers University found that overdoses from loperamide—known as “the poor man’s methadone” and sold under the brand name Imodium AD—increased steeply between 2011 and 2016, although they remained very rare, with only 26 cases reported, according to the study published in the journal Clinical Toxicology. At the same time, calls to poison control about the drug rose more than 90%.

Despite the relatively low numbers, the trend caused alarm for people who see loperamide as an opioid that is easy to access and hard to detect in drug tests.

Diane Calello, executive and medical director of the New Jersey Poison Control Center at Rutgers New Jersey Medical School and lead study author, said in a news release that loperamide is safe when taken as instructed.

However, some opioid users take up to 50 times the recommended dosage, at which point the drug becomes very dangerous.

“When used appropriately, loperamide is a safe and effective treatment for diarrhea—but when misused in large doses, it is more toxic to the heart than other opioids which are classified under federal policy as controlled dangerous substances,” she said. “Overdose deaths occur not because patients stop breathing, as with other opioids, but due to irregular heartbeat and cardiac arrest.”

Calello said that over the past years there have been multiple deaths related to loperamide in New Jersey. Because of this, Calello and others recommend that there be changes to the way that loperamide is sold, as well as more public awareness about the risks of the drug.

She said, “Possible ways of restricting loperamide misuse include limiting the daily or monthly amount an individual could purchase, requiring retailers to keep personal information about customers, requiring photo identification for purchase and placing medication behind the counter. Most importantly, consumers need to understand the very real danger of taking this medication in excessive doses.”

In May 2018, the Food and Drug Administration announced changes to the way that loperamide is packaged and sold. FDA head Scott Gottlieb requested that online retailers stop selling large quantities of the drug, and that it be packaged in blister packs, which require users to individually open each pill. These requirements could curb misuse, while also keeping the drug available to people with digestive issues who need it regularly.

“We’re very mindful of balancing benefit and risk and the needs of patients in our mission to promote and protect public health,” Gottlieb wrote.

“The FDA’s actions to address drug misuse and abuse must be informed by an understanding of the complex social environment in which changing patterns of drug consumption occur. The agency is committed to addressing emerging issues of abuse and misuse while taking steps to safeguard the needs of patients who depend on these medicines.”

View the original article at thefix.com

7 February 2019
Charlie Sheen Shares Moment That Led Him To Become Sober

“If you can’t be available for the basic necessity of being there for your children, then something really needs to shift,” Sheen explained.

Actor Charlie Sheen’s drug use—and sobriety—has been a pursuit held in the public eye for years, but in a recent interview, he shared the very private moment which inspired him to change his life for the better for his family and himself.

Speaking with Us Weekly, Sheen said it was a request from his daughter for help, and his inability to provide it due to his inebriated state, that forced him to take a look at his behavior.

“If you can’t be available for the basic necessity of being there for your children, then something really needs to shift,” he explained. Sheen, who recently reached a year of sobriety, added that he is putting his newfound focus and energy into “daily responsibilities,” including his children and his own health.

In the interview, Sheen recalled the moment when one of his daughters asked him for help in getting to a pressing appointment. “I’d already had a few drinks,” he said, and was forced to call a friend to take him and his daughter to her destination. On the way back, Sheen said, he began to turn over the situation in his head.

“On the drive back, I was just like, ‘Damn, man, I’m not available,’” he recalled. “‘I’m just not responsible and there’s no nobility in that.’” Sheen said that after pondering the reality of his condition, he decided to take matters seriously. “It was the next day that I said, ‘All right, it’s time. Let’s give this a shot.’”

With the help of parents, Martin and Janet Sheen, his ex-wives, and friends, Sheen began to amass days of sobriety. “A month went by, a couple of months went by, I’m like, ‘All right. This feels good,’” he said.

After marking his year in sobriety in December of 2018, Sheen said that he feels “excited to be excited again,” and has devoted his time and energy to his family and his own well-being.

As for acting, Sheen told Us Weekly that he would like to do a Two and a Half Men revival to gain “closure” on the series, from which he was fired under a cloud of controversy in its ninth season.

View the original article at thefix.com

7 February 2019
Emma Stone Is Doing Her Part To Shatter Mental Health Stigma

The actress has joined the board of an organization dedicated to helping children with mental health and learning disorders.

Actress Emma Stone, who has spoken publicly about her struggles with anxiety, is joining the board of directors at The Child Mind Institute, a non-profit organization that supports children with learning and mental health disorders.

“I’m honored to join the board of The Child Mind Institute. This is a stigma-shattering organization I am deeply passionate about, and I’m looking forward to helping the Child Mind Institute continue to advance its critically important work,” Stone, 30, said in a statement to PEOPLE.

Stone has dealt with anxiety since she was a teenager, but has said that acting — and therapy — have helped her keep her anxiety under control. She works to let others, especially young people, know that they can have a fulfilling life despite anxiety.

“Emma’s courage in openly discussing her story with anxiety is inspirational,” said Dr. Harold S Koplewicz, president of The Child Mind Institute. “It offers hope to millions of kids that it is possible to overcome their own challenges and thrive.”

In 2017, Stone recorded a video as part of the institute’s awareness campaign that asked people to share what they would like to tell their younger selves.

“What I could tell kids who are going through anxiety, which I have, is that you’re so normal it’s crazy,” she said. “It’s so normal, everyone experiences a version of anxiety or worry in their lives and maybe we go through it in a different or more intense way, or for longer periods of time, but there’s nothing wrong with you.”

Stone talked about the often over-looked flip-side to anxiety.

“To be a sensitive person that cares a lot, that takes things in in a deeper way, is actually part of what makes you amazing and is one of the greatest gifts in life: you think a lot, you feel a lot, and it’s the best,” Stone said. “I wouldn’t trade it for the world even when there are really hard times.”

She said that over time she has learned how to manage her anxiety and what things are likely to set it off.

“There are so many tools you can use to help yourself in those [bad] time, and it does get better and easier as life goes on and you get to know yourself more and what will trigger certain instances of anxiety, and where you feel comfortable and safe.”

Overall, experiencing anxiety is very common, she said.

“Don’t ever feel like you’re a weirdo for it because we’re all weirdos.”

View the original article at thefix.com

7 February 2019
Study Challenges Link Between Teen Social Media Use And Depression

Researchers explored whether teens are using social media to feel better or if it makes them feel worse.

Which came first? It has been documented that teen social media use is tied to higher rates of depression, but a new study suggests that experiencing symptoms of depression may actually lead to social media use, rather than the other way around.

The study, published in the journal Clinical Psychological Science, polled 6th, 7th and 8th graders over the course of two years, and college students over the course of 6 years.

Researchers asked about weekday and weekend social media use and other screen time, and evaluated the participants for depression using established scales, according to Science Daily.

The researchers found that social media use did not predict symptoms of depression.

Breaking the data down between ages and genders, the researchers found that among people with depressive symptoms, only teen girls are likely to spend more time on social media, said lead study author Taylor Heffer.

“This finding contrasts with the idea that people who use a lot of social media become more depressed over time. Instead, adolescent girls who are feeling down may turn to social media to try and make themselves feel better,” Heffer said.

The study differed from previous research because it polled participants over time, rather than relying on information about depressive symptoms and social media use from one specific time.

“You have to follow the same people over time in order to draw the conclusion that social media use predicts greater depressive symptoms,” Heffer said. “By using two large longitudinal samples, we were able to empirically test that assumption.”

The study results may be a welcome relief for parents who are concerned that social media engagement could be detrimental to their children’s health, Heffer said.

“When parents read media headlines such as ‘Facebook Depression,’ there is an inherent assumption that social media use leads to depression. Policymakers also have recently been debating ways to tackle the effects of social media use on mental health.”

Instead of looking to broad trends in the cause and effect of social media use, Heffer said it’s important that individuals pay attention to how they particularly are affected by heavy social media use, if at all.

“There may be different groups of people who use social media for different reasons. For example, there may be a group of people who use social media to make social comparisons or turn to it when they are feeling down, while another group of people may use it for more positive reasons, such as keeping in contact with friends.”

View the original article at thefix.com

7 February 2019