Tag: News

Family Creates Christmas Light Show To Highlight Addiction Struggle

A Maryland couple have dedicated their massive Christmas light show to their daughter who is battling opioid addiction.

In 2015, Jim Kurtz created a spectacular Christmas light show dedicated to the addiction recovery of his daughter, Caroline, and to those everywhere struggling with addiction. The light show was not only visually captivating but also synchronized the blinking lights to hit songs.

In a newly released video reported by The Maryland Patch, the Kurtzes say that their daughter has relapsed and is again in recovery. Caroline has been in 22 recovery facilities in four states over the past seven years.

This year, Caroline’s mother and father have dedicated a special song in the light show to their daughter: “This Is Me” from the 2017 film The Greatest Showman.

The Kurtz light and musical show can be seen from half a mile away. Their home in Harford County is decked out with blinking lights, including a 50-foot-tall pine tree, which is the tallest decorated tree in town, as far as they know. The tree is visible from a Starbucks off MD 543 and is hung with oversized, old-fashioned and brightly colored bulbs. Jim Kurtz appreciates the show himself, telling The Patch, “It is amazingly beautiful.”

Kurtz originally began the light and music show in 2012 and received internet fame for the set piece orchestrated to the hit song, “Call Me Maybe.” Families struggling along with their loved ones battling addiction are becoming more transparent in an attempt to defeat the stigma of drug and alcohol addiction. Memoirs such as Beautiful Boy by David Sheff, and Tweak by Nic Sheff, are gaining national attention. Beautiful Boy is now a movie starring Steve Carell and Timothée Chalamet.

Jim Kurtz gave The Patch the 2018 show scheduled songs and home information for anyone visiting or local who would like to take in this show dedicated to recovering from addiction.

The light show features “The Greatest Show,” the theme from Star Wars, a dubstep version of “The Nutcracker,” Griswold track, “12 Days of Christmas,” “Christmas Vacation,” “A Mad Russian’s Christmas,” “It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas,” “This Is Me” and “God Bless the USA.”

Where: 1205 Corinthian Court, Bel Air, MD

When: Friday, Dec. 7, to Monday, Dec. 31

Hours: 5-9 p.m. from Sunday to Thursday; 5-10 p.m. on Friday and Saturday

How to tune in: Listen to 87.9 FM for the music.

Guests are asked to drive slowly and to refrain from blocking driveways in the neighborhood.

View the original article at thefix.com

20 December 2018
Vaping Rates Double Among Teens, While Opioid Use Declines

Results from the 2018 Monitoring The Future survey show that teens have turned to vaping nicotine and marijuana and away from binge drinking and opioid use.

The percentage of teens who reported vaping nicotine nearly doubled this year, representing the largest increase in use of a substance since the national Monitoring the Future study began.

“To put the nicotine vaping increase in context, it is the largest out of more than one thousand reported year-to-year changes since 1975 for use of substances within the 30 days prior to the survey,” according to a press release from the University of Michigan, which conducts the annual survey of about 50,000 8th, 10th and 12th graders.

About 20% of high school seniors reported vaping nicotine in the past 30 days. In addition, more than a quarter of teens reported vaping “just flavoring,” but researchers believe these students may be confused or ill-informed about what they’re consuming, since many popular vaping devices don’t have nicotine-free options. Marijuana vaping also increased.

“Teens are clearly attracted to the marketable technology and flavorings seen in vaping devices; however, it is urgent that teens understand the possible effects of vaping on overall health; the development of the teen brain; and the potential for addiction,” Dr. Nora D. Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse said. “Research tells us that teens who vape may be at risk for transitioning to regular cigarettes, so while we have celebrated our success in lowering their rates of tobacco use in recent years, we must continue aggressive educational efforts on all products containing nicotine.”

Overall, 28.5% of high school seniors reported using nicotine of some variety in the past 30 days. Tobacco use was down slightly in 2018 but not a statistically significant amount. This shows that prevention efforts need to target teens who may see vaping as a safe alternative to smoking.

“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.”

He said vaping is popular because it is easy to conceal.

“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,” Miech said.

The survey found that binge drinking and use of opioids and tranquilizers decreased significantly, while use of other drugs, including meth, marijuana and molly remained stable.

“With illicit opioid use at generally the lowest in the history of the survey, it is possible that being in high school offers a protective effect against opioid misuse and addiction,” Volkow said. “We will be focusing much of our new prevention research on the period of time when teens transition out of school into the adult world and become exposed to the dangerous use of these drugs.”

View the original article at thefix.com

20 December 2018
How Physical Therapy May Help Reduce Opioid Use

Researchers combed through insurance claims of chronic pain patients to determine if physical therapy could help reduce their pain enough to cut back on their pain meds.

Getting physical therapy early on may help pain patients reduce their long-term opioid use by about 10%, according to research published this week in the journal JAMA Network Open.

“By serving as an alternative or adjunct to short-term opioid use for patients with musculoskeletal pain, early physical therapy may play a role in reducing the risk of long-term opioid use,” the study authors wrote. “Early physical therapy appears to be associated with subsequent reductions in longer-term opioid use and lower-intensity opioid use for all of the musculoskeletal pain regions examined.”

To conduct the study, researchers reviewed the insurance claims of 88,985 patients with shoulder, neck, knee or low back pain. They found that using physical therapy, as recommended by best practices, is associated with reduced opioid use. Since long-term opioid use can lead to dependence and addiction, physical therapy could potentially help reduce those conditions.

“Using early physical therapy, consistent with recent clinical guidelines, could play an important role in reducing the risk of transitioning to chronic long-term opioid use for patients with shoulder, neck, knee, and low back pain,” researchers wrote.

The director of the division of integrative pain management at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City, Dr. Houman Danesh, said this study shows how important physical therapy can be in long-term pain relief.

“You can take an opioid for a month, but if you don’t get at the underlying issue [for the pain], you’ll go back to where you started,” Danesh, who wasn’t involved with the study, told WebMD. Getting physical therapy can help patients address the underlying cause of their pain.

However, he pointed out that it’s critical to have access to high-quality physical therapists.

“Physical therapy is highly variable,” he said. “Not all physical therapists are equal — just like not all doctors are.”

Dr. Eric Sun, who teaches anesthesiology, perioperative and pain medicine at Stanford University and who led the study, said patients should consider trying physical therapy instead of relying solely on opioid pain relief.

“For people dealing with these types of musculoskeletal pain, it may really be worth considering physical therapy — and suggesting that your health care provider give you a referral,” he said.

Sun pointed out that the study merely established a link between physical therapy and lower opioid use; it did not prove that physical therapy causes people to use fewer opioids.

“Since physical therapy is more work than simply taking an opioid, patients who are willing to try physical therapy may be patients who are more motivated in general to reduce opioid use,” he said.

View the original article at thefix.com

19 December 2018
Former Police Lieutenant Details How Past Addiction Changed Everything

The former police lieutenant hopes that by sharing his story he can help other cops have courage to get treatment before addiction derails their lives.

Dan Gosnell was a star with the Aberdeen, Maryland police department. At 35, Gosnell became a lieutenant in charge of the criminal investigation division, one of the youngest officers in a leadership position with the department. By that time, however, his opioid addiction had already started to take hold.

“It started initially as taking the pills as prescribed, one to two pills every two to four hours as needed for pain. Being a large person as I am and building up a tolerance rather quickly, that progressed to three pills at a time rather than two, and then eventually four pills at a time,” Gosnell said in a video for The Baltimore Sun. “And then, rather than every two to four hours, it was every hour, or every two hours at the most. I would take three to four pills and that just progressed until eventually I was taking five, six, eight at a time, depending.”

Eventually, Gosnell was taking up to 24 pills a day, according to a story in The Baltimore Sun.

At first he began using leftover pills in his own home or leftover pills from family and friends.

“Eventually it got to the point where that was no longer feasible,” he said. “I couldn’t go getting drugs off of friends and family that I knew happened to have them sitting around.”

That’s when Gosnell turned to the prescription drug drop box that the station maintained.

“I made the unfortunate decision to actually seek the drugs out of that location and supplement my addiction that way,” he said.

However, soon even the pills from the drop box were not enough to stave off withdrawals.

“It escalated just like many other addicts; their addiction from opiates escalates. Pills become harder and harder to find . . . That was what brought me to the evidence room, and then I started taking actual drug evidence from the Aberdeen Police Department,” Gosnell said.

By the time his deputy chief confronted him, Gosnell tested positive for cocaine, marijuana and opioids. However, he said after years of concealing his addiction, getting caught was a relief.

“Of course you have that panic moment of, ‘Oh my God, my career and my life is completely over because they’ve got me; they’ve caught me,’ but that wasn’t the overpowering sensation that I felt. What was more overpowering was the sense of absolute and utter relief,” he said.

Gosnell received a 10-year suspended sentence and had to go through drug treatment. Today his law enforcement career is over and he works in the treatment industry. However, he hopes that by sharing his story he can help other cops have courage to get treatment before addiction derails their lives.

“The message would be to not sacrifice your integrity in order to save your career or your life,” he said. “It is not worth flushing your integrity and life down and going the road that I went. . . . I walked that road for you so you don’t have to.”

Gosnell said that if he had gotten help sooner, he may have been able to continue his police career.

“There is a life after law enforcement and police work,” he said. “But if you get this caught early enough and you actually ask for the help that I was afraid to, that you might not get to the point where you’re doing the things that I was doing.”

View the original article at thefix.com

19 December 2018
Sarah Hyland Talks About Depression That Came From Chronic Illness

The Modern Family star suffers from kidney dysplasia, and she’s been battling it alongside the depression that comes with it.

Sarah Hyland, who plays Haley Dunphy on Modern Family, has gone through serious trials and tribulations with her health. Now she’s talking to Self about how she’s been battling the depression that can come with a chronic illness.

Hyland suffers from kidney dysplasia, an illness she was born with. Her kidneys weren’t fully developed when she was forming in the womb. (Dysplasia causes the kidneys to develop cysts, which stops the kidneys from filtering out waste from the bloodstream.) Hyland has had to endure about 16 surgeries, including six trips to the operating room in the last 16 months, and two kidney transplants.

Hyland got a kidney from her father, but her body rejected the organ and she had to go on dialysis, which she had to do three times a week for four hours each visit. (Hyland also got another kidney from her brother Ian.)

Hyland has been able to fit her dialysis treatments around her Modern Family shooting schedule, and as she told Self, “That’s why I’m so independent. In some areas of my life, I literally have no choice but to be dependent. I’ve been going through this for 28 years, and I still am learning how to let go of control and how to be patient.”

Hyland’s health problems would eventually take a toll on her mental health as well. “I was very depressed,” she explains. “When a family member gives you a second chance at life, and it fails, it almost feels like it’s your fault. It’s not. But it does. . . . For a long time, I was contemplating suicide, because I didn’t want to fail my little brother like I failed my dad.”

Hyland felt like she was a burden to her family, “always having to be looked after, having to be cared for,” which was a distortion because her family didn’t feel that way towards her at all.

Eventually Hyland reached out and talked about her suicidal thoughts with a close friend. “It’s not shameful,” she continues. “For anybody that wants to reach out to somebody but doesn’t really know how because they’re too proud or they think that they’ll be looked upon as weak, it’s not a shameful thing to say.”

In addition to finding comfort with her pet dogs, who give her unconditional love, Hyland also feels, “My work is my therapy. I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for my work.”

View the original article at thefix.com

19 December 2018
Elderly Man, Evicted For Using Medical Marijuana, Allowed To Return Home

“I can tell you I really don’t want to move back there,” he said. “I was just kicked out by those lovely people there, in the cold.”

A disabled New York senior citizen evicted from his apartment for using state-approved medical cannabis has returned home after his plight was made public in the media. John Flickner, 78, who is confined to a wheelchair, was evicted from his apartment on Dec. 4 after employees of the government-subsidized Niagara Towers in Niagara Falls, New York discovered his doctor-prescribed cannabis during an apartment inspection. The Tennessee-based LHP Capital, which owns the building, enforced its strict drug policy and evicted Flickner from the apartment. But coverage in the New York press drew national attention, as well as a rebuke from Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Administrator Lynne Patton, and spurred a reversal by the Niagara Towers landlord, who permitted Flickner to return to his apartment.

As reported by High Times and other sources, Flickner uses medical marijuana to treat pain from spinal injuries incurred in a 1968 skydiving accident. When Niagara Towers employees conducted an inspection of his apartment in June 2018, they found botanicals he had obtained in Canada, and notified the police. Since that form is not authorized in New York, law enforcement did not arrest Flickner but instead told him to get a New York State medical marijuana card, which he was able to obtain, along with a vaporizer and cannabis oil.

Despite his compliance with the police request, LHP decided to continue with the eviction process. Amy Styles, a spokesperson for LHP Capital, told The Buffalo News on Dec. 7 that the company “does not allow marijuana of any kind – liquid, smoking, whatever.” Federal lawcurrently allows landlords of government-subsidized housing like Niagara Towers to exercise their own discretion in evicting residents whom they believe are using an illegal substance. Since marijuana of any kind remains a Schedule I drug, LHP was within its rights to remove Flickner. After a brief November 1 hearing, he was removed from the apartment on Dec. 4.

Flickner eventually found temporary shelter at local missions, and his plight was taken up by The Buffalo News and other newspapers. Word of his eviction spread to national media like High Times and was addressed in a Twitter post by Lynne Patton, who oversees HUD for Region II (New York and New Jersey). She admonished state and federal law regulations that allow such evictions, stating that they “need to catch up with medicinal marijuana usage and require private landlords to legally permit the same. Period.”

On Dec. 10, The Buffalo News reported that LHP had allowed Flickner to return to Niagara Towers. In a statement, the company stated that they would “[rescind its] decision and [revisit its] policy. We’ve spoken with Mr. Flickner to let him know he is welcome to return to Niagara Towers. He was appreciative and will let us know in the next day or so.”

Flickner’s response, as noted in The Buffalo News, was decidedly less effusive. “I can tell you I really don’t want to move back there,” he said. “I was just kicked out by those lovely people there, in the cold.” But he also acknowledged that the apartment was “a roof over my head.” His attorney has requested that LHP submit in writing that they will allow him to use his medical marijuana device without interference.

View the original article at thefix.com

19 December 2018
Ellen DeGeneres Reveals Depression Struggle

The week of the release of her new Netflix stand-up special, Relatable, Ellen DeGeneres is speaking openly about her struggles with depression.

The talk show host and comedienne told USA Today that she was depressed and felt alienated after she famously came out of the closet, and she fought back against it through “meditation and being quiet. For a long time, there was a lot of fear that (being gay) was going to influence people’s opinions about me and so I didn’t ever have the confidence I should have had. Because whenever you carry shame around, you just can’t possibly be a confident person.”

On the Armchair Expert podcast, DeGeneres said, “Because there was so much talk about [coming out] . . . Even Elton John said, ‘Shut up already. We know you’re gay. Be funny.’ I had never met him and I thought, ‘What kind of support is that from a gay person?”

When her show, Ellen, finally went off the air, DeGeneres spiraled deeper. “I was looked at as a failure in this business. No one would touch me. I had no agent, no possibility of a job, I had nothing.”

DeGeneres said, “It took a while to shake off that judgment and the attacks I felt . . . I was fully honest with myself and that gave me confidence. I think that helps with depression. Depression eats away at your confidence and you get lost in that, and forget that you’re enough just as you are.”

When she moved out to the industry town of Los Angeles, DeGeneres felt more isolated and reluctant to reach out to others for help. “If you ever have experienced depression, you isolate yourself and don’t reach out for help. You don’t say, ‘I’m hurting, I need help’ – you kind of crawl further into that dark hole, so that’s where I was for a while.”

In addition to meditation, DeGeneres told Good Housekeeping she “started seeing a therapist and had to go on anti-depressants for the first time in my life . . . I slowly started to climb out of it. I can’t believe I came back from that point. I can’t believe where my life is now.”

DeGeneres says her new special is called Relatable because even though she’s a celebrity, “we’re all relatable. I didn’t have money for a long, long time. I’ve been doing this (talk) show for a long time and now I do have money, but I’ve always been the same person. Just because we have different experiences, at the core we’re all the same.”

View the original article at thefix.com

19 December 2018
Can Internet-Based Therapy Effectively Treat Depression?

Scientists investigated whether internet-based platforms that offer treatment for depression were actually effective.

Technology may soon have a larger role in treating severe depression, as new research has determined that cognitive behavioral therapy sessions via an app can be effective.

Cognitive behavioral therapy, according to Medical News Today, is a type of therapy that works to change people’s thought patterns over time. When delivered via an app, it is referred to as internet-based CBT or iCBT.

In the past, it has been deemed effective for depression, anxiety and panic disorder, bipolar, substance use disorders and various other mental health disorders.

However, until recently, it was unknown whether iCBT was effective for severe depression or for those struggling with both depression and anxiety/alcohol use disorder.

According to Lorenzo Lorenzo-Luaces, a clinical professor in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences at Indiana University in Bloomington and lead study author, iCBT is effective in such cases.

Lorenzo-Luaces says the criteria for major depressive disorder is met by about one in four people.

“If you include people with minor depression or who have been depressed for a week or a month with a few symptoms, the number grows, exceeding the number of psychologists who can serve them,” he told Medical News Today.

In the study, Lorenzo-Luaces and his team analyzed 21 existing studies and determined that iCBT apps were, in fact, effective for treating mild, moderate and severe levels of depression.

Many of the existing studies compared iCBT apps to “sham apps,” or apps that are meant to make weaker recommendations to their users. In these cases, the iCBT apps were far more effective for users.

“Before this study, I thought past studies were probably focused on people with very mild depression, those who did not have other mental health problems and were at low risk for suicide,” Lorenzo-Luaces said.  

“To my surprise, that was not the case,” he added. “The science suggests that these apps and platforms can help a large number of people.”

Even so, Lorenzo-Luaces says it’s important that people don’t interpret this evidence as a reason to stop taking a medication and rely solely on iCBT.

In conclusion, Lorenzo-Luaces and his team note that iCBT is on par with other treatment methods for severe depression.

“A conservative interpretation of our findings is that the patient population sampled in the literature on self-guided iCBT is relatively comparable with that of studies of antidepressants or face-to-face psychotherapy.”

View the original article at thefix.com

19 December 2018
"The Ring" Actress Daveigh Chase Reportedly Arrested On Drug Charges

Actress Daveigh Chase was allegedly arrested on drug charges in Los Angeles back in August.

Actress Daveigh Chase, who played the malevolent Samara in the 2002 American film version of The Ring, is facing a jail sentence and a $1,000 fine if convicted on two charges of drug possession.

The 28-year-old, who also provided the voice of Lilo in Disney’s Lilo and Stitch, was arrested in Los Angeles in August 2018 and booked for possession of drugs and drug paraphernalia. The presiding judge also issued a warrant for her arrest as part of the recent ruling, which took place on November 6.

Chase was arrested on August 6, 2018 by the Los Angeles Police Department’s Hollywood division on the drug charge, which was a misdemeanor. According to The New York Daily News, she spent two hours behind bars before being released on a $1,000 bond.

The arrest is the latest in a string of run-ins with the law for the actress. Chase was previously arrested and locked up on a $25,000 bond in November 2017 on charges of driving in a stolen car without the owner’s consent.

That same year, while under arrest for an outstanding traffic misdemeanor warrant, Chase was questioned by police about allegedly leaving an unidentified man outside a Hollywood hospital before fleeing the scene.

The man was pronounced dead by hospital employees upon discovery, but Chase, who reportedly spent time with the man prior to the incident, was not charged with any crime or playing any role in the death.

Chase is currently facing two misdemeanor charges of possession of a controlled substance without a valid prescription and possession of drug paraphernalia. The charges carry a possible sentence of one year in jail and a fine up to $1,000. Because Chase was released on the aforementioned bond, the judge also issued a warrant for her arrest.

Chase began her professional career in television commercials before making her screen-acting debut at the age of eight. Roles in Donnie Darko and voice-over work for the English-language version of Spirited Away led to her star-making turns in Lilo and Stitch and The Ring.

She earned an Annie Award and an MTV Movie Award, respectively, for the projects, and later enjoyed a recurring role on Big Love. In recent years, Chase has made regular appearances in independent features and made-for-television films, while continuing to work as a voice-over actor for video games.

View the original article at thefix.com

18 December 2018
Can A Google Search Predict An Overdose?

Researchers examined whether Internet search data from Google could help them predict where an overdose will occur.

Technology has no doubt played a role in the opioid epidemic, with drug users and dealers able to order narcotics online and have them delivered directly to their homes. Now a new study suggests that the internet could also play an important role in alleviating the crisis by helping to predict opioid overdoses.

The study, titled “Internet searches for opioids predict future emergency department heroin admissions,” was published in the September issue of the journal Drug and Alcohol Dependence and reported in Scientific American last week.

Sean D. Young, a researcher at the University of California Institute for Prediction Technology, led a team that analyzed Google search prevalence of opioid-related terms, including “Avinza,” “Brown Sugar,” “China White,” “Codeine,” “Kadian,” “Methadone,” and “Oxymorphone.”

The researchers compared that data to heroin-related emergency room visits in nine different areas around the US over the following year. They found that in the best model, search data could explain 72% of the variance in emergency department visits. Overall, the more a keyword was searched, the more opioid-related hospitalizations were likely to happen in that region in the next year.

“Internet search-based modeling should be explored as a new source of insights for predicting heroin-related admissions,” the study authors wrote.

Internet search data could be particularly important in areas where there is little information on the drug epidemic. Analyzing the data is a cost-effective way of predicting how opioid abuse might change in the upcoming year, they said.

“In geographic regions where no current heroin-related data exist, Internet search modeling might be a particularly valuable and inexpensive tool for estimating changing heroin use trends,” the authors wrote. “We discuss the immediate implications for using this approach to assist in managing opioid-related morbidity and mortality in the United States.”

Researchers said this tool could be important for helping to understand and prevent overdose deaths. For example, in areas expecting to see an increase in drug-related hospital visits, community organizations could distribute more doses of naloxone, the opioid overdose reversal drug.

“For a number of fiscal and practical reasons, data on heroin use have been of poor quality, which has hampered the ability to halt the growing epidemic,” the researchers wrote. “Internet search data, such as those made available by Google Trends, have been used as a low-cost, real-time data source for monitoring and predicting a variety of public health outcomes.”

View the original article at thefix.com

18 December 2018