Tag: News

Opioids, Suicide Push Life Expectancy Down Again In The US

This is the “longest sustained decline” in life expectancy in a century.

The life expectancy of Americans has declined for the third year in a row, according to 2016-2017 data.

Rising drug overdose deaths and suicide are to blame, says the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

As the Washington Post stated, this marks the “longest sustained decline” in life expectancy in a century, a trend not seen in the U.S. since 1915-1918, a period which included World War I and a flu pandemic.

A person born in 2017 can expect to live 78.6 years in the U.S., according to the new data. This marks a decrease of 0.1 year from 2016.

Females continue to outlive men. From 2016-2017, the life expectancy of American women did not change (81.1 years), while men’s life expectancy declined from 76.2 to 76.1 years.

Drug overdose deaths hit a record high in 2017 at 70,237, the CDC confirmed—a 9.6% increase from 2016. The demographics most affected were men, and people between the ages of 25-54.

West Virginia saw the highest rates of drug overdose deaths (57.8 per 100,000), with Ohio, Pennsylvania and Washington, D.C. trailing behind. Meanwhile, Texas, North Dakota, South Dakota and Nebraska had the lowest rates, with about 10 or fewer drug overdose deaths per 100,000.

Deaths from fentanyl and its analogs, and similar drugs, increased by 45%, while heroin-related deaths remained constant.

Prescription painkiller-related deaths also did not increase in 2017, the Washington Post noted. This may be the result of efforts to address over-prescribing through prescription drug monitoring programs and awareness initiatives, said Robert Anderson, chief of the mortality statistics branch at the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics.

Efforts to increase access to naloxone, the drug that reverses opioid overdose, may have helped mitigate some death rates as well.

The rate of suicide, the 10th leading cause of death in the U.S., increased by 3.7% in 2017. Female suicides increased at a higher rate than male suicides (53% vs. 26%), however, men still die in greater numbers by suicide each year.

The statistics paint a grim picture of drug and mental health problems in the U.S..

“Life expectancy gives us a snapshot of the nation’s overall health and these sobering statistics are a wakeup call that we are losing too many Americans, too early and too often, to conditions that are preventable,” said CDC director Dr. Robert Redfield.

“We must all work together to reverse this trend and help ensure that all Americans live longer and healthier.”

View the original article at thefix.com

30 November 2018
Nic Sheff Discusses "Beautiful Boy" Movie

“The movie felt so real and they got so many details of our life right that it felt like reliving the most painful parts of our lives,” Nic Sheff shared in an interview with Parade magazine.

The memoirs Beautiful Boy by David Sheff and Tweak by Nic Sheff have been made into a tender, heart-wrenching movie.

Nic Sheff recently gave an interview to Parade magazine on the incredible emotions and experiences of watching his life play out on the screen, with Timothée Chalamet portraying Nic as a teenager struggling with addiction, and Steve Carell portraying Nic’s dad David Sheff.

Nic watched the movie for the first time as a 36-year-old family man who’s been clean for eight years. The shock of being pulled back into his painful past was clear as Nic told Parade, “I saw it the first time with a close friend in a private screening. I definitely cried all through the movie. It was so emotional. The movie felt so real and they got so many details of our life right that it felt like reliving the most painful parts of our lives.”

Nic felt grateful to be able to leave the theater and return to his home life as a husband and writer. “Watching the movie was such a reminder of everything we went through as a family and just how lucky I am to be alive and to have my family back,” he said.

Although Nic’s parents spent a lot of time and money to help him achieve sobriety, Nic credits his survival, in large part, to sheer luck. “There’s no reason I survived when so many of my friends have died from this disease,” he said to People. “There’s nothing I did that they didn’t do, or my family did that their families didn’t do. I just got super, super lucky.”

Still, Nic gained sobriety through his own hard work and surrender to the reality that his life was out of his control. He allows that, “For me getting and staying sober has really depended on my willingness to do what the experts tell me to do. Once I became willing to follow the directions of doctors and people in the recovery program, I began seeing the results in my life.”

For people in the grip of addiction, this can often be the hardest part: admitting powerlessness and accepting help.

The movie’s sensitive actors and careful reimagining of Nic and David’s memoirs were successful in conveying the suffering addiction causes families as well as the unconditional love that saw them through.

“Love never gives up,” the movie reiterates.

Nic’s life is now one he never could have imagined, he told Parade. “The main thing for me is when I was growing up and when I was struggling with sobriety I just never thought that it would be possible to be happy on a daily basis and to wake up and not just be like totally consumed with anxiety, depression, fear and hopelessness. I just didn’t think that I would ever be able to live a contented life and to be able to say that 95% of the time I feel really happy.”

View the original article at thefix.com

30 November 2018
Eric Clapton Committed To Sobriety After Son’s Death

Rather than returning to drugs and alcohol to cope with his son’s accidental death, Eric Clapton turned to songwriting.

Legendary singer and songwriter Eric Clapton was just three years sober when his son Conor fell from a window and died at the age of four. Despite that immense loss, Clapton was more committed to his sobriety than ever following Conor’s death, according to a new biography.

“He was trying to beat the alcoholism when his son was just a baby,” biographer Philip Norman recently wrote Slowhand: The Life and Music of Eric Clapton, told Fox News. “He was fighting against it. But it was really the death of Conor that made him determined that he would never drink again.”

Conor died in 1991 when he fell from the window of his mother’s 53rd-floor apartment in New York. Conor would regularly look out the window, pressing his face against the glass, but that day a cleaner had left the window open. Conor reportedly darted past the cleaner and fell out.

At the time of Conor’s death, Clapton was on his way to pick up his son for a day at the zoo.

“He was enchanted by Conor,” Norman told Fox News. “He had become a companion. Not quite a baby, but more of a boy. Eric was waiting to take him out that day… Conor would normally run into the room and press his nose against the glass of the window. But it wasn’t there that day. He just went out. It was the most dreadful, horrible, unimaginable tragedy.”

After Conor’s death, Clapton struggled with his loss, but maintained his focus on his sobriety, Norman said. Rather than returning to drugs and alcohol to cope, Clapton turned to songwriting. His ballad “Tears In Heaven” was written in the aftermath of Conor’s death.

“Eric first coped, strangely enough, by playing a song he had written when he was married to Pattie called ‘Wonderful Tonight,’” Norman said. “Which is very soft, almost like a lullaby… That was the initial thing that comforted him. Then he wrote a song about [his grief]. By a really cruel twist of fate, it became the most successful record he has ever released, ‘Tears in Heaven.’ That’s really how he got through it.”

In 1992, the track won Grammys for “Record of the Year,” “Song of the Year” and “Best Pop Vocal Performance.” Despite its success, Clapton told the Associated Press in 2004 that he could no longer perform the song because it was too emotional for him.

Clapton’s daughter Ruth also helped him cope with his son’s death.

“Looking back on those years, I realize what a profound effect she had on my well-being,” Clapton wrote in his memoir. “Her presence in my life was absolutely vital to my recovery. In her, I had again found something real to be concerned about, and that was very instrumental in my becoming an active human being again.”

View the original article at thefix.com

30 November 2018
West African Clinic Offers Free Methadone, Clean Needles & More

The goal of Senegal’s free program is not only to rehabilitate, but also to reduce the spread of HIV and AIDS among drug users.

A clinic in West Africa is doing its part to mitigate the region’s opioid crisis.

People line up at the Center for the Integrated Management of Addictions (known locally as CEPIAD) in Senegal to receive a daily dose of methadone and counseling. Some travel hours for treatment.

“You get here, you have your methadone and you are not thinking about taking drugs. You are thinking about moving your life forwards,” says Moustapha Mbodj, who is in recovery from more than 30 years of heroin use.

A new CNN report highlights CEPIAD’s efforts. Established by the Senegalese government in 2014, the clinic is the first in West Africa to provide free opioid substitution treatment. CEPIAD offers methadone, clean syringes and condoms, as well as skills workshops and help with reintegrating into family networks, according to CNN. It has helped more than 700 people since it opened.

The goal of the free program is not only to rehabilitate drug users, but to reduce the spread of HIV and AIDS among drug users. Over 10% of injecting drug users in Senegal live with HIV, according to United Nations estimates. Among the general population, this number is less than 1%.

An estimated 1,300 injecting drug users were counted in Dakar (Senegal’s capital) in 2011, according to a voluntary survey by the French National Agency for Research on AIDS.

In response to the survey, Senegal’s government turned to a harm reduction approach. In a two-year period, public health workers distributed 18,614 clean syringes and 17,564 condoms to the public at no cost.

The need for such services is rising.

Senegal is among a handful of African nations that offer this type of free service. According to a 2017 report, out of 37 African nations reporting drug use data to the UN, just eight offer harm reduction approaches, including Senegal, Tanzania, Kenya and Mauritius.

Pierre Lapaque, a representative with the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) for West and Central Africa, explained that the market for drugs is growing in a region that previously served only as a transit point for drug traffickers.

Lapaque says traffickers used a “smart approach” to introduce drugs to a “region where there was absolutely no market ten years ago.”

“Often what the traffickers are doing is they are paying their support staff not only in cash but in drugs,” said Lapaque.

View the original article at thefix.com

30 November 2018
More Police Departments Partnering With Mental Health Experts

The mental health “co-responders” aid police by determining whether a person should go to the hospital or if they would have a better outcome under a treatment plan.

Police officers who find themselves face-to-face with people who may be suffering from mental health problems now have the proper support to de-escalate potentially deadly encounters.

We’ve heard of police departments partnering with mental health experts in Minneapolis, Los Angeles, San Antonio, and Kansas. Now, this strategy is being tried in Livingston County, New York, where police officers say it’s a step in the right direction.

“They’re trained professionals. They’re certified. They know much better than a deputy sheriff what exactly is going on mentally,” said Livingston County Sheriff Tom Dougherty, according to News 10 NBC.

Neighboring Monroe County is also experimenting with the new strategy, according to NBC.

According to the Treatment Advocacy Center, people suffering from mental health issues are 16 times more likely to be killed by police.

“The police officers are really asked to wear a lot of hats. They’re supposed to get on the scene and quickly assess the mental health status of someone,” said Michele Anuszkiewicz, Livingston County director of mental health.

Once police officers determine that there is no immediate danger on scene, mental health experts arrive to assess the situation.

“We’ll get there as soon as we can. We’ve got some very brief but we think evidence-based effective assessments that we can do with folks,” says Anuszkiewicz.

The mental health “co-responders,” who are on call 24/7, are able to determine whether a person should go to the hospital or if they would have a better outcome under a treatment plan. This is a better long-term solution for the individual, says Sheriff Dougherty.

“I can tell you, we have repeat offender after repeat offender and when I say offender, I mean somebody taken into custody on an MHA (mental health arrest)… There’s times, when we feel like patrol will drop them off at the hospital and we feel that they beat us back to the county.”

He added, “My belief is this new program may be more of a long-term involvement with the mental health crisis team. There may be more of a bond between the person that’s going through these struggles and a long-term commitment from the crisis team that maybe we don’t have the repeat calls, maybe they don’t have the repeat feelings because they’re getting more long-term treatment.”

View the original article at thefix.com

29 November 2018
Did Juul Use Young People To Create E-Cig Buzz On Social Media?

Stanford University researchers suggest that Juul used young social media influencers to market its products to teens.

These days there is great concern about young people Juuling, which is the most popular form of vaping. At first, some young people were under the mistaken impression that vaping wasn’t as dangerous as smoking, but many would soon become hooked, suffering from similar health problems to cigarette smoking, and suffering terrible withdrawal symptoms when they tried to quit.

These days, there is a backlash against the company Juul, which insists that their vaping products are for adults who want to wean off cigarettes, but as Business Insider discovered, Juul has a large following on Twitter and Instagram with younger users and the report suggests that this may be by design.

Stanford University researched how Juul marketed their product on social media and they discovered that many of the company’s images, videos and social media posts featured young people.

Currently valued at $15 billion, Juul is now a giant in the e-cigarette world. They went to the top by utilizing launch parties, free samples and flooding social media with content.

The Juul launch ads featured a snazzy, colorful campaign where customers were e-mailed, and were asked to become “Juul influencers,” a position that allowed everyday people to help drive sales on social media.

Robert Jackler, a physician at Stanford explained, “Juul’s launch campaign was patently youth-oriented….You started seeing viral peer-to-peer communication among teens who basically became brand ambassadors for Juul.”

At each event organized by Juul, over 1,500 samples were given out, and as Jackler continues, “Their business model was to get the devices in your hands either for free or cheaply.”

Juul countered that their initial advertising “was intended for adults, was short-lived, and had very little impact on our growth.” Juul also started charging $1 for their samples because of a US regulation that banned giving away tobacco products for free that has since been amended to include e-cigarettes.

In researching Juul’s advertising strategy, Stanford noted similarities with the big tobacco companies’ ad campaigns, and how Juul put emphasis on their sweeter flavors, like Crème Brulee, which the company called “dessert without the spoon.”

In anticipation of an FDA crackdown, where stronger regulations will be placed on e-cigarettes, Juul has stopped selling their flavored vapes in retail stores, renaming certain flavors to be less youth-friendly. Juul has also shutdown its US-based social media accounts on Facebook and Instagram, according to Time.

In September, the FDA sent out 1,300 warning letters to e-cigarette manufacturers, telling them they needed to come up with a plan to “immediate and substantially reverse [the] trend” of young people taking up vaping.

The FDA warned that if these companies, including Juul, did not comply with their demands, it “may require the companies to revise their sales and marketing practices, to stop distributing products to retailers who sell to kids and to stop selling some or all of their flavored e-cigarette products until they clear the application process.”

Do you think Juul purposefully marketed its products to teens using social media? Sound off in the comments below.

View the original article at thefix.com

29 November 2018
Meth Hospitalizations More Than Double

According to a new study, the number of meth-related hospitalizations is increasing much faster than opioid-related hospitalizations.

The number of people visiting the hospital because of amphetamine-related illnesses rose 245% between 2008 and 2015, but the unprecedented rise in meth-related emergencies continues to be overshadowed by the opioid epidemic, experts say.

“Nobody is paying attention,” Jane Maxwell, a researcher at the Addiction Research Institute at the University of Texas at Austin, told Kaiser Health News. “We have really undercut treatment for methamphetamine. Meth has been completely overshadowed by opioids.”

According to a study published this week in The Journal of the American Medical Association, the number of meth-related hospitalizations is increasing much faster than opioid-related hospitalizations, which rose 46% during the same period. In addition, the cost of treating people who are using methamphetamines rose from $436 million in 2003 to nearly $2.2 billion by 2015, with Medicaid covering most of the cost.

“There is not a day that goes by that I don’t see someone acutely intoxicated on methamphetamine,” said Dr. Tarak Trivedi, an emergency room physician in Los Angeles and Santa Clara counties in California. “It’s a huge problem, and it is 100 percent spilling over into the emergency room.”

Opioids still kill more Americans than meth — claiming about 49,000 lives last year, compared with 10,000 deaths caused by methamphetamine. However, doctors and law enforcement are concerned about the escalating use of meth, which can lead to a variety of physical and mental-health complications, including psychosis.

“It taxes your first responders, your emergency rooms, your coroners,” said Robert Pennal, a retired supervisor with the California Department of Justice. “It’s an incredible burden on the health system.”

Methamphetamine can cause psychotic symptoms as people come down from their high. In addition, users experience a high heart rate that can lead to congestive heart failure in the long run. Cardio-vascular and psychiatric issues were the leading causes of amphetamine-related hospitalizations, the JAMA study found. Researchers also noted that about half of the hospitalizations involved another drug in addition to amphetamines.

“Meth is very, very destructive,” said Jon Lopey, the sheriff-coroner of Siskiyou County, California and a member of the executive board of the California Peace Officers Association. “It is just so debilitating the way it ruins lives and health.”

Dr. Tyler Winkelman, a physician at Hennepin Healthcare in Minneapolis and author of the JAMA study, said that because of the opioid epidemic “we have not been properly keeping tabs on other substance use trends as robustly as we should.”

View the original article at thefix.com

29 November 2018
Bruce Springsteen Discusses Mental Health Struggles Ahead Of Netflix Special

Bruce Springsteen says he used music as a distraction from his mental health struggles.

As the release of his new Netflix special approaches on Dec. 15, music legend Bruce Springsteen sat down and openly discussed his past mental health struggles with Esquire magazine.

Springsteen says his struggles date back to his childhood and that early on in his life, he used music to distract from the onset of depression.

“When I was a child, and into my teens…I felt like a very, very empty vessel,” Springsteen said. “And it wasn’t until I began to fill it up with music that I began to feel my own personal power and my impact on my friends and the small world that I was in. I began to get some sense of myself. But it came out of a place of real emptiness.”

Springsteen went on to state that as a teen, he didn’t feel he had his father’s approval of who he was as a person.

“My mother was kind and compassionate and very considerate of others feelings,” he said. “She trod through the world with purpose, but softly, lightly. All those were the things that aligned with my own spirit. That was who I was. They came naturally to me. My father looked at all those things as weaknesses. He was very dismissive of primarily who I was. And that sends you off on a lifelong quest to sort through that.”

According to Springsteen, he had his first breakdown when he was 32 years old, in 1982, during the release of the album Nebraska. Though he says he remains unsure what prompted the episode, he suspects his aging and childhood played a role.

He went on to discuss the loss of a close friend to suicide, stating he got “very, very ill.”

“So can I understand how that happens? Yes,” Springsteen said. “I think I felt just enough despair myself to—pain gets too great, confusion gets too great, and that’s your out. But I don’t have any great insight into it, and in truth, I’ve never met someone who has.”

In experiencing what he has, Springsteen says he now knows the warning signs of a downward mental health spiral and that he keeps watch of his children for the same signs.

“I have come close enough to [mental illness] where I know I am not completely well myself,” he told Esquire. “I’ve had to deal with a lot of it over the years, and I’m on a variety of medications that keep me on an even keel; otherwise I can swing rather dramatically and…just…the wheels can come off a little bit. So we have to watch, in our family. I have to watch my kids, and I’ve been lucky there. It ran in my family going way before my dad.”

View the original article at thefix.com

29 November 2018
Old 97's Rhett Miller Opens Up About Sobriety, Mental Health

“I’ve been sober the last three and a half years and I feel like it was definitely a part of wanting to take care of myself, wanting to love myself,”

The Old 97’s lead singer Rhett Miller lived the rock and role lifestyle, complete with partying and booze, but he says that his more recent solo albums really showcase who he is and how he has grown as an artist.

“I’ve always thought of it as a shark that can’t stop swimming or it will die. Not to be melodramatic, but artistically, that’s how I’ve always felt. I want to keep moving,” Miller, 48, told Rolling Stone. “I love to make things. I have this deep-seated fear that if I stop making things, I’ll lose that ability. I don’t want to live a life where I’m not making things, because the act of creation is the thing that got me out of the darkest places in my life.”

On his new album The Messenger, Miller shares his experiences in some of those dark places, including a serious suicide attempt when he was 14.

“The last few years, I’ve done a lot of work with different suicide-prevention groups, where I realized it’s better to say something to address these things and try to de-stigmatize them instead of give in to the shame and fear that goes along with talking about them,” Miller said. “It’s just an inherently tricky negotiation to wake up every morning and figure out the motivation to go on. Some people are able to overcome that more easily, and some people are never able to overcome that.”

Miller now has 12- and 14-year-old children, which has made him even more aware of the importance of sharing his survival story

“I’m looking at my son, who’s the same age I was when I tried real hard to kill myself. Fortunately, I don’t think he’s having to traverse as tricky a minefield of emotion or mental health issues as I did at his age, but it’s still hard,” he said.

After finishing his last album, Miller decided to get sober, something he has been reluctant to talk about publicly. However, he said that he is realizing the importance of sharing that story as well.

“I wonder if I’m reaching a point where I’ll feel comfortable talking about it without feeling too self-conscious. I’ve been sober the last three and a half years and I feel like it was definitely a part of wanting to take care of myself, wanting to love myself — but also maybe me recognizing a few years ago that I was headed in a bad direction, back towards a place I thought I’d come out of.”

View the original article at thefix.com

29 November 2018
Alcohol-Related Deaths Surge Among Women

A new study revealed that alcohol-related deaths among women have increased substantially from 2007 to 2017.

Despite being overshadowed by the current opioid epidemic, alcohol kills more people each year than opioids—and it’s hitting women especially hard, with the death rate rising 67% between 2007 and 2017.

Lawyer Erika Byrd was 42 when she died in 2011. A few months before her death, after leaving a treatment center, Byrd had lunch with her father and admitted that alcohol had made her into a different person. Though doctors never said alcohol killed her, her father Ron says he knows it did.

“The death certificate never says alcoholism,” he says. “It said heart arrhythmia and heart valve disease. But nobody in our family had heart problems.”

According to USA Today, the new statistics come from a recent analysis from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington. The analysis examined alcohol deaths in the 10 years between 2007 and 2017 and found that overall, the death rate increased by 24%.

However, the numbers when it came to women were especially concerning with the increase of 67%. In contrast, the rate for men increased 29%. According to USA Today, alcohol-related deaths include those caused by cancer, liver cirrhosis, pancreatitis and suicide.

Another study published last year in the journal Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research supports the idea that alcohol is becoming more problematic among women in particular.

In the study, researchers examined data from emergency room visits from 2006 to 2014 and found that there was a significant increase among middle-aged women when it came to visits related to acute and chronic alcohol use.

According to New York City attorney and author Lisa Smith, who has been in recovery for 10 years, alcohol is a growing issue but isn’t being treated as such.

“It is poison, and we’re treating it like it’s something other than that because there‘s big corporate money behind it,” she told USA Today. “A lot of people are getting really rich on something that is toxic to us.”

Ali Mokdad, a professor at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, tells USA Today that there are often differences in problem drinking for men and women. In particular, he points out that women often begin drinking casually as a way to de-stress after the workday and the problem builds from there.

Stefanie Wilder-Taylor, an author and podcast host, agrees. “Moms just aren’t going to call home and say they’re stopping for a couple drinks after work with friends or going to the gym to unwind,” she tells USA Today. Instead, she says, they will drink at home while preparing dinner or relaxing.

This was the case for Amy Durham, who nearly died from her drinking six years ago, at the age of 40. Durham was taken to the hospital with triple organ failure and ended up in a coma for more than a week. Afterward, she was on dialysis and placed on a liver transplant list.

Now, she has been in recovery for six years and works in the field, using her own story to reduce the stigma for women.

“I want to show the world what recovery looks like, especially for women where stigma is still the way it is,” Durham says. “I want people to know there is hope.”

View the original article at thefix.com

29 November 2018