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  • Paramore's Hayley Williams Talks Mental Health, Social Media Break

    Paramore's Hayley Williams Talks Mental Health, Social Media Break

    Paramore’s Hayley Williams opened up about mental health in a candid Instagram post.

    Hayley Williams is taking a break from social media. The lead singer of Paramore announced Saturday that she will be focusing on her side project, Good Dye Young, a line of vegan and cruelty-free hair products, in lieu of posting on Instagram and Twitter.

    “Hey friends. It’s holiday season… but I’m working a lot from home,” she said in a lengthy collage-style message on Instagram. “There’s… a lot… going on. It’s exciting and it’s also a lot.”

    While she is taking “another extended break” from social media, she will be managing Good Dye Young’s social media accounts, she assured fans.

    “I am careful not to sensationalize issues around mental health as it’s such a sensitive and very layered conversation for every individual,” she continued in her Instagram post.

    Williams confessed that she “could never fully admit to nor bring myself to go get a true diagnosis for my own issues until recently.”

    “I’m working really hard on getting strong for myself. I am so grateful to people who have kept this conversation safe and sacred for me in the last couple of years.”

    With the release of the album After Laughter in the spring of 2017, after a dry spell since 2013, Williams revealed that her mental health had suffered for a while as a young artist in the public eye.

    “I don’t feel as hopeful as I did as a teenager. For the first time in my life, there wasn’t a pinhole of light at the end of the tunnel. I thought, I just wish everything would stop,” she said in a Fader interview.

    But with the release of After Laughter, Williams said she’s moving on from feeling hopeless. “[After Laughter] helps me mark this time as a significant turning point in my life. I’m noticing similar movement in my friends’ lives too,” she said in Paper Magazine earlier this year. “More presence and awareness. More tenderness. I’m alive to both pain and joy now. I have my old laugh back, as my mom says… And only a couple years ago, I had hoped I’d die.”

    Williams urged fans to take mental health seriously. “It’s important to do what you can to find a solution that works for you. Be it therapy, medication, fighting the tendency to isolate and asking people you trust to keep you accountable,” she said in her recent Instagram post.

    The singer-songwriter said that she’s done feeling “okay” and ventured to want more for herself. “I know it is very popular to say ‘it’s okay to not be okay,’ but please give me the grace to admit that as I am quickly approaching 30 I am just not okay with not being okay anymore,” she said. “I am interested in living out a much more fulfilling life than just ‘okay’ could ever offer. I think that you are worth more than ‘okay’ has to offer too.”

    “Please take care of yourselves and try to believe that you are worth more than just ‘okay’ or ‘been better’ or ‘can’t complain.’ I think we are all worth experiencing joy. We are worth feeling hope.”

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Do Problematic Facebook Users Make More Impulsive Decisions?

    Do Problematic Facebook Users Make More Impulsive Decisions?

    A small-scale study examined the impulsivity of problematic Facebook users.

    Impulsive decision-making may be added to the list of negative effects of too much Facebook use, according to new research.

    The study, published in Addiction Research and Theory, was done at a Midwestern university and consisted of surveying 75 students. In doing so, researchers discovered that students who scored higher on the Bergen Facebook Addiction Scale had a higher probability of exhibiting “delay discounting.”

    According to PsyPost, delay discounting is when a person is more inclined to take a smaller reward that they can have immediately, rather than waiting for a larger reward. For the study specifically, students were asked whether they wanted $70 immediately or $200 in two weeks. 

    According to the research, many of the students who said they would choose the $70 were also the students who reported utilizing Facebook to forget about personal issues, who tried to decrease Facebook use without success and used the social media platform so much that it impacted their jobs and studies in a negative way. 

    “Steep delay discounting, or a preference for smaller immediate rewards instead of investing in a larger payout in the future, has been an observed behavior across addictions,” researchers wrote. “This finding thus strengthens the proposition that [Facebook addiction] may share neurocognitive processes similar to other addictions.”

    Licensed psychologist Tyler Fortman told Guy Counseling that for those in the field such as himself, the results of this study were expected. “I’m not surprised to see the results of this study. We’ve known for some time now that frequent social media usage has a negative impact on delayed gratification,” he said. 

    In their conclusion, the researchers acknowledge that in the future, such a study would benefit from having more participants from more diverse backgrounds. 

    “More advanced and better powered research on this topic is warranted,” researchers wrote. “Although Facebook can be innocuous for many users, and even provides apparent benefit to users by maintaining social connections, for some persons, Facebook use may be problematic.”

    This research supports a prior study’s findings that measured impulsivity with a “go/no-go” task and found that Facebook addiction aligned with impulsive decision making.

    “The findings indicated that at least at the examined levels of addiction-like symptoms, technology-related ‘addictions’ share some neural features with substance and gambling addictions, but more importantly they also differ from such addictions in their brain etiology and possibly pathogenesis, as related to abnormal functioning of the inhibitory-control brain system,” that study’s researchers wrote. 

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Cocaine Cut With Deworming Drug May Cause Brain Damage

    Cocaine Cut With Deworming Drug May Cause Brain Damage

    In 2017, close to 90% of seized cocaine bricks were cut with the deworming drug. 

    A pet dewormer commonly used to cut cocaine may cause brain damage, according to a team of Swiss researchers. 

    Known as levamisole, the anti-parasite drug can lead to changes in the brain’s structure and also hurt cognitive performance, the University of Zurich team of scientists wrote in the October issue of Translational Psychiatry.

    “We can assume from our findings that it is not just cocaine that changes the brain, but that the adulterant levamisole has an additional harmful effect,” said Professor Boris Quednow, the group’s lead researcher. “The sorts of cognitive impairment often exhibited by cocaine users may therefore be exacerbated by levamisole.”

    The anti-worming drug isn’t a new addition to coke supplies; it started popping up in illicit powders more than a decade ago, the DEA reported at the time. Swiss authorities began noticing it sometime around 2008, the researchers wrote. 

    It’s recently become less pervasive in drug supplies there, but in U.S. close to 90% of cocaine bricks seized in 2017 contained the dewormer. 

    But researchers aren’t entirely clear on why it’s so popular as a cocaine additive, according to a university press release. It may draw out or heighten the effects of blow—but previous research has already shown a number of negative side effects, including a linkage to skin necrosis. 

    And, animal testing shows it can impact the nervous system. In part that’s why researchers with the Psychiatric Hospital and the Institute of Forensic Medicine of the University of Zurich decided to take a closer look at the effects of levamisole, by testing drug users’ hair to figure out who had consumed the deworming agent with cocaine and who hadn’t. 

    In one study, researchers compared 26 regular coke users with low levels of levamisole exposure, 49 users with high levels of exposure and 78 non-users in cognitive functioning tests. 

    Both groups of coke users showed “significant impairments” in attention and memory—neither of which should come as any surprise to anyone who’s done a line or two. But the researchers also found that the group with more exposure to the dewormer showed much worse executive function—even though they weren’t doing more blow.

    A second study used MRIs to look at how levamisole-laced cocaine affects the brain’s structure, finding that it thinned a region associated with executive functions. 

    Given the findings, researchers suggested that the most immediate solution might be better purity testing, a harm-reduction approach to help users screen out tainted supplies. 

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • "Ralph Breaks The Internet" Was Originally About Social Media Addiction

    "Ralph Breaks The Internet" Was Originally About Social Media Addiction

    The original storyline of Ralph Breaks the Internet focused on social media addiction and the obsession with getting “likes” and affirmations.  

    Ralph Breaks the Internet is the follow-up to the popular animated movie, Wreck-It Ralph. Sarah Silverman and John C. Reilly voice the video game characters Vanellope and Wreck-It Ralph, two unlikely friends.

    The sequel—now playing in theaters—was almost a tale of internet addiction, according to the film’s producers.

    Wreck-it Ralph is about arcade-game character Wreck-It Ralph who doesn’t want to be the bad guy in the game anymore. After years of being the bad guy to good guy Fix-It Felix, Ralph takes action: he hops through video games to prove that he can be the hero. But while on this hero’s journey, Ralph accidentally unleashes a deadly enemy to the entire arcade.

    Wreck-It Ralph meets Vanellope, a video game character who thinks she is the bad guy, when actually she is the princess destined to win the game.

    The sequel sees Wreck-It Ralph and Vanellope beginning a journey inside the world wide web to find a replacement part for Vanellope’s game. Without the replacement part, Vanellope will cease to exist in the virtual world they inhabit.

    Producer Clark Spencer told Yahoo Movies UK that the original concept went down a darker-themed journey. In the original movie plot, Vanellope became obsessed with her online status and growing her social media affirmations, echoing the experience of many young people in the modern world.

    “In the very beginning we did want the story to be the concept of being caught up in the Internet,” Spencer told Yahoo Movies UK earlier this year. “So there was a story told where Vanellope, being the younger character, actually got caught up in the ‘likes’ and she started to feel like that was giving her the affirmation she needed.”

    Social media addiction is a growing concern as generations of children are growing up spending hours a day engaging online.

    However, the filmmakers felt that the plot wasn’t authentic to the strong character of Vanellope they had created. Spencer told Yahoo, “It made us take a step back and say: what’s a different story we can tell that still deals with those elements of the Internet that are complicated?”

    Spencer continued. “How do we deal with comments? How do we deal with the word ‘likes’ and what does it mean for someone? That idea of affirmation through this kind of anonymous body of the Internet.”

    Ultimately the storyline focused on how identity is created and understood through how we spend our days, and what we identify with.

    “What we wanted to say is: What would it mean to a character if their game actually was gone?” Spencer told Yahoo. “Do they define themselves by their games rather than who they are? It’s sort of like do I define myself by my career or do I define by myself as an individual or as a person? That is a key element of what we explore with Vanellope.”

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Kelly Osbourne Says Her First Year Of Sobriety Was Really Difficult

    Kelly Osbourne Says Her First Year Of Sobriety Was Really Difficult

    Building up a sober community has been instrumental for Kelly Osbourne’s success in her first year of sobriety.

    The Osbourne family is known for telling it like it is, with colorful language to boot, so it’s no surprise that Kelly Osbourne is being candid about the difficulties of staying sober as she speaks about her one-year sobriety anniversary. 

    “It feels amazing, but the first year is really hard for everyone,” Osbourne told In Touch. “People have this whole notion that you can be fixed and I am not fixed. I am now just beginning to start to know who I really am and I am not even close. Life is really scary but I get to do things for the first time all over again, which is great and just really figure out who I am and what I am but it’s tough. That first year is really f—ing tough.”

    Osbourne, 34, has been in and out of treatment since she was a teenager. This time, she says, the benefits of sobriety have clicked for her. 

    “I am not hungover and like a lot of my friends aren’t sober and when we do stuff, I am always the first one up, the first one out the door, you know,” she said. “I am excited about life in a whole new way.”

    She said that her family—including mom Sharon, dad Ozzy and brother Jack—all supported her in their own ways. 

    “They have just been amazing,” she said. “My brother has been the one, more than anything because he truly gets it. My mom is a normie… she is there for me as much as she can be. She will always manage to say that one thing that you’re like oh, why the f—k did you say that! But she is only trying to help because she cares so much. Without the support of my family this year, I don’t think I could have gotten through it. They have been there for me like crazy when I know that they should have given up on me by now, but they didn’t.”

    Osbourne said that she is learning to cope with her feelings—which she said she “f—ing hates”—because in the past she’s been “numb the whole time.”

    She said that building up a sober community has been instrumental for her success in sobriety. She’s learned to keep her focus on her sobriety. 

    “Listen to what people are telling you to do, talk to people, don’t keep stuff in and just take it each day as it comes,” she said. “And if you fall, just dust yourself off and try again.”

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Modest Mouse On Medical Marijuana For Mental Health

    Modest Mouse On Medical Marijuana For Mental Health

    “After taking the antidepressants, I started to realize cannabis was probably the better way to go,” Modest Mouse drummer Jeremiah Green says about his medical marijuana use.

    Some members of the band behind the album The Moon & Antarctica are turning to marijuana to help deal with anxiety.

    Jeremiah Green, the drummer of Modest Mouse, was forced to temporarily leave the band due to his depression. He’s been trying to treat it over the past few years with marijuana.

    “I went on antidepressants, and I got all manic and weird,” Green explains to High Times. “I just blew up one day. I was acting hella weird. I ended up in the hospital for six hours and realized pretty quick I didn’t want to be there.”

    Green never intended to quit the band, it just kind of happened that way, he says.

    “It basically took me a long time to call them because I was embarrassed,” Green confesses. “All of a sudden all of that happened, and within a week or so, I was off antidepressants and I figured out what the fuck had gone on. I got back to normal and was like, ‘Holy shit, I ruined my whole life basically.’ [Laughs] I sat around depressed for like a year. I didn’t do shit. Luckily, those guys were cool and got me back in the band.”

    Despite Green’s absence, the band moved forward with Benjamin Weikel in his place. With Weikel on the drummer’s stool, the band found commercial success in their 2004 album Good News for People Who Love Bad News. When Green finally did return, his bandmates weren’t sure what to expect.

    “It was a good opportunity for him to see if he wanted to be a part of the band,” said Modest Mouse frontman Isaac Brock.

    Things were rough with Green self-medicating with marijuana all the time.

    “When he got back, he was getting super-high all the time. He had normal-people weed-smoking abilities at that point. It was super-weird, because he’d be [drumming] super-slow or super-fast. It was never right. Then he got super-good at weed smoking, if that’s a thing—and I think it is,” Brock recalled. “Master-expert level is where he is now. He can walk on tight ropes and do trigonometry with it and shit. He’s always Jeremiah. I love the guy. Even when he was crazier than a shit-house rat, I had patience for it. His crazy was kind of interesting.”

    Nowadays, Green’s bandmates, including Brock and Tom Peloso, sometimes smoke with him. However, Green still does most of the smoking.

    “I smoke regularly,” Green said. “After taking the antidepressants, I started to realize cannabis was probably the better way to go. I’ve smoked for so long I don’t really get high anymore. I just sort of smoke on a low.”

    The band is currently on tour for their album Strangers to Ourselves.

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Artie Lange: I'm 18 Days Clean And Fighting Hard

    Artie Lange: I'm 18 Days Clean And Fighting Hard

    Comedian Artie Lange took to Twitter to gush about his current recovery program and how many days he’s been clean.

    The comedian stepped out of rehab to perform a show and took the time to send off a series of appreciative tweets.

    Comedian Artie Lange tweeted Wednesday that he’s been clean for 18 days. Lange performed a show before returning to his rehab in time for Thanksgiving on Thursday.

    “Guess who’s clean?!! Been clean 18 days! The rehab I’m at let me use my phone to check things. I still have more time here but I’m doing great,” he wrote on Twitter. “I’m humble. Not bragging. Just feel well. Tons of work ahead. Sunrise detox in Sterling, NJ helped save my life!!!  They’re great!!”

    The comedian has struggled with substance use disorder for years, but on Wednesday his treatment center allowed him to take a break from his program to perform. He gushed about his current recovery program on Twitter.

    “I’m at The Retreat by Lancaster PA. This place is a Godsend! They’re not payin me. No free stay. They do it right. I’m so grateful to them. The nurses are Angels,” he tweeted. “I’m not saying I will never relapse. I pray every day!! Just happy to be alive. I ain’t checkin out yet! I love u all!”

    He topped off his tweets with the serenity prayer.

    “God. Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change. The courage to Change the things I can. And the wisdom to know the difference,” he wrote on Twitter.

    Lange had recently announced his intention to get clean on the Steve Trevelise Show. 

    “I’m about to go into drug treatment and commit to a full rehab, in-patient,” he said in the interview on the show. “I don’t know. I’m a very humble guy at this point. And I think I’m ready to go and do what I gotta do. It’s been long enough.”

    Soon after arriving at the rehab center after finishing his show, Lange sent out one last tweet before relinquishing his phone to thank his fans.

    “On way back to rehab. Did show.  Stayed clean.  On way back.  Another Thanksgiving inside someplace.  Last one was jail.  But I just killed for a huge crowd who felt like family,” his last tweet read. “I’m fighting hard.  Don’t count Artie Lange out. Love u. Be back by end of month.  I’m smiling. Thx”

     

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Florida Sues CVS, Walgreens For Their Alleged Roles In Opioid Crisis

    Florida Sues CVS, Walgreens For Their Alleged Roles In Opioid Crisis

    The suit claims that the companies failed to stop “suspicious orders of opioids,” and dispensed “unreasonable quantities” of such drugs.

    The state of Florida has named two of the largest drugstore chains in the United States—Walgreens and CVS—as well as Insys Therapeutics, in a lawsuit that alleged that they “played a role in creating the opioid crisis.”

    Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi issued a press release stating that the pharmacy giants and Insys, which manufactured the fentanyl-based medication Subsys had been added to a state-court lawsuit filed on May 15, 2016 against Purdue Pharma, L.P.—the manufacturer of OxyContin—and other pharmaceutical manufacturers for allegedly contributing to the opioid epidemic with their opioid-based products.

    The suit against CVS and Walgreens alleges that the companies failed to stop “suspicious orders of opioids,” and dispensed “unreasonable quantities” of such drugs from their locations.

    In the complaint, the Attorney General’s Office alleged that Walgreens Co.—the largest drugstore chain in the nation—has distributed vast amounts of opioids throughout the state of Florida, and in some cases, reportedly distributed millions of pills that far outnumbered town populations.

    The suit cites an unidentified Florida town where the Walgreens location is alleged to have sold 285,000 pills in a single month to a town with just 3,000 people.

    According to the suit, some stores reportedly experienced six-fold sales growth for pills in just two years time. Walgreens previously paid a record settlement of $80 million in 2013 for violations of record-keeping and dispensing regulations that allowed oxycodone and other pain medications to be diverted for black market sales.

    The accusations against CVS Healthcare Corp. and CVS Pharmacy, Inc.—the second largest U.S. drugstore chain—claim that the company sold more than 700 million opioid products between 2006 and 2014, including three towns that received and dispensed “huge quantities” of opioids during that time frame.

    CVS also paid $22 million to resolve allegations by the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) that retail stores in the town of Sanford, Florida sold painkillers that were not prescribed for “legitimate medical purposes.”

    The suit’s allegations against Insys Therapeutics echo similar charges levied against the troubled pharmaceutical firm, which has been accused of paying doctors to prescribe Subsys, a medication for patients with breakthrough cancer pain, to patients without cancer or similar diagnoses.

    The suit cites public records that showed that Insys paid $18.7 million to doctors between August 2013 and December 2016, including one Florida physician who received $270,000 from the company.

    According to data from the Center for Medicaid and Medicare Services, more prescriptions for Subsys were written in Florida than in any other state.

    A spokesperson for CVS labeled the lawsuit “without merit” and said that in recent years, the company “has taken numerous actions to strengthen our existing safeguards to help address the nation’s opioid epidemic.”

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Inside The Methadone Clinic Boom

    Inside The Methadone Clinic Boom

    “We haven’t seen such a dramatic increase in the industry since the 1970s,” says one expert.

    The methadone treatment industry has exploded from 2014 to 2018, growing more in those four years than in the past two decades, the Boston Globe reports. 

    In the past four years, according to Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) data, the industry has added 254 new clinics. The clinics allow for the administration of methadone, which is a type of long-acting opioid that can help short-acting opioid users manage withdrawals and allow them more time to detox, WebMD states.

    “We haven’t seen such a dramatic increase in the industry since the 1970s,” Mark Parrino, president of the American Association for the Treatment of Opioid Dependence, told the Globe. 

    Critics of methadone treatment say it is just replacing one substance for another. Yngvild Olsen, an addiction doctor in Baltimore and board member of the American Society of Addiction Medicine, tells the Globe that needs to change.

    “There has been an underlying stigma against methadone for so many years that the industry naturally maintains a low profile,” she said. “Even now, access to methadone is highly geographic. It depends on where you live.”

    Indiana, Maryland, and New York have been at the forefront of states with access to methadone treatment, implementing dozens of new clinics in the past two years alone. Ohio and Florida plan to follow suit with expansions in the works.

    There are some states where laws limit the availability of such clinics. These include Georgia, Indiana, Louisiana, Mississippi, West Virginia, and Wyoming. 

    Even so, the clinics are becoming more common, as in the past four years Medicaid has expanded its coverage and reimbursement for such services for low-income adults. And, in 2020, Medicare coverage of the treatment for those 65 and older will begin as part of the Opioid Crisis Response Act, meaning the need could become even greater. 

    If a state wishes to open such a clinic, they must apply for a license, Parrino tells the Globe.

    While there are other medications to assist in curbing opioid withdrawals, such as buprenorphine, methadone is the most highly regulated. 

    The Globe reports that often, patients are given methadone through a plexiglass shield. Patients are often screened to make sure they are not combining methadone with other drugs. At first, they are only given the medication in the clinic, under the watch of a professional. Eventually, some patients are allowed take-home doses. 

    In contrast, buprenorphine can be prescribed for 30 days at a time by doctors, nurse practitioners, and physician assistants and is viewed as the more obvious treatment by some. 

    “There’s no question that better access to methadone maintenance would save lives,” Andrew Kolodny, co-director of opioid treatment research at Brandeis University, told the Globe. “But for an addiction epidemic that is disproportionately rural and suburban, an intervention that relies on people visiting a clinic every day isn’t the best option. Buprenorphine would be better, but it’s not growing quickly enough.”

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Naloxone Price Spiked 600% During Opioid Crisis By Drug Maker

    Naloxone Price Spiked 600% During Opioid Crisis By Drug Maker

    One drug manufacturer reportedly increased the price of its naloxone drug Evzio from $575 per dose to $4,100 per dose.

    Naloxone, the opioid overdose reversal drug, has been heralded as a lifesaving intervention credited with helping stem the death toll of the opioid epidemic. However, one drug manufacturer reportedly saw the demand for the drug as a lucrative opportunity, raising its price 600% over the past four years. 

    According to a report commissioned by Sens. Rob Portman (R-OH) and Tom Carper (D-DE), drug manufacturer Kaléo “exploited the opioid crisis” by increasing the price of its naloxone drug Evzio from $575 per dose to $4,100 per dose. 

    Naloxone can save people’s lives during opioid overdoses by reversing the effects of opioids. Sometimes, in the case of powerful synthetic opioids like fentanyl, multiple doses need to be administered. 

    According to the report, Kaléo intentionally increased the price of Evzio, in addition to manipulating how the drug was processed by insurance companies to take advantage of a money-making opportunity.

    “In conjunction with the price increase, Kaléo launched its new business plan,” the report reads. “The Evzio Commercial Update Executive Summary, pictured here, dated April 2016, noted ‘2016 is critical to long-term success.’ With the increased price and new business model, Kaléo sought to ‘[c]apitalize on the opportunity’ of ‘opioid overdose at epidemic levels—a well-established public health crisis.’”

    The report concluded that Kaléo’s aggressive pricing cost taxpayers $142 million through payments made through Medicare and Medicaid, according to a press release from Portman’s office. 

    “Naloxone is a critically important overdose reversal drug that our first responders have used to save tens of thousands of lives,” Portman said. “The fact that one company dramatically raised the price of its naloxone drug and cost taxpayers tens of millions of dollars in increased drug costs, all during a national opioid crisis no less, is simply outrageous. The Subcommittee will continue its efforts to protect taxpayers from drug manufacturers that are exploiting loopholes in the Medicare and Medicaid system in order to profit from a national opioid crisis.”

    Carper agreed, saying, “We know that naloxone can save lives. We need to take the necessary steps to ensure that drugs like this are affordable and accessible to those in need, especially during a public health emergency of this magnitude.”

    In response to the report, Kaléo issued a statement pointing out that it has donated thousands of doses of Evzio, and claimed that it has never turned a profit from the drug. 

    “Patients, not profits, have driven our actions,” the company said.

    Read more about the report’s findings and how Kaléo manipulated pricing here.  

    View the original article at thefix.com