Tag: News

AJ McLean Talks Recent Relapse, Recovery & Self-Care

“I have no shame in saying, I’ve relapsed over the past year. It’s no secret that this is a disease, and that it’s a daily struggle.”

The Backstreet Boys are wrapping up their Las Vegas residency and are gearing up for their world tour in 2019, which will hit 27 countries—the boy band’s largest arena tour in 18 years.

AJ McLean, who is in recovery, is up for the challenge. The Backstreet Boy has been to rehab in 2001, 2002 and 2011 for depression and alcohol use, according to People.

Over the years, he’s learned a few hard lessons about recovery.

“Sometimes, you’re just going to have the worst days possible,” he said. It’s a daily struggle. “You have to make it a lifestyle, you truly do. It doesn’t mean that you can’t have fun, and can’t be yourself.”

Seeing recovery as a journey and not a destination also helps McLean stay grounded. “It’s not like, okay, I’m sober, it’s done. I’ll never drink again. No. You have to work at it daily.”

By maintaining this mindset, McLean is not ashamed to acknowledge his mistakes as a person in recovery. “Look, I have no shame in saying, I’ve relapsed over the past year. It’s no secret that this is a disease, and that it’s a daily struggle.”

As a father of two young daughters, McLean says it’s easy to forget about his own needs. “You know, it’s interesting about sobriety with family and with kids—you still have to put yourself first, and that’s been a real big struggle for me.”

But it’s important to balance his family’s needs with his own, McLean says. “It will win if you don’t take care of yourself.”

“Because I’m still very codependent, I’m Mr. People Pleaser… I want to make sure everyone’s cool,” he said. “[But] if you do that too often, then you forget about taking care of yourself, and you do tend to get lost in the sauce. And that’s happened to me numerous times.”

After the death of Mac Miller in September, McLean mourned the loss of the young rapper. “I met him a couple of times at radio shows and he was a stand-up guy,” he told Entertainment Tonight in a previous interview. “You would never know that he had a problem—but a lot of people had no idea that I had a problem. Addicts can hide it pretty well, so all my condolences go to his family and friends. He’s another one gone too soon.”

The Backstreet Boys’ upcoming 10th album is due on January 25, 2019. Then in May, they will embark on their DNA World Tour.

View the original article at thefix.com

16 November 2018
Could Alcohol Use Screenings Become More Common For Adults?

One task force suggests that if an adult reports drinking more than recommended amounts, doctors should take steps to help them cut back.

Alcohol use screenings while seeing a physician may become more common for all adults, due to a new recommendation from the United States Preventive Services Task Force.

The recent recommendation, according to CNN, was accompanied by a statement Tuesday (Nov. 13) in the journal JAMA. The statement advises that if an adult reports drinking more than recommended amounts, doctors should take steps to help them cut back.

Recommended amounts, according to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA), are different for men and women and across age ranges. Men 21 to 64 years old should not surpass four drinks daily or 14 drinks weekly.

For women and men over 64, that changes to three drinks daily and seven drinks weekly. For women who are pregnant, no level of alcohol consumption is safe.

The task force has made similar recommendations before, and this is simply the latest update to the version from 2013. Among the changes is removing the phrase “alcohol misuse” and replacing it with “unhealthy alcohol use.”

The task force has recommended since 1996 that doctors screen adult patients and provide counsel if need be. Prior to that, in 1989, the task force suggested that doctors should have their patients describe their alcohol use.

However, in an editorial accompanying the recommendation, Boston University School of Public Health officials Angela Bazzi and Dr. Richard Saitz wrote that not enough doctors are doing so.

“Yet implementation of screening and brief intervention still remains quite low,” the editorial read. “For example, in the United States, 1 in 6 patients reports having discussed alcohol with their physician; rates in Europe are similarly low.”

The authors go on to state that addressing unhealthy drinking in adults could be difficult for various reasons.

“First, screening may be met with reluctance if unhealthy alcohol use is viewed as less ‘medical’ than other conditions,” they wrote. “The stigma surrounding heavy alcohol use and blame that may be placed on patients make this challenge difficult to address, possibly requiring a shift in thinking, additional training, and acceptance of broader, more contemporary views of disease and prevention.”

Difficulty could also be due to the brevity of doctor visits, as well as the normalization of drinking in today’s culture, Bazzi and Saitz wrote.

The pair went on to note that the way alcohol is viewed in society must change in order to make forward progress.

“The societal context must change, as recommended by the World Health Organization, to limit the influence of the alcohol industry and make the message unequivocal that less use of a toxin and carcinogen (even at very low levels) is better for health,” the two concluded.

View the original article at thefix.com

16 November 2018
Parents Grapple With Cutting Off Children With Addiction

“It’s easy to pay for court costs and to bail them out of every situation. It takes a very long time to gain the strength, courage, and faith to say no,” said one parent.

Parents often spend hefty amounts of money trying to help their children get sober, sometimes to the detriment of their own financial health, according to a new feature in Time magazine which focuses on the financial implications of substance use disorder.

“[Parents] are faced with this dilemma: Do I help them get out of this in the short term, or do I let them experience the natural consequences of their behaviors?” said Kenneth Leonard, director of the Clinical and Research Institute on Addictions at the University of Buffalo. “You don’t want to do anything that will ruin their lives, but on the other hand, you want them to learn from experience. Nobody wants their child to suffer, short term or long term.”

Diane Buxton, of Indiana, estimates that she spent more than $70,000 on eight stints in rehab, counselors and other approaches to try to help her son who was addicted to opioids. “I was going to save him,” she said.

Eventually, she realized that all her spending was fruitless.

“I remember walking through my living room one day and seeing my 130-pound son, who was supposed to be 160 pounds, sitting on the couch with needle marks in his arm,” she said. “And I heard this voice saying ‘You’re loving him to death.’”

Buxton told her son he needed to leave: check into rehab or crash with friends. Now six years sober, her son tells her that tough love helped save his life. “If I had not given him that choice, he’d be dead or in prison,” she said.

Katie Donovan, of Michigan, said that she spent about $200,000 supporting her daughter through addiction—but her story did not end with a happy ending. “I was interrupting my whole life, constantly, on a daily basis, to take care of her,” Donovan said. “I didn’t realize that I had become a part of it. I was addicted to her.”

Donovan started small in setting boundaries with her daughter, first refusing to buy her new clothes or take her to appointments. She says her daughter still struggles with addiction—with intermittent periods of sobriety—but that her own life is a lot less chaotic now.

“It’s easy to buy a car. It’s easy to pay for court costs and to bail them out of every situation,” she said. “It takes a very long time to gain the strength, courage, and faith to say no. I believe in loving with boundaries. She knows that, emotionally, I accept where she’s at. Am I going to give her money? No.”

Ipek Aykol, a therapist in Newport Beach, California who specializes in addiction counseling, says it’s important for families to establish financial boundaries. “Families come to treatment with very unhealthy boundaries,” Aykol said. “If you’re giving your child money, and your child is spending that money on drugs, it’s not serving them.”

Fred Leamnson, of Virginia, who blogs about personal finance, said he spent more than six figures supporting his son through heroin addiction. Now, he wants to give others permission to just say no.

“The best advice I can offer is advice we didn’t follow—protect yourself and your finances at all costs!”

View the original article at thefix.com

15 November 2018
Lil Xan On Mac Miller's Death, His Own Sobriety: "I'm Not Completely Clean Yet"

“You relapse. You don’t want to. You get clean again. And you relapse. It’s a process. You need treatment, and sometimes, that doesn’t even help.”

Hip-hop artist Lil Xan spoke candidly about the overdose death of his idol, rapper Mac Miller, and his own struggles with substance use, including a recent relapse.

In a conversation with TMZ on Nov. 5, Lil Xan (born Diego Leanos) said that while he wasn’t surprised that fentanyl played a role in his fellow artist’s demise, he remains devastated by the news.

“It’s always fentanyl,” Leanos told TMZ in regard to Miller’s death on Sept. 7, 2018. He said that the synthetic opioid was among the primary reasons that he stopped dealing pills prior to his music career.

“I was selling Xanax before I was a rapper, you know, when it was real,” he said. “And the minute it got to fentanyl, I was like, ‘I’m not going to sell this.’ My friends were taking it, they were puking. I was like, ‘I can’t… I’m out of the game.’”

In regard to Miller’s death, Leanos told TMZ, “There’s been so many people [who died from fentanyl overdose], but in particular, Mac hurt the most, because it definitely changed my everything.”

Leanos had been left so devastated by Miller’s death that in September, he considered retiring from music after fulfilling his recording contract. “When your hero dies, f—k that s—t,” he declared during a podcast interview. “I don’t want to make music no more.”

Most recently, Leanos has been recording a tribute album to Miller called Be Safe, which is reportedly due in December. He canceled a quintet of live appearances to focus his energy on completing the project, but added that he was also working on his sobriety.

“I’m not completely clean yet,” he told TMZ. “I’m off Xanax, but narcos I’m still trying to wean off. ”

Leanos said that following his recent relapse, he sequestered himself in a forest and “detached from the world” to regain his sobriety. In regard to the relapse, he said, “Any addict would understand that s—t happens. You relapse. You don’t want to. You get clean again. And you relapse. It’s a process. You need treatment, and sometimes, that doesn’t even help.”

Change, said Leanos, can only come when the individual wants it. “It has to come from within,” he said. “I’ve gone through periods of like, six months. And now it’s because of me. It’s because I want to be clean.”

View the original article at thefix.com

15 November 2018
Why Some Pharmacies Still Fail To Carry Naloxone

Though many states have passed laws to expand naloxone access, some pharmacies have been too slow to get onboard with carrying the life-saving medication.

According to new research, expanding access to naloxone still has room for improvement.

Two new studies that surveyed pharmacies in California and Texas suggest that access to the opioid overdose “antidote” is still not optimal, despite the passage of laws across the U.S to expand naloxone access.

Both California and Texas have passed laws that allow pharmacists to dispense naloxone without a prescription. But some pharmacies are still not on board with the new policies.

“There is still significant room for improvement with regards to making this potentially lifesaving medication available to patents who need it,” said one researcher.

Just 23.5% of retail pharmacies in California were dispensing naloxone sans prescription two years after the new policy was established. Dr. Talia Puzantian and Dr. James Gasper, who co-authored the research, say this may be due to a lack of training, stigma about substance use, and time, according to Family Practice News.

In Texas, 83.7% of pharmacies surveyed said they would dispense naloxone without a prescription, while 76.4% said they currently stocked naloxone.

The benefit of increasing access to naloxone—not only to first responders and medical providers, but the public—is to save lives, says Texas study lead Kirk Evoy of the University of Texas at Austin College of Pharmacy and University Health System in San Antonio.

“Being able to administer naloxone immediately, while waiting for emergency medical services to arrive, greatly increases the chances of survival and reduces the risk of long-term negative health consequences, because the body cannot last long without oxygen,” Evoy said.

Improving access to naloxone is just one way to lessen the death toll of the opioid crisis.

The total number of drug overdose deaths in 2017 is projected to exceed 72,000, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

“I do not know how many of these people overdosed alone,” says Dr. Seth Landefeld of the University of Alabama at Birmingham in an editorial accompanying the research. “But ready availability of naloxone would undoubtedly have saved many lives.”

While all 50 states and the District of Columbia have enacted some form of a naloxone access law, all but Nebraska allows for a pharmacist to dispense the drug without a prescription, according to PDAPS (Prescription Drug Abuse Policy System).

Other naloxone access laws include providing immunity from criminal or civil liability for prescribers, pharmacists, and laypeople for dispensing or administering the drug.

View the original article at thefix.com

15 November 2018
Medical Marijuana Advocate’s Death Sentence Sparks Outcry

Medical marijuana advocate Muhammad Lukman is one among about 900 other people on death row in Malaysia for drug offenses.

Malaysia may be on a path toward drug policy reform.

The Southeast Asian country has some of the harshest drug laws in the world. According to the BBC, cultivating a single cannabis plant can land you in prison for life, while possessing more than 7 ounces “is almost certain to result in a death sentence.”

But recently, Malaysians have been more vocal in protesting these laws. Twenty-nine-year-old Muhammad Lukman was convicted of trafficking in cannabis and sentenced to death by hanging on August 30. This has prompted a public outcry.

According to his lawyer, Farhan Maaruf, Lukman testified that he only sold cannabis oil to help ill patients. If they could not afford it, he would provide it for free.

Lukman’s case has captured the attention of Malaysians. A Change.org petition to free Lukman has garnered more than 70,000 signatures as of Nov. 14.

Prime Minister Mahathir bin Mohamad said in September that Lukman’s sentence should be reviewed, according to Reuters. MP Nurul Izzah Anwar declared the case a “miscarriage of justice,” and said at the time that she would urge the attorney general to reconsider Lukman’s case.

Change might be coming. In October, the prime minister’s administration announced that it would abolish the death penalty completely. But “suspects convicted for drug trafficking, like Lukman, could however still face jail for decades or life,” the BBC reported.

Lukman is one among about 900 other people on death row in Malaysia for drug offenses. Others include Mohammed Zaireen bin Zainal, the founder of the Malaysian Marijuana Education Movement. He is waiting for a final appeal.

A medical marijuana patient and advocate named Yuki is hoping Lukman’s case will spark a shift in Malaysia’s drug laws.

Yuki, 41, has been using marijuana to help ease chronic, debilitating pain from hypokalaemia (low blood potassium) since she was 29 years old.

She’s now at the forefront of the campaign to reform Malaysia’s drug laws. “If you are desperate, you are sick, you will do anything. We go online, we search about it, we find out about it. The government doesn’t want to give it to us but we will still find it,” she said.

View the original article at thefix.com

15 November 2018
Gary Busey Reflects On Cocaine Addiction, Becoming Sober

Busey says he stopped using cocaine on May 3, 1995, and has been sober ever since.

In addition to his busy and prolific career as an actor, Gary Busey has earned a reputation for philosophical aphorisms that he calls “Buseyisms” – words of wisdom drawn from the letters of a word that he said reveal a new definition in its “deeper, dimensional meaning.”

The Academy Award nominee has compiled many of these life lessons in a new book, Buseyisms: Gary Busey’s Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth (itself a Buseyism, which stands for “Bible”). In addition to a wealth of Buseyisms, the new book also details the actor’s battle with cocaine addiction, which nearly ended his life before he gained clarity through a spiritual outlook.

In a conversation with NBC News Digital’s Think page, Busey recalled how he became addicted to cocaine shortly after earning an Oscar nomination for his performance in The Buddy Holly Story.

“A fellow who looked like a Beverly Hills cowboy showed up at my door,” he recalled. “He told me that he was going to be my manager, and he had a gift for me. It was a blue box from Tiffany’s and, in the box, was a rock of cocaine as big as a 50-cent piece, and thick, with my initials in it.”

The dealer told Busey that the drug would help him be “more creative,” and as Busey recalled, “I got hooked bad.” His drug use led to an overdose, followed by an unpleasant realization: “What have I been doing? I’ve been dancing with the devil in a circle that’s very tight, and the devil always leads the dance.”

According to Busey, he stopped using cocaine on May 3, 1995, and has been sober ever since.

To summarize his 25 years of sobriety, Busey has an aphorism: “F-R-E-E-D-O-M stands for ‘facing real exciting energy, developing out of miracles.” Busey expounded on the notion by adding, “The best freedom you can have is knowing you’re a miracle. So, be yourself, and live in the harmony of what God gave you to be when you were born. Think on that; feel that about yourself. And you won’t need to abuse substances or alcohol or needles or pills.”

Busey remains sanguine about the challenges of chasing sobriety. He freely admitted that those who follow his advice and give up their substance of choice may actually come to hate him for such a suggestion. “But that’s okay,” he noted. “Hate is an emotion that comes with growth.” But the payoff, he said, is worth the effort. “Everything you’ve done in your life, even though some of it was hard, is good, because you go through it to get better. And that’s why we’re on earth.”

View the original article at thefix.com

15 November 2018
Why People With Internet Addiction React Worse When Wifi Fails

Researchers explored the reaction to digital technology failure in people with internet addiction for a recent study.

When the Wifi loses its connectivity, or the movie we’re streaming buffers endlessly—when the digital technology by which we have come to expect as part of our daily lives fails, our response to this interruption can take a variety of forms, from mild annoyance to more extreme or “maladaptive” reactions, including anger, panic and depression.

What determines our response, according to a new study, may be dependent on our psychological makeup. Researchers found that participants who expressed a “maladaptive” response to digital technology failure also showed signs of extroversion, neuroticism, internet addiction and a pervasive “fear of missing out” (FOMO).

Understanding what provokes these responses may help provide better support for such individuals, researchers suggest.

In the study—published in the November edition of Heliyon—researchers from De Montfort University in Leicester, England engaged 630 participants, all between the ages of 18 and 68, in an online questionnaire that examined their responses to digital technology failure.

Participants self-reported how they responded such incidents, as well as their attitudes towards “fear of missing out” and internet addiction. The study authors also measured responses in regard to the BIG-5 personality traits: conscientiousness, extraversion-introversion, agreeableness, openness and neuroticism.

The researchers found that those participants whose responses indicated extroversion and neuroticism, and who expressed positive responses towards FOMO or symptoms of internet addiction also exhibited more signs of a maladaptive response towards digital technology failure. They also noted a correlation between age and level of response: specifically, as Science Daily noted, as age increased, a person’s level of frustration decreased.

A frustrated response to technological failure is normal, according to study co-author Dr. Lee Hadlington. “[It’s] one of the things we all experience on a daily basis, so it seemed to be a logical step in our research.”

But with technology playing a more significant role in our lives with each new development, our dependency on those devices to make our lives function also grows.

“When they don’t work, we tend to just go a little bit ‘crazy’ or just switch off and stop doing things altogether,” Hadlington noted.

Determining what provokes extreme responses in certain individuals may help make their lives more manageable.

“If we can understand what leads individuals to react in certain ways, and why these differences occur, we can hopefully make sure that when digital technology does fail, people are better supported and there are relevant signposts for them to follow to get help,” said Hadlington. “Extreme reactions only make things worse.”

View the original article at thefix.com

15 November 2018
Homeless Shelter Will Start Requiring Sobriety

Under the new policy anyone who appears intoxicated or has alcohol on their breath will not be allowed in.

A Montana homeless shelter will begin turning away people who are using drugs and/or alcohol, reversing its previous policy and highlighting the issues that homeless people with substance use disorder face as they try to find shelter during the winter months.

According to The Billings Gazette, the Montana Rescue Mission in downtown Billings will no longer allow people who have been using drugs and/or alcohol to stay inside during “code blue” night, when it is particularly cold or snowy and people on the street could be at risk.

Previously, the Mission would accept anyone who wasn’t very drunk — it had a policy of refusing people with a blood alcohol level higher than 0.2. Under the new policy anyone who appears intoxicated or has alcohol on their breath will not be allowed in.

“The only change we’ve made is we expect to them to be sober,” said Perry Roberts, executive director of the mission. “We just decided [on the change] in order to maintain peace.”

Individuals who are turned away will be referred to the nearby the Community Crisis Center, a facility that only has room for 45 people and has already begun filling up on cold nights this year.

“It really does create a capacity issue,” said MarCee Neary, the Crisis Center’s program director.

The Montana Rescue Mission provides two separate long-term shelters: one for men and one for women and children, in addition to the code blue openings. Participants in those programs are required to be sober, and Roberts said that having people around who are abusing drugs or alcohol could be triggering for them and compromise the progress that they have made while at the shelter.

“Our purpose, our mission is we’re trying to transform lives,” he said.

In addition, Roberts pointed out that the staff at the shelter are not able to provide the support that intoxicated people might need.

“We don’t have medically trained staff,” he said. “We don’t have a professional security guard.”

The conversation around the policy change at the Mission reflects a wider discussion about providing shelter to people with substance use disorder. According to the Office of National Drug Control Policy, about two-thirds of people who are chronically homeless have a primary substance use disorder. Shelters often have different requirements for their residents, from total sobriety to not using drugs or alcohol on campus. There are also some wet shelters that let homeless people drink.

In 2015, a Connecticut homeless shelter opted to close down rather than accept people who were using drugs or alcohol, according to NPR.

“The organization lacks the staff and funding to supervise active alcohol- and drug-abusers overnight, Stafford said, and there are concerns about the safety of the two people — a staff member and a volunteer — who manage the place each night,” the shelter said at the time.

View the original article at thefix.com

14 November 2018
"Six Gifts" Film Follows Athletes In Different Stages Of Recovery

“The movie is meant to inspire people currently suffering from addiction and those who are unable to find that missing piece to the puzzle to help finally get them sober.”

A new film celebrates six stories of recovery, sparking a movement to inspire and motivate the addiction/recovery community.

6 Gifts, directed by Nick Tribuno, follows six athletes from all walks of life and shares their failures and triumphs in battling addiction—Ben Gravy (surfing), Scott French (snowboarding), Rebecca Selig (skiing), Chris Vargo (endurance athlete), Monica Lebansky (yoga) and Melody Schofield (crossfit).

According to the official website of Sober and Stoked, the movement which funded and produced 6 Gifts, the film is now available to rent or to purchase on Blu Ray. Sober and Stoked co-founders Scott French and Eugene Stiltner raised $6,000 to produce the film with the help of a crowdfunding campaign.

“The movie is meant to inspire people currently suffering from addiction and those who are unable to find that missing piece to the puzzle to help finally get them sober,” according to the official website. “It is also meant for people who are already sober and feel like they need something else to get them motivated and out enjoying life, so they don’t fall back into previous traps and pitfalls.”

Both Stiltner and French, who are both originally from the Fairfax, Virginia area, have about 11 years of sobriety.

“Over a decade of doing drugs and drinking every day had taken a toll on me,” said French on the Sober and Stoked website. “I had acquired 4 DUIs over 10 years, had many drunk-in-public offenses, and many violation of probations.”

A series of failed relationships compounded his drug use. “Cocaine slowly turned into meth and crack, and then OxyContin and heroin.”

Ultimately, French surrendered himself at the courthouse and pleaded guilty to his charges. Going to jail was his chance at redemption. “I remember smiling, this was my chance. I was given an opportunity to forcibly be away from drugs and alcohol. I could transform my life, incarceration is the only way I’ll get sober.”

After enduring a “vicious” detox and attending AA meetings in jail, French put his energy into fitness, marathons and snowboarding.

His friend and co-founder Eugene Stiltner stopped drinking after a “culmination of almost 8 years of reckless, out-of-control drinking, depression, trouble with the law, and a desire to no longer go on,” he said.

Stiltner was pulled over by police and arrested while driving home after a night of drinking until last call. “When I got out the next morning, my parents and a family friend who had been sober for many years sat me down for an intervention,” he said.

Now that the film is complete, Sober and Stoked is focusing on launching a pilot program throughout Maryland and Delaware in 2019.

The pilot program will host “gear drives” to support the athletic or artistic pursuits of people in recovery.

“The concept of a gear drive is similar to a clothing drive,” Stiltner told The Fix via email. “People can clean out their basements and garages and bring in lightly used/new outdoor gear and art/music supplies, so the halfway houses we partner with can have healthy activities for people in the houses to do.”

6 Gifts is available to rent or to purchase on Blu Ray.

To schedule a screening of 6 Gifts in your community, contact wearesoberandstoked@gmail.com, or purchase a community screening kit available on their website.

You can also reach out to Sober and Stoked via social media.

Watch the trailer here.

View the original article at thefix.com

14 November 2018