Tag: News

Demi Lovato’s Life After Rehab

From sober homes to 12-step meetings, the pop star reportedly has a strong post-rehab support system.

After spending 90 days in an in-patient facility, singer Demi Lovato is adjusting to life after her overdose, utilizing a sober living facility and relying heavily on her ex-boyfriend Wilmer Valderrama for support.

TMZ reported that Valderrama regularly visited Lovato throughout her stay in rehab and has been talking with her and visiting since she returned to Los Angeles last week. The pair dated for six years before splitting up in 2016.

In 2015 when Lovato was celebrating three years of sobriety, she said that Valderrama had been instrumental to her recovery.

“I really wouldn’t be alive today without him,” she said, according to the Los Angeles Times.

“He’s loved me the way I never thought I deserved to be loved and with this day marking my 3rd year sober… After sharing my ups, putting up with my downs and supporting my recovery… he still never takes credit and I want the world to know how incredible his soul is,” Lovato wrote at the time.

The pair hasn’t been spotted in public, but sources told TMZ that they’ve been talking regularly since Lovato has been home. However, it’s not clear whether their interactions are romantic, especially since Lovato was spotted last week with clothing designer Henry Levy, laughing and holding hands.

TMZ also reports that Lovato is splitting her time between a private house and a sober home, where she has access to on-going sobriety support including counselors. She spends three days a week at that house, and spends the remainder of the week at home, easing in to everyday activities like going to the gym. Sources also reported that Lovato is regularly attending 12-step meetings.

In addition to the support that Lovato gets at the sober home and from attending meetings, she has a sober coach who is constantly by her side to help her get through the days, TMZ reported.

Lovato, who overdosed on pills laced with fentanyl in July, posted on social media after the incident.

“I have always been transparent about my journey with addiction,” she wrote. “What I’ve learned is that this illness is not something that disappears or fades with time. It is something I must continue to overcome and have not done yet.”

She had been silent on social media since then. However, on Tuesday she posted a picture of herself at the ballot box, saying “I am so grateful to be home in time to vote! One vote can make a difference, so make sure your voice is heard! Now go out and vote.”

View the original article at thefix.com

14 November 2018
Black Hawk Down Hero Fights For Veterans With Addiction

The retired hero discusses the turning point that led him to become an advocate for veterans with addiction in a recent interview.

Heroes come in many forms, and now a soldier who fought in the battle documented forever in its namesake movie—Black Hawk Down—is finding himself a different kind of hero than he once was. After serving the country as a soldier, he now helps veterans with opioid addiction.

The famous battle began Oct 3, 1993 when then—U.S Army Master Sergeant Norm Hooten went in as Delta force team leader for the assault force in Mogadishu, Somalia. Hooten and his team flew in to Somalia to capture command members fighting for a warlord.

“It ended up being a lot more than we thought it was going to be,” Hooten recalled in KOMO News.

Horrifically, as the American team left the completed mission, one of the helicopters—a Blackhawk—was brought down in enemy fire. Hooten and his team returned to find and rescue the downed copter, spending 18 hours of battle fighting toward the site, and then bringing home the dead soldiers. In the end, 18 American soldiers were killed. Hooten’s squadron was hit particularly hard with more than half wounded.

“Not only were we rushing to get there,” Hooten said. “Every other hostile militiaman in that city was doing the same thing. We were going to go in and recover every person that went in if it took us forever to do so.”

Twenty years later, one of Hooten’s team members died. He lost his life not to enemy soldiers, but to opioid addiction. “I used to think of it [drug addiction] as a choice,” Hooten admits. “But it’s really not a choice. It’s truly a disease.”

Hooten was grief-stricken and enraged in a new way.” It was a different feeling losing a dear friend to a drug overdose than one in combat,” Hooten said. “Both are tragic but one is a little more acceptable than the other as far as I’m concerned.”

Hooten felt a later-in-life call to service, and at age 55 he received his doctorate of pharmacy. He is now a clinical pharmacist at the Orlando Veteran’s Association, working to support and save veterans with addiction.

A staggering statistic that moved Hooten to action: opioid abuse has killed more Americans than the Iraq, Afghanistan and Vietnam wars combined. Due to PTSD and pain resulting from injuries, veterans are prescribed opioids and more at risk for opioid addiction.

This past Veteran’s Day, vets had a rally pushing for more access to legal cannabis for the treatment of pain through the Department of Veterans Affairs. “Use cannabis, die less,” Mike Krawitz, a 56-year-old disabled U.S. Air Force veteran told Marijuana.com.

If you are a veteran or a service member in crisis, there are resources to help. Please call the Veterans Crisis Line at 1-800-273-8255 and Press 1.

View the original article at thefix.com

14 November 2018
John Mayer Details Giving Up Alcohol After Drake's Birthday Party

“I was in my sixth day of the hangover… I went, ‘OK, John, what percentage of your potential would you like to have?’”

Singer-songwriter John Mayer hasn’t had a drink in two years.

“I just went deep one night, and I remember being like, ‘What happens if I keep going?’” he said in a new interview with Complex.

The decision was simple. “It was Drake’s 30th birthday party, and I made quite a fool of myself,” he recalled. “And then I had a conversation with myself. I remember where I was. I was in my sixth day of the hangover… I went, ‘OK, John, what percentage of your potential would you like to have?’”

There was no wrong answer, he told himself. But in the end, he wanted it all—100%.

“The voice in my head said, ‘OK. Do you know what that means?’ I went, ‘We don’t have to talk anymore. I get it.’”

The “Your Body Is a Wonderland” singer is hoping to show people that there are alternatives to drinking. “I want people to know that ‘that’s enough for now’ is on the menu, so to speak,” he said on social media October 2017.

Giving up drinking—a very personal experience, he says—paved the way to new things. “The next year, I did four tours, I was in two bands, I was happy on airplanes.”

Not drinking “feels like boredom at first,” he explained. But sticking with it will level everything out. “You’re like, ‘Oh, I”m not having these high highs.’ But if you work, you can bring the whole line up.”

Mayer says because it is different for everyone, it’s hard to explain how he came to quit booze on his own.”It’s the most personal thing to people. If I were to tell other people how they could do it, it just is so particular to your own spirit and your own psychology that it’s almost impossible to develop one way of explaining it to someone else.”

Mayer also recalled collaborating on a song with late rapper Mac Miller (born Malcolm McCormick). The Pittsburgh native died of a drug overdose on Sept. 7 in his home in Studio City, California.

“I just wish it wasn’t fatal. I just wish figuring out your life didn’t take your life away from you,” Mayer says. “I don’t have an answer for how to fix that, but once you get old enough to understand how valuable life is, you look at people and go, ‘I just wish you could work this out.’”

View the original article at thefix.com

14 November 2018
Teen Drug Use Drops In Ohio

A local prevention expert credits greater awareness, media attention and personal tragedies for the decrease.

There’s some good news out of Ohio, as a new survey indicates teen prescription painkiller and heroin use are on the decline.

According to the Cincinnati Enquirer, the numbers come from a survey administered every two years by PreventionFirst, a nonprofit with the goal of stopping teen drug use before it begins.

“2018 is the lowest I’ve ever seen it,” Mary Haag, president and CEO of PreventionFirst, told the Enquirer.

The survey involved almost 33,000 students in grades 7-12 from both private and public schools in the greater Cincinnati area.

According to the findings, 2.4% of surveyed students reported using any type of prescription drugs in the 30 days prior to the survey, and 0.3% reported using heroin in that same timeframe. In comparison, in 2012, 6.5% reported using prescription pain pills and 1.8% reported heroin use.

Haag tells the Enquirer that these numbers are encouraging and she credits greater awareness, media attention and personal tragedies for the decrease.

However, the survey did raise some concerns when it came to alcohol and marijuana. According to the results, in the 30 days before the survey, 13.7% of students reported using alcohol and 8.1% reported using marijuana.

Another recent survey, the CDC’s 2017 Youth Risk Behavior Survey, also asked questions about teen opioid use. This survey asked whether students had ever misused prescription opioids and the number answering yes was higher, at 14%.

Nancy Brener, lead health scientist for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Division of Adolescent and School Health, tells the Enquirer that this response is concerning. However, the same survey also showed a decrease in overall drug use in teens.

“I think it’s important to understand that we have made progress,“ Brener noted.

The survey also indicates that those who do not smoke cigarettes or use alcohol, illegal drugs or prescription drugs by age 21 are “virtually certain never to do so.”

According to Marc Fishman, medical director of Maryland Treatment Centers and assistant professor at Johns Hopkins University Department of Psychiatry, tells the Enquirer that it’s vital that treatment centers be willing to treat all types of substance use disorders in teenagers.

“We need more treatment,” Fishman told the Enquirer. “Treatment of cocaine-use disorder. Treatment of alcohol-use disorder. Treatment of marijuana-use disorder.”

“The vast majority of people with opioid-use disorder start with non-opioid use,” Fishman added. “Most of them don’t progress, but almost all of the cases of opioid-use disorder started there.”

View the original article at thefix.com

14 November 2018
Mexico's Supreme Court Strikes Down Recreational Marijuana Ban

Though limited in scope, the decision was considered a victory for pro-cannabis groups.

Lawmakers in Mexico opened a door to marijuana legalization by declaring an absolute ban on recreational use a violation of constitutional rights.

The country’s top court declared on October 31 that it had found in favor of two amparos (or legal injunctions) against the ban, which when added to three previous challenges, resulting in the five amparos required to change national law.

The country’s top court ruled in all five cases that the “effects caused by marijuana do not justify an absolute prohibition on its consumption.”

Though limited in scope, the decision was considered a victory for pro-cannabis groups, and was soon followed by legislation submitted to Congress that would legalize recreational marijuana use in the country.

The Mexican government has maintained a hardline stance towards marijuana legalization for decades. Senator Olga Sanchez, who is President-elect Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s choice for interior minister and the author of the legalization bill, suggested that this approach can be considered a contributing factor in the deaths of more than 230,000 individuals in Mexico, victims of the country’s decades-long war against drug cartels.

The first significant effort towards legalization came with the Supreme Court’s 2015 ruling, which allowed eight-year-old Graciela Elizalde to use cannabis as treatment for a severe form of epilepsy.

The second amparo came the same year, when the court granted four members of the Mexican Society for Responsible and Tolerant Self-Consumption the right to grow, transport and use marijuana. Medical marijuana was approved in the country in 2017, though health professionals are only allowed to prescribe cannabis oil with less than 1% THC.

Pro-cannabis groups marshaled their forces to present three more legal challenges, and passed one before ruling on the final two on October 31 and establishing jurisprudence. In its statement, the Supreme Court noted that its decision did not allow for unrestricted or unregulated use of marijuana; more importantly, the ruling only allowed those individuals that filed the legal challenges to cultivate and consume marijuana.

Senator Sanchez’s bill, submitted this week, proposes that licensed companies could grow and sell marijuana, and individuals would be allowed to grow plants for private use—though in the latter case, approximately one pound would be allowed per year.

Exactly what form the bill will take once it is passed into the hands of Mexico’s Congress remains unclear, but Supreme Court Judge Arturo Zaldlívar said that the move towards legalization is inevitable.

“The world is going in that direction,” he said. “I think that when we announced the first approval of cannabis amparo, it was very polemic, very controversial. But time and history are proving that we were right, fortunately.”

View the original article at thefix.com

13 November 2018
Big Claims About Pot's Health Benefits Made Possible By Limited Research

“It’s hard to study marijuana, and there’s money to be made in the business. That’s an unfortunate combination that makes it exceedingly hard to separate the truth from the hype.”

Cannabidiol (CBD) can alleviate your PTSD and anxiety symptoms, while THC can reduce your nausea and inflammation—or, at least, that is what the medical marijuana industry wants you to believe.

As using cannabis has become more socially acceptable, industry insiders are making big claims about their products’ health benefits, despite the fact that there is limited scientific research on cannabis due to the federal government’s tight control on the Schedule I substance.

“Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, but if something is being marketed as having health benefits, it needs to be proven to have health benefits,” Salomeh Keyhani, a professor of internal medicine at UC San Francisco told The Verge. “I think it’s very dangerous to be asserting that things are very beneficial without thinking about risks.”

Keyhani authored a study published in September in the Annals of Internal Medicine examining how Americans perceive cannabis. He found that 81% of Americans believe that marijuana has at least some health benefit, and 66% believe it can help relieve pain. Nearly 30% of people surveyed believe that using marijuana can prevent health issues.

The research on the medical benefits of cannabis shows that Americans may be vastly overestimating its effectiveness. “Americans’ view of marijuana use is more favorable than existing evidence supports,” authors concluded.

“Limited evidence suggests that cannabis may alleviate neuropathic pain in some patients, but insufficient evidence exists for other types of chronic pain,” authors of another study in the Annals of Internal Medicine wrote, noting that research also shows that cannabis can increase the risk for mental health consequences.

Despite the Drug Enforcement Administration’s promise to grant more licenses to study cannabis, this has not happened, meaning that research has lagged behind the growing social acceptance of marijuana. This has allowed an industry to be created around cannabis as a health product, without research on the benefits or dangers.

“The irony is that by trying to keep us ‘safe’ and refusing to reschedule, the DEA is making us less safe by letting us be drowned by hype without quality evidence either way,” writes Angela Chen of The Verge.

Last Tuesday, voters in Michigan approved legalizing recreational marijuana, meaning that a quarter of Americans can now use the drug for non-medical use, and many more can opt into a medical marijuana program.

“All the while, the research lags behind,” Chen writes. “It’s hard to study marijuana, and there’s money to be made in the business. That’s an unfortunate combination that makes it exceedingly hard to separate the truth from the hype.”

View the original article at thefix.com

13 November 2018
FDA Tries To Blame Kratom In Newborn Withdrawal Case

The agency claims it is aware of four other NAS cases involving infants exposed to kratom in utero.

A new case report published in the journal Pediatrics suggests that kratom was the cause of a newborn’s withdrawal symptoms. While the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and other naysayers of the herbal supplement say this is a prime example of kratom’s potential for abuse and addiction, researchers say there’s not enough information to draw any hard conclusions.

According to the case report, a former oxycodone user gave birth to a boy who showed signs of drug withdrawal—he was jittery, screaming, and required a morphine treatment to stay alive.

The mother reported that she had used oxycodone for almost a decade. But she completed a treatment program and was off the drugs during her pregnancy. Indeed, no opioids were detected in a drug test.

According to the woman’s husband, she had kratom tea every day to treat her withdrawal symptoms and help her sleep. Kratom, a plant that is native to Southeast Asia, has a fierce and loyal following of people who say it has helped them manage pain and treat opioid withdrawal.

But people should practice caution, says lead author of the case report Dr. Whitney Eldridge, a neonatologist at BayCare Health System in Florida. “I fear that women making genuine commitments to overcome their dependency may develop a false sense of safety by using a substance that is advertised as a non-opioid alternative,” she said.

As CNN notes, there is no explicit link between kratom and neonatal abstinence syndrome (NAS) made in the case report.

There is not enough information to do so, says Dr. Andrew Kruegel, associate research scientist at Columbia University. “The main limitation is that we don’t know anything about the dosage that the mother was taking. Without that information, you can’t really extrapolate too much.” Nor was it verified—other than from the husband’s account—that the substance the mother was ingesting was indeed kratom.

According to the FDA, the boy’s case “further illustrates the concerns the FDA has identified about kratom, including the potential for abuse and addiction.”

The agency claims it is aware of four other NAS cases involving infants exposed to kratom in utero.

In April, FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb went so far as to state that “compounds in kratom make it so it isn’t just a plant—it’s an opioid.”

View the original article at thefix.com

13 November 2018
Imagine Dragons Release New Song About Depression

“Zero” is featured on the soundtrack for the upcoming animated movie “Ralph Breaks The Internet.”

Ralph Breaks The Internet is the long awaited sequel to the animated hit Wreck It Ralph, and it’s due to hit theaters on November 21. On the movie’s soundtrack is a new song, “Zero,” by Imagine Dragons, and it deals with high-functioning depression.

Dan Reynolds, the lead singer of Imagine Dragons, told The New York Post that “Zero” “is a song about somebody who feels empty, who feels like nothing, but continues on and puts a smile on their face. That’s kind of the theme of my life: a constant battle to find positivity in living and feeling a little empty at times. I’m trying to fill that void.”

The single also captures the contradiction of high-functioning depression in that it’s a happy song in a Disney movie, but the lyrics tell us, “Let me tell you what it’s like to be a zero, let me show you what it’s like to never feel, like I’m good enough for anything that’s real, I’m looking for a way out.”

In a press release about the single, Reynolds added, “That journey of feeling like nothing and trying to realize and recognize your worth as a human is an important part of life. And given the distorted version of reality kids face online and that expectations that come with it, this struggle is real for so many people right now.”

Reynolds has been open about his struggles with depression in the past. He told CBS This Morning, “When I’m happy, I’m very happy. When I’m low, I’m so low, and [the band] have had to deal with that for years and years.”

Reynolds also told the BBC he had to seek help after a tour. “It came to a point where I didn’t have an option. It was lose my family and lose my life or seek help.” Reynolds went to a therapist in 2016 “sat down and basically faced it head on for the first time.”

“This year has been very healing for me,” Reynolds says. “I would say I’ve dealt with a much lower level of depression this year than I have in the past decade, and I think that comes from living my truth.”

View the original article at thefix.com

13 November 2018
Artie Lange Ready For Sobriety: "It’s Been Long Enough"

“I’m about to take a big step to help myself, to save my life. I’m sure you will hear about it. I feel like I’m not done. I have another run of laughing with you all.”

Comedian Artie Lange seems ready for a change.

Now 51 years old, his health fading, Lange appears ready to commit to sobriety. And it begins with a treatment program.

“I’m about to go into drug treatment and commit to a full rehab, in-patient,” he said in a recent interview on The Steve Trevelise 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.”

With Kevin Meara walking him through the process, Lange is ready to receive help. This time he’s hoping it will stick. Meara is the co-chair of City of Angels, a Groveville, New Jersey-based organization that provides interventions, recovery support, counseling services and more at no cost.

Lange did not expect to live past 25, he said in a previous interview. He was 37 at the time fellow comedian Mitch Hedberg died at the same age of a drug overdose in 2005.

“When I heard [Mitch] died, I had such guilt and said to myself, ‘God, if I was a better person I would have just said, you know what, the heck with the Stern show, forget Caroline’s.’ I should have grabbed him and said, let’s go to the hospital right now. Let’s get detoxed and get better right now,” Lange said on The Steve Trevelise Show.

“But Mitch was the kind of guy who openly said—he was so far gone—[that] he goes, ‘Guys, don’t try to help me. I wanna do heroin ’til I die.’ And that’s a mindset that people get into because they’re so afraid of not being on it that you lose sense of reality. It just is so sad to think of that. And even that didn’t stop me.”

When Trevelise asked if Lange can see himself getting to this point, he replied, “I hope not. I don’t think so. I don’t think I’m even close to there yet.”

Lange, who said in a previous interview that his fading health is starting to worry him, does not want to end up like Hedberg or Greg Giraldo, another comedian who died of a drug overdose in 2010. He was 44 years old.

“I get nervous now, because now I wanna live. Now I do care about it, and I think that maybe I’ve done too much damage,” Lange said to NJ Advance Media in July.

The day after his recent interview on Nov. 5, Lange tweeted some uplifting words to his followers: “I’m about to take a big step to help myself, to save my life. I’m sure you will hear about it. I feel like I’m not done. I have another run of laughing with you all. I want to thank you fans the way you thank me. You have saved my life. You are special to me. Wish me luck.”

View the original article at thefix.com

13 November 2018
Low-Level Weed Cases Not A Priority, Michigan's Top Prosecutors Say

Michigan voters approved a ballot measure to legalize recreational marijuana last week.

On the heels of a successful ballot measure that legalized recreational weed in Michigan, prosecutors last week put out a statement clarifying that pot is still illegal on a federal level – but they won’t make weed cases a priority.

“Marijuana continues to be an illegal drug under federal law,” Matthew Schneider and Andrew Birge, U.S. Attorneys for the Eastern and Western Districts of Michigan, wrote in a statement Thursday, according to the Detroit Free Press. “Because we have taken oaths to protect and defend the Constitution and the laws of the United States, we will not unilaterally immunize anyone from prosecution for violating federal laws simply because of the passage of Proposal One.”

But – following the lead of federal prosecutors elsewhere – the duo said they wouldn’t make throwing resources at marijuana enforcement a priority.

“Our offices have never focused on the prosecution of marijuana users or low-level offenders, unless aggravating factors are present,” the federal prosecutors said. “That will not change.”

The factors that could pique federal interest in a given case include everything from the involvement of other illegal drugs to suspects’ past criminal records and from the use of guns to the possibility of environmental contamination.

The ballot measure approved by 56% of Michigan voters on Tuesday will allow adults over 21 to grow and use weed legally, and it’ll take effect 10 days after the vote is certified.

“The Proposal 1 campaign boiled down into one of fact versus fear,” Coalition to Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol Spokesperson Josh Hovey said, according to Forbes. “The data from the nine other states to have legalized marijuana made clear that regulation and taxation are a better solution. Legalization of marijuana will end the unnecessary waste of law enforcement resources used to enforce the failed policy of prohibition while generating hundreds of millions of dollars each year for Michigan’s most important needs.”

But, while Michiganders greenlit legal pot on Tuesday, the resignation of Attorney General Jeff Sessions a day later created some uncertainty about the future of the nation’s marijuana enforcement policies.

Although Sessions was no friend to marijuana reformers, he did clarify earlier this year that he was not interested in pursuing small-time weed cases due to a lack of resources for low-level crimes.

It’s not clear what a new attorney general might mean for federal approaches to pot.

View the original article at thefix.com

13 November 2018