Tag: victoria kim

Ohio Doctor Charged With 25 Counts Of Murder In Fentanyl Case

The doctor, who pleaded not guilty to all charges, could face 15 years to life for each count if convicted.

A former critical care doctor is facing multiple counts of murder, accused of administering fatal doses of fentanyl to patients.

While a typical dose of fentanyl is between 25 and 100 micrograms, as the Cincinnati Enquirer noted, William Husel gave patients between 500 and 2,000 micrograms of the powerful opioid.

Husel allegedly “purposely caused the death” of 25 patients; he “shortened their life and hastened or caused their death” by giving lethal amounts of fentanyl between February 2015 and November 2018, according to the Franklin County Prosecutor’s Office.

Husel surrendered to police on Wednesday (June 5) and pleaded not guilty to all charges. He could face 15 years to life for each count if convicted.

The intensive care patients that came to Mount Carmel Health System, where Husel worked until he was fired last December, were already suffering from cancer or other ailments. “In many instances, relatives had given permission to not resuscitate their family members,” the Enquirer noted.

Husel’s attorney argued that the patients’ health would have declined whether or not Husel treated them. “The patients that we are talking about are end-of-life patients,” Richard Blake said according to the Enquirer. “The people were being kept alive primarily due to equipment in the hospital. They are going to die whether Dr. Husel was on or whether another doctor was.”

Blake maintained that “at no time did he ever have the intent to euthanize anyone,” according to NBC News.

Husel was fired from Mount Carmel last December after working there since 2013. Around Christmas, relatives of the deceased were informed by the hospital that Husel’s over-prescribing had led to their family members’ deaths, the Enquirer reported. This triggered lawsuits against Husel, the hospital and staff. His medical license was suspended in late January and a criminal investigation was launched.

Mount Carmel CEO Ed Lamb recently released a video statement in which he said, “We take responsibility for the fact that the processes in place were not sufficient to prevent these actions from happening.”

Husel is also the target of 19 wrongful-death lawsuits, according to NBC News. Eight other lawsuits have been settled.

Dozens of employees who worked at the hospital were placed on leave or no longer work there. This case has left many wondering how Husel’s actions went unchecked for years under Mount Carmel’s system of care.

“What remains unclear is how Husel could circumvent apparent rules that would require him to order medications through an in-house pharmacy team and then convince a nurse to administer the drug,” NBC News reported.

View the original article at thefix.com

7 June 2019
Jessica Alba Attends Therapy With 10-Year-Old Daughter

Alba opened up about the importance of healthy communication with her daughter during a recent conference.

Actress and entrepreneur Jessica Alba recently opened up about attending therapy with her 10-year-old daughter, Honor, to encourage healthy communication and to become a “better mother.”

Alba was at Her Campus Media’s eighth annual Her Conference at Wanderlust Hollywood last Saturday (June 1), where she discussed women in the workplace, running The Honest Company which she co-founded in 2011, and growing up in Hollywood as a young actress with Mexican roots.

The mother-of-three talked about going to therapy with her 10-year-old daughter, Honor Marie Warren, to “learn to be a better mother to her and communicate better with her.”

This is a far different approach to how she was raised, she admits.

“I didn’t grow up in an environment where you talked about this stuff, and it was just like shut it down and keep it moving,” said Alba, according to The Hollywood Reporter. “So I find a lot of inspiration just in talking to my kids.”

“Some people think, like in my family, you talk to a priest and that’s it. I don’t really feel comfortable talking to him about my feelings,” she said.

Alba is often candid about her life, parenting style and approach to running her business.

Last month, she revealed the impact that coming of age in Hollywood had on her. “I was meant to feel ashamed if I tempted men. Then I stopped eating a lot when I became an actress. I made myself look more like a boy so I wouldn’t get as much attention. I went through a big tomboy phase,” she said during a panel at the Goop Health summit in Los Angeles on May 18.

Actresses Taraji P. Henson, Olivia Wilde and Busy Philipps also sat on the panel.

Being a young woman in Hollywood, Alba became guarded and became insecure about her womanhood.

“In Hollywood, you’re really preyed upon,” Alba said. “They see a young girl, and they just want to touch you inappropriately or talk to you inappropriately or think that they’re allowed to be aggressive with you in a way.”

She continued, “So, then I like created this pretty intense ‘don’t f— with me’ [attitude]. I had to create a harder shell about being a woman.”

Motherhood allowed her to stop being ashamed of her body, she said. “[After Honor was born] I was like, oh this is what these boobies are meant to do! Feed a kid! And that was the dopest s— I’d ever done. So, I came into my body as a woman finally and I stopped being ashamed of myself.”

View the original article at thefix.com

6 June 2019
Dank Recovery Memes And The Healing Power Of Humor

The memes inject humor into even the darkest subject matter—overdosing, rehab, heroin withdrawals, domestic abuse and more.

In the age of social media, it’s easy to find communities of people who share even the most obscure common interest. This is especially true for people who hesitate to openly share that part of their life with just anyone. Like people who are living with, or are recovering from, addiction.

Dank Recovery Memes is just one example of a social media channel that has gained popularity through its humorous take on the experience of living with addiction. Created in 2015 by Timothy Kavanagh, its Facebook page (where it all began) now has more than 726,000 followers. It has a presence on Instagram as well.

As a heroin user in recovery himself, Kavanagh, 35, found a community of people online who craved the same humor when it came to their shared experience. “Through social media I found other people that were sober, had good recovery, but had the same kind of sense of humor,” Kavanagh told BuzzFeed News.

Kavanagh built his seven years of recovery around total abstinence. He won’t drink, smoke or use methadone because it will trigger a relapse. But he emphasizes that his recovery may not look like the next person’s. It is unique to him.

The content posted on Dank Recovery Memes injects humor into even the darkest subject matter—overdosing, rehab, heroin withdrawals, domestic abuse and more.

“I had to reconcile the fact that I can have a really fucked-up sense of humor but not be a fucked-up human being,” Kavanagh told the Daily Dot last month. “I’m very awkward in a fun way. I’ll go out to eat and the waiter will say, ‘Can I get you a beer?’ And I’ll say, ‘I can’t. I’m allergic. I break out in track marks.’ The waiter will just look at me like oh my god…”

While plenty of his social media followers have reached out to Kavanagh to thank him for providing this space to relate to others, others don’t find his brand of humor particularly helpful, including experts interviewed by BuzzFeed News and the Daily Dot. But while they were reluctant to praise his efforts due to the graphic and “offensive” nature of his posts, they did acknowledge the importance of finding connection in recovery.

While the content on Dank Recovery Memes may be offensive to some, its greater purpose is to bring together a marginalized community through humor. And for “normies” who come across these memes, it’s a humanizing glimpse inside the world of people living with addiction.

“There are other people like me who are sober right now who don’t know you can be sober but still laugh,” said Kavanagh. “Being OK with your sense of humor and laughing at your past is a form of self-forgiveness. It helps remove the shame, stigma, and isolation that comes with addiction.”

View the original article at thefix.com

5 June 2019
Takedown Of "Malibu Rehab Guru" Christopher Bathum Chronicled In Amazon Series

Ahead of its May 30th release, a former business partner of Bathum’s tried halting the publication of Bad Therapist.

The story of the “predatory Malibu rehab guru” who sexually assaulted clients under the care of his Community Recovery chain of treatment facilities is chronicled in a new publication—and it’s already whipping up controversy.

Bad Therapist is the first of a 6-part series called Exposure published by Amazon Original Stories. But ahead of its May 30th release, a person who was interviewed for the book tried halting its publication.

The Blast reported on May 28 that it obtained a cease and desist letter sent to Amazon by Cliff Brodsky, a former business partner of Christopher Bathum. After being cheated out of a significant investment, Brodsky helped bring down Bathum, a fraud who was once respected in the addiction-recovery community.

Brodsky was interviewed by author Evan Wright for the book, but later claimed that Wright did not have his permission to publish the information that he provided.

Despite his efforts, Amazon went ahead and published Bad Therapist.

“I’m not sure why Brodsky feels I need his permission to write about him,” Wright told The Blast. “He sought out and spoke to journalists—to me and others—for a story that he has been a part of for years through his business ties with Bathum, civil litigation, his social media campaigns and his prior interviews that appeared in print, on TV and in other media.”

Meanwhile, Bathum is awaiting trial for an alleged $176 million insurance fraud. The luxury rehab “guru” was convicted in 2018 of sexually assaulting seven women while operating the Los Angeles-based Community Recovery.

Bathum built Community Recovery—one of the fastest growing rehab chains in the U.S.—as a “luxury rehab for the people” and gained respect in the industry. But it began to come undone after a 2015 exposé by LA Weekly reporter Hillel Aron revealed that Bathum had quite a few skeletons in his closet. Bathum was never a psychotherapist. He never completed college. He was a pool cleaner before working in the rehab industry.

And even as he appeared to help clients overcome substance use disorder, he himself abused meth and heroin. Wright claimed that not long before Aron’s story had published, “Bathum had overdosed in a Malibu motel while shooting drugs with patients.”

Bathum’s sexual misconduct—allegations of abuse and sexual assault—was also revealed in Aron’s report, including a claim by a former patient that he offered her drugs in exchange for sex.

Other Community Recovery clients also came forward with allegations of sexual assault.

Wright warns, “Absent reforms, there are countless Bathums out there, running their rehabs, waiting to help a loved one close to you.”

View the original article at thefix.com

4 June 2019
Mama June’s Family Staged Intervention Before Drug Possession Arrest

The intervention was featured on a recent episode of “Mama June: From Not To Hot.”

Just days before reality TV star June Shannon (aka Mama June) was arrested for drug possession back in March, she came face-to-face with a family intervention.

On the season finale of her spin-off reality show, Mama June: From Not to Hot, June’s children Lauryn “Pumpkin” Shannon, Alana “Honey Boo Boo” Thompson, Jessica and her niece Amber gathered at June’s sister Doe Doe’s home to share with June how her behavior has affected the family.

“I would love to come home and stay with you, tell you about my day, but I can’t do that because I’m scared. I’m scared to stay at your house,” said Alana, who is now living under the care of her sister and legal guardian Pumpkin, who is 19.

June left during the intervention. She admitted she was having a hard time. “Just ask Geno (boyfriend Eugene Edward Doak) how many times I sit there and cry to him and be like, ‘I hate my f—ing self. I want to f—ing kill the person that I am now.’ Because I don’t know who I am. I don’t know if I want to ‘kill myself’ or I want to kill the person that has took over my body,” she said.

She was finally persuaded to enter a treatment facility the same night. But after only 12 hours, June checked herself out and her boyfriend Geno picked her up.

Two days later, on March 13, the couple was arrested at a gas station in Alabama on drug possession charges. June allegedly had crack cocaine and a crack pipe on her. She and Geno now face felony charges for drug possession. The court ordered Geno to stay away from June.

June is currently in Alabama awaiting trial. According to her, she is not allowed to leave the state until after her hearing. She is facing several years of jail time.

Mama June became a household name on the reality show Here Comes Honey Boo Boo, a spin-off of Toddlers & Tiaras which documented the family’s life in rural Georgia.

Alana, who is now 13, reminisced about her pageant days with her mom by her side. “I just want mama back. Like at the pageant,” she said during the episode. “She helped me and we both did it together… And when we were at Dancing with the Stars, she was so fun and me and her spent time together. And she would take me to rehearsals and she would take me here and there.”

According to Pumpkin, the family is hoping June will leave Geno and get back to her old self.

Alana hopes things will change after the arrest. “So I really hope this is rock bottom for mama because once you hit rock bottom, there’s no more going deeper—you can only go up,” she said. “I really hope mama’s just thinking, I just got arrested. I need to get it together. I need to get my s— together. If this isn’t her wake-up call, I could possibly lose her forever.”

View the original article at thefix.com

4 June 2019
Does The Disease Model Of Addiction Empower People To Get Help?

A new study examined whether the messaging that addiction is a disease made people more or less likely to get help.

New research compared how differing approaches to substance use disorder affect how a person manages their addiction.

For the study, 214 participants with substance use disorder were placed into one of two groups—a group that was exposed to a “growth mindset” and a group that was exposed to messaging that emphasized addiction as a disease.

“The growth mindset message stresses that human attributes are malleable, and we know from previous work that it encourages better self-regulatory strategies such as seeking help from others,” said Jeni Burnette, associate professor of psychology at North Carolina State University and first author of the paper published in the Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology.

The growth mindset group read an article that explained the various roots of substance abuse and emphasized that there are multiple pathways to recovery, while the disease mindset group read an article that explained the effects of addiction on the brain.

After reading the articles, members of each group completed a survey asking them about their approach to dealing with their addiction.

The findings suggest that the disease messaging limited the participants’ approach to managing their addiction, while the growth mindset made participants feel more empowered to handle their substance use problem.

The growth mindset group reported feeling more confident in dealing with their problem, and reported “stronger intentions” to seek counseling or cognitive-behavioral therapy.

“When we began talking about addiction as a disease, the goal was to decrease stigma and encourage treatment,” said Sarah Desmarais, associate professor of psychology at NC State and co-author of the paper. “That worked, to an extent, but an unforeseen byproduct was that some people experiencing addiction felt like they had less agency; people with diseases have no control over them.”

The study found no difference between the groups when it came to how much they blamed themselves or whether they would seek medication-assisted treatment (MAT).

“It’s promising to see the growth mindset group express a greater willingness to seek treatment via counseling or cognitive-behavioral therapy,” said Desmarais. “And the lack of difference between groups on medication treatment is also good news, because it reflects the fact that both groups equally appreciate the medical aspects of addiction.”

The authors conclude that their findings support “moving away from messaging about addiction solely as a disease.”

“It’s more complicated than that,” said Desmarais. “Instead, the finding suggests that it would be more helpful to talk about the many different reasons people become addicted.”

View the original article at thefix.com

4 June 2019