“Sleepaway School”

by Lee Stringer

Reviewed by Ginger B.

“We wee people were all at risk. Every mother’s son of us. Even those of us with overflowing larders and soft, warm beds. Our young hearts like leaves in the wind, we all had to face down the inner turmoil of being, simply children. We were all on shaky ground.”

These few sentences, written in the preface of this memoir, give the reader a taste of what is to follow in this personal, yet often matter-of-fact description of the adolescent struggles of a troubled, young, poor, black boy in an environment that is often inclined…

February 26, 2008
Missing Our Old Habits

Whenever we make the effort to free ourselves of an addiction or a habit we no longer need, we are often surprised to find ourselves missing the old pattern as we would a familiar friend. This sounds counterintuitive, because we think we should instinctively gravitate toward what is good for us. Yet, it makes a lot of sense when you consider that we humans are creatures of habit. This is why we gravitate to people and places—and patterns of behavior—that make us feel comfortable. Therefore, many of the habits we form are not conscious and…

I met a truly extra-ordinary person today through my job. Working as a gad-about reporter, I’ve met everyone from Tom Cruise to Desmond Tutu, but the young woman I met today made as strong an impression as anyone I’ve ever shaken hands with.

She’s 23, African-American, works full time in non-profit, is the mother of two, guardian of 2 more, in recovery on several fronts, as well as being a survivor of some really horrific abuse in her childhood.

But none of this is not what most impressed me about her.

What got to me is that this young woman’s heart still sings.

By…

They say relapse is a part of recovery. And when I first started hearing it, it didn’t seem to make a lot of sense to me. That was back when I still thought of recovery as an exercise of will; that you make your decision, get the help needed if you need it, then hunker down and bully your way through to the end. Relapsing didn’t seem to fit into that picture at all.
I was 47 years old and, after the ravages of a 12 year love/hate affair with the crack pipe, didn’t have nickel to my name. Nor a…

Sam Sullivan is the mayor of Vancouver and a long time supporter of drug policy reform and harm reduction in Canada. This video shows him adressing the closing ceremony of the International Drug Policy Reform Conference in New Orleans, December 2007. He pointed out that drug addiction is neither a moral nor a medical issue, but a management issue like other disabilites. He said drug addicts needs substitution treatment to manage their lives just as he needed a wheelchair to get elected as a mayor.

A hilarious character from the British television show, The Fast Show (aired in the late 1990’s), Rowley Birkin, Q.C. (Queen’s Council) strikes again from his cozy leather chair…

This article is from Newsweek’s cover story on Science. Very interesting…

Addiction isn’t a weakness; it’s an illness. Now vaccines and other new drugs may change the way we treat it.

Photographs by Gerald Forster for Newsweek

Faces of Recovery: (Clockwise from top left) Alvin O. Taylor, Megan Pudliner, Brandal Mitchell (with his mother, Chase), Christine Kelly, Sam Stanford and Annie Fuller each tell their stories

By Jeneen Interlandi | NEWSWEEK

Mar 3, 2008 Issue

 

Annie Fuller knew she was in trouble a year ago, when in the space of a few hours she managed to drink a male co-worker more than twice her size under the table.…

Here’s a little info on the interesting VH1 series, “Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew“…

“Celebrity Rehab” is the first television series to chronicle the dramatic, unscripted real life experiences of a group of actual celebrities as they make the life-changing decision to enter themselves into a drug, alcohol and addiction treatment program with the sincere desire to achieve true rehabilitation and recovery.

This compelling true account of addiction, healing, and redemption is being supervised with great compassion and insight by renowned addiction and recovery expert Dr. Drew Pinsky, Medical Director of the Department of Chemical Dependency Services at Southern California’s Las Encinas…

I’m really really interested in what sobriety does to one’s spirituality and faith. So, I’m asking anyone who wanders by this blog to take a moment and describe their sober relationship with H.P. and the changes that have come from it. And in the spirit of openness, I’ll go first.

I had no faith at all in H.P. when I got sober. I came to an acknowledgment of God retroactively–by tracing my sober life backwards, seeing all the good changes that had happened in my life (and my head) with God riding shotgun that I’d never been able to pull off…

It started as an innocent gesture…yes, that’s how it always starts, doesn’t it? Let’s see if I can remember…. Ah, yes - It began that week-end in the summer of 2005. I was at a beach house in North Carolina with my sister and her family, who had invited me to spend some time with them during their own family vacation. I adore my nieces and was really looking forward to spending time with them. Little did I know it was to be the beginning of the end for me. Yes, I am here to tell you that something happened…

by Mark Harris
Black History month is everyday for a lot of us, myself included. The cultural amnesia that is promoted as part of American culture is a primary component of what makes up an addictive society. Primarily when you forget who you are, you don’t care where you came from or where you are going. There is a saying among my people “It got so bad, it got good to them.” In short you basically take addiction as normal behavior, a normal lifestyle.

I’m on one of my walks downtown, and this kid, ok he’s twenty, not a little kid, but…

By William C. Moyers

Each week, I get scores of letters and emails from parents who, more often than not, share their heartbreaking stories of addicted children unable to break free from the grip of alcohol or other drugs.

At times, it seems like nobody under the age of 21 has a tale with a happy ending. Dropping out of school, teenage pregnancy, gang violence, jail and even death are the final chapter that too many parents share about their kids.

But young people can and do recover. Perhaps more than any generation before them, today’s teenagers are finding and holding onto sobriety…

This excerpt on alcoholism and drug addictions comes from the online Ezine, Opinion Editorials, a project from Frontiers of Freedom. Check it out…

By Lou Peters

February 01, 2008

“It’ll never happen to me.” That’s the line you hear everyone say about becoming addicted when it comes to alcohol and substance abuse. To the user, that first drink…that first experience on any given drug is “amazing”…especially if you’re in your teens. What’s really amazing is the percentage of the people who don’t get addicted from the first use. Even more amazing are the reasons for the initial use. Back in the 1980s, the…

Here is an interesting article we found on Methadone treatment and the number of deaths connected to the drug. Definitely worth a look…

By Joanna Kiernan
Sunday January 27 2008
The drug substitute methadone is leading to the deaths of more addicts than heroin, disturbing figures have revealed.A report by the Dublin City Coroner has shown that of the 87 inquests heard in his court last year, pure heroin was found to have caused the deaths of 14 people and contributed to a further 12. However, methadone, the legal substitute used to treat those with a heroin addiction, was found to have caused…

I suppose there’s no greater gift that sobriety has given me than my regular Sunday morning yack with my daughter who lives in Colorado.

I give myself about an overall  D+ as a mother (I had my good moments, but stability wasn’t my forte when she was growing up), but over the last couple of decades of my sobriety we’ve re-discovered each other as people. I made amends, she forgave, and then we both put the past behind us and got on with enjoying each other as parent and child.

I believe we best express our relationship with H.P. through our relationships…

By William C. Moyers
There’s been plenty of media buzz lately about President Bush’s recollections of being buzzed in days long ago. The president, whose drunk driving arrest and other run-ins with alcohol growing up is well known, has not talked much over the years about how or why he stopped drinking in 1986.

But last week, he offered perhaps his most pointed and candid assessment of his struggles, referring to an “addiction” and even citing the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous and the power of faith to overcome the problem. Bush made his remarks during a visit with newly sober clients…

My kid called me at work yesterday. He usually calls once a day just to check in, which is good, because otherwise I’d be hunting him down in every nook and cranny of this town until I knew he wasn’t where he shouldn’t be. But this time his salutation was different than the usual “Hey, Mom.” He began his greeting with, “Mom, you’ll never believe what just happened to me!” Now, that statement could bring terror into a mother’s heart in a nanosecond, so I wasn’t sure how to reply. “What, honey?”, I asked, trying to hide the trepidation in…

Before I became a broadcast journalist, I co-owned a couple of restaurants –one of which, for a brief time, was the Blue Moon Diner in Charlottesville, Virginia. My partner was a glorious woman named Maggie Cox; friend supreme, chef supreme, character supreme. We had a blast, serving a combination of traditional diner food and whatever we could dream up in the decrepit kitchen. I baked fresh apple pies and biscuits every day and if there was any apple pie left over from the day before, we gave it away at breakfast.

The place was too small to support two family units,…

The Sports Lover’s Guide to Recovery

by Andrew L. Dieden

Reviewed by Ginger B.

I am not a sports person. I’d rather watch mold grow than sit in front of a television looking at hockey players hit each other with sticks, or try to find out who’s got the damn football on any given Sunday afternoon. I know nothing about most sports, except that when I was a kid, Ron Santo from the Chicago Cubs was called Pizza Man. I’ve been to a few baseball games, one college football game (a total waste of a beautiful afternoon) and saw Meadlowlark Lemon play for…

By our guest writer, blogger In Repair.

I’m not good at future planning. I don’t plan at all. I don’t know what I’m doing tomorrow. I don’t have a day planner and I don’t have a diary. I completely live in the now, not in the past, not in the future.

~Heath Ledger

I walked in the door after work on January 22, 2008, to my husband asking, “Did you hear about your *boy*?” I had no idea who he was talking about. When he told me Heath Ledger had died, I felt a bit of a knot form in my stomach.

“How?…

I enjoy all elections, but I’m particularly enjoying this one ! Yesterday was my state’s (Virginia’s) primary, and I was on the road all day–driving almost 300 miles, visiting out-of-the-way polling places, phoning in hourly reports to my station. I don’t think I’ve ever seen people waiting in line as cheerfully as the voters I talked to within the collection of elementary schools, Ruritan Halls, and Rescue Squads I visited. We were all so engaged with our country’s political process–as though, somehow, we were at the beginning a grand housekeeping of our country’s ethos. I felt like high-fiving the world!

Come…

This reality show takes on the reality of dealing with fame and and the stresses that may lead some to addiction…

The Monitor
January 13th 2008
By Jon Caramanica
Special to The Times

HERE’S how “Celebrity Rehab With Dr. Drew,” which premiered on Thursday and will run on VH1 for eight weeks, ends: It didn’t work.
At least, for some.
Drugs and alcohol may not be the only demons affecting the C- and D-listers on ‘Celebrity Rehab With Dr. Drew.’
In the five months from when the show was filmed and now, a few participants have very publicly fallen off the wagon. TMZ has aired video of two…

An article from News 14 Carolina on mothers who used meth in order to cope with their family life. Check out the video link on this page…

January 20th 2008
By Ivanhoe Newswire
News 14 Carolina

PHOENIX, Ariz. — According to government statistics, women make up 49 percent of all patients treated for a primary addiction to meth. Long-term effects of taking meth can be devastating, and more and more mothers are turning to this dangerous drug. The results can be disastrous.
Jasmine Trujillo loves her daughter Savannah, but until recently she also loved something else. “Meth became my higher power, it was something I…

THIS SOBER LIFE

by Dave Breslin

Reviewed by Ginger B.

I just finished reading a book of poetry called “This Sober Life.” The book was self-published in 2002 by Dave Breslin, who, at the time of publication, was about 2/1/2 years clean and sober. Breslin got sober at the age of 19 and writes that he wasn’t even aware that he could be suffering from alcoholism at such a young age. He thought he was just being “a normal teenage kid”, but the depression that ensued when he stopped drinking made him acutely aware that he was battling much more than the average…

More and more Hollywood actors are heading to rehab, here is an article excerpt from The Sydney Morning Herald…

February 5, 2008

Needing support … Eva Mendes has become the latest high-profile name to check into the Cirque Lodge clinic in Utah.
Photo: AFP Eva Mendes is in Rehab.

The actress is reportedly being treated at Utah’s Cirque Lodge rehab clinic for an undisclosed addiction, after deciding herself she needed “professional support”.

Her spokesman said: “Eva has been working hard for the past year and made a positive decision to take some much needed time off to attend to some personal issues that, while not critical,…

Grammy’s Says “Yes, Yes, Yes” to Winehouse
By Nekesa Mumbi Moody
Associated Press
Trapped half a world away by the place she promised to never “go, go, go,” a vibrant, exuberant Amy Winehouse dominated the Grammys on Sunday night, winning five awards and delivering a defiant performance of her autobiographical hit “Rehab” via satellite from London.Winehouse, nominated for six awards, lost the final prize in a shocker when Herbie Hancock took album of the year for “River: The Joni Letters.””You know it’s been 43 years since the first and only time that a jazz artist got the album of the year award,” Hancock said, then…

It’s 4 o’clock Friday afternoon. I’ve been on deadline all week and, man, am I pooped. I spent the day (after filing my story) cleaning up my e-mail and trying to clean up the inside of my head. I think, you know, that I must be really, really tired. I have a tendency to push myself to keep going. The more I get done, the more there seems to be that I want to do or try.

My office at work has a window. I sit facing it. with my back to the door and, as I have a very friendly…

Since the death of Heath Ledger more Hollywood stars are checking into rehab…

Marie Claire
Friday 8 February
Kirsten Dunst is reportedly ‘not doing well’ at the Cirque Lodge rehab facility, sources close to the singer claim.

The Marie Antoinette actress has checked into the Utah centre, which specialises in substance abuse issues. Eva Mendes is also currently being treated for suspected prescription drug addiction, and Lindsay Lohan spent two months there last summer.

Speaking to People magazine a source claims, ‘She’s not doing well. People were pushing her to go in there but there was no intervention… She has been partying hard for a…

An interesting excerpt from the San Diego City Beat on Methadone…

Methadone is the ‘gold standard’ for getting addicts off heroin–just not in San Diego County
By Kelly Davis
January 29th 2008

No one’s quite sure how addiction works—why among a group of friends who share a few lines of coke or a balloon of heroin at a party, one becomes an addict and the other nine never pass the point of being recreational users. Or why one person can toss out a bottle of leftover Vicodin once he’s recovered from his back sprain while another finds himself doctor shopping for prescriptions, unable to function…

It’s still too early to know yet what killed actor Heath Ledger.

But the typical media frenzy surrounding the sudden death of a young celebrity already suggests a drug overdose may be the cause.

No matter the final official determination, Ledger’s legacy now seems doomed to become part of the “Hall of Shame” that includes Britney Spears, Lindsey Lohan and so many other notable people who crash and burn, and then crash again for all of us to see.

I am still waiting for the tabloids to do a story about somebody other than Eric Clapton who hit bottom and then held on…