Is the Time of the No-Knock Drug Raid Coming to an End? #health #holistic

In the mass protests over out-of-control and racially biased law enforcement ignited by the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, Floyd’s name isn’t the only one being chanted by the crowds. There’s also Ahmaud Arbery, the Georgia jogger gunned down by white vigilantes. There’s Rayshard Brooks, the Atlanta man who was shot and killed by police after he fell asleep in his car in a Wendy’s drive-through lane and got into a tussle with the officers when they tried to arrest him.And then there’s Breonna Taylor. The 26-year-old Black EMT and Louisville resident was killed near midnight on March 13, as police executed a no-knock drug search warrant at her apartment, waking Taylor and her boyfriend. The police opened fire after they were met by gunfire from Taylor’s boyfriend, Kenneth Walker. As the circumstances of her death emerged, she has become the face of the burgeoning movement to radically restrict the police resort to no-knock warrants, which could just as aptly be referred to as home invasion warrants.That’s what it must have felt like to Taylor and her boyfriend Kenneth Walker. Although Louisville police claimed they knocked and announced their presence, they were operating with a no-knock warrant; the police claim that they knocked is disputed by Walker and Taylor’s relatives. Walker said he and Taylor were in bed together when the door crashed in and he thought someone was breaking into their home. In his statement after the incident, Walker said he fired in self-defense. (Here is that fraught zone where the war on drugs encounters the Second Amendment.)Walker’s single shot wounded one officer, who returned fire along with two other officers. Breonna Taylor was hit by at least eight bullets and died at the scene. Walker was charged with attempted murder (although those charges have now been dropped). No drugs were found at the apartment. To make matters even worse, the drug suspect the police were looking for was already in custody when police raided Taylor’s apartment.“They executed this innocent woman because they botched the search warrant execution,” attorney Benjamin Crump, who is representing the Taylor family in a lawsuit filed over the killing, told the New York Times. “They had the main person that they were trying to get in their custody, so why use a battering ram to bust her door down and then go in there and execute her?”Outrage over the killing of Breonna Taylor quietly festered as the country hunkered down amidst the coronavirus pandemic, but when the killing of George Floyd finally galvanized protests against police brutality, the pain and anger over Taylor’s killing became a rallying cry not just in Louisville but also across the country. And it’s bringing a laser-like focus on a practice more akin to raiding terrorist hideouts in the Middle East than to serving and protecting American citizens, which in turn is leading to a renewed focus on the role of the drug war in all of this.The war on drugs provided the impetus for no-knock raids from the beginning, and the courts were all too willing to help. The 1963 U.S. Supreme Court case Ker v. California, which gave constitutional imprimatur to forcible police entries, was a drug case where the possibility that evidence could be destroyed carried the day for the cops. When the Supreme Court revisited and refined its no-knock doctrine in the 1990s, the impetus once again was enforcing drug prohibition.In a case involving small-scale sales of marijuana and meth to an informant, the court ruled in 1995 in Wilson v. Arkansas that police must generally “knock and announce” before kicking in a door with a search warrant, although it allowed for exceptions as per Ker. In another small-time drug sales case in 1997, Richards v. Wisconsin, the court held that police needed to demonstrate “a reasonable suspicion” that announcing their presence before bashing in the door would be dangerous or allow for the destruction of evidence for a no-knock warrant to be permitted.Those rulings left “reasonable suspicion” up to state and local judges, and while little national or even state data exists on the rates at which judges rejected no-knock warrant requests, a couple of local studies suggest they essentially acted as rubber stamps. A recent PBS NewsHour report cited a Denver Post analysis of no-knock warrant requests from Denver police in 2000, a year after Mexican citizen Ismael Mena was killed in a no-knock drug raid. The cops got 158 out of 163 requests approved. Similarly, a Washington Post analysis of no-knock warrant requests by police in Little Rock, Arkansas, between 2016 and 2018 showed that the cops got approvals for 103 out of 105 no-knock warrants from judges.Police resort to no-knock raids has gone through the roof in recent decades, according to a 2007 study done by Peter Kraska, a professor at the School of Justice Studies at Eastern Kentucky University. He found that while the number of no-knock warrants or announce-and-enter raids served during SWAT team deployments had grown to about 1,500 annually in the early 1980s, that figure skyrocketed to about 40,000 a year by the turn of the century as the drug war deepened. Kraska estimated the number of such raids to be about 45,000 by 2010.The raids are mainly for drugs. A 2014 ACLU report investigating SWAT teams doing no-knock raids found that 62 percent of them were for drugs. In at least a third of those raids, no drugs were found. In nearly another third of those raids, it’s not known if any drugs were seized because police did not report that information.And such raids can be deadly—both for their targets and for the officers undertaking them. According to a 2017 New York Times report, between 2010 and 2016 alone, at least 13 police officers lost their lives during such raids, but so did more than six times as many civilians. The New York Times report put the civilian death toll at 81, with many more injured or wounded. These include cases of people who were completely innocent like the 19-month-old baby “Bou Bou” Bounkham Phonesavanh, who was severely burned by a flash-bang grenade thrown by a Georgia SWAT officer in a 2014 no-knock raid.But now, with the widespread public outcry over the unjust killing of Breonna Taylor, no-knock raids are being challenged like never before. The Democratic congressional response to the upheaval has been the rolling out of the Justice in Policing Act, which directly targets the practice. As the Democrats put it, the bill “[b]ans no-knock warrants in drug cases at the federal level and conditions law enforcement funding for state and local governments banning no-knock warrants at the local and state level.”Kentucky’s libertarian-leaning U.S. Senator Rand Paul (R) introduced the Justice for Breonna Taylor Act on June 11, “to prohibit no-knock warrants.” The bill would mandate that federal law enforcement officers must announce their presence and purpose before executing a search warrant, and it would condition federal aid to law enforcement agencies to ensure they follow the same rules.“After talking with Breonna Taylor’s family, I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s long past time to get rid of no-knock warrants. This bill will effectively end no-knock raids in the United States,” said a statement from Sen. Paul’s office.Meanwhile, even his Republican colleagues are climbing on the no no-knock bandwagon, although to a more limited degree than the Democrats. The just-introduced Justice Act, largely crafted by the GOP’s sole Black senator, Tim Scott of South Carolina, wouldn’t ban no-knock raids but would increase federal reporting requirements for no-knock raids and use of force. It would also increase penalties for false police reports.It’s unclear whether any of these bills will pass or whether compromise legislation will emerge, and it’s unclear just how strong any language on no-knock raids will end up being. What is clear is that Congress finally has the issue squarely in its sights.But law enforcement is largely a state and local matter, and it’s going to be up to state legislatures, governors, city councils and mayors to address the issue at the local level. Louisville’s city council has already unanimously banned no-knock raids. Only two other states—Florida and Oregon—have banned no-knock raids, but this is likely to change, given the anger against police misconduct. In fact, this is something that should have happened a long time ago.Source: Independent Media InstituteThis article was produced by Drug Reporter, a project of the Independent Media Institute.

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The Danger of Justified Anger #health #holistic

I will never forget the day I learned how to let go of justified anger. I had just gotten sober and attended an AA meeting, where they were reading out of 12 Steps and 12 Traditions. I was listening but not fully until I heard these words from Step 6, “Self Righteous anger can be very enjoyable.” In a perverse way we allow people to annoy us because it brings a comfortable feeling of superiority. We proclaim our own righteousness by criticizing them instead of taking the time to help them understand why and how they’ve annoyed us. I sat up straight and dove into the reading eager to learn more about it.My first addiction was resentment. I hated my father, who was a narcissistic, alcoholic republican. All of my memories were clouded with intense loathing for him and making him wrong. It was my driving force for most of my life. The reason I turned to alcohol. I was putting him in the wrong, but I was killing myself with my self righteousness. I couldn't live another moment with the anger inside me.I had tried everything I could think of to let go of the anger. I went to therapy, read every single self help book on forgiveness, wrote him letters, some I sent, others I burned. I had (on the advice of a guru) written his name on a balloon and let it go. The only thing that that accomplished was hating the guru. I had been to shamans and psychics. I felt alone. Nobody I knew had the level of resentment I had. I was dying. My justified anger was killing me.I went to see Abraham Hicks. He said to “lay new pipes” to not dig out the clogged pipe but to lay a new one so you can go with the flow. I was willing to try it. It sounded great in theory but there was a darkness in me I just couldn’t let go of. Then I discovered the Law of Attraction. It states that when you are indulging in self righteous anger you are blocking the path of Deliberate Creation. Deliberate Creation is a principle that enhances the manifestation process by helping you to eliminate the resistance whilst boosting your Law of Attraction powers to attract good things into your life. I immediately connected with that. I wanted to learn how to go from one to the other. I would do it in a heartbeat. No questions asked. I read all that I could about Deliberate Creation but It didn’t give me the steps to change. It just told me to change and I was left disappointed and frustrated once again.I went to a hypnotist who had been successful in getting me to quit smoking in one session. I did four sessions on letting go of self righteousness, but nothing changed. I was just succeeding in getting angrier.So on that day when I read about justified anger and self righteousness in the 12 and 12 and that it causes excessive misery in our lives, tears flowed down my face. Finally, I had a direction. I had a recipe. A book that was written before I was born, before my mother was born had all the answers.The first thing I had to do was admit to myself that I preferred to hang on to self righteousness. I had to admit that it was an addiction in itself. I had an ineffectual behavior and that I was getting a “hit” out of being right and making someone else wrong. That I was continually choosing to be a willing victim of my very own justified anger.I was asked, “Do you want to be right or do you want to be happy? I had to let go of the anger I had towards my father. Not for his benefit. For my peace of mind. Was I pardoning anything? No way in hell never. But I did what the book told me to do. I became “entirely willing to aim toward perfection.” I had my sponsor, I had the recipe, and I had the willingness. We seek progress not perfection in AA. I do not need to be perfect to experience unconditional love. No one does. It is free for all of us at any time. But striving for perfection keeps me doing the right thing. Not for anyone else but me. Doing the right thing gives me peace of mind. The right thing is never justified anger, it is deliberate, intentional creation from a place of love.I have a sponsor that helps me “unclog the pipe.” I asked my sponsor how I can be of service at this difficult time. She said, “Don’t silently scorn. Don’t make anyone wrong. Stay right sized. Don’t think I am better or worse than anyone. Take action from a place of love and change. What I am, is what I will see. To wholeheartedly be the change I seek to see.”Since I let go of justified anger and self righteous behavior I have now been able to practice Deliberate Creation. I can accomplish so much more and I produce quality work. I open myself up to creative energy and give myself over fully to the process.Getting in touch with my higher power and using that to take action instead of self righteous anger has completely changed my life for the better. Living from my heart is how I live today. It prevents me from a slip up of drinking, but more importantly, a slip up of emotional drunkenness.

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Another Point of View #holistic #health

One of the more difficult phrases for me in the book Alcoholics Anonymous occurs on page fifty-three. The verbiage made me feel as if someone were trying to sell me something. It wasn’t a drastic aversion but more that someone had rubbed my fur the wrong way.  The exact phrase is “. . . we had to face the proposition that either God is everything or else He is nothing. God either is or He isn’t.” (Alcoholics Anonymous p. 53)

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Episode 176: The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde #holistic #health

In this episode, I'm joined by my friend Sam S. from my home group in Kansas City to discuss the novella The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, by Robert Louis Stevenson. This story is a great metaphor for alcoholism and drug addiction, and though I have always been familiar with story simply by reference in popular culture, I found that actually reading the book and then discussing it with Sam to be quite educational. 

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A Life Torn Asunder #holistic #health

Facing a harsh reality 13 years ago of a reality that I had created, filled me with hope-consuming shame. Until that point, I protected my denial by blaming a sometimes traumatic childhood, failed relationships, stressful career situations, being misunderstood, etc.

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People with Opioid Use Disorder Deserve Medical Treatment #health #holistic

Opioid use disorder and alcohol use disorder are physical conditions. Although people might start abusing opioids or alcohol to numb physical, psychological, or emotional pain, the use of these substances leads to a physical dependence, in which the brain and body require more of the substance just to avoid becoming sick. People dealing with these conditions deserve access to high quality medical detox, but many people who need this service don’t get it.Before you choose a treatment program for you or your loved one, it’s important to understand medical detox. For people who are dependent on opioids or alcohol, medical detox provides a fast and effective way to address dependency. With dependency behind them, the person can go on to address any underlying causes of their substance abuse, like physical or psychological pain. Because of this, medical detox is an important first step to living life without drugs or alcohol.Is medical detox the same as medication-assisted treatment?It’s easy to confuse medical detox and medication-assisted treatment, but they’re actually completely different. Medication-assisted treatment (MAT) is often used to treat opioid use disorder. While MAT is effective and can reduce the risk of relapse, it comes with a major downside to your health and wellbeing: it involves continuously taking opioid medications.The medications used for MAT, including suboxone and methadone, are themselves opioids. Sure, they’re much less harmful than street opioids like heroin or fentanyl. But the fact remains that if you’re on MAT, you’re still dependent on opioids.At Waismann Method® Opioid Treatment Specialists, we believe that everyone deserves the chance to live without using opioids or alcohol — even in prescribed circumstances. That’s why we offer medical detox that treats the dependency on drugs or alcohol entirely. We deliver medically-assisted detox in a hospital that allows you to get off opioids for good.After detoxing you from opioids, we use naltrexone (also known as vivitrol) to help control any cravings. Unlike suboxone or methadone, naltrexone doesn’t have any opioids, so you cannot become dependent on it. In fact, this medication blocks the brain’s opioid receptors, eliminating cravings without introducing new habits or dependencies.Addressing dependency once and for allMany people want to live their lives with as few medications as possible. Even if you are dependent on opioids or alcohol, living life without ongoing medications could be a possibility for you. More people with opioid use disorder and alcohol use disorder need to be aware that medically-assisted detox is an option that they should explore. We believe that this is the most effective treatment for opioid use disorder. So, what exactly is medically-assisted detox? Waismann Method® Opioid Treatment Specialists provide the medical detox treatment in a full service, JCAHO-accredited hospital, in a private room, which many people find safer and more comfortable than a rehab or an outpatient detox facility. Once there, you’ll meet with one of our doctors, discussing your health history and any underlying medical conditions that you’re dealing with. Then, we’ll discuss the best medically-assisted detox option for you, including rapid detox and anesthesia-assisted rapid detoxification.During all decisions, your safety is a priority. That’s why all care is delivered under the watch of a quadruple board-certified medical director, Michael H. Lowenstein, M.D, and why there are different detox options available.Patients usually spend one to two nights in the hospital depending on which detox procedure they receive along with their individual health needs. As part of our treatment, you complete your detox at our private recovery center, Domus Retreat, for post-procedure care and continued support. There, we will work with you to give recommendations about how best to treat any underlying factors that contributed to your substance abuse, whether that was trauma, physical pain, or untreated psychological conditions.Dignity in detoxDetox is often the biggest barrier to getting help. People are afraid of having to physically suffer through the withdrawals with minimal support. Opting for medically-assisted detox allows you to get over that first hurdle comfortably so that you can begin building your new, opioid-free life.

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Episode 175: Outside Issues? Let’s Talk About It. #holistic #health

This episode was recorded from our weekly Friday night live stream on YouTube. Every week, Angela and I cover a topic we think may be of interest to secular people in AA, and this particular episode was all about outside issues. We are living through a pandemic the likes of which hasn't been experienced in over a hundred years, millions of us have lost our jobs in numbers not seen since the great depression, and our society is grappling with the difficult and painful issues of racism and injustice. All of these external events affect us deeply, and it could be argued that talking about these events and our feelings about them is just what we need to do.

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Episode 174: Sharing Our Stories #holistic #health

IIn this episode Angela and I discuss our experiences speaking at AA meetings and offer tips and suggestions that you may find helpful when speaking at other groups. We talk about the importance of knowing your audience, staying on time and on track, and formats other than the standard “what it was like, what happened, and what it’s like now.” We also cover how to record your talk and why that may be important. This was recorded during our weekly lives stream on YouTube and features listeners calling into the show as well as comments from the YouTube chatroom. You can join our live stream every Friday night at 7:00 PM CDT at the AA Beyond Belief YouTube Channel.

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A Nazi drug’s US resurgence: How meth is making a disturbing reappearance #health #holistic

Although I am teaching a course at Indiana University this semester on the opioid epidemic, I can’t get meth out of my mind.A colleague of mine was recently carjacked. He was forced to drive at extreme speed throughout the city and escaped with his life only by intentionally crashing his car. My colleague told me he believes his gun-wielding assailant was suffering an acute psychosis related to methamphetamine use.Opioids may get most of the media attention these days, but meth has hardly gone away. Law enforcement seizures of meth are surging in the U.S., up 142% between 2017 and 2018. Overdose deaths in 2017 were seven times higher than in 2007.Just what is meth? Why is it such a grave threat to health? And why does its terrible specter seem to loom larger and larger?The health effects of methMethamphetamine, a powerful stimulant of the central nervous system, has some legitimate medical uses, such as the treatment of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. But it is widely trafficked and purchased for recreational consumption, often as crystal meth (think of the award-winning television drama “Breaking Bad”).Recreational meth users smoke, snort, ingest or inject the drug. Smoking and injection seem to give the greatest rush, but the effect doesn’t last as long. Users often report euphoria, increased alertness and reduced appetite; chronic users may experience paranoia, delusions and unpredictable mood swings. Addicts may exhibit a “binge and crash” pattern, and many try to maintain the rush with continuous consumption.Chances of addiction are high, and symptoms from withdrawal can linger for months. Treatment is complicated, particularly because many meth users are often also using cocaine, heroin or alcohol.Meth is directly toxic to the brain; developmental delays are common in meth babies. In adults, it’s associated with an increased risk for Parkinson’s disease. Addicts age at an accelerated pace, and commonly acquire “meth mouth” – tooth loss, tooth decay and tooth blackening.Those who overdose may develop psychosis or abnormal heart rhythms. Unlike opioid overdoses, which can quickly be resolved if the drug naloxone is available, meth overdoses have no “reversal” agent. Instead, the meth is suctioned from the stomach. Anti-psychotics can help with psychosis, and anti-hypertensive drugs can reduce acutely elevated blood pressure.Meth’s dark historyDuring World War II, meth played a sinister role in the Nazi war machine.The military, along with German civilians, used a commercial form of the drug – made in Berlin and marketed under the trade name Pervitin – to stay awake, alert and energized. With Pervitin, factory workers and homemakers alike found they could work longer and harder. Troops called it “tank chocolate” or “pilot’s salt.” Pervitin fueled the Nazis during their “blitzkrieg” invasion of France in 1940.Wrote one German commander about Pervitin: “Everyone fresh and cheerful, excellent discipline.” Later his assessment became less rosy: “After taking four tablets, double vision and seeing colors.”The toll meth took on the Germans was immense. It provoked war crimes, stoked psychosis and triggered suicide. As the war progressed, Adolf Hitler received ever-increasing doses of the drug.No one should be surprised. After all, the German name Pervitin is related to the word pervert (“ill-turned”). It means corrupted or distorted. Meth, as the Nazis discovered, distorts our nature and turns us away from what we are meant to be.Now, 75 years after the war, and still without an effective drug therapy, a meaningful response to methamphetamines requires three things. We in the U.S. must recognize the true scope of the problem. We must make sure meth users have access to counseling and behavioral therapy. Most of all, our society needs to help individuals and families discover healthier ways to find meaning in life.[ Get the best of The Conversation, every weekend.Sign up for our weekly newsletter. ]Richard Gunderman, Chancellor's Professor of Medicine, Liberal Arts, and Philanthropy, Indiana UniversityThis article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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The Murder of George Floyd Is Normal in an Abnormal Society #health #holistic

There is no need to wonder why George Floyd (age 46) was murdered in broad daylight in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on May 25, 2020. The script of his death is written deep in the ugly drama of U.S. history.I Can’t Breathe 2020Officer Derek Chauvin’s knee sat on George Floyd’s neck for eight minutes and 46 seconds. After that time, George Floyd was dead. From the moment Chauvin put his body on an unarmed man, George Floyd said—eleven times—I can’t breathe.Scientists who study human respiration say that untrained people can hold their breath from between thirty seconds and two minutes; anything more than that results in a process that leads eventually to death.I Can’t Breathe 2014Officer Daniel Pantaleo slammed Eric Garner onto the New York City sidewalk just minutes after Garner had helped resolve a dispute on the street. Pantaleo pushed Garner’s face onto the pavement, and Garner said—eleven times—I can’t breathe.Garner lost consciousness, did not receive medical care in the ambulance, and was pronounced dead soon after arriving at the hospital. He died, effectively, of suffocation.DismayedBoth Floyd and Garner were African American; both were men who struggled to make a living in a harsh economic environment.The UN Human Rights head Michelle Bachelet wrote a powerful statement in response to the death of George Floyd: “This is the latest in a long line of killings of unarmed African Americans by U.S. police officers and members of the public. I am dismayed to have to add George Floyd’s name to that of Breonna Taylor, Eric Garner, Michael Brown and many other unarmed African Americans who have died over the years at the hands of the police—as well as people such as Ahmaud Arbery and Trayvon Martin who were killed by armed members of the public.”Each year in the United States, more than a thousand people are killed by the police; African Americans are three times more likely to be killed by the police than whites, and African Americans who are killed by police are more likely to be unarmed than whites. Most of these killings are not associated with serious crime. Astoundingly, 99 percent of the officers who kill a civilian are not charged with a crime.Permanent Depression“The Depression,” the poet Langston Hughes wrote of the 1930s, “brought everybody down a peg or two.” It was different for African Americans, for they “had but few pegs to fall.”Garner was accused of selling loose cigarettes on the street, violating excise tax laws to make a few dollars; Floyd was accused of using a counterfeit $20 bill. Even if these accusations could have been proved, neither were earth-shattering crimes; if they had gone to court, neither would have earned these men death sentences. They were killed after being accused of minor infringements.When Hughes wrote those words, Lino Rivera, a 16-year-old Afro-Puerto Rican boy, had been arrested for shoplifting a 10-cent penknife. A crowd gathered when the police went to arrest him, a rumor spread that he had been killed, and Harlem rose up in anger. A government report later showed that the protests were “spontaneous” and that the causes of the unrest were “the injustices of discrimination in employment, the aggressions of the police, and racial segregation.” This report could have been written last week. It suggests a permanent Depression.System Cannot Be ReformedHistorically, police aggression has come before any unrest. In 1967, unrest in Detroit spurred the U.S. government to study the causes, which they assumed would be communist instigators and an inflammatory press. The riots, the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders (the Kerner Commission) said, “were not caused by, nor were they the consequences of, any organized plan or ‘conspiracy.’”Instead, the Kerner Commission said that the cause of the unrest was structural racism. “What white Americans have never fully understood,” the report noted, “is that white society is deeply implicated in the ghetto. White institutions created it, white institutions maintain it, and white society condones it.” By “ghetto” the report’s authors meant the atrocious class inequalities in the United States that had—because of the history of enslavement—been marked by race.Rather than address the deep inequalities in society, the American government chose to heavily arm police officers and send them to discipline populations in distress with their dangerous weapons. The commission proposed instead “a policy which combines ghetto enrichment with programs designed to encourage integration… into the society outside the ghetto.”Nothing came of that report, as nothing has come of any of the reports that stretch backward 150 years. Rather than genuinely invest in the well-being of people, the American government—whether governed by Republicans or Democrats—cut back on social programs and cut back on welfare spending; it allowed firms to erode wages and it allowed them to diminish working conditions. What was terrible in 1968 only became worse for the working-class Black population.The financial crisis of 2008 stole from African American households’ savings that had been accumulated through generations of work. By 2013, Pew Research found that the net worth of white households was 13 times greater than African American households; this was the largest such gap since 1989, and it is a gap that has only widened. Now, with the global pandemic striking the United States particularly hard, data shows that the disease has struck African Americans and other people of color the most. Some of this is because it is African Americans and other people of color who often have the most dangerous frontline jobs.If Eric Garner and George Floyd earned a minimum wage of $25 for decent work, would they need to be in a position where a belligerent police officer would accuse them of selling loose cigarettes or of passing a counterfeit bill?They Are NormalSociety in the United States has been broken by the mechanisms of high rates of economic inequality, high rates of poverty, impossible entry into robust educational systems, and remarkable warlike conditions put in place to manage populations no longer seen as the citizenry but as criminals.Such processes corrode a civilization. The names of Michael Brown, Sandra Bland, Eric Garner, Tamir Rice… and now George Floyd are only the names of the present moment, written in thick ink on cardboard signs across the United States at the many, many protests that continue to take place. The taste of desperation lingers in these protests, along with the anger at the system, and the outrage seems to have no outlet.Donald Trump is an exaggeration of the normal course of history in the United States. He takes the ugliness to the utmost limit, bringing in the army, sniffing around for the legal possibility of the mass detention of demonstrators. His is a politics of violence. It does not last long. It is hard to beat the urge for justice out of an entire people.As you read this, somewhere in the United States, another person will be killed—another poor person whom the police deem to be a threat. Tomorrow another will be killed; and then another. These deaths are normal for the system. Outrage against this system is a logical, and moral, response. This article was produced by Globetrotter, a project of the Independent Media Institute. Reprinted with permission.Source: Independent Media Institute

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2020 International Convention A Virtual Experience Coming Soon – July 2020 #holistic #health

The General Service Office of Alcoholics Anonymous published the following announcement on aa.org about plans to move the 2020 International AA Convention Online. Details will be made available at aa.org on July 1, 2020. 

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These Masks I used to Wear #holistic #health

Of late, I’ve been in several meetings where the idea of imposter phenomenon or imposter syndrome came up in more than one share. Now in my sixth decade of life, and second decade of recovery, I still feel the need to pretend, to hide my true self. Some of my earliest memories from elementary school are of feeling inadequate academically, athletically and socially.

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Episode 173: Adoptees and Addiction #holistic #health

This episode features a conversation with two people in recovery who were adopted as children. Lisa K., a Korean adoptee describes her struggle with identification as an Asian person growing up with a white family in a white world. David B. Bohl, author of Parallel Universes: The Story of Rebirth shares his personal journey as one who was relinquished at birth as a way of providing some perspective that may help understand the correlation between being adopted and problems with substance abuse later in life.

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Living in the Present with the Past and With the Future #holistic #health

One day at a time. Living in the present. Be here, be here now. Useful AA and beyond slogans. But … But for me an impossible task. The idea, though attractive, evokes something akin to the magical thinking required of me by let go and let god. Even more secular oriented notions such as live in the present create a sense of hope that has proven humanly impossible for me.

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Zoom Is an Ineffective Substitute #health #holistic

Last night, I and the other residents of my recovery house saw a man vigorously performing a scatological act on himself. A bathtub was involved. While it’s going to be a long time before I contemplate a bath, it was just another night of Zoom bombing during an online meeting during this pandemic. Forgive me, but it seems our country, and the larger world, is unraveling at the seams. I often contemplate if we’re living in the end times. The Romans had their day in the sun, and this may be the end of ours. I’d say this pessimistic line of thinking is a consequence of the years I’ve lost to addiction, but I’ve always been this way. My mind is like a jaguar on a treadmill, always moving rapidly but not really getting anywhere.Maybe my bleak outlook has something to do with the fact that my compatriots and I attempting to scramble out from the cloud of addiction have been unwillingly deprived of our only method for not imploding. The absence of physical meetings has had an enervating effect on my psyche.. We have been relegated to the internet because of an aggressive bat virus. Bureaucratic mouthpieces have told us that meeting in the flesh would put lives at risk. While that’s not exactly false, it is frustrating.[1] The program, which I reluctantly adhere to because I have no alternative[2] has been deemed non-essential by our government. This action, specifically the government declaring something superfluous for the greater good, strikes me as ludicrous. Tons of Americans, tons of humans, are reliant on abstinence programs to stay among the living. What about our greater good? These abstinence programs are effective in no small part because they garner a sense of community and camaraderie. That in-person contact and discussion, and in a sense shared misery, is mystifyingly powerful. Speaking candidly, I haven’t quite bought into the actual meat and potatoes or concrete sharing portion of these meetings. But I now realize how much I cherish the small talk and cigarettes before and after meetings.[3] A massive portion of the country, the world even, suffers from the disease. That other pandemic, COVID, has tyrannically forced us on to the internet and deprived us of that person-to-person contact, that fortifying sense of community, that is essential to our survival. Governors, and the government, should certainly contemplate the consequences of classifying our haphazard panacea as non-essential. The act of classifying physical meetings as non-essential is only made more aggravating upon considering that cannabis dispensaries were initially deemed essential in California. Recreational cannabis users often claim that it is critical medicine they need to subsist. It should be abundantly apparent to any non-troglodytic governor that meetings should be similarly classified.The wrench, being COVID, pelted into the machine, being physical meetings, is not the only pernicious issue we face related to this new normal.[4]  Zoom bombing has, well, bombed us. That’s precisely how the aforementioned bathtub scene invaded my field of vision. But Zoom bombing goes further than the briefly obscene and crosses into dangerously hazardous territory when these bombers (sadistic teenagers, sad-sack individuals, or I can’t even contemplate the other possibilities that would drive someone to bomb a 12-step meeting) begin harassing meeting attendees through their microphones. I’ve witnessed some truly disturbing hectoring; the kind that could jeopardize already tenuous sobriety during these arduous times. Female attendees are importuned to display their bosoms, traumatic share notwithstanding. Attendees are denigrated for their appearance. F-bombs are flying. I’ve witnessed attendees get heckled to the point of tears and flee the session. Are they OK? I have no idea. But I’m sure the bombers lived to bomb another day. My peers have countless other examples. The puerility is breathtaking, if not surprising Enough already. Governors, I implore you to lift restrictions on our supposed non-essential meetings. Meetings can meet social-distancing guidelines and take other precautions. They're certainly safer than church choirs.I realize that security measures can be put in place within Zoom to prevent bombing, but they are often at the expense of the recovering alcoholic and drug addict. Most large-scale meetings now disable the chat feature of the Zoom call to prevent a steady stream of obscenities and racial epithets from our bomber buddies. As a result, attendees are unable to share their phone numbers quickly and easily, if they’re so inclined. Zoom meeting chairs also now password lock their meetings. This safeguard prevents people who desperately need that camaraderie – possibly to stay alive – from easily accessing meetings. If you’re flirting with rock bottom, you’re probably incapable of fumbling with numbers and words and special characters.[5] Meetings can also be hosted on Skype or other video chat services, but Zoom is by far the most ubiquitous platform currently available. Yes, some preventative measures are marginally effective. The “waiting room” feature in a Zoom call doesn’t prohibit access to meetings, a Zoom host can restrict access to the screen-sharing feature, which prevents hormonal adolescents from punishing us alcoholics and addicts with indecorous videos.[6] But these are all band-aids, inadequate remedies to a paramount dilemma that ignore the heart of the issue. The solution to absurdity is not implementing a proportional amount of absurdity; asking those in the program to forego meetings is exactly that..[1] From this point on, read anything that is in bolded text in a facetious “Krusty the Clown” voice.[2] Well I do have an alternative, but been there, done that..[3] I’ll concede and recognize that I need the core/big book-oriented sharing portion of the meeting to stay in this thing. I would still be watching tv in my underwear pounding Budweiser if it weren’t for the spiritual principles of the program..[4] Ideally, COVID made visible wouldn’t take the form of a wrench. It would probably be a soiled adult diaper, but that wouldn’t be feasible within the context of the metaphor, as it wouldn’t break the machine. Instead, it would probably just rip the adult diaper to shreds and regurgitate it as a sort of fecal firework..[5] This frustrating phenomenon happens at an alarming frequency. At least, at a much higher rate than it should. Too often the password for the meeting is simply absent from intergroup websites, is outdated, or can only be accessed by emailing the chair of the group, and often the email is conspicuously omitted from the page. It’s ridiculous to require someone who could quite likely be fresh off a relapse to dive through an absurd number of virtual hoops..[6] It’s a sad reality that many meeting chairs are technologically inept. Please don’t come at me with ageism daggers out. These hosts are kind, benevolent souls who can’t contemplate, let alone combat, a Zoom bombing in real time. I refer you to Grandpa Simpson trying to fix the family TV in season 7, episode 14.

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Why cellphone videos of black people’s deaths should be considered sacred, like lynching photographs #health #holistic

As Ahmaud Arbery fell to the ground, the sound of the gunshot that took his life echoed loudly throughout his Georgia neighborhood.I rewound the video of his killing. Each time I viewed it, I was drawn first to the young black jogger’s seemingly carefree stride, which was halted by two white men in a white pickup truck.Then I peered at Gregory McMichael, 64, and his son Travis, 34, who confronted Arbery in their suburban community.I knew that the McMichaels told authorities that they suspected Arbery of robbing a nearby home in the neighborhood. They were performing a citizen’s arrest, they said.The video shows Arbery jogging down the street and the McMichaels blocking his path with their vehicle. First, a scuffle. Then, gunshots at point-blank range from Travis McMichael’s weapon.My eyes traveled to the towering trees onscreen, which might have been the last things that Arbery saw. How many of those same trees, I wondered, had witnessed similar lynchings? And how many of those lynchings had been photographed, to offer a final blow of humiliation to the dying?A series of modern lynchingsIt may be jarring to see that word – lynching – used to describe Arbery’s Feb. 23, 2020, killing. But many black people have shared with me that his death – followed in rapid succession by Breonna Taylor’s and now George Floyd’s officer-involved murders – hearkens back to a long tradition of killing black people without repercussion.Perhaps even more traumatizing is the ease with which some of these deaths can be viewed online. In my new book, “Bearing Witness While Black: African Americans, Smartphones and the New Protest #Journalism,” I call for Americans to stop viewing footage of black people dying so casually.Instead, cellphone videos of vigilante violence and fatal police encounters should be viewed like lynching photographs – with solemn reserve and careful circulation. To understand this shift in viewing context, I believe it is useful to explore how people became so comfortable viewing black people’s dying moments in the first place.Images of black people’s deaths pervasiveEvery major era of domestic terror against African Americans – slavery, lynching and police brutality – has an accompanying iconic photograph.The most familiar image of slavery is the 1863 picture of “Whipped Peter,” whose back bears an intricate cross-section of scars.Famous images of lynchings include the 1930 photograph of the mob who murdered Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith in Marion, Indiana. A wild-eyed white man appears at the bottom of the frame, pointing upward to the black men’s hanged bodies. The image inspired Abel Meeropol to write the poem “Strange Fruit,” which was later turned into a song that blues singer Billie Holiday sang around the world.Twenty-five years later, the 1955 photos of Emmett Till’s maimed body became a new generation’s cultural touchstone. The 14-year-old black boy was beaten, shot and thrown into a local river by white men after a white woman accused him of whistling at her. She later admitted that she lied.Throughout the 1900s, and until today, police brutality against black people has been immortalized by the media too. Americans have watched government officials open firehoses on young civil rights protesters, unleash German shepherds and wield billy clubs against peaceful marchers, and shoot and tase today’s black men, women and children – first on the televised evening news, and, eventually, on cellphones that could distribute the footage online.When I conducted the interviews for my book, many black people told me that they carry this historical reel of violence against their ancestors in their heads. That’s why, for them, watching modern versions of these hate crimes is too painful to bear.Still, there are other groups of black people who believe that the videos do serve a purpose, to educate the masses about race relations in the U.S. I believe these tragic videos can serve both purposes, but it will take effort.In 1922 the NAACP ran a series of full-page ads in The New York Times calling attention to lynchings. New York Times, Nov. 23, 1922/American Social History ProjectReviving the ‘shadow archive’In the early 1900s, when the news of a lynching was fresh, some of the nation’s first civil rights organizations circulated any available images of the lynching widely, to raise awareness of the atrocity. They did this by publishing the images in black magazines and newspapers.After that image reached peak circulation, it was typically removed from public view and placed into a “shadow archive,” within a newsroom, library or museum. Reducing the circulation of the image was intended to make the public’s gaze more somber and respectful.The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, known popularly as the NAACP, often used this technique. In 1916, for example, the group published a horrific photograph of Jesse Washington, a 17-year-old boy who was hanged and burned in Waco, Texas, in its flagship magazine, “The Crisis.”Memberships in the civil rights organization skyrocketed as a result. Blacks and whites wanted to know how to help. The NAACP used the money to push for anti-lynching legislation. It purchased a series of costly full-page ads in The New York Times to lobby leading politicians.Though the NAACP endures today, neither its website nor its Instagram page bears casual images of lynching victims. Even when the organization issued a statement about the Arbery killing, it refrained from reposting the chilling video within its missive. That restraint shows a degree of respect that not all news outlets and social media users have used.A curious double standardCritics of the shadow archive may argue that once a photograph reaches the internet, it is very difficult to pull back from future news reports.This is, however, simply not true.Images of white people’s deaths are removed from news coverage all the time.It is difficult to find online, for example, imagery from any of the numerous mass shootings that have affected scores of white victims. Those murdered in the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting of 2012, or at the Las Vegas music festival of 2017, are most often remembered in endearing portraits instead.In my view, cellphone videos of black people being killed should be given this same consideration. Just as past generations of activists used these images briefly – and only in the context of social justice efforts – so, too, should today’s imagery retreat from view quickly.The suspects in Arbery’s killing have been arrested. The Minneapolis police officers involved in Floyd’s death have been fired and placed under investigation. The videos of their deaths have served the purpose of attracting public outrage.To me, airing the tragic footage on TV, in auto-play videos on websites and social media is no longer serving its social justice purpose, and is now simply exploitative.Likening the fatal footage of Ahmaud Arbery and George Floyd to lynching photographs invites us to treat them more thoughtfully. We can respect these images. We can handle them with care. In the quiet, final frames, we can share their last moments with them, if we choose to. We do not let them die alone. We do not let them disappear into the hush of knowing trees.[Insight, in your inbox each day.You can get it with The Conversation’s email newsletter.]Allissa V. Richardson, Assistant Professor of Journalism, University of Southern California, Annenberg School for Communication and JournalismThis article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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When Is The Right Time To Quit Drinking? #health #holistic

How do you find the right time to quit drinking? 

Perhaps you’ve dabbled with alcohol-free living, on and off. 

Maybe you spend a lot of time thinking about stopping. 

You love the idea of waking up hangover free… and you know you’ll sleep better, look better, feel great and save tons of money.

You know you need to do something… and yet the moment never feels quite right.

This video is all about finding the right time to quit drinking:

Key points:

There is no such thing as the ‘right time’ to quit drinking

Logically, we all know this, because life is messy. But when we’re about to do something new and out of our comfort zone, it’s easy to drift back into waiting for the ‘right time’ to come along.

 

Perfect moment vs perfect perspective

We can’t always control our circumstances, but we can control our attitude, our actions and the perspective we choose. It’s the way you interpret what’s happening around you that really matters. 

For every person who thinks a global pandemic is a terrible time to quit drinking, someone else will look at the same situation and decide it’s the perfect moment. It’s all about perspective – so why not choose one that moves you forward?

 

There will always be a reason to delay

It’s easy to romanticise how things were before or how much easier things might be in the future. But the reality is that there will always be something. If you look for it, you’ll always be able to find a reason why now isn’t the right time.

Ultimately, if your drinking is making you miserable, or you’re worried about it, then this is the right time. And the secret to success? Start before you’re ready. 

 

If you’d love some help and support to quit drinking, click here for details of my online course.

 

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In Hard-Hit Areas, COVID’s Ripple Effects Strain Mental Health Care Systems #health #holistic

In late March, Marcell’s girlfriend took him to the emergency room at Henry Ford Wyandotte Hospital, about 11 miles south of Detroit.“I had [acute] paranoia and depression off the roof,” said Marcell, 46, who asked to be identified only by his first name because he wanted to maintain confidentiality about some aspects of his illness.Marcell’s depression was so profound, he said, he didn’t want to move and was considering suicide.“Things were getting overwhelming and really rough. I wanted to end it,” he said.Marcell, diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder seven years ago, had been this route before but never during a pandemic. The Detroit area was a coronavirus hot spot, slamming hospitals, attracting concerns from federal public health officials and recording more than 1,000 deaths in Wayne County as of May 28. Michigan ranks fourth among states for deaths from COVID-19.The crisis enveloping the hospitals had a ripple effect on mental health programs and facilities. The emergency room was trying to get non-COVID patients out as soon as possible because the risk of infection in the hospital was high, said Jaime White, director of clinical development and crisis services for Hegira Health, a nonprofit group offering mental health and substance abuse treatment programs. But the options were limited.Still, the number of people waiting for beds at Detroit’s crisis centers swelled. Twenty-three people in crisis had to instead be cared for in a hospital.This situation was hardly unique. Although mental health services continued largely uninterrupted in areas with low levels of the coronavirus, behavioral health care workers in areas hit hard by COVID-19 were overburdened. Mobile crisis teams, residential programs and call centers, especially in pandemic hot spots, had to reduce or close services. Some programs were plagued by shortages of staff and protective supplies for workers.At the same time, people battling mental health disorders became more stressed and anxious.“For people with preexisting mental health conditions, their routines and ability to access support is super important. Whenever additional barriers are placed on them, it could be challenging and can contribute to an increase in symptoms,” said White.After eight hours in the emergency room, Marcell was transferred to COPE, a community outreach program for psychiatric emergencies for Wayne County Medicaid patients.“We try to get patients like him into the lowest care possible with the least restrictive environment,” White said. “The quicker we could get him out, the better.”Marcell was stabilized at COPE over the next three days, but his behavioral health care team couldn’t get him a bed in one of two local residential crisis centers operated by Hegira. Social distancing orders had reduced the beds from 20 to 14, so Marcell was discharged home with a series of scheduled services and assigned a service provider to check on him.However, Marcell’s symptoms ― suicidal thoughts, depression, anxiety, auditory hallucinations, poor impulse control and judgment ― persisted. He was not able to meet face-to-face with his scheduled psychiatrist due to the pandemic and lack of telehealth access. So, he returned to COPE three days later. This time, the staff was able to find him a bed immediately at a Hegira residential treatment program, Boulevard Crisis Residential in Detroit.Residents typically stay for six to eight days. Once they are stabilized, they are referred elsewhere for more treatment, if needed.Marcell ended up staying for more than 30 days. “He got caught in the pandemic here along with a few other people,” said Sherron Powers, program manager. “It was a huge problem. There was nowhere for him to go.”Marcell couldn’t live with his girlfriend anymore. Homeless shelters were closed and substance abuse programs had no available beds.“The big problem here is that all crisis services are connected to each other. If any part of that system is disrupted you can’t divert a patient properly,” said Travis Atkinson, a behavioral consultant with TBD Solutions, which collaborated on a survey of providers with the American Association of Suicidology, the Crisis Residential Association and the National Association of Crisis Organization Directors.White said the crisis took a big toll on her operations. She stopped her mobile crisis team on March 14 because, she said, “we wanted to make sure that we were keeping our staff safe and our community safe.”Her staff assessed hospital patients, including Marcell, by telephone with the help of a social worker from the emergency room.People like Marcell have struggled during the coronavirus crisis and continue to face hurdles because emergency preparedness measures didn’t provide enough training, funds or thought about the acute mental health issues that could develop during a pandemic and its aftermath, said experts.“The system isn’t set up to accommodate that kind of demand,” said Dr. Brian Hepburn, a psychiatrist and executive director of the National Association of State Mental Health Program Directors.“In Detroit and other hard-hit states, if you didn’t have enough protective equipment you can’t expect people to take a risk. People going to work can’t be thinking ‘I’m going to die,’” said Hepburn.For Marcell, “it was bad timing to have a mental health crisis,” said White, the director at Hegira.At one time Marcell, an African American man with a huge grin and a carefully trimmed goatee and mustache, had a family and a “pretty good job,” Marcell said. Then “it got rough.” He made some bad decisions and choices. He lost his job and got divorced. Then he began self-medicating with cocaine, marijuana and alcohol.By the time he reached the residential center in Detroit on April 1, he was at a low point. “Schizoaffective disorder comes out more when you’re kicked out of the house and it increases depression,” said Powers, the program manager who along with White was authorized by Marcell to talk about his care. Marcell didn’t always take his medications and his use of illicit drugs magnified his hallucinations, she said.While in the crisis center voluntarily, Marcell restarted his prescription medications and went to group and individual therapy. “It is a really good program,” he said while at the center in early May. “It’s been one of the best 30 days.”Hepburn said the best mental health programs are flexible, which allows them more opportunities to respond to problems such as the pandemic. Not all programs would have been able to authorize such a long stay in residential care.Marcell was finally discharged on May 8 to a substance abuse addiction program. “I felt good about having him do better and better. He had improved self-esteem to get the help he needed to get back to his regular life,” Powers said.But Marcell left the addiction program after only four days.“The [recovery] process is so individualized and, oftentimes, we only see them at one point in their journey. But, recovering from mental health and substance use disorders is possible. It can just be a winding and difficult path for some,” said White.Seeking HelpIf you or someone you know is in immediate danger, call 911. Below are other resources for those needing help:— National Helpline: 1-800-662-HELP (4357) or https://findtreatment.samhsa.gov.— National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1-800-273-TALK (8255).— Disaster Distress Helpline: 1-800-985-5990 or text TalkWithUs to 66746.

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Episode 172: Doctors in Recovery #holistic #health

Rich S., a physician from Portland, Oregon shares his experience as healthcare professional in recovery from alcoholism, and helps us understand the challenges facing healthcare workers as they confront a global pandemic. 

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Pandemic Presents New Hurdles, and Hope, for People Struggling with Addiction #health #holistic

Before Philadelphia shut down to slow the spread of the coronavirus, Ed had a routine: most mornings he would head to a nearby McDonald’s to brush his teeth, wash his face and — when he had the money — buy a cup of coffee. He would bounce between homeless shelters and try to get a shower. But since businesses closed and many shelters stopped taking new admissions, Ed has been mostly shut off from that routine.He’s still living on the streets.“I’ll be honest, I don’t really sleep too much,” said Ed, who’s 51 and struggling with addiction. “Every four or five days I get a couple hours.”KHN agreed not to use his last name because he uses illegal drugs.Philadelphia has the highest overdose rate of any big city in America — in 2019, more than three people a day died of drug overdoses there, on average. Before the coronavirus began spreading across the United States, the opioid overdose epidemic was the biggest health crisis on the minds of many city officials and public health experts. The coronavirus pandemic has largely eclipsed the conversation around the opioid crisis. But the crisis still rages on despite business closures, the cancellation of in-person treatment appointments and the strain on many addiction resources in the city.When his usual shelter wasn’t an option anymore, Ed tried to get into residential drug treatment. He figured that would be a good way to try to get back on his feet and, if nothing else, get a few good nights of rest. But he had contracted pinkeye, a symptom thought to be associated with the virus that leads to COVID-19, so the evaluation center didn’t want to place him in an inpatient facility until he’d gotten the pinkeye checked out. But he couldn’t see a doctor because he didn’t have a phone for a telehealth appointment.“I got myself stuck, and I’m trying to pull everything back together before it totally blows up,” he said.Rosalind Pichardo wants to help people in Ed’s situation. Before the pandemic, Pichardo would hit the streets of her neighborhood, Kensington, which has the highest drug overdose rate in Philadelphia. She’d head out with a bag full of snack bars, cookies and Narcan, the opioid overdose reversal drug.She’d hand Narcan out to people using drugs, and people selling drugs — anyone who wanted it. Pichardo started her own organization, Operation Save Our City, which initially set out to work with survivors of gun violence in the neighborhood. When she realized that overdoses were killing people too, she began getting more involved with the harm reduction movement and started handing out Narcan through the city’s syringe exchange.When Pennsylvania’s stay-at-home order went into effect, Pichardo and others worried that more people might start using drugs alone, and that fewer first responders would be patrolling the streets or nearby and able to revive them if they overdosed.So, Pichardo and other harm reduction activists gave out even more Narcan. A representative for Prevention Point Philadelphia, the group that operates a large syringe exchange program in the city, said that during the first month of the city’s stay-at-home order, they handed out almost twice as much Narcan as usual.After the lockdowns and social distancing began, Pichardo worried that more people would be using drugs alone, leading to more overdoses. But Philadelphia’s fatal overdose rate during the pandemic remains about the same as it was this time last year. Pichardo said she thinks that’s evidence that flooding the streets with Narcan is working — that people are continuing to use drugs, and maybe even using more drugs, but that users are utilizing Narcan more often and administering it to one another.That is the hope. But Pichardo said users don’t always have a buddy to keep watch, and during the pandemic first responders have seemed much more hesitant to intervene. For example, she recently administered Narcan to three people in Kensington who overdosed near a subway station, while two police officers stood by and watched. Before the pandemic, they would often be right there with her, helping.To reverse the overdoses, Pichardo crouched over the people who she said had started turning blue as their oxygen levels dropped. She injected the Narcan into their noses, using a disposable plastic applicator. Normally, she would perform rescue breathing, too, but since the pandemic began she has started carrying an Ambu bag, which pumps air into a person’s lungs and avoids mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. Among the three people, she said, it took six doses of Narcan to revive them. The police officers didn’t step in to help but did toss several overdose-reversal doses toward Pichardo as she worked.“I don’t expect ’em to give ’em rescue breaths if they don’t want to, but at least administer the lifesaving drug,” Pichardo said.In her work as a volunteer, she has reversed almost 400 overdoses, she estimated.“There’s social distancing — to a limit,” Pichardo said, “I think when someone’s life is in jeopardy, they’re worth saving. You just can’t watch people die.”Even before Philadelphia officially issued its stay-at-home order, city police announced they would stop making low-level arrests, including for narcotics. The idea was to reduce contact overall, help keep the jail population low and reduce the risk of the virus getting passed around inside. But Pichardo and other community activists said the decreased law enforcement emboldened drug dealers in the Kensington neighborhood, where open-air drug sales and use are common.“You can tell they have everything down pat, from the lookout to the corner boys to the one actually holding the product — the one holding the product’s got some good PPE gear,” said Pichardo.More dealers working openly on the street has led to more fights over territory, she added, which in turn has meant more violence. While overall crime in Philadelphia and other major cities has declined during the pandemic, gun violence has spiked.Police resumed arrests at the beginning of May.Now when she goes out to offer relief and hand out Narcan, Pichardo packs a few extra things in her bag of supplies: face masks, gloves and gun locks.“It’s like the survival kit of the ’hood,” she said.For those struggling with addiction who are ready to start recovery, newly relaxed federal restrictions have made it easier to get medications that curb opioid cravings and stem withdrawal. Several efforts are underway among Philadelphia-based public health groups and criminal justice advocacy organizations to give cellphones to people who are homeless or coming out of jail, so they can make a telehealth appointment and get quicker access to a prescription for those medicines.During the pandemic, people taking medication-assisted treatment can renew their prescription every month instead of every week, which helps decrease trips to the pharmacy. It is too soon to know if more people are taking advantage of the new rules, and accessing medication-assisted treatment via telehealth, but if that turns out to be the case, many addiction medicine specialists argue the new rules should become permanent, even after the pandemic ends.“If we find that these relaxed restrictions are bringing more people to the table, that presents enormous ethical questions about whether or not the DEA should reinstate these restrictive policies that they had going in the first place,” said Dr. Ben Cocchiaro, a physician who treats people with substance-use disorder.Cocchiaro said the whole point of addiction treatment is to facilitate help as soon as someone is ready for it. He hopes if access to recovery can be made simpler during a pandemic, it can remain that way afterward.This story is part of a partnership that includes WHYY, NPR and Kaiser Health News.

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My Daughter / Myself #health #holistic

(The following is an excerpt from a longer work.)The following summer, Oscar developed such serious health problems that we had to put him down. In July, Angel came over to say goodbye to him. Then Carter and I walked him to the vet and held him down while he received his injection. Annie couldn’t bear to be there. As we were sobbing over his dying body, unable to leave, the aide gently suggested that we needed to let go of him. We left the building and Carter and I held onto each other all the way home. Annie stayed in her room and I tried, unsuccessfully, to reach her.“Annie,” I said, knocking on her door, “please let me in. I know how you feel; we’re all sad to lose Oscar. I just want to hug you and tell you it’ll be okay. Please don’t isolate yourself like this. Come out and get something to eat with me and Carter.”“Mom, I couldn’t eat a thing right now. I just want to go to sleep. I’ll see you in the morning.”I couldn’t eat anything, either. We were both stunned by the absence of our much-beloved dog and, not surprisingly, we lost our appetites. Even bulimics can lose their appetites, at least for a while, when they’re sad.Another letting go served to uproot us as Angel and I sold our large house a month later. We all seemed to scatter like the four winds afterwards. Caroline had moved to California and Carter was living with a friend in D.C. I moved into a condominium near my high school, and Annie moved into a friend’s apartment.Her first year of living independently seemed uneventful at first. Frequently visiting her in the apartment she shared, I took her furniture from her old bedroom so she would feel at home in her new digs. But there were signs that she was changing. She had never had many boyfriends in high school. Then one Sunday morning I arrived to find a friend of hers on the sofa, clearly feeling at home. Later I learned he was a bartender at a watering hole and drug hotspot in Adams Morgan. Well, she was on her own. And by now she was twenty-one; I felt I didn’t have much leverage.In the spring, though two courses short of her graduation requirements at George Mason University, Annie was allowed to walk with her class, cap and gown and all.Angel, his wife and I all dressed up for our second child’s college graduation in the spring of 2001, and we all viewed this ceremony as a symbol of hope that Annie was willing and anxious to embrace her adulthood and take on more responsibilities, like other young people.“Hey, Mom, I want you to meet my friend Shelly. She got me through statistics sophomore year.”“Hi, Shelly, nice to meet you. Thanks for helping Annie. Is your family here today?”“No. They had to work. No big deal for them anyway.”“Oh. Well I think it’s a big deal, so congratulations from me! It was nice to meet you, Shelly, and good luck.”Annie’s graduation distracted us from being curious about what she was doing in the evenings. Again, she went to a lot of trouble to cover up behavior that she knew would alarm us and might threaten an intervention.Just like her mother.At the end of the summer, she asked if she could move into my basement. Her roommate was buying a condo, she said, and their lease was up anyway. Later on, when I watched in horror as the tragedy unfolded in my own house, I wondered about the truth of that. I thought maybe the roommate saw where Annie was going and asked her to leave. No matter. She was in my house now.The circle was about to close.Then a shocking discovery—a bowl of homemade methamphetamine on top of my dryer! I had been wondering about the stuff she’d left in my basement laundry room. I read the label: muriatic acid. I looked it up on my computer. So that’s what she used it for!I moved the bowl up to the kitchen and put it next to the sink, where recessed lighting bore down on it. She couldn’t miss it when she came in the front door. I thought I’d be ready for the confrontation.At 4:30 in the morning, she exploded into my bedroom while Gene and I were sleeping. I’m glad he was with me that night.“How dare you mess with my things downstairs! Don’t you ever touch my stuff again, you fucking bitch!” she roared. I thought I was dreaming when I saw her there, animal-like, with wild, blood-shot eyes.Gene held onto me as I sobbed into my pillow. “Oh God, this isn’t happening, Gene, please tell me this isn’t happening!”A half hour later, pulling myself together, I went downstairs to make coffee. I still had to go to work.Annie stomped upstairs from the basement with a garbage bag full of her clothes and brushed by me without a word or a look. After she slammed the door behind her, I ran to the kitchen window and saw her get into her car.My daughter went from crystal meth, to cocaine, to heroin, as though it were a smorgasbord of terrible choices. Despite four rehabs and family love, her addictive disease continued. There were periods of remission, but they were short-lived. My daughter lived in one pigsty after another, her boyfriends all drug addicts. I would spend a decade trying to reconcile two feelings: complete hatred for the stranger who was living in my daughter’s body and total surrender to my love for her.Because of our superficial differences, I didn’t realize right away how alike we were.We’ve both suffered from depression since we were young. The adults in our lives didn’t always acknowledge our screams. We turned to substance abuse for relief: food, cigarettes, and drugs. I added alcohol to my list, but I’m not aware that she ever drank alcoholically. My daughter moved on to heroin.At least I cleaned up well.Though Annie was no longer living with me at that point, I tried to continue embracing her, accepting her, so she’d know she was still loved. But I couldn’t yet distinguish between helping and enabling.I did unwise, misguided, things: I gave her money; I paid her debts; I shielded her from jail when she broke the law.“Are you sure you don’t want us to contact the authorities about this, Mrs. Rabasa?” the rep asked me when she stole my identity to get a credit card.“Oh no,” terrified of her going to jail, “I’ll handle it.”And I did, badly.This was enabling at its worst. Convinced her addiction came from me, that guilt crippled me and my judgment.Placing a safety net beneath her only served to ease my anxiety. It did nothing to teach her the consequences of her behavior. I kept getting in her way.It felt like I was in the twilight zone whenever I visited her. My daughter was buried somewhere deep inside, but the addict was in charge. One body, split down the middle: my daughter, Annalise; and a hard-core drug addict. A surreal nightmare. Her apartment smelled of incense and dirty laundry. The soles of her shoes flopped until she could get some duct tape around them. She didn’t offer me anything to eat because there was no food in the refrigerator.Nothing.Twice while I was there she ran to the bathroom to vomit.Heroin. Dope sick.Annie was hijacked by a cruel disease—cruel because it robs you of yourself while you’re still alive. While destroying your mind, it keeps your body alive long enough to do a lot of damage before it actually kills you. For many drug addicts, it’s an agonizingly slow death.It was like looking at a movie of my life in reverse, erasing all the good fortune that brought me to where I was, leaving only the pain and ugliness—and hopelessness—of a wasted life. How I might have ended up.For better or worse, my life had been unfolding as many do with addictive personalities. But to see the same disease taking over the life of my child—to see that mirror up close in front of me—was threatening to be my undoing.Trying to hold it together, I was imploding. Like all addicts and families of addicts, survival can be reached from many places, but often from the bottom.Mine was waiting for me. Excerpted from Stepping Stones: A Memoir of Addiction, Loss, and Transformation, to be released on June 16 by She Writes Press. It is the sequel to the award-winning debut memoir, A Mother’s Story: Angie Doesn’t Live Here Anymore (Maggie C. Romero), available on Amazon and where other books are sold.

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Avoiding Family Drama During the Covid-19 Pandemic #health #holistic

Several times since the Covid-19 pandemic broke out, I have wondered whether my brothers were safe. Knowing whether John*, my middle brother, was okay was easy. Although we’ve not talked to each other in 12 years, I found out through two of our mutual childhood friends that he was not one of the more than 350,000 people in his state who have contracted the virus.Finding out whether Marco* was okay took several weeks. Nobody in our family and none of my childhood friends can deal with him. He has bipolar disorder, and since his diagnosis 39 years ago, he has consistently refused meds. He’s verbally and physically abusive to most people he comes in contact with, especially women, which he came by honestly as the saying goes.I never needed a diagnosis to know something was seriously off with Marco. Looking back, he exhibited all the signs: stretches of mania followed by equally long bouts of depression, calculated and well-thought-out verbal and physical assaults, and rage that seemed to come from nowhere.When I was 10 (Marco is four years older than I) he planned out his first of two attempts to kill one of the neighbors in our Manhattan apartment building. He tied a thin wire across the top of the staircase. He then rang the doorbell and tried to lure this woman out of her apartment and down those marble stairs, where she would surely have fallen to her death. She saw the wire just in the nick of time and held onto the banister. Marco was hiding out of sight, snickering.He told our parents he did it because the neighbor wouldn’t let him play with her daughter. Laughing as he retold the story was creepy as hell.A few days later while staring out the window, Marco noticed the same neighbor climbing out of a cab. He had a 10-gallon garbage bag already filled with water, waiting beside the window. As she closed the car door, Marco dropped that 85-pound “water balloon” down 10 flights. It missed our neighbor by a hair and she did as anyone would do: she looked up and saw Marco looking out the window. He not only didn’t duck inside (as most people would have done), he yelled out to her, “Better luck next time!” Although none of us saw this happen, his version of events was identical to hers.With me Marco had a trigger hand, like our father. If our father didn’t like something I said or did, I would get knocked across the room. Our father beat all three of us whenever he felt like it, which was probably three to four times a week, as did his father to him growing up. When I was 14, I paid $25.00 from my babysitting money to a neighborhood kid to install a lock on my bedroom door. I couldn’t control the world outside my bedroom, but I could protect myself in my own room.And what was John doing as Marco was abusing his sister and trying to kill the neighbor? John has always been good at taking care of John and ignoring everyone else. Give him a substance and the world ceases to exist.Forgive and Forget Because Nothing is More Important Than FamilyThose who don’t know my family or think I’m exaggerating when I describe what it was like growing up usually say things to me like, “Nothing is more important than family,” “Whatever happened, just forgive him and move on” or “You’ll regret it when you get older.”The last comment has some merit. We are all in our 50s, and I’m acutely aware there are fewer years in front of us than behind. Our parents are now deceased, so they’re non-issues in the forgive and forget department. But for the living, reconciliation isn’t always so easy.It involves real work my brothers are too stuck to do. The apple rarely falls far from the tree, although the real mystery isn’t how one brother has bipolar and the other is an alcoholic. The question I’ve had my whole life is, why didn’t I become an alcoholic, have bipolar or both?Depression, bipolar disorder and alcoholism run on both sides of my family. My mother struggled with depression and used alcohol to self-medicate. She was a functional alcoholic—so functional that she was the editor for The New Yorker Magazine for years. While she rarely hit me, my mother was the queen of belittling. To give you an idea how biting her tongue could be, when I hit adolescence and my body started changing, she told me, “I don’t know what I did in life to deserve a mother, a best friend, a husband and a daughter who are all fat.”My father was a different variety of excrement. He just shit on everyone he knew and claimed to love. When he wasn’t confessing his mortal marital sins to my mother on a near-weekly basis, he was beating the crap out of us. He used whatever was handy: a book, a shoe, a belt, his fist, his legs to kick us, and when he was really frustrated, he’d throw things at us.My mother used to say, “Parents give their children unspoken commands their children learn to implicitly obey.” Marco and John learned at a young age to throw weapons instead of using their words. Their weapons of choice included a skateboard, a frying pan, scissors, lamps, glass bottles and a hammer. It amazes me they’re both still alive.Shorter and less muscular than Marco, John took up martial arts when he was 11. By the time he was 15, John was a black belt in three styles of Kung Fu. He was still shorter than Marco, but now his weapons became sharper, his hands and arms stronger, and he could inflict serious, life-altering damage. I lost count of how often I had to call the police because I wasn’t about to get in the middle of a fight between two rabid dogs.I used to pray for my parents and brothers to get arrested, so I could raise myself.Aleutian Islands: Same Name, Not ConnectedAfter I graduated from high school at 16, I rented a furnished room in the apartment of a different neighbor. By 17, I was in therapy, where I was diagnosed with PTSD and a panic disorder. I would end up spending seven years with Barbara, working through the damage of my childhood. Together, we dismantled me so we could put me back together. I was 24 when Barbara and I decided I was ready to go out into the world without an attendant.The first few years after I left home—especially while I was still in therapy—I hardly spoke with my parents or my brothers. I honestly didn’t know what Marco was doing, but I knew from various people he was fine and living with a woman in another state. Periodically, I’d run into John on the street. On those occasions we were cordial, but there was nothing to talk about. It was like seeing someone from my childhood I had nothing in common with now. We’d promise to catch up, knowing full well neither of us would make that call.Weeks turned into months and eventually years between check-ins with my brothers. I spoke with my parents every so often because, no matter how much work I’d done on myself, I was also raised with a sense of obligation, and daughters aren’t supposed to just cut off their parents. While they were still alive, I controlled the direction of the conversations to keep them from touching on areas that could trigger me.I once told Barbara in therapy that I felt like we were the Aleutian Islands. They were people I knew but had no connection to. I didn’t hate them; I felt nothing for them. My mother used to say, “The opposite of love isn’t hate. It’s indifference.” She was right.I met my husband in 1996 and we were married in 2001 while living in Southern California. Although all of my girlfriends who had previously gotten married and who were getting married opted to keep their maiden names, I couldn’t wait to change mine. Despite being every bit as feminist as my friends, for them the decision to keep their maiden name was about maintaining their identity. For me, the act of changing my last name meant adopting a new one.As important as leaving my home the first chance I got and staying in therapy for seven years (no matter how uncomfortable things got sometimes), changing my name allowed me to reinvent myself.The beauty of having a different last name is that, unless I tell people my maiden name, nobody knows I have any association with those people. It helps that I have an amazing relationship with my husband’s family, who have been my tribe for 23 years.Today, my husband and I live in Puerto Rico on an organic farm. We have rich relationships with people both in Puerto Rico and the States. When I think about the stark contrast between my life then and now, I’m reminded of a quote by Maya Angelou: "Family isn't always blood, it's the people in your life who want you in theirs: the ones who accept you for who you are, the ones who would do anything to see you smile and who love you no matter what.” Separate Lives in the Time of Covid-19My husband and I have talked with my brothers a handful of times over the last 24 years we’ve been together. My mother died in 1994 and, after my father’s death in 2002, I was named executor of my parents’ estate. I had to periodically be in touch with both brothers for signatures on this or that document required to sell our parents’ home, which we did in 2008. Between then and now, I had no desire to contact them.When the pandemic broke out, for the first time since I left home, I felt conflicted between the need to learn they’re safe and my need to maintain a drama-free life. Once I found John was alive, I felt I was halfway to feeling I wouldn’t need to expose myself.It took several weeks, but I was finally able to confirm Marco is also safe from Covid-19. I remembered a nickname he used to refer to himself when we were younger and during times he was manic. I started googling versions of the nickname and eventually came across his Twitter profile.He’s on his fourth wife, living somewhere in the Midwest. What I read were 75 tweets in rapid fire succession about everything that angers him that nobody reacted to or commented on. Based on my accelerated heart rate while reading them, I deduced he still isn’t treating his bipolar disorder. I got what I came for: I know he’s alive. Now that I know both my brothers are safe from Covid-19, and that I can continue to confirm it without reaching out to them, I no longer have to wonder and I can continue living my life.

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You Aren’t Weak, Broken Or Lacking Willpower #health #holistic

Many people mistakenly believe that sobriety is just about having tons of willpower.

Maybe you’re convinced that if only you were stronger, you’d be able to ‘control’ alcohol a bit better.

Perhaps you’ve confided in someone about your drinking, only for them to turn round and say, “Well – why don’t you just stop at one?” 

This stuff can leave you feeling as if your drinking is a personal failing and weakness. 

I get it. It’s a horrible place to be. 

But you aren’t weak at all. I explain why in this video:

Key points:

You’re not weak

If you’re reading this, I’d put money on the fact that you are smart, motivated and driven. You’re juggling many competing demands, between family life, work and the fallout from the coronavirus.

You have to be a strong person to make all that stuff happen whilst feeling hungover and pretending to feel absolutely fine. 

 

‘Normal’ drinking

Alcohol is a mind-altering, addictive drug which is normalised, glamorised and often presented as the solution to all your problems, and completely essential to a full and happy life. 

It’s completely normal – and predictable – to become dependent on an addictive drug that is repeatedly presented to you in the most flattering and appealing way.

 

Successful sobriety isn’t about willpower

Let’s be clear: grit and determination will only get you so far. Long term, happy sobriety is about much more than willpower – it’s about doing the right mindset work.

If you want sobriety to feel less like a punishing diet and more like an empowering way of life, you have to examine the benefits of drinking. Is alcohol genuinely doing everything you think it is? (Hint: it’s not).

 

Why do you really drink?

The real work of sobriety is looking at why you want to numb out in the first place. Why do you want to escape your life? Why do you want to do that on a very average Monday night? 

Focusing on this is much more helpful than clinging on to a story – and it is just a story – that you are weak and broken and there’s something wrong with you.

 

If you’d love some help and support to quit drinking, click here for details of my online course.

 

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