Sunday, September 30, 2012
September--National Recovery Month Coming to a Successful End
National Recovery Month (Recovery Month) is a national observance that educates Americans on the fact that addiction treatment and mental health services can enable those with a mental and/or substance use disorder to live a healthy and rewarding life. The observance's main focus is to laud the gains made by those in recovery from these conditions, just as we would those who are managing other health conditions such as hypertension, diabetes, asthma, and heart disease. Recovery Month spreads the positive message that behavioral health is essential to overall health, prevention works, treatment is effective, and people can and do recover.
Recovery Month, now in its 23rd year, highlights individuals who have reclaimed their lives and are living happy and healthy lives in long-term recovery and also honors the prevention, treatment, and recovery service providers who make recovery possible. Recovery Month promotes the message that recovery in all its forms is possible, and also encourages citizens to take action to help expand and improve the availability of effective prevention, treatment, and recovery services for those in need.
Celebrated during the month of September, thousands of prevention, treatment, and recovery programs and services around the country celebrate their successes and share them with their neighbors, friends, and colleagues in an effort to educate the public about recovery, how it works, for whom, and why. There are millions of Americans whose lives have been transformed through recovery. These successes often go unnoticed by the broader population; therefore, Recovery Month provides a vehicle to celebrate these accomplishments.
The 2012 Recovery Month observance emphasizes that while the road to recovery may be difficult, the benefits of preventing and overcoming behavioral health conditions are significant and valuable to individuals, families, and communities. Recovery Month, has become a year-round initiative that supports educational outreach and celebratory events throughout the year.
Saturday, September 29, 2012
Justin Bieber's Mom Tells Her Story--Teen Depression & Drug Use
It's not an easy read for anyone, but Mallette says it was particularly difficult for her son, Canadian pop star Justin Bieber.
"It was tough for him to read, parts of it," Mallette said during an interview this week from a well-appointed hotel room in downtown Toronto.
"Because you know, it's his mom going through this pain. It's hard for him to look at that pain. But he also wants to see people's lives change, and he sees the bigger picture.
"He supports me in what I'm doing."
And while it was hard for Bieber to read the new memoir (the 18-year-old also penned its foreward), it was just as difficult for Mallette to re-open wounds from decades ago.
Like her pop prodigy of a son, Mallette grew up in a blue-collar family in Stratford, Ont. Even before Mallette was born, her family faced tragedy — her sister, Sally, was hit by a car and killed upon impact when she was five years old.
While similarly senseless personal catastrophes seemed to crop up with unusual frequency — Mallette's biological father left her family when she was two, then died suddenly just as he was trying to reconnect — she writes that, on the surface, she appeared to have a standard suburban upbringing.
However, "under all the apparent normalcy" — as Mallette writes — she endured many years of sexual abuse from an array of perpetrators: male and female, young and old. According to Mallette, those responsible included a friend's seemingly charming grandfather and an aggressive male babysitter.
At one point long ago, she held these secrets so close that their heavy burden was in part to blame when a teenaged Mallette became so distraught that she stepped in front of an oncoming box truck. The driver skillfully swerved, but the suicide attempt landed Mallette in the psych ward of the Stratford General Hospital.
So clearly, committing these childhood traumas to the public record wasn't an easy decision for Mallette.
"I had to just keep remembering the only reason I wrote this book was to help other people," she said. "So I knew that it was going to be painful putting it down on paper. Some things are even still painful to talk about.
"But you know, I'm so much more healed today than I was and I really want to help other people get to that place as well."
And really, Mallette's honesty seemed boundless.
She opens up about a litany of details that many celebrity memoirs might have glossed over: her adolescent tendency to numb herself with drugs and alcohol; the brief period she spent supporting herself by dealing weed and selling stolen cigarettes; and her occasionally difficult relationship with her well-meaning mother. Mallette, a faithful Christian, also concedes that she's been celibate since she was 21 years old, a revelation that has inspired plenty of tabloid gawking.
Later, she writes about the revelatory experience she's had recently sharing her story with teen moms. And she says now her book wouldn't have had value to those struggling youngsters if it wasn't thoroughly candid.
"I wanted to connect with people and relate to people, so I knew I had to be as real and raw and honest as I could," she said.
"It's tough being vulnerable in front of the whole world. But again, I'm hoping to reach even one person. If just one person's life gets changed after reading this story, it's worth it."
That complete transparency also meant probing the difficult relationship she had with Bieber's father. Writing about the early years of their mercurial relationship, Mallette portrays him as magnetic but immature, and the two young lovers had a rocky relationship exacerbated by mutual substance use.
He was in county jail the day his son was born over a fight. But Mallette stresses, both in print and in person, that neither party was blameless and Bieber's father (who also has children now from another relationship) has deeply matured over the years, and is very much a different man now than he was.
"We (had a) toxic, on-again, off-again relationship when we were younger," said Mallette, who penned the book with A.J. Gregory.
"We've both grown. We've both changed.... He's been there since Justin was a baby. Some people think he just showed up when Justin became famous, but he's been a good dad."
Of course, the book brightens considerably once Mallette gives birth to her only son on March 1, 1994, when she was only 18 years old.
Although she lived for a time at a home in Stratford for teen moms (and portions of the book's proceeds will be dedicated to a charity benefiting single-parent homes and addiction centres) and endured some dramatic episodes with his father, Mallette found purpose with her son's arrival.
And Bieber was a handful as a child, seemingly possessing a boundless energy that irked teachers and kept his single mother perpetually occupied. She writes in the book that although Bieber was never formally diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, the "signs were obvious."
"He still has a ton of energy," she says, laughing. "I had a teacher say that ... he was like having 10 kids. When he was good, the whole class was good. When he was bad, the whole class was bad. "So he kept me on my toes."
It's clear how closely bonded Mallette and Bieber became after spending years living together in tiny Stratford apartments. Bieber has never been shy about expressing his love and appreciation for his dear mom, and her influence runs deep — for instance, it was the Boyz II Men records she played during her pregnancy and Bieber's early childhood that informed his love of R&B.
And the effervescent Mallette seems to share her son's gregarious streak. Just before the interview, she chides an American member of her team for being unfamiliar with the CN Tower, then muses on whether there's time to scale up to the peak — before pointing out herself that she and her son share a "mischievous" streak.
But the fact that their relationship is so close explains why it was so difficult for Mallette to allow him into show business in the first place. As a pre-teen YouTube sensation, Bieber (who got his start by placing second in a Stratford singing competition) was attracting attention from a number of reputable entertainment types, but Mallette was initially reluctant.
"I'm very protective — and he would say over-protective and maybe strict," said the diminutive Mallette. "But I didn't want to see him go through the same sort of pain that I went through. And I just wanted to protect him at all costs.
"You hear all the horror stories of the industry, and I just really wanted to make sure that anything I could do to prevent him from being hurt, I would do."
In the early-going, that meant meticulously monitoring the comments sections below Bieber's videos and judiciously paring the more mean-spirited posts.
But of course, as Bieber's star rose and he became a multi-platform superstar with an army of social media faithful and worldwide record sales well past the 15 million mark, it became impossible for Mallette to shield her son from the scornful backlash.
"He's a human being, and when he sees those hurtful, hateful comments, I'm sure he feels some sort of way about them. I know I do as his mom," she said. "It hurts me to see that stuff. Because some people just don't see us as human beings.
"But he's just, he's great. He just brushes it off. And he's got a lot more people that love him, so as mom, I just have to realize it comes with the territory."
For all her fretting, Mallette is proud of the way Bieber has turned out after his atypical adolescence — "My biggest achievement is just seeing that he's turning out to be ... a good man," she says.
Still, she stumbles over that "man" part. She bristled light-heartedly when it was mentioned that the "Baby" hitmaker, who turned 18 earlier this year, was now all grown up.
"Grown up?" she interjects with a smile. "It's so bizarre to think of him as a grown-up. Because he's my baby, and will probably always be my baby."
Still, Mallette acknowledges that she no longer needs to be focused on her son to the exclusion of all else.
After devoting all of her adult life to her only child, Mallette says she's finally ready to carve out some time for herself.
"Now that he's 18 and doesn't need mom as much anymore, it's good for me to have time to focus on this book and my message and being able to help other people and do my own thing," she said.
"I have over a million Twitter followers because of Justin, and they all call me mom. So I feel somewhat of a responsibility to have something good to say. I feel like there's a lot of people with a platform and they don't have anything to say or they don't have anything good to say.
"And I really want to bring some hope and encouragement."
Paradigm Malibu is devoted to the provision of state of the art Teen Drug Treatment, Adolescent Behavioral Health, Mental Health and Emotional Health Treatment. To learn more about our services, please visit our web site at: www.paradigmmalibu.com
Friday, September 28, 2012
Risky Rise of the Good-Grade Pill
He steered into the high school parking lot, clicked off the ignition and scanned the scraps of his recent weeks. Crinkled chip bags on the dashboard. Soda cups at his feet. And on the passenger seat, a rumpled SAT practice book whose owner had been told since fourth grade he was headed to the Ivy League. Pencils up in 20 minutes.
The boy exhaled. Before opening the car door, he recalled recently, he twisted open a capsule of orange powder and arranged it in a neat line on the armrest. He leaned over, closed one nostril and snorted it.
Throughout the parking lot, he said, eight of his friends did the same thing.
The drug was not cocaine or heroin, but Adderall, an amphetamine prescribed for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder that the boy said he and his friends routinely shared to study late into the night, focus during tests and ultimately get the grades worthy of their prestigious high school in an affluent suburb of New York City. The drug did more than just jolt them awake for the 8 a.m. SAT; it gave them a tunnel focus tailor-made for the marathon of tests long known to make or break college applications.
“Everyone in school either has a prescription or has a friend who does,” the boy said.
At high schools across the United States, pressure over grades and competition for college admissions are encouraging students to abuse prescription stimulants, according to interviews with students, parents and doctors. Pills that have been a staple in some college and graduate school circles are going from rare to routine in many academically competitive high schools, where teenagers say they get them from friends, buy them from student dealers or fake symptoms to their parents and doctors to get prescriptions.
Of the more than 200 students, school officials, parents and others contacted for this article, about 40 agreed to share their experiences. Most students spoke on the condition that they be identified by only a first or middle name, or not at all, out of concern for their college prospects or their school systems’ reputations — and their own.
“It’s throughout all the private schools here,” said DeAnsin Parker, a New York psychologist who treats many adolescents from affluent neighborhoods like the Upper East Side. “It’s not as if there is one school where this is the culture. This is the culture.”
Observed Gary Boggs, a special agent for the Drug Enforcement Administration, “We’re seeing it all across the United States.”
The D.E.A. lists prescription stimulants like Adderall and Vyvanse (amphetamines) and Ritalin and Focalin (methylphenidates) as Class 2 controlled substances — the same as cocaine and morphine — because they rank among the most addictive substances that have a medical use. (By comparison, the long-abused anti-anxiety drug Valium is in the lower Class 4.) So they carry high legal risks, too, as few teenagers appreciate that merely giving a friend an Adderall or Vyvanse pill is the same as selling it and can be prosecuted as a felony.
While these medicines tend to calm people with A.D.H.D., those without the disorder find that just one pill can jolt them with the energy and focus to push through all-night homework binges and stay awake during exams afterward. “It’s like it does your work for you,” said William, a recent graduate of the Birch Wathen Lenox School on the Upper East Side of Manhattan.
But abuse of prescription stimulants can lead to depression and mood swings (from sleep deprivation), heart irregularities and acute exhaustion or psychosis during withdrawal, doctors say. Little is known about the long-term effects of abuse of stimulants among the young. Drug counselors say that for some teenagers, the pills eventually become an entry to the abuse of painkillers and sleep aids.
“Once you break the seal on using pills, or any of that stuff, it’s not scary anymore — especially when you’re getting A’s,” said the boy who snorted Adderall in the parking lot. He spoke from the couch of his drug counselor, detailing how he later became addicted to the painkiller Percocet and eventually heroin.
Paul L. Hokemeyer, a family therapist in Manhattan, said: “Children have prefrontal cortexes that are not fully developed, and we’re changing the chemistry of the brain. That’s what these drugs do. It’s one thing if you have a real deficiency — the medicine is really important to those people — but not if your deficiency is not getting into Brown.”
The number of prescriptions for A.D.H.D. medications dispensed for young people ages 10 to 19 has risen 26 percent since 2007, to almost 21 million yearly, according to IMS Health, a health care information company — a number that experts estimate corresponds to more than two million individuals. But there is no reliable research on how many high school students take stimulants as a study aid. Doctors and teenagers from more than 15 schools across the nation with high academic standards estimated that the portion of students who do so ranges from 15 percent to 40 percent.
“They’re the A students, sometimes the B students, who are trying to get good grades,” said one senior at Lower Merion High School in Ardmore, a Philadelphia suburb, who said he makes hundreds of dollars a week selling prescription drugs, usually priced at $5 to $20 per pill, to classmates as young as freshmen. “They’re the quote-unquote good kids, basically.”
The trend was driven home last month to Nan Radulovic, a social worker in Santa Monica, Calif. Within a few days, she said, an 11th grader, a ninth grader and an eighth grader asked for prescriptions for Adderall solely for better grades. From one girl, she recalled, it was not quite a request.
“If you don’t give me the prescription,” Ms. Radulovic said the girl told her, “I’ll just get it from kids at school.”
Keeping Everyone Happy
Madeleine surveyed her schedule of five Advanced Placement classes, field hockey and several other extracurricular activities and knew she could not handle it all. The first physics test of the year — inclines, friction, drag — loomed ominously over her college prospects. A star senior at her Roman Catholic school in Bethesda, Md., Madeleine knew a friend whose grades had gone from B’s to A’s after being prescribed Ritalin, so she asked her for a pill.
She got a 95. Thereafter, Madeleine recalled, she got Adderall and Vyvanse capsules the rest of the year from various classmates — not in exchange for money, she said, but for tutoring them in calculus or proofreading their English papers.
“Can I get a drink of water?” Madeleine said she would ask the teacher in one class, before excusing herself and heading to the water fountain. Making sure no one was watching, she would remove a 40-milligram Vyvanse capsule from her purse and swallow it. After 30 minutes, the buzz began, she said: laser focus, instant recall and the fortitude to crush any test in her path.
“People would have never looked at me and thought I used drugs like that — I wasn’t that kid,” said Madeleine, who has just completed her freshman year at an Ivy League college and continues to use stimulants occasionally. “It wasn’t that hard of a decision. Do I want only four hours of sleep and be a mess, and then underperform on the test and then in field hockey? Or make the teachers happy and the coach happy and get good grades, get into a good college and make my parents happy?”
Madeleine estimated that one-third of her classmates at her small school, most of whom she knew well, used stimulants without a prescription to boost their scholastic performance. Many students across the United States made similar estimates for their schools, all of them emphasizing that the drugs were used not to get high, but mostly by conscientious students to work harder and meet ever-rising academic expectations.
These estimates can be neither confirmed nor refuted because little data captures this specific type of drug misuse. A respected annual survey financed by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, “Monitoring the Future,” reports that abuse of prescription amphetamines by 10th and 12th graders nationally has actually dipped from the 1990s and is remaining relatively steady at about 10 percent.
However, some experts note that the survey does not focus on the demographic where they believe such abuse is rising steadily — students at high-pressure high schools — and also that many teenagers barely know that what they often call “study drugs” are in fact illegal amphetamines.
“Isn’t it just like a vitamin?” asked one high school junior from Eastchester, a suburb of New York.
Liz Jorgensen, a licensed addiction specialist who runs Insight Counseling in Ridgefield, Conn., said her small center had treated “at least 50 or 60” high school students from southern Connecticut this school year alone who had abused prescription stimulants for academics. Ms. Jorgensen said some of those teenagers landed in rehab directly from the stimulants or, more often, grew comfortable with prescription drugs in general and began abusing prescription painkillers like OxyContin.
A spokesman for Shire, which manufactures Vyvanse and Adderall’s extended-release capsules, said studies had shown no link between prescribed use of those drugs and later abuse.
Dr. Jeff Jonas, Shire’s senior vice president for research and development, said that the company was greatly concerned about the misuse of its stimulants but that the rate was very small. “I’m not aware of any systematic data that suggests there’s a widespread problem,” he said. “You can always find people who testify that it happens.”
Students who sell prescription stimulants to their classmates focus on their burdens and insecurities. One girl who sells to fellow students at Long Beach High School on Long Island said: “These kids would get in trouble if they don’t do well in school. When people take tests, it’s immediately, ‘Who am I getting Adderall from?’ They’re always looking for it.”
Every school identified in this article was contacted regarding statements by its students and stimulant abuse in general. Those that responded generally said that they were concerned about some teenagers turning to these drugs, but that their numbers were far smaller than the students said.
David Weiss, superintendent of Long Beach Public Schools, said the survey his district used to gauge student drug use asked about only prescription medications in general, not stimulants specifically.
“It has not been a surface issue for us — we’re much more conscious of alcohol or other drug use,” Mr. Weiss said in a telephone interview. “We haven’t had word that it’s a widespread issue.”
Douglas Young, a spokesman for the Lower Merion School District outside Philadelphia, said prescription stimulant abuse was covered in various student-wellness initiatives as well as in the 10th-grade health curriculum. Mr. Young expressed frustration that many parents seemed oblivious to the problem.
“It’s time for a serious wake-up call,” Mr. Young said. “Straight A’s and high SAT scores look great on paper, but they aren’t reflective measures of a student’s health and well-being. We need to better understand the pressures and temptations, and ultimately we need to embrace new definitions of student success. For many families and communities, that’s simply not happening.”
Fooling the Doctors
During an interview in March, the dealer at Lower Merion High reached into his pocket and pulled out the container for his daily stash of the prescription stimulants Concerta and Focalin: a hollowed-out bullet. Unlike his other products — marijuana and heroin, which come from higher-level dealers — his amphetamines came from a more trusted, and trusting, source, he said.
“I lie to my psychiatrist — I expressed feelings I didn’t really have, knowing the consequences of it,” he said, standing in a park a few miles from the high school. “I tell the doctor, ‘I find myself very distracted, and I feel this really deep pain inside, like I’m anxious all the time,’ or something like that.”
He coughed out a chuckle and added proudly, “Generally, if you keep playing the angsty-teen role, you’ll get something good.”
Christine, a junior sitting nearby, said she followed the well-known lines to get her drugs directly and legally, a script for scripts. “I’m not able to focus on schoolwork,” she said in a mockingly anxious voice. “I’m constantly looking out the window.” Although she often uses the drugs herself, snorting them for a faster and more intense effect, she said she preferred to save them for when her customers crave them most.
“Right before everybody took the PSATs, a bunch of kids went to the bathroom to snort their Addies,” she said.
This is one of the more vexing problems with stimulants in high schools, experts said — the drugs enter the schools via students who get them legally, if not legitimately.
Older A.D.H.D. drugs required low doses every few hours, and schools, not wanting students to carry the drugs themselves, had the school nurse hold and dispense the pills. Newer long-lasting versions like Adderall XR and Vyvanse allow parents to give children a single dose in the morning, often unaware that the pills can go down a pants pocket as easily as the throat. Some students said they took their pills only during the week and gave their weekend pills to friends.
The mother of one high school freshman in Westchester County said she would open the kitchen cabinet every morning and watch her son take his prescribed dose of Ritalin. She noticed one day that the capsule was strangely airy and held it up to the light. It was empty.
“There were a few times we were short in the month, and I couldn’t understand why,” recalled the woman, whose son was in eighth grade at the time. “It never dawned on me until I found those empty capsules, and then I started discovering the little packets of powder. He was selling it to other kids.”
A number of teenagers interviewed laughed at the ease with which they got some doctors to write prescriptions for A.D.H.D. The disorder’s definition requires inattentiveness,hyperactivity or impulse control to present “clinically significant impairment” in at least two settings (school and home, for example), according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Crucially, some of this impairment must have been in evidence by age 7; a proper diagnosis for a teenager claiming to have A.D.H.D., several doctors said, requires interviewing parents, teachers and others to confirm that the problems existed long before.
Many youngsters with prescriptions said their doctors merely listened to their stories and took out their prescription pads. Dr. Hilda R. Roque, a primary-care physician in West New York, N.J., said she never prescribed A.D.H.D. medicine but knew many doctors who did. She said many parents could push as hard for prescriptions as their children did, telling her: “My child is not doing well in school. I understand there are meds he can take to make him smarter.”
“To get a prescription for Adderall was the Golden Ticket — it really was,” said William, the recent graduate of Birch Wathen in Manhattan.
A high school senior in Connecticut who has used his friend’s Adderall for school said: “These are academic steroids. But usually, parents don’t get the steroids for you.”
As with the steroids taken by athletes, the downside of prescription stimulants appears after they provide the desired short-term competitive benefits. This was the case with a recent graduate of McLean High School in Virginia, one of the top public schools in the Washington area.
Late in his sophomore year, the boy wanted some help to raise his B average — far from what top colleges expected, especially from a McLean student. So he told his psychologist what she needed to hear for a diagnosis of A.D.H.D. — even gazing out the window during the appointment for effect — and was soon getting 30 pills of Adderall every month, 10 milligrams each. They worked. He focused late into the night studying, concentrated better during exams and got an A-minus average for his junior year.
“I wanted to do everything I could to get into the quote-unquote right school,” he recalled recently.
As senior year began, when another round of SATs and one last set of good grades could put him over the top, the boy said he still had trouble concentrating. The doctor prescribed 30 milligrams a day. When college applications hit, he bought extra pills for $5 apiece from a girl in French class who had fooled her psychiatrist, too, and began taking several on some days.
The boy said that as his A-minus average continued through senior year, no one suspected that “a kid who went to Bible camp” and had so improved his grades could be abusing drugs. By the time he was accepted and had enrolled at a good but not great college, he was up to 300 milligrams a day — constantly taking more to stave off the inevitable crash.
One night, after he had taken about 400 milligrams, his heart started beating wildly. He began hallucinating and then convulsing. He was rushed to the emergency room and wound up spending seven months at a drug rehabilitation center.
To his surprise, two of 20 fellow patients there had also landed in rehab solely from abusing stimulants in high school.
“No one seems to think that it’s a real thing — adults on the outside looking in,” the boy said. “The other kids in rehab thought we weren’t addicts because Adderall wasn’t a real drug. It’s so underestimated.”
‘No Way You’d Notice’
The Sklar family lives near the top of a daunting hill in Ardsley, a comfortable suburb north of New York City. Ardsley High School sends dozens of graduates every year to Ivy League-caliber colleges. When students there use Facebook, they all know that its founder, Mark Zuckerberg, once walked the same halls.
At their kitchen table after school last month, Dodi Sklar listened as her ninth-grade son, Jonathan, described how some classmates already abused stimulants — long before SATs and college applications. An accomplished student who said he would never join them, Jonathan described the ease with which he could.
“There’s no way you’d notice — that’s why so many kids are doing it,” he told his mother. “I could say I’m going for a run, call someone I know who does it, get some pills from them, take them, come home and work. Just do it. You’d be just glad that I was studying hard.”
His mother sighed. “As a parent you worry about driving, you worry about drinking, you worry about all kinds of health and mental issues, social issues,” she said. “Now I have to worry about this, too? Really? This shouldn’t be what they need to do to get where they want to.”
Asked if the improper use of stimulants was cheating, students were split. Some considered that the extra studying hours and the heightened focus during exams amounted to an unfair advantage. Many countered that the drugs “don’t give you the answers” and defended their use as a personal choice for test preparation, akin to tutoring.
One consensus was clear: users were becoming more common, they said, and some students who would rather not take the drugs would be compelled to join them because of the competition over class rank and colleges’ interest.
A current law student in Manhattan, who said he dealt Adderall regularly while at his high school in Sarasota, Fla., said that insecurity was a main part of his sales pitch: that those students “would feel at a huge disadvantage,” he said.
William, the recent Birch Wathen graduate, said prescription stimulants became a point of contention when a girl with otherwise middling grades suddenly improved her SAT score.
“There was an uproar among kids — some people were really proud of her, and some kids were really jealous and mad,” he recalled. “I don’t remember if she had a prescription, but she definitely took more than was prescribed. People would say, ‘You’re so smart,’ and she’d say, ‘It wasn’t all me.’ ”
One sophomore at Harvard-Westlake School in Studio City, Calif., is unsure what his future holds. Enrolled at one of the top high schools on the West Coast, he said he tried a friend’s Adderall this semester but disliked the sensation of his heart beating rapidly for hours. He vowed never to do it again.
But as he watches upperclassmen regularly abuse stimulants as they compete for top college slots, he is not quite sure.
“Junior and senior year is a whole new ballgame,” the boy said. “I promised myself I wouldn’t take it, but that can easily, easily change. I can be convinced.”
Paradigm Malibu is devoted to the provision of state of the art Teen Drug Treatment, Adolescent Behavioral Health, Mental Health and Emotional Health Treatment. To learn more about our services, please visit our web site at: www.paradigmmalibu.com
Thursday, September 27, 2012
More Pre-Teens Abusing Inhalants
NEW YORK - Abuse of inhalants by middle school children has increased by as much as 44 percent over a two-year period, driven by fewer and fewer children seeing risk in experimenting with inhalants to get high, according to a new data analysis conducted and released today by the Partnership for a Drug-Free America.
"It's clear that this new generation of pre-teens has a lot to learn about the lethal nature of inhalant abuse," said Steve Pasierb, president & CEO of the Partnership. "We've got two concerns to contend with: 1) the fact that more kids are using inhalants to get high, and 2) fewer kids seeing risk in this behavior, which suggests more kids will experiment in the future."
Drawn from the Partnership's latest national survey on drug use, the new analysis reports that over the past two years inhalant abuse increased by 18 percent (from 22 to 26 percent) among 8th graders and by 44 percent (from 18 to 26 percent) among 6th graders.
Commonly known among adolescents as "sniffing," "inhaling" or "huffing," inhalant abuse is the deliberate inhalation of fumes from common products found in homes, offices and schools to get high. Approximately one in four 8th graders - or almost one million youngsters - has reported trying an inhalant at least once in their lives. Inhalant abuse can cause brain damage and can lead to death, even at the trial stage.
The percentage of kids associating risk with using inhalants also dropped significantly over the past two years. The perception that sniffing of huffing inhalants can kill you fell 14 percent among 8th graders (from 73 to 63 percent) and decreased 29 percent among 6th graders (from 68 to 48 percent).
New Inhalant Education Initiative
The Partnership is re-launching its inhalant education campaign as part of a nationwide effort across all major media markets with a renewed focus on preventing inhalant abuse.
The Partnership and the Alliance for Consumer Education (ACE) are discussing ways to help educate parents about the dangers of inhalant abuse by building awareness through prevention efforts.
"Working closely with The Partnership as an alliance partner, we will be able to reach millions of parents and educators to help stem the tide of increased inhalant abuse among preteens," said Carleen Kreider, president of the Alliance for Consumer Education (ACE). "We have dedicated our efforts at ACE to educate as many parents and other adults nationwide about this risky behavior. We hope to help empower parents to talk to their children about the dangers of inhalants because we know that the threat of inaction can be even more dangerous."
Overall, teen drug use is trending downward in the United States. Lifetime use of any illegal drug is down by 10 percent over the last five years (from 51 percent in 1998 to 46 percent in 2003). Over the past five years, Marijuana trial or lifetime use has declined from 42 to 39 percent, a seven percent reduction. And teen trial or lifetime of Ecstasy , which peaked in 2001, has declined by 25 percent (from 12 to 9 percent). The one exception to this positive trend is the up-tick in inhalant abuse among pre-teens.
"The Partnership's findings are quite alarming and confirm what we are seeing at the state and local levels," said Harvey Weiss, executive director of the National Inhalant Prevention Coalition (NIPC) in Austin, Texas. "We must talk about the very real threats of inhalants with our children; to do nothing about this now invites needless tragedies."
The 2003 PATS study, conducted for the Partnership by Roper Public Affairs & Media, under grants from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, interviewed 7,270 adolescents nationwide. An additional teen sample of 1140 adolescents in the 6th grade was also included. Data are nationally projectable with a +/- 1.5 percent margin of error.
ACE is a nonprofit foundation dedicated to advancing community health and well being. The flagship program of ACE is Inhalant Abuse Education and Prevention.
The National Inhalant Prevention Coalition (NIPC) was founded in 1992 and views inhalant abuse as a public health problem. It provides all segments of a community with resources, materials and referrals and leads National Inhalants & Poisons Awareness Week. The NIPC has established a grief support network for parents who have lost their child to inhalants.
For parents and those who care for children, resources, tips and the latest information about drugs and inhalant abuse are available at the Partnership's parent resource center on-line at www.drugfree.org or ACE at www.consumered.org or NIPC at www.inhalants.org.
Paradigm Malibu is devoted to the provision of state of the art Teen Drug Treatment, Adolescent Behavioral Health, Mental Health and Emotional Health Treatment. To learn more about our services, please visit our web site at: www.paradigmmalibu.com
Wednesday, September 26, 2012
Good News for Teens--California Legislature Passes Bill to Help Prevent Drug Overdose Deaths
SACRAMENTO, CA—By an overwhelming margin (50 Aye – 20 No), the California legislature passed Assemblymember Tom Ammiano’s ‘911 Good Samaritan Overdose Response Act’ (AB 472), which provides limited protection against arrest for minor drug law violations for anyone who summons emergency medical assistance to prevent a fatal overdose. Governor Jerry Brown quickly signed the bill.
“The demographic of addiction and drug overdose has gone through a sudden transformation in California,” said the bill’s author Tom Ammiano (D-San Francisco).
“In suburban areas, the emergency rooms and addiction centers are seeing more and more overdose among teens and young adults… This will protect all our communities.”
Advocates are applauding the passage of the life-saving bill, just days before International Overdose Awareness Day (August 31).
“The instinct to call 911 should always be immediate when witnessing a life-or-death situation. Our current policies cause people to waste time wondering about the consequences of seeking emergency help,”
said Meghan Ralston, Harm Reduction Manager of the Drug Policy Alliance. “Lives are lost in the minutes when the decision to call 911 is debated. This Good Samaritan law will encourage people to get medical assistance immediately.”
Five Republican members joined 48 Democrats in support. Assemblymember Kristin Olsen (R-Modesto) said regarding the passage of the bill, “It is critically important…as a mother, a human being and a Christian, I know we all make mistakes.” Olsen went on to say she wouldn’t want a family member of hers to die from such a mistake. In a bipartisan show of support, Olsen joined four other Republicans in voting to pass the bill. They join Republican Congresswoman Mary Bono-Mack as advocates for this reform.
Drug poisoning overdose remains a major public health problem and a leading cause of accidental death in California. According to the California Department of Public Health, in 2009, more Californians died from drug poisoning than from motor vehicle accidents. Fear of arrest and prosecution often prevents people who are in a position to help from calling 911; as a result, help is called in only half of all overdose emergencies. AB 472 would provide limited protection from arrest and prosecution a witness who calls 911 to save a life, but only for three low-level violations: possession for personal use; being under the influence; and possession of paraphernalia. Assemblymember Ammiano stressed that it does not protect for arrest for furnishing or selling drugs, driving under the influence, or any other crime.
New York, Illinois, Washington State, New Mexico, Colorado, Florida, Rhode Island, Massachusetts and Connecticut have already passed 911 Good Samaritan policies for drug overdoses and similar measures are currently pending in others.
Californians impacted by the tragedy of overdose from across the state urged the Governor to sign the bill. Their stories are available atwww.drugpolicy.org/odvideo
The Good Samaritan Overdose Response Act (AB 472) is supported by a long list of public health organizations, treatment providers and advocacy groups including: California Society of Addiction Medicine; California Attorneys for Criminal Justice; California Professional Firefighters; California Association of Alcohol and Drug Program Executives; County Alcohol and Drug Program Administrators Association of California; National Council of Alcohol and Drug Dependence of the San Fernando Valley; National Association of Social Workers; Asian Pacific AIDS Intervention Team; Bay Area Addiction Research and Treatment; Families ACT!; Grief Recovery After a Substance Passing; and Parents for Addiction Treatment and Healing.\
Paradigm Malibu is devoted to the provision of state of the art Teen Drug Treatment, Adolescent Behavioral Health, Mental Health and Emotional Health Treatment. To learn more about our services, please visit our web site at: www.paradigmmalibu.com
Tuesday, September 25, 2012
Brent Shapiro Foundation Raises $500,000 To Battle Teen Addiction
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| Robert Shapiro and Christopher Kennedy Lawford |
Hollywood celebrities including Robert Duvall, Ryan O’Neal, Bai Ling,Richard Grieco, Catherine Bach,Drew Seeley, Nicole Richie, Gloria Allred, and Kris and Bruce Jenner were among more than 700 people Saturday evening at the annual Summer Spectacular, which raised more than $500,000 for The Brent Shapiro Foundation for Alcohol and Drug Awareness.
Founded in 2006 by Los Angeles attorney Robert Shapiro honors the memory of his son Brent, a USC student who died suddenly in 2005 after drinking alcohol and taking ecstasy. The organization creates awareness about addictive diseases including chemical dependence and finds ways to help halt its spread.
“I know one thing,” Shapiro told the glittering crowd gathered on the grounds of Jeff Greene’s five acre palatial estate high atop Beverly Hills, “It takes a life to save a life. We hope we’re saving thousands of lives with what we are doing.”
The foundation’s newest initiatives include outreach to children as young as 12 through an innovative pilot program at the Variety’s Boys & Girls Club in Boyle Heights. Kids will be encouraged to attend Brent’s Club after school, where they will play while learning about the dangers of alcohol, illegal drugs and other things that lead to addiction, or as the group calls it “brain diseases.”
Teens who stay clean and sober will attend events where top DJs will play music and they will receive tutoring to help prepare them for school and to encourage them to go on to higher education. Each week they will be given a simple saliva test (conducted with a cotton swab of the tongue) and if they are clean, they will get a grab bag of gifts, Shapiro explained.
If they stay sober for a full school year, they will be given a cell phone to use the following year. If they graduate, they will qualify for college scholarships provided by the foundation.
Two students were singled out for scholarships. A young woman named Audrey told her own story of using drugs, getting pregnant, having an abortion, and having her life spiral out of control until she received help. Her goal now is to attend UCLA on the Shapiro Foundation Scholarship.
“Bob and his family have turned a huge horrible situation into something positive,” said Pat O’Brien, the sports and entertainment show host who has fought his own battles with addiction in a very public way.
O’Brien acted as emcee for the evening, which included performances by America’s Got Talent winnerLandau and X Factor finalist Chris Rene, who said he too was a recovering addict. “Sixteen months ago I was doing drugs,” Rene told the audience. “I’m doing well now and love being clean and sober.”
Shapiro appeared on stage with his son Grant and his wife Linell, who in her remarks called the problems of addiction an “epidemic,” and announced the foundation’s latest book aimed at children about 8 years old to help them learn about the dangers of getting involved with drugs and alcohol and to show them that they can “learn to say no.”
“We all must pay it forward,” said Linell Shapiro, “and maybe people will start to understand addiction is a disease.”
After the dinner by Wolfgang Puck, Shapiro served as auctioneer selling things like jewelry, ringside seats to a boxing match, floor seats to the opening Lakers game and even an African safari. The evening ended with a runway fashion show featuring gowns and more from Baracci of Beverly Hills.
Robert Shapiro said they were also celebrating the passage by the state of California of the ‘911 Good Samaritan Overdose Response Act’ (AB 472), to provide protection against arrest for minor drug law violations for anyone who summons emergency medical assistance to prevent a fatal overdose. Shapiro said Gov. Brown had just signed the bill into law.
Some of the most poignant remarks came from Christopher Kennedy Lawford, the son of the late actor Peter Lawford and Patricia Kennedy, whose brothers included President John F. Kennedy and Senators Robert and Ted Kennedy. He was awarded the Spirit of Recovery Award, which was previously given to Kelly Osborne and Sugar Ray Leonard.
Lawford said he has been sober for 26 years, and now is a fulltime advocate for issues of substance abuse and the need for awareness. He said he came from a family of addicts. “Legend has it that right after my birth my parents went straight from St. Joseph’s hospital to the Beachcomber bar in Malibu,” said Lawford. “That was the start of my alcoholism.”
Lawford said he now has three children and they have never seen him take a drink. O’Brien said he sees Lawford almost every week when both attend meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous.
“I accept this award not for me,” said Lawford, “because I don’t want awards, but for families, for my family and for those who help.
“There’s an overdose epidemic today in the country,” Lawford told The Hollywood Reporter, echoing his remarks in his acceptance. “Overdoses have just overtaken traffic fatalities in terms of deaths, especially among our young people, so people need to get aware.”
Lawford, who works with the United Nations and White House on related policy issues, had high praise for the Brent Shapiro Foundation’s efforts. He said they are raising “amazing awareness and visibility in Hollywood. People pay attention because Bob, through his notoriety, is able to get a lot of people of note here to come and talk about this.”
Lawford is author of the books Symptoms of Withdrawal and Moments of Clarity, and early in 2013 will publish his latest book, Recover To Live. “Basically there’s no real difference between gambling, sex addiction, alcoholism and drug abuse,” said Lawford. “It’s a brain disease.”
“Look at it this way,” added Lawford, “this disease costs this country three times what cancer costs us. Every year the American Cancer Society raises over $1 billion. You know how much we raise for addiction? $20 million. The reason is that people are unaware. There is a stigma. People don’t want to deal with it. They don’t know there are solutions and one of the major solutions is awareness that this is an illness. Then people won’t look at addicts like there’s something wrong with them.”
Many teens seek help from cutting edge treatment facilities like Paradigm Malibu. This unique facility is devoted to the provision of state of the art Teen Drug Treatment, Adolescent Behavioral Health, Mental Health and Emotional Health Treatment. To learn more about their services, please visit www.paradigmmalibu.com.
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