Morning Roundup: Nov. 19, 2019

Bill Would Let More People More Doctors Prescribe Addiction Treatment Meds Without Waiting For Insurer's Permission [STAT News]Bella Hadid Talks Mental Health, Runway Modeling [Teen Vogue]Vote To Federally Legalize Marijuana Planned In Congress [Forbes]Lil Xan Says He Suffered Seziures While Going Through Drug Withdrawal [Page Six]Switching From Cigarettes To Vapes May Be Better For Heart Health [CNN]How Ewan McGregor Approached Dan Torrance's Alcoholism In Dr. Sleep [CinemaBlend]Kratom May Cause Liver Damage [WebMD]This New Headset Combats Depression Symptoms Without Medication [Local 12]   

From War Correspondent to Workplace Mental Health Advocate: An Interview with Dean Yates

After years of covering war, terrorist attacks, and natural disasters in the Middle East and Southeast Asia for Reuters, journalist Dean Yates was diagnosed with PTSD and "Moral Injury." He sought healing not only with professionals and clergy, but by writing and sharing his story with the world. What happened next created a new role for him at Reuters and an opportunity to turn something tragic into something inspiring. After meeting at a conference in London, Dean Yates spoke with me from his home in Australia. What did it mean to be a bureau chief for Reuters in Bagdad at the time you were there? Yates: I was the bureau chief in Bagdad at the height of the Iraq war just before the surge of US troops into Iraq. This was George W. Bush’s last roll of the dice. It had plunged basically into civil war. That first six months of 2007 were the most violent period during the Iraq war. There were car bombs going off every day. That job entailed being responsible for coverage of that story but also being responsible for close to 100 men and women in the world’s most dangerous reporting zone. That made it an extremely stressful job. If I had half an idea of what it was going to be like, I’m not sure I would’ve gone there in retrospect because what ended up happening was way beyond anything I was prepared for. On the roof of the Reuters office in BaghdadOver the years you reported on many tragic events including a nightclub massacre that killed 202 people in Bali in 2002 and a tsunami that killed 165,000 in Indonesia’s Aceh province in 2004 before you arrived in Bagdad. You’ve written in your stories about losing several colleagues in Iraq. Can you talk about what that was like? What it comes down to really is, you know, I felt morally responsible for the safety of my staff. I think that’s something a lot of people experience. Even though people say you did everything you could, you shouldn’t blame yourself, that wasn’t how I felt. It surfaced later into this moral injury. I just couldn’t live with myself because of what I saw as my own culpability and my failure. It was a spiritual care worker at the psych ward who helped guide me through a healing ceremony where I was able to pay my respects to Namir (22) and Saeed (40), the two men who were killed in an attack by a U.S. Apache helicopter on July 12, 2007 in Baghdad. This spiritual care worker was able to be at my side. No clinician could have done that. I really found I was able to make peace with myself after that ceremony.What is Moral Injury? Actually, you can trace it back to the writings of Homer, the ancient Greek poet, and his epic poems “The Iliad” and “The Odyssey.” What it really means is if someone feels there is something that they did or didn’t do or that they witnessed that so deeply contravenes their moral compass or ethical values, they end up with a moral injury. People often think of PTSD as being something that affects the nervous system, the brain, the body. I think it also affects the soul. Think of a soldier who believed he was doing something good for the community but the Taliban, it turned out, didn’t like what he was doing and so the end result is that children die. You can’t give someone medication for that or give them a bit of evidence-based therapy.That makes sense. I’ve heard a lot of people in recovery talk about how when they were using and drinking, they did things in service of their disease which were not in alignment with their own moral compass. You talk in one of your stories about taking paracetamol and codeine tablets to get to sleep and about drinking heavily as well as staying in bed, do you feel you were self-medicating your undiagnosed condition at that time? Oh yeah, totally. I honestly don’t think I’ve ever suffered from addiction. I went through bouts where I’d rely on alcohol or prescription medication but I was never in that years long cycle that some of my colleagues have been in. I had a little bit of an experience with it, but I got off the booze quite easily on my first psych ward admission.Journalists have been known as boozers for as long as the profession has existed. I remember one weekend I was on duty and I was in the office asleep on the couch so hungover and the boss walked into the office with his wife and I remember him saying to his wife “let’s be quiet, I think Dean’s had a big night, we don’t want to wake him.” If that happened now, I’d be fired. But back then it was all part of the journalist culture. We went out and got roaring drunk. It was how we dealt with a lot of the traumatic stories. When we were in Baghdad we used to spend huge amounts of money on alcohol. Because we had to. Otherwise we would have gone crazy.You’re lucky you were brave enough to seek out help and you did find the help you needed so you no longer had to self-medicate. We talk now in the addiction field about trauma being one of the main causes of addiction.Who can be affected by PTSD? Oh anyone. All it takes is a severe enough traumatic event for someone to be at risk of developing PTSD. But the problem is that people associate PTSD with soldiers and increasingly with first responders. I’ve seen it across so many different sectors of the work force: nurses, doctors, and then in the civilian sphere—domestic violence, road accident victims. In Australia 70% of people will experience a traumatic event, according to Phoenix Australia (a center for post-traumatic mental health in Australia). In the U.S. the biggest group of people with PTSD are actually victims of rape. It doesn’t matter what brought you to the diagnosis. It doesn’t matter what your profession was. You all have flashbacks, nightmares, anxiety, depression. We have these things in common that I thought wouldn’t have been possible and it makes me angry that so many of these people suffering with PTSD are silenced. It’s the same with addiction. Addiction is very much a disease of isolation. The whole idea of stigma contributes to the avoidance. It looks to me like avoidance has a role in the development of mental illness and PTSD in the first place. Yes, I had isolated myself incredibly. The only people who knew I had PTSD were my family and a few close friends. It was the same when I was in the psych ward. When I walked in that door it was terrifying. You know once you go through that door you can’t take that back. How’s that going to look on your resume? Because people think you’re crazy.What do you think happened for you in the process of writing your story “The Road to Ward 17” even before you published it? The writing process is cathartic, it’s therapeutic, you learn a lot about yourself; it’s part of the recovery process. There’s so much research out there about the power of writing and sharing your story with others. When you wrote your story, how were your expectations different from what happened when you actually published it? I had initially thought that this could maybe be used as a blog for other colleagues, but then I thought this should actually be published. One of the things I thought about in the psych ward was that these folks who were in there, they were going through really rough times, and no one could tell their story. But I thought if I tell my story it’s a little like telling their story. The story ended up in the hands of our investigations editor in New York who is responsible for what’s called our special reports. We rarely publish first person account stories. But he really liked it. And when the story came out I wasn’t prepared for the response. I was more prepared to get negative responses. For people to be angry about me talking about the Apache attacks and Wikileaks. But I got messages from people all over the world and all walks of life who had experienced trauma just saying thanks for writing your story, thanks for putting this out there, thanks for telling it like it is. I’d only come out of the psych ward a couple months earlier. The video of the attack that killed your two colleagues, and the way only parts of it were released, created a certain perspective that skewed much of the response to it, even your own if I read you right. What have you learned about perspective in all this? Two weeks after Namir and Saeed had been killed, I was sitting in this office with these two generals and they started playing the tape and we had no idea that was coming. I saw the first— not even three minutes— of the tape and the tape was stopped at the moment the Apache fired on the men which included my staff. I walked out of that briefing with this one image in my head of our photographer peering around that corner. That image actually was burned into my brain for years and I just could not get that image out of my head to the point where I actually started seeing him as being responsible for what happened, whereas the order to fire had already been given before he even peered around the corner. And then when the (full) tape was released in 2010 I could not actually physically watch it. I knew what happened. I had read the transcripts by then but I hadn’t actually watched it. It was only when I wrote that story that I was able to watch that tape for the first time because I knew I had to get the timing of the events correct. So it did give me a different perspective. That tape to me shows the world what the Iraq war was really like.Tributes to Namir and SaeedChanging the Face of Mental Health at WorkHow are you transforming what was a tragic event into something inspiring in your new role at Reuters? I wanted to try to create an environment where our staff felt comfortable putting their hands up and saying I’ve got mental illness or whatever and have management respond with compassion so that they could access the resources we have available. Because when you have an environment where people don’t feel comfortable talking about it, there’s not much you can do. We’ve been doing a series of internal blogs at Reuters. I wrote about my PTSD issues, and what it did is it kicked off other journalists writing about their own issues. The next person was a journalist in the Middle East who wrote about his struggle with bi-polar, another woman wrote about her depression, another guy wrote about his burnout. Some of these journalists have been overwhelmed with responses which also makes them feel like they’ve got meaning out of what they’ve done. They’ve got purpose out of what they’ve done. We’ve had about 30 now but not a single blog about addiction. So this colleague of mine wants to write about their addiction but wants to remain anonymous. I think that just shows how much stigma there still is.Those blogs were very powerful in normalizing that conversation to the point where I think they’ve been as effective as anything we’ve done in getting that message out there that it’s okay to come forward, and that you’ll get the support you need. And it’s helpful for managers because if they’re reading about colleagues getting help, they’re thinking I want to be a good manager and make sure my people get the help they need,too. One of my areas of focus this year has been in training managers on how to look after the mental health of their team.This is an important endeavor considering that, according to the Mental Health at Work 2019 Report BiTC, 62% of managers faced situations where they put the interests of their organizations above the interest of their colleagues. You’re not a psychologist or a psychiatrist but what you’re offering is peer support; you can explain to a manager how to talk to their staff who are struggling because you’ve been there. Right, I know the profession and I’ve got the lived experience of mental illness. I try to operate in the early intervention space. I am not an expert but I can be an advocate. I’ve got the street cred. No one can look at me and say you don’t know what you’re talking about. Because I do.If the 12-step movement has taught us nothing else it’s taught us that peer support works. It crosses my mind that there’s something in this for the corporate world. How does mental health and addiction effect a company’s level of productivity?I was able to function very highly for a long time but one of the symptoms of PTSD is avoidance. And so one of the great ways of avoiding your issues is through work and that was how I did it and I know a lot of people who have done the same thing. People want to contribute and they want to be part of something bigger than themselves. All the research shows that work is good for people’s mental health in general. But the point is: Don’t look after people’s mental health because it’s good for the business, look after people’s mental health because it’s the right thing to do. People with a mental health issue just want to be acknowledged. They want to be treated as if they had come into the office with their leg in a plaster (cast). You come into the office with your leg in plaster--it’s okay, we’ll sort this out; you’re supposed to be at that conference next week, we’ll send someone else; and okay, you’ve got to go to that doctor appointment, no problem. If you treat people like that, the numbers take care of themselves. Fair enough, though it is interesting to note that at the Mad World Summit in London, where we met, Sir Vince Cable was quoted as saying, “Mental illness costs the UK economy more than Brexit.” Which is a lot of money. And, according to the CDC, by combining medical and behavioral health care services, the United States could save $37.6 billion to $67.8 billion a year.One last question. What would you say to someone out there who’s suffering in silence from depression or PTSD or trauma or substance use disorder or any kind of mental illness? You are not alone.Dean Yates in Times Square, October 2019 (Helen Barrow/Evershine Productions)The Road to Ward 17: My Battle with PTSDReturn to Ward 17: Making Peace with Lost Comrades. 

Upon Release from Prison, a New Kind of Nightmare

When you’re being escorted out of a federal court room in shackles and handcuffs, after being sentenced to almost two decades behind bars, you can almost feel the life ooze out of your pores. The pronounced slam of a gavel drives home the fact you’re not in Kansas anymore, while one hope creeps its way into your brain: the day those cuffs come off and you’re free. This image is your savior, your best and only friend to keep you company throughout the brutally unforgiving years of violence, isolation, and solitude. Visions of beautifully simple things like going to the park or eating strawberry pancakes shoot through your psyche in bright shining lights onto the faded white graffiti laced brick walls of your 9-by-6-foot cell of despair. All this promise makes it all the more devastating when that magical day arrives for the nightmare to end, and you realize just how far you are from getting out of the rabbit hole.“Have you ever played a PlayStation? Hell, have you even used a cell phone?” These are the words the middle-aged Latino case manager told me through the battered food slot inside the cell door of the Special Housing Unit. “Someone like you, I wouldn’t give more than 4 months. The world has passed you by…but good luck.”These words of encouragement came from someone who spent almost as much time in the Bureau of Prisons as I have. A man who has witnessed firsthand how hard it is to adjust to a world that will chew you up and spit you right back. He wasn’t talking about my transition back into the free world. He was talking about the federally funded center that was in charge of restoring my sanity. Institutionalization, PTSD, and Post Incarceration SyndromePTSD and its sister syndrome, PICS (Post Incarceration Syndrome), are disorders in which a person has difficulty recovering after experiencing or witnessing a terrifying event. The condition may last months or years, with triggers that can bring back memories of the trauma accompanied by intense emotional and physical reactions.During my 15 years of incarceration, I experienced and witnessed atrocities that would make most war veterans cringe. Divided racial lines and the total disregard for human life were the first things that greeted me behind the grimy walls down in the swamps of Louisiana, USP Pollock. The “slaughterhouse of the south” averaged 40 stabbings a month, while incurring 16 murders in an 18-month span. Desensitization set in rapidly when watching a stabbing was as common as watching a baseball game. This was just the first of four penitentiaries in which I was beaten, stabbed, isolated, and herded throughout half of my life.While President Bush was fighting his wars overseas, and smartphones, text messaging, and iPods were shaping humanity, I was envisioning a breathtakingly beautiful sun setting over the ocean. The sound of waves crashing danced through my ears, as I felt the cool wet sand beneath my feet. When President Obama was still fighting the war, and Google, Facebook, and YouTube took over society, I was sitting in solitary confinement, my stomach touching my ankles, as I dreamed of the family dinners at my parents’ house. The four cheeses of mom’s famous lasagna made my mouth water, as I imagined the smiling faces of better years sitting around the table listening to Dad’s old war stories. As President Trump was halfway through his reign of terror, the cuffs finally came off and I was released. But little did I know, the nightmare was far from being over.Institutionalization is a gradual normal reaction to the unnatural and abnormal conditions of prisoner life. The more extreme, harsh, dangerous, or otherwise psychologically taxing the nature of the confinement, the deeper the damage that will be done. During this process, a prisoner incorporates the norms of prison into their habits of thinking, feeling, and acting. It renders some people so dependent on external constraints that they gradually lose the capacity to rely on internal organization and self-imposed personal limits to guide their actions and restrain their conduct.When I was released from the SHU in Big Sandy Kentucky on July 29, 2017, the world seemed to be in hyperdrive. My parents and sister, along with the girlfriend I’ve never held, laughed as I bounced around the car like a dog in heat. The speed of everything left me spinning as I tried to comprehend the tiny screen in my hands that was speaking directions towards the home I’ve never seen. Inside that car I felt alive for the first time in over a decade and a half. Then we stopped a block short from my residence, and all the rules that I’d just broken by being with my family drove away with five minutes to spare, as a whole new nightmare began.Bait and SwitchAccording to the Federal Bureau of Prisons: “Residential reentry centers provide a safe, structured, supervised environment, as well as employment counseling, job placement, financial management assistance and other programs and services. RRC’s help inmates gradually rebuild their ties to the community and facilitate supervising ex-offenders activities during this readjustment phase.” When I walked into the reentry center in downtown Pittsburgh, I wasn’t greeted with a homecoming of old friends and relatives like in the movies. Instead, I sat in a drearily filthy break room as paramedics wheeled off a semi-conscious reentrant to a waiting ambulance. These overdoses, ranging from heroin to K-2, would become a normal part of my daily routine. Once I made my way to the seventh of eight floors, each floor packed to capacity with clueless ex-cons all trying to breathe free fresh air, the prison mentality quickly set back in.My case manager greeted me in her tiny cluttered office and gave me a list of all the rules and regulations that make readjustment damn near impossible. No smartphones, riding in cars, or being ANYWHERE without approval a week ahead of time. If I wanted to stop at 7-Eleven for a cup of coffee in the morning on my way to work, I would be in violation of my release. I also received the bonus of not being allowed to publish any of my writing or leave the city limits. She concluded her orientation with the added kick to the nuts of twenty five percent of my pay getting kicked back to the house for the opportunity to feel the sunshine on my face for the first time in a decade and a half.I also was given the one-time warning about being late. If I was more than 5 minutes late back from a pass, whether it be a late bus or a broken leg, it was back to the box to finish out the remainder of my sentence. Just riding on public transportation is enough to give me a panic attack after years of isolation. The need to sit with my back against the wall is uncontrollable while my hypervigilance runs wild surveying everyone and everything. When you add a traffic jam to that equation, it’s almost debilitating. Going from a world with nothing but time, to one that will literally put you in a cage if it’s mismanaged, was and still is one of the hardest things to deal with after my release.During the 15 years of my incarceration, I lived with a lot of different people. A redneck from Wyoming to a skinhead from Seattle, I’ve been forced to share a bathroom with the best of them. No matter where they were from, there was one thing in common: I didn’t like any of them. Even Mother Teresa is going to get on your nerves if you’re stuck in a broom closest with her 24 hours a day for months on end. Standing on the Edge of FreedomIn the late 70’s, psychologist Bruce K. Alexander conducted his Rat Park study. In this study he took lab rats and housed them in two different environments. In the first, “skinner boxes” (solitary confinement), they were completely deprived of everything, even movement was difficult. The second environment housed the rats in a space 200 times bigger, with wheels, and boxes and other rats to interact with. Inside both settings were two different water bottles. One filled with narcotics to numb the pain that will run through any being under such harsh conditions, and the other without. Each time when the rats are housed in skinner boxes, they go right for the drugs. But, when they’re in rat park with all their friends, free to make decisions and live a good life, they always chose the clean water.After staring at a wall for almost half of my life, being able to look out the windows of the halfway house at the world below but not being able to go out and experience what I’ve been dreaming about for so long was maddening. Having that freedom dangling in my face, after coming so far, was heartbreaking. After years of dreaming about what you want to do, where you want to go, who you want to see, and then discovering you won’t be doing any of those things for a long time, it absolutely puts you right back into that ‘I don’t give a fuck’ mentality.Institutionalization can be taken to extreme lengths or become chronic and deeply internalized so that even though the conditions of one’s life have changed, many of the once functional but now counterproductive patterns remain.I spent 14 months inside the halfway house after my release. It almost seemed to last as long as the 15 years that I did behind the walls of our fine penal system. During that time, I wasn’t allowed to go to the park, or take my girlfriend out on a date. I couldn’t sit down for those family meals or see that sunset on the beach, but I made it through it. I absolutely know that I suffer from PTSD and PICS as a result of my incarceration, and I’m far from the only one who suffers from these syndromes. Anyone would feel the same way as I do if they grew up deep inside the belly of the beast. Who knows if the hypervigilance, paranoia, and anxiety will ever allow me to be at ease when I’m out in society. It took me getting out of the system completely before I could even begin to heal.

Whitney Houston First Tried Cocaine At 14, Best Friend Says

There has been much speculation about the inception of Whitney Houston's drug use. Many blame her husband pop star Bobby Brown for introducing her to drugs but the "Every Little Step" singer emphatically denies introducing his wife of 14 years to drugs. "It wasn't me that started her [on drugs]," he told Robin Roberts in an emotional 20/20 interview in 2016.Houston's best friend and alleged lover Robyn Crawford appears to back-up Brown's denial in her recently released a memoir titled A Song For You: My Life with Whitney Houston which details their relationship as well as Whitney's turbulent and prolific relationship with cocaine.Romantic RumorsIn the book, Crawford says the "I Will Always Love You" singer admitted that she had first tried cocaine when she was 14 years old. Crawford first met Houston when they were teens and they became fast friends...and then more.For years, romantic rumors swirled around the duo but were often kiboshed by those in Whitney's camp, including her mother, Cissy Houston. In A Song For You, Crawford laid those tumors to rest by confirming that the two were romantically involved. “Whitney told me her mother said it wasn’t natural for two women to be that close,” Crawford wrote, “but we were that close.”According to Crawford the pair "never talked about labels, like lesbian or gay. We just lived our lives and I hoped it could go on that way forever.”When Whitney began pursuing her music career, Crawford was by her side as her personal assistant though they had to end the physical aspects of their relationship due to pressure from Whitney's team about how their queer relationship could possibly derail her budding career.Cocaine In The SpotlightAs the singer's career began to take off in the 80s, she noted that the drug use could be a problem as she ascended the heights of stardom.“Whitney would often say ‘Cocaine can’t go where we’re going.’ [But] we weren’t ready to give it up quite yet,” Crawford wrote.Success came in waves for the talented singer but she continued to use. Crawford says she warned Whitney, “I’d say, ‘Nip [Whitney's nickname]  we’re here already. And it’s [cocaine] still here. It shouldn’t be.’ And she’d say ‘I know, I’m going to stop.'”But Houston didn't stop.“She admired that I could stop. She said, ‘I’m going to stop but I’m just not ready yet.'”And the drug use continued and escalated. Crawford put an end to her imbibing but the pressures of fame helped push Houston deeper into addictionAfter being the legendary singer's personal assistant throughout her career, Crawford decided it was time to hang up her hat and extricate herself from the situation in 2000. “I had done all I could do,” she wrote, according to People.“and for the first time I realized that I needed to save myself.”After Houston's death, Crawford confronted the late singer's agent about sending her out on tour while she was in the midst of a harrowing addiction to cocaine.“She said to me, ‘Because she and her daughter would have been out on the street. And my response was, ‘Is that what you guys have been telling her?'”Crawford assumed that there would be time for them to reunite after her departure but in 2012, Houston passed away from an accidental drowning at 48.“I thought we had time but in an odd way, Whitney was waiting for me and I was waiting for her,” she noted. "I owe it to my friend to share her story, my story. Our story. And I hope that in doing so, I can set us both free."

Morning Roundup: Nov. 7, 2019

Elton John Feared He Wouldn't Be Able To Perform Sober [NME]Cocaine, Molly Becoming More Popular In The NHL [The Athletic]100 Pound Marijuana Bust Just Legal Hemp, Owner Says [The Patch]How Danny Trejo  Has Stayed Sober For 51 Years [Variety]Narcan Now Sold Online In Tennessee [The Tennessean]US Ready To "Wage War" On Drug Cartel "Monsters," Trump Says [The Hill]Naltrexone May Help Stop Meth Cravings [KCUR]

Jamie Lee Curtis Talks Sharing Drugs With Dad, AA In Variety's Recovery Issue

The legendary Halloween actress detailed how she became addicted to painkillers and what led her to get help with Variety magazine for its first-ever recovery issue. Like so many people with opioid addiction, Curtis's dependency on painkillers began when she was given Vicodin after a routine cosmetic surgery for pain."They gave me Vicodin as a painkiller for something that wasn’t really painful," Curtis said. Her experience is all-too-common. The overprescription of opioids for post-operative pain is one of the driving factors behind the opioid epidemic. Nowadays, opioid prescribing guidelines and legislation are working to correct the course of the epidemic.Curtis also discussed how addiction impacted her family, including her father, actor Tony Curtis. Sharing Drugs With Dad"I knew my dad had an issue because I had an issue and he and I shared drugs. There was a period of time where I was the only child that was talking to him. I had six siblings. I have five. My brother, Nicholas, died of a heroin overdose when he was 21 years old. But I shared drugs with my dad. I did cocaine and freebased once with my dad. But that was the only time I did that, and I did that with him. He did end up getting sober for a short period of time and was very active in recovery for about three years. It didn’t last that long. But he found recovery for a minute."Similar to her father, Curtis was high-functioning in her addiction. "I never did it when I worked. I never took drugs before 5 p.m. I never, ever took painkillers at 10 in the morning. It was that sort of late afternoon and early evening — I like to refer to it as the warm-bath feeling of an opiate. It’s like the way you naturally feel when your body is cool, and you step into a warm bath, and you sink into it. That’s the feeling for me, what an opiate gave me, and I chased that feeling for a long time."Curtis described the moment her facade slipped in 1998. A friend witnessed her taking five Vicodin with a sip of wine in her kitchen and confronted her. “I heard this voice: ‘You know, Jamie, I see you. I see you with your little pills, and you think you’re so fabulous and so great, but the truth is you’re dead. You’re a dead woman.’”This stern warning didn't deter her from using and neither would a later confrontation with her sister Kelly about stealing her pain pills. She finally decided to get help a couple months later after reading an article about recovery in Esquire.Her First AA MeetingGoing to AA for the first time can be intimidating but there's an added set of worries when you're a Hollywood superstar trying to privately deal with addiction. "I was terrified. I was just terrified that someone in the recovery community was going to betray my trust. But it is my experience that that doesn’t really happen and that my fear was unfounded. There is no guarantee in the world that someone won’t betray your confidence. There are also ways for people to get recovery help privately. There are ways for people to understand that public figures need privacy in order to be able to disclose and talk about this shameful secret that has dogged and plagued them their whole lives. Now, Curtis is 21 years sober, something she doesn't take for granted. She holds recovery meetings in her trailers when she's working, if none are available."I am a very careful sober person. When I work, if there are no recovery meetings available, I make them. I put a sign up by the catering truck saying, 'Recovery meeting in my trailer.' When I was in Charleston making Halloween, I was in a coffee shop near where I was living, and I met somebody in recovery, who told me, 'Oh, those two ladies out on the patio are sober too. There’s a women’s meeting near here.' I went out and introduced myself to the ladies, and a day later I was at a women’s gathering 100 yards from where I was living. Literally 100 yards. When I was making The Tailor of Panama with Pierce Brosnan and John Boorman, I was swimming in the Gatun Dam, but on my day off, I found a recovery meeting that only spoke Spanish, didn’t speak a word of English. I didn’t understand a word anybody said, but I went and sat down and met people, shook hands and talked."

Makeup Artist Finds Cocaine In Sephora Package

A New Jersey-based professional makeup artist got more than she bargained for in a shipment of cosmetics from Sephora earlier this month.Inside The Mystery BoxAmong her foundation and false eyelashes, 30-year-old Christina Milano found a “good amount” of white powder wrapped in a dollar bill along with a small straw cut for snorting the substance, plus a female Sephora employee's company ID. There was also a forklift operator's card and a photo of a young girl in another part of the package.How these items ended up in Milano’s package is unclear, but the makeup artist was able to identify the powder as cocaine.“I’ve seen it and I’ve been offered it in the past,” she told the New York Post. She became fairly upset when she realized what she had due to the high penalties associated with shipping illicit drugs through the mail. “I could have gotten in trouble for this,” she said to local New York news affiliate PIX11. “What if there was a random check at the post office?”$100 Store Credit For Her TroublesMilano quickly took photos of what she discovered, including the white powder, and sent them to Sephora. After she was assured that she would be contacted after the company’s investigation, she was informed that the Sephora had credited $100 to her account and asked her to dispose of the “foreign items.”The makeup artist was unsatisfied with this response.“It was kind of like, here’s $100, like, you know, don’t talk about it,” she said, saying the idea made her angry. So she went to the press, who investigated further.Getting To The Bottom Of ItA Post reporter was able to use the information and photos provided by Milano to track down an address associated with the woman whose name was on the company ID.However, the owner of the house said that the Sephora employee was her sister and that she no longer lived there.“She’s on the grid, off the grid. She’s always changing her phone number,” the sister said. “She lived here that one time, but I haven’t spoken to her in a month. And even then it was only for 15 minutes.”She confirmed that the Sephora employee had a history of drug use, but according to the report, declined to give further details.Sephora, of course, has a zero-tolerance policy around employees using illicit drugs, particularly while at work. Milano, though not entirely pleased with how the cosmetics company handled the situation, says she remains loyal to them.“I would still love a more personal apology from them but truly I still will shop at Sephora,” she admitted. “I love them.”Sephora provided a statement to Newsweek about the incident."We have investigated the matter and taken appropriate actions," it read. "Sephora prides itself on our delivery and supply chain experiences and have a zero-tolerance policy around illegal substances in the workplace. We have apologized to the impacted client for this unfortunate experience and are working with her directly to resolve it."

Finland May Be Next Country To Decriminalize Marijuana

Finland's Parliament is reportedly considering the decriminalization of marijuana after more than 50,000 residents signed a petition to revise the country's current laws.The proposal sought to remove criminal penalties for the possession of 25 grams or less of cannabis, as well as the cultivation of up to four plants, both for personal use; the organization behind the measure, Kasuva Kannabiksesta, cited the deleterious impact of marijuana convictions on Finnish citizens, who can be barred from education or work opportunities for minor convictions, as a primary factor behind the petition.Advocates are hoping that the sheer number of signees, as well as those that support their efforts but did not sign the petition, will help to push the Finnish government towards ratifying decriminalization.The People Of Finland Support DecriminalizationThe petition's primary sponsor, activist Janne Karvinen, said that the majority of the 50,000 signatures were gained in its final month, which he credited to a strong social media push.He also believed that the actual level of support for decriminalization in Finland was even greater than the number of signees. "There's certainly more than 50,000 – or even more than 100,000 – people in Finland who support this issue," he told, Yle, Finland's national public broadcasting company.In addition to the aforementioned allowances for personal use, the petition would also call for new penalties for individuals who use marijuana in public areas where children are present.Even Minor Drug Charges Impact Job Opportunities In The CountryIn terms of the current policies regarding marijuana use, the petition's authors stated that they have done more harm than good by imposing severe penalties on cannabis users; individuals convicted of even minor drug charges can be barred from more than 60 job and educational opportunities.It also noted the financial toll of employing police officers to make arrests on such charges and then processing individuals through the legal system.By calling for decriminalization and not legalization, the petition's authors said that Finland would remain within the requirements of United Nations (UN) obligations, which do not allow member nations to regulate and sell cannabis. As the petition states, "The ban on an act may not be completely abolished or made legal, but the punishment for the act will be abolished or the act will be transformed into a mere offense, for example, a fine."As Marijuana Moment noted, this language may address how Canada and Uruguay have remained within the UN regulations while still allowing for cannabis legalization.Karvinen told Yle that he believed the Finnish Parliament would pass the initiatives called for in the petition on the grounds that members "do not want to oppose the benefits decriminalization would bring."However, the newspaper also quoted Mika Luoma-aho, a researcher on drug policy from the University of Lapland, who opined that the government is most likely not ready to accept such a measure "But it will force a debate," said Luoma-aho. "I want to hear the discussion that quashes the initiative and then continue the dialogue on that basis.

Kanye West Talks Porn & Sex Addiction

Kanye West is back with his latest album, Jesus is King, and on the eve of its release, he candidly spoke with Beats 1 about being addicted to porn and sex.West started with a ritual many young boys go through, finding an issue of his dad’s Playboy, which he called a “gateway to a full on pornography addiction. It has impacted every choice I have made in my life from age five to now, having to kick the habit. And it just presents itself in the open like it’s okay and I stand up and say, ‘No, it’s not okay.’” Drowning Himself In Sex — A Rock Star ClichéWest saw himself living a cliché that many musicians fall into.“That was such a script out of a rock star’s life. You know that Playboy that I found when I was five years old was written all over the moment when I was at the MTV awards with the Timberlands, the Balmain jeans and the Hennessy bottle. My mom had passed a year before. And I said some people drown themselves in drugs, and I drown myself in sex.”West said that sex “fed the ego too. Money, clothes, paparazzi photos, going to Paris fashion week, all of that.” Asking Employees To Abstain From Premarital SexComing to his realization about porn and sex addiction also affected how he crafted the Jesus is King album. “I was asking people to…this is gonna be radical what I’m about to say. There were times where I was asking people to not have premarital sex while they were working.” West has openly spoken about his mental health issues, including publicly disclosing that he’s bipolar (he subsequently claimed he was misdiagnosed), and he’s used it as material for his lyrics as well.On the cover of his album Ye, “I hate being bipolar it’s awesome” is scrawled in neon green. And as he told radio personality Big Boy, “I am so blessed and so privileged because think about people that have issues that are not Kanye West, that can’t go and make that [music] and make you feel like it’s all good. I’d never been diagnosed and I was like 39 years old. That’s why I said on the album it’s not a disability, it’s a super power.” 

Morning Roundup: Oct. 29, 2019

This Town Turned Its Opioid Nightmare Into a Haunted House. And It's Terrifying. [Washington Post]A Maryland county with a serious opioid problem is the site of a different kind of haunted house this Halloween, featuring frightful scenes from a life of substance use disorder. "It's a walking, shrieking, living, screaming PSA." In Philadelphia Opioid Crisis Zone, Children Get Lessons in Coping [WHYY]Students in Philadelphia's opioid problem zone are getting a special education on drug abuse and coping. The area's visible drug problem has affected not only school enrollment, but the overall quality of life of these children.  Shame, Fear, Stigma: Recovering Addicts Address Meth Abuse in 'Crystal City' [NBC News]The documentary Crystal City debuted on Sunday at NewFest film festival. It is a chronicle of methamphetamine abuse in New York City's gay community. "Without consciously acknowledging it, I was preparing to die." Drug Policy: Family of Teenager Who Died from Ecstasy Supports Drug Legalization [Guardian]A mother who lost her son to a fatal overdose on ecstasy is determined to use her voice to promote drug policy reform. She and her daughter are expanding awareness of how a policy of prohibition is more dangerous than not. NJ Student Athletes Undergo Mandatory Opioid Addiction Training [NBC 10]New Jersey student athletes are required to learn about opioid use disorder to prepare them for potential injuries and how to treat pain. NBC 10 reports from Sterling High School in Somerdale.Dear Abby: Non-alcoholic Bachelorette Party Presents Dilemma [Press Democrat]"Is it rude to drink in front of a pregnant bride?" A bridesmaid ponders the sober rule imposed by the pregnant bride. "I feel we're all adults and should be able to make our own choices." Rehab Racket: High Costs of Addiction Treatment and Questions Over Efficacy [WBUR]Is the high cost of treating substance use disorder a "rehab racket"? "It's crucial not to settle for a one-size-fits-all approach, even if those worked for someone you know." Filmmaker Asks How Adults Can Help Digitally Obsessed Teens Tackle Mental Health Challenges [Washington Post]The next chapter of Screenagers is a new documentary that explores the role that adults can play in helping young people build resilience to stress to make it easier to overcome life's adversities.