Leslie Glass's Blog, page 270

Trying To Get In Shape For ‘Swimsuit Season’? You’re Doing It Wrong

From The Washington Post:

Focusing on your values, rather than your appearance, is more likely to help you stick to your diet and exercise plans.

It’s May, which means heavy sweaters have been shed and skin is starting to show. The arrival of summer comes second to only New Year’s as the calendar event that spurs us to eat healthier and be more active. But science shows us that all the “X days till summer!” reminders in the world won’t help you change your eating and exercise habits if you’re primarily focused on how you’ll look in your bathing suit.

If you want to form habits that stick around long after the return of cool weather, your motivation to eat better and get in shape needs to be based on something you deeply value — such as having enough strength, stamina and energy to hike your favorite trails with your family. Real change comes when you make changes based on who you are, not on how you think you will be perceived. Here’s why envisioning what you will look like once you’re “bathing suit ready” (a suggestion: Put on a bathing suit and you’re ready!) or when you make an entrance at your high school reunion isn’t the motivator you think it is.

Values trump appearance

Attempting to change your behavior and appearance to earn the approval of others taps into something researchers call “social identity threat.” Here’s how that works: If you see yourself as overweight or unfit, or believe others see you that way, it becomes part of your social identity. When you fear being rejected, devalued or judged because of negative stereotypes about this aspect of your identity, this threat leads to stress, anxiety, lower self-esteem and increased self-consciousness. Ironically, this can make you want to avoid going to the gym to avoid scrutiny. It may also contribute to unhealthy eating behaviors as you try to escape your emotional discomfort.

Though research suggests that visualizing yourself from an outside perspective can be motivating for straightforward goals — envisioning people seeing you vote makes it more likely you’ll actually vote, for example — it might hinder your pursuit of more complex health-related goals, including nutrition and exercise. That’s because our health isn’t entirely under our control, and seeing results requires consistent, ongoing effort and a deeper level of behavior change.

If you find yourself struggling, you’re more likely to abandon an appearance-related goal, because it becomes little more than a source of stress. Conversely, when you struggle with a goal central to who you are, you’re more likely to persist because you see the goal as challenging but essential. This is where values come in.

Finding your values

What does it mean to make choices that align with your values? A quick online search for “values list” will yield dozens, if not hundreds, of examples, many of which relate — directly or indirectly — to health, nutrition and fitness. Take independence. If you value being independent, you can take actions every day to preserve that independence. For example, eating well and exercising regularly can help keep you strong and prevent chronic disease.

Or, let’s say you actively seek novel and stimulating experiences, particularly exploring new places around the world. Your values would include adventure and curiosity. Eating well and staying physically active will help you align with those values because it’s easier to travel if you feel good, can walk for miles, and can easily hoist your luggage into overhead bins and up flights of stairs. One of the major reasons I enjoy long, brisk walks and weightlifting is because I view it as training for international travel.

Setting goals based on what you deeply value goes beyond achieving something — such as a desired weight or clothing size — so you can check off the “done” box. It’s about making decisions that align with who you are and how you want to be. You can live your values every day, even if your goal feels far away. And when your actions match your values, you can continue to behave that way, regardless of whether you reach your goal. Your values have no endpoint, so acting based on your values won’t either.

Setting values-based goals

If you find that your motivation for change tends to wax and wane, how do you navigate to a source of motivation that is values-based? First, create a list of values and identify a few that are most important to you.

Then, set goals in the context of your chosen values, such as “I will lift weights X days per week so I stay strong as I age (independence) and can travel with ease (adventure).” Or, “I will carve out time to cook X days a week because I enjoy it (pleasure) and I feel better when I eat out less often (self-care).” Every time you are at a choice crossroads, ask yourself, “If I choose X, is that moving me closer to what I value, or farther away?” That said, remember to retain some flexibility. If you turn values-based actions into rules — “I value my physical independence, so I must go to the gym every day no matter what” — you become rigid and actually lose touch with the value of independence.

The post Trying To Get In Shape For ‘Swimsuit Season’? You’re Doing It Wrong appeared first on Reach Out Recovery.

Eight Stellar Book Picks For Mom This Mother’s Day

From USA Today:

Flowers fade and dinner out is fleeting, but the joy of a good book lingers long after it is enjoyed. Indulge mom this year by showing her how well you know her with just the right book.

We’ve rounded up current best-selling titles from USA TODAY’s Best-Selling Books list that are sure to please Mom.

For the book club mom: Looking for a fictional heroine who will sweep Mom off her feet? Look no further. “When We Left Cuba,” (Berkley) by Chanel Cleeton, tells the story of Beatriz Perez, a young Cuban exile in 1960s Florida, who risks her life when she is recruited by the CIA to infiltrate Fidel Castro’s inner circle. This is a sequel to Cleeton’s previous novel, “Next Year in Havana,” which was a Reese Witherspoon book club pick in July 2018.

For the aspirational mom: When it comes to recommendations on aspirational books, do we really need to say more than Oprah Winfrey? In “The Path Made: Clear Discovering Your Life’s Direction and Purpose” (Flatiron) Winfrey shares her own stories, gathers insights from renowned figures, including Lin-Manual Miranda, Jay-Z and Ellen DeGeneres, and lays out a plan for self-actualization, with tips to achieve not just a successful life, but a significant one.  

For the mom who loves politics: We have two selections to choose from for mom, depending on her political leanings. Both feature former first ladies who cross the aisle when it comes to mass appeal. The first, a biography, is a recent addition to the list: “The Matriarch: Barbara Bush and the Making of an American Dynasty,” (Twelve) by USA TODAY’s Susan Page, chronicles the life of the late former first lady. USA TODAY gave the book ★★★½ out of four. The second, a memoir, is the blockbuster best-seller “Becoming” (Crown) by Michelle Obama. Filled with stories from her childhood through to her experience as First Lady. Obama’s “Becoming” became the No. 1 book of 2018 on USA TODAY’s year-end top 100 best-selling books and shows no signs of slowing down. 

For the music-lover mom: Mom can hum down memory lane with “Daisy Jones & the Six,” (Ballantine) by Taylor Jenkins Reid. The novel follows the fictional story of singer Daisy Jones, from her finding huge success with her band in the 1970s to their eventual breakup. Reese Witherspoon’s book club selected the book as their March 2019 pick and Amazon, along with Witherspoon’s Hello Sunshine, is currently adapting the book into a 13-episode limited series. 

For the mom who needs a laugh: Being a mom is serious business. So serious that sometimes you really have to find the humor in it. And Kristin Hensley and Jen Smedley, the comedic duo behind popular #IMomSoHard videos on YouTube, take their mom comedy seriously. In their book “#IMomSoHard,” (HarperOne) the pair take a satirical look at the daily and unique challenges facing parents today. 

For the mystery-loving mom: Who doesn’t love a good whodunit? And this is a whodunit with legs. “The Woman in the Window,” (William Morrow) by A.J. Finn has been a constant presence since its publication in early 2018. The “Rear Window”-esque novel follows Anna Fox, a 38-year-old shut-in in New York City who self-medicates. Until one day she believes she sees a crime committed in the townhouse across the park. USA TODAY gave the book ★★★ out of four. 

For the mom who needs a reminder: Women, particularly moms, don’t always recognize the power and confidence they have within. But Abby Wambach wants to make sure women know their power. And as a two-time Olympic gold medalist, FIFA World Cup champion and six-timewinner of the U.S. Soccer Athlete of the Year, Wambach is definitely qualified to talk about both. Her book “Wolfpack: How to Come Together, Unleash Our Power, and Change the Game” (Celadon Books) is based on her inspiring commencement speech to Barnard College grads that went viral in 2018. 

The post Eight Stellar Book Picks For Mom This Mother’s Day appeared first on Reach Out Recovery.

How to Help A Teenage Daughter Get Along With Her Mom

From Fatherly.com

When a daughter hits puberty, her relationship with her mom is almost guaranteed to deteriorate. This strained relationship is actually a good sign of normal development, even if it might be occasionally painful for parents. But the good news is that dads are in a unique position to ease tensions between mom and daughter, says Dr. Dana Dorfman, a therapist to families and teens for 30 years. 

“From an emotional standpoint, there are two primary tasks that adolescents are trying to achieve: emotional separation from their parents, and developing their own identity,”says Dr. Dana Dorfman, a therapist to families and teens for 30 years. “Because of the gender similarity, girls identify with their mothers for the most part. So, oftentimes, the intensity with which they try to extricate themselves is directed towards their mother more specifically.”

So what can dad do to help the conflict? Well, for one, fathers can remind mothers that at least a part of the reason that their daughter is lashing out is because she feels safe at home. “A lot of times, a parent, especially a mother, is the safest receptacle for those feelings,” says Dorfman.

How To Help Your Teenage Daughter Get Along With Mom



Remember that this is a totally normal part of teenage development, even if it is totally awful, and that because of gender similarity, your daughter will actually lash out at mom more. Remember that daughters lash out because they feel safest with their moms and at home. Remind mom of that.When a teenage daughter is acting out, mom and dad should not bite the bait. Stay calm. If either parent does react and argue back, they should apologize to their daughter.After the dust has settled on a blow-out, talk to your daughter about her feelings. Don’t take her side, but do be empathetic. Being a teenager is hard. Even though you should stay calm in fights and arguments, you should have hard lines on what they will and won’t tolerate. Being a calm parent does not mean that you should have to tolerate disrespect.Being a mom to a teenage girl is hard. Do all you can to make sure that mom is taking care of herself by taking her out on dates, getting her out with friends, making sure she has time to exercise, and spend time not being worried about being a mom.

And what’s more, a dad can help by offering measured reactions to a teen girl’s emotional outbursts. This models great behavior for all involved, but especially for moms who should never rise to meet a teen daughters emotion. 

“Mom and dad should not bite the bait,” says Dorfman. “All of this is much easier said than done, but it’s not a parent’s job to absorb their kids feelings for them.” If a teen daughter is acting out, being rude or mean, parents need to stay as calm as possible. But if a fight breaks out apologies are in order from all sides.

“That shows teenagers that parents reflect on their behavior as well,” says Dorfman. 

She notes that dads should also know that intervening during a fight might not work out the way they want to. In fact, the best time to talk to both daughter and mom about whatever is troubling them is after the dust has settled and everyone has had a chance to sit down and think. That’s when dad can be both supportive to his daughter and his wife. But it requires finesses. There’s no good in completely siding with the daughter, because it could undermine mom’s authority. But generally, teen girls just want to feel heard, and dads can be that person for their daughter. 

“If a daughter is complaining to their father about their mom, what dad can say is: ‘It’s hard to be a teenager. I know it’s frustrating for you to be told what to do’ Dad is not agreeing or disagreeing with her — he’s simply reflecting back what her frustration is, and that can be very helpful and validating,” says Dorfman.

Likewise, fathers should talk to mom after fights or arguments, away from their daughter. Validating a partner and backing them up will help them feel like she’s not fighting the teen-daughter battle alone. Being a supportive husband, and presenting a united front, is deeply important. It’s also important that parents have hard boundaries on what they will allow their daughter to say to them. Just because a teen girl is going through extreme developmental changes doesn’t mean parents should become pushovers.

“It’s helpful for parents not to take it personally. This is part of their kid’s process,” says Dorfman, “That doesn’t mean that they should just roll over, absorb, or accept disrespect. A mom and father should know what the limits are. They should reinforce them, so that expectations are clear.” says Dorfman. This shows kids that parents respect themselves and they won’t endure disrespect or abuse. Kids need to see that.

The post How to Help A Teenage Daughter Get Along With Her Mom appeared first on Reach Out Recovery.

Here’s How One Small Town Beat The Opioid Epidemic

From Buzzfeed News:

Little Falls, Minnesota, didn’t do anything revolutionary. They just made a real effort — and spent real money — treating addiction as a disease, not a crime.

The stomp of boots echoed above her head. Her father had found the empty cashbox. Monica Rudolph, a 25-year-old living in her parents’ basement after her second eviction, had robbed the box to pay for heroin.

She was working two jobs in this small town, waitressing by day and bartending at night, to pay for drugs, but still never had enough. Like a mouse nibbling cheese, she’d steal $30 at a time from her dad’s stash to buy bags of brown powder, until all of the money — $2,000 — was gone.

Now it was a Saturday morning, her father had discovered the theft, and she was shaking from heroin withdrawal. She knew days of knee-buckling vomiting, diarrhea, and stomach pain lay ahead.

“I had nothing. My life was broken down into four- to five-hour increments to get high, to put off feeling sick,” Monica told BuzzFeed News. After realizing the money was gone, her father railed against her boyfriend. Her mother, Louise Rudolph, asked her if she was on drugs. And after years of pretending otherwise on that day in 2017, Monica said yes.

“I just didn’t want my daughter to die,” Louise told BuzzFeed News. “Oh my God, I was so scared she would die. I just wanted to get her help.”

She opened the Yellow Pages and started calling treatment centers in cities all over Minnesota. Again and again, Monica and Louise heard recorded out-for-the-weekend messages saying to call back on Monday.

Monica was scared too. She knew from past attempts to get clean that it would be at least two weeks before a treatment center could take her, because they needed a diagnosis and referral from a doctor first. And she knew she’d never last. “Mom, I cannot be sick that long,” she told her.

“Why not call the local hospital?” her mother finally asked, the last place Monica would have thought of. Somebody picked up the phone at St. Gabriel’s Hospital in Little Falls. Monica was immediately transferred to a substance abuse counselor, who did her referral over the phone and then asked if she could come the next morning to start treatment.

“My hometown of 8,000 people was the one place in the state that picked up the phone,” Monica said. “Think of all the people like me who don’t have that hometown.”

This small town has managed, in just five years, to curb its drug epidemic — a rare feat in a country where overdose deaths continue to rise, with more than 70,000 last year alone. Nationwide, fewer than one-third of people addicted to opioids can find the treatment that Monica found.

Little Falls didn’t do anything revolutionary. They just spent real money — at least $1.4 million in state grants since 2014 — on basic public health measures: limiting prescription refills, increasing access to addiction medications, and putting drug users in treatment programs instead of jail.

In other words, they began treating addiction as a disease instead of a crime.

And it worked: Emergency room visits to obtain painkillers fell from the top occurrence to out of the top 20 within six months after the hospital started monitoring prescriptions. There are now 100 patients on addiction medication at St. Gabriel’s, and 626 people have been tapered off opioids.

“One thing led to another,” Kurt DeVine, the first doctor Monica saw at St. Gabriel’s, told BuzzFeed News. “We realized we had to do a lot of things we weren’t doing, and that we had to do them together, or it wasn’t going to work.”

DeVine and his colleague Heather Bell became certified to prescribe buprenorphine, the milder opioid they favor to taper patients with opioid use disorders, in 2016. Now they teach people in other Minnesota cities, and as far away as Alaska, how things work in Little Falls through regular online seminars. Another 24 doctors have become certified through their efforts in the state, up from 100 three years ago. They talk to many towns, he said, who aren’t thinking big enough.

“They get Narcan” — an opioid-reversal drug — “or they get one little project and they think that is going to fix it,” he said. “There is no easy answer. It is a lot of work. If we were doing only one thing, just Narcan, our problem would be as bad as anywhere else. You have to do it all.”

Like a lot of places across the US, the overdose crisis snuck up on Little Falls, largely because of a surge in opioid painkiller prescriptions. Those excess pills ended up on the black market, often stolen by teenagers from their parents or grandparents and sold to their friends.

On Thanksgiving Day 2012, a shocking double murder got everyone talking about the opioid crisis. A retired homeowner, Byron David Smith, shot and then executed two teenage cousins, Nicholas Brady and Haile Kifer, who had broken into his house. The cops found prescription painkillers, stolen from another retiree the previous week, in their car.

“That made it clear to everyone that something bad was going on,” investigator Jason McDonald of the Morrison County Sheriff’s Office told BuzzFeed News.

A year later, “we had our first local heroin overdose, of a young woman,” he added. “We knew we had a problem.”

The opioid crisis arrived in Morrison County a bit later than the rest of the country, but its spread there followed a similar pattern — with prescription opioids coming first, then a legal crackdown on pills that left some users desperate enough to try street heroin. That’s what happened to Monica too. She was prescribed Percocet painkillers after a high school car wreck, then started buying stolen pills and finally heroin.

By 2014, the community could no longer ignore the problem: As many as three people were dying of opioid overdoses every year, a shock to the small county of 33,000 people that hadn’t seen them before.

That year, St. Gabriel’s Hospital realized local pharmacies were dispensing far too many painkillers, with more than 100,000 opioid pills prescribed every month. Aided by a $368,000 state grant, the hospital began reading charts of patients to see who was getting so many refills and alerting pharmacies about overprescribing. Within a year, people seeking painkillers went from the top emergency room complaint to less than a top 20 concern. Around 660,000 fewer doses of painkillers have since been prescribed in the county. As of August, the prescription-monitoring program has helped 626 people, more than one-third of the people on high-dose prescriptions in the county, taper off opioids, while crimes related to drugs — the kind of thefts that led to the deaths of Brady and Kifer — have dropped.

But the team there soon realized that lowering prescriptions wasn’t enough, DeVine said. They also had to help the people already addicted to the drugs.

In a clinic, they formed a “care team” — a social worker, a nurse, two doctors, and a pharmacist — who devote themselves to helping people like Monica Rudolph. Usually they prescribe them Suboxone, a medication that combines a mild opioid, buprenorphine, with naloxone, a drug that reverses overdoses. This “medication-assisted treatment” lessens the addictive properties of opioids without triggering withdrawal sickness and is the most effective treatment for people with an opioid use disorder.

In the decade before the opioid crisis, Morrison County had a similar problem with methamphetamines and had created a public task force of health officials, cops, schools, and doctors to deal with it. That task force has since been repurposed for opioids, so that authorities can connect what is going on in schools with changes at pharmacies, traffic stops, and the county jail. There are endless programs, “coffee with a cop” meetings, school talks, naloxone trainings, and even yoga classes at the jail.

When a patient comes into the St. Gabriel’s emergency room with a 10-year-old prescription for painkillers, they aren’t just cut off cold turkey; a plan is created to taper them down to a safe dose. When the police find someone with stolen pills, they are referred for treatment, not arrest. When people prescribed opioids don’t test positive for opioids in routine medical checkups, questions are asked.

“If you find a person’s urine has a bunch of meth and not their pain meds, you make the assumption they are selling their pain meds to get meth,” family physician Heather Bell, DeVine’s colleague, told BuzzFeed News. “But we don’t kick them out of our clinic. We say, ‘OK, what is going on? Do you need help?’ Then we get them into treatment.”

When Monica came to their clinic, she was treated like any other patient, not as a drug addict or a criminal. “Honestly, if they had shuddered, I would have run out the door,” she said. “I told them all these horrible dark things things I had done, and Dr. DeVine was like, ‘OK, that stuff happened. Now let’s get you better.’”

The team found her an in-patient program at a clinic where she could work on recovering from her five-year addiction to heroin. “I knew I couldn’t do it at home,” she said.

What’s truly unusual about Morrison County is that more places aren’t offering that same coordinated swath of services among doctors, teachers, and law enforcement, drug policy expert Brendan Saloner of the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health told BuzzFeed News. In December, he published a report calling for towns across the US to combine in just that way, promoting safer prescriptions, reducing overdoses, and switching from arrests to treatment.

“Every place will have to do those things its own way, and do it a little different,” Saloner said. “But some things are bottom line, starting with getting people into treatment and treating this like an epidemic.”

In places like Dayton, Ohio, and Huntington, West Virginia, people have turned to these coordinated efforts only at a later stage in the overdose crisis, amid a wave of deaths tied to the drug fentanyl. An opioid 30 to 50 times more potent than heroin, fentanyl began widely showing up in heroin in eastern states after 2013 and has driven drug overdoses to record-breaking levels, exceeding yearly deaths from guns, car accidents, and AIDS at its height.

The basic biology of opioids helps explain why. Opioids supplant natural painkillers produced by the brain and induce a dependence on the drug. The dependence mounts over time as the body demands more and more of the stuff both to get high and stave off withdrawal. That often leads people to seek opioids that are more potent — and more likely to kill.

As little as 2 milligrams of fentanyl, for instance, can be fatal. And its widespread distribution throughout the illicit drug market has been wildly uneven. The resultant death toll has been horrific, with fentanyl linked to about 30,000 fatal overdoses a year, roughly 60% of all such deaths in the US, from a drug rarely found outside hospitals at the start of this decade.

In Dayton in 2017, the toll was particularly harsh: 566 fatal overdoses in one year in the city of 140,000. The outbreak was linked to heroin contaminated with carfentanil, an opioid some 100 times stronger than fentanyl. Emergency responders responded to multiple overdoses a day, and the coroner needed to rent funeral homes to store the bodies.

Last year, however, overdose deaths in Dayton fell to 292, nearly cut in half.

“The first reason for the decline in deaths in Dayton, to be straightforward, is a decline in fentanyl in the drug supply,” Dayton Mayor Nan Whaley told Buzzfeed News. “The second reason is that we have come together as a community.”

Spurred by $1.5 million in federal grants aimed at preventing overdose deaths and stopping break-ins from drug users, the city has over time created a system of quick response teams aimed at connecting people who overdose, and drug users in general, with treatment instead of arrests. Firefighters, police, health organizations, and local businesses have all combined efforts. Teams respond to overdose outbreaks and visit people in their homes before they overdose, offering help instead of jail. People already in jail, meanwhile, are offered medication-assisted treatment that continues after they get out. The city runs a needle exchange and makes sure that firefighters and police officers readily administer Narcan, the overdose-reversing drug. The goal at every step is to get people into treatment.

Although Whaley wouldn’t call Dayton’s drop in overdose deaths a success story, “we are making progress,” she said. “It is expensive,” she added. Emergency responses to overdoses have cost the city more than $1.3 million from 2016 to 2018, and another $500,000 was spent on overdose-reversing drugs from 2015 to 2018. Medicaid expansion in Ohio under the Affordable Care Act, which started in 2014, was essential to paying for the addiction recovery treatment that is the end goal of Dayton’s system, she added. “I would prefer we had more funding for mental health.”

Huntington has also seen a drop in overdoses, down 40% from 2017 to 2018. And again, they did it with a collective response that treats the overdose crisis like an epidemic rather than a crime wave. The city of 47,000 was once called the “ground zero” of the overdose crisis after a record-breaking 20 overdoses happened there over just two days. A recent American Journal of Public Health study estimates around 2.5% of the population there are injection drug users, rates similar to Baltimore and San Francisco, making the drop all the more remarkable.

“Three years ago, if you overdosed in Huntington, you were treated, and got up, and went home. Nothing happened,” Michael Kilkenny, physician director of the Cabell-Huntington Health Department, told BuzzFeed News. “That doesn’t happen anymore — we changed the protocol to just start you on treatment.”

That’s rare in West Virginia, where only about 10% of people who survive an overdose receive addiction treatment afterward. Only about half of the state’s 55 counties have at least one federally certified provider of buprenorphine.

With nearby Marshall University’s help, Huntington now has a “one-stop shop” for drug treatment called PROACT, a former pharmacy location that offers counseling, job, and housing help along with medication-assisted treatment, welded together from four health systems in the region. Unlike Little Falls, which made an effort to create a widespread network of doctors across the state accredited to offer buprenorphine, Huntington has centralized treatment, PROACT director Michael Haney told Buzzfeed News.

“There are a lot of things that we can’t bill insurance for that people need,” Haney said. “Spiritual care is not a billable service. Finding someone a job is not a billable service. We have to find a way to let people have meaningful and productive lives, though.”

So the program found clever ways to save money, such as enlisting church group vans to transport people to appointments across the rural state. Aside from Sunday and Wednesday services, the vans were otherwise sitting in church parking lots.

In Rhode Island, a similar medical program has worked in the toughest of places: the prison system. In 2016, despite some reluctance at the Rhode Island Department of Corrections, a unified prison and jail, the state launched a treatment program for inmates with an opioid use disorder, offering methadone and buprenorphine (opioids that reduce cravings) and naltrexone (which blocks the effects of opioids), as well as counseling, at a cost to the state of $2 million. The overdose death rate for inmates dropped by 61% within a year of them leaving jail , and this alone lowered the fatal overdose rate for the entire state by 12%.

“It was idiotic not to do this,” Josiah Rich, director of the Center for Prisoner Health and Human Rights at the Miriam Hospital in Providence, told BuzzFeed News. Without drug treatment in prison, he said, “they are going to overdose as soon as they get out.”

Little Falls overcame similar reluctance from Minnesota prison officials to start offering drug treatment in the local county jail in September 2017.

“They told us it was frowned upon,” said DeVine of St. Gabriel’s.“We said they could frown all they like. We were going to do it.”

The results speak for themselves. The average jail time for inmates who started on Suboxone treatment dropped from 17 days in 2016 to 1 day by 2018, with fewer committing crimes after their release. And 100% of prisoners now stay on their medication while in jail.

“We went to the jail, talked to all the correctional officers — and let me tell you, that’s a tough crowd. We got them convinced enough to do it in there,” DeVine said.

Officials in Little Falls, Huntington, and Dayton all said that the gains in their towns would never have happened without infusions of money they’ve received from the federal government.

First off, all three rely on Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act — which spent $9 billion last year across the country on treatment for substance use disorders, including Monica’s in-patient recovery program. But the towns have also received new pools of state and federal money. Since 2016, Congress has passed spending bills providing an extra $2 billion for state and city grants to address the overdose crisis, on top of $1.9 billion given to its main drug prevention and treatment agency.

“As a critical access hospital, any new program is always funded with grant dollars,” St. Gabriel’s Health foundation director Kathy Lange told BuzzFeed News by email. Without a fortuitous state grant in 2014, “this program would have NEVER happened because we don’t have the extra money.”

For Little Falls, that $368,000 state grant was followed by another $75,000 grant a few years later. A $1 million state grant making the city one of eight hubs for addiction treatment in Minnesota came in 2016. And another $293,000 state grant that started last year pays for the hospital’s medication-assisted treatment program, part of a worldwide network of teleconferences to train medical personnel on dealing with the overdose crisis.

That all helps, because the salaries of the clinic team total around $300,000 a year, not including the two doctors. The hospital has had to work hard for every grant, and is working with state legislators to try to find more funding, Lange said. Right now, they are waiting for $650,000 promised last year in a federal spending bill. “I have not yet seen a check or acknowledgement,” she said. “Waiting on that any day!”

It still doesn’t cover everything. The people from the more than a dozen organizations, pharmacies, county and city agencies on the Morrison County Prescription Task Force all volunteer their time. Coordinating patient care, vital to patients with physical or mental health challenges common on top of an opioid use disorder, has only been reimbursable by Medicaid since July, and in 15-minute increments that don’t cover costs. Much of the work that DeVine and Bell do is also unreimbursed. “We are always looking for more grants,” Lange said.

As a snowstorm blanketed Little Falls this January, just ahead of a polar vortex that sent wind chills down to –50 degrees, the task force volunteers met at St. Gabriel’s Hospital over lasagna to see what was working, and what still needed to be done.

Yoga has gone over quite well in the jail, with about 30 men and 5 women now taking the classes. The town’s drug court has 13 participants, in recovery instead of in jail. But there are, as always, money problems. The insurance that paid the monthly $20 for recovering drug users to work out at a local gym has expired. And the sheriff’s office needed $300 to burn the 180 pounds of painkiller pills they had collected from users in voluntary “drug take back” events.

“It’s expensive, because it’s hazardous waste,” McDonald, the sheriff’s office investigator, told the group. He planned to see if the DEA would pay to burn the pills.

On the Monday after that meeting, Feb. 4, with a respite from winter actually sending temperatures above freezing in Little Falls, a new person started work at St. Gabriel’s clinic.

It was Monica Rudolph. Monica who had used heroin for five years. Monica who had robbed her father’s cashbox for heroin. Monica who has walked in the door there at the hospital unwashed and in the throes of withdrawal. She has now been trained through a federal program to serve as its first rural “peer” counselor, a former drug user who helps coach people through their recovery.

“My life has come full circle,” she said. “I’m really excited to give something back.

The post Here’s How One Small Town Beat The Opioid Epidemic appeared first on Reach Out Recovery.

What Wine Mom Culture Misses About Being A Sober Parent In A Society That Worships Alcohol

From The Washington Post:

My husband and I sat in the corner of a dimly lit restaurant on a Saturday night. Waitstaff flitted from one table to the next. I zeroed in on a table to my right. A young couple was smiling and taking photos of each other with their cellphones. Their server dropped off two iced glasses of water, a small carafe of wine for the young man and, for the young woman, a mojito.

For a moment, I could not look away. My husband and I had been going to that particular restaurant for years, and before I stopped drinking, mojitos had been my thing. For a split second, I wanted one.

I watched her sip the slightly cloudy drink garnished with mint leaves and lime. I longed for the relief I knew it would bring her, but I cannot and I will not drink, because I am an alcoholic. Drinking does not bring me relief. It brings disaster.

With a sigh, I turned back to my husband, who was staring at me.

“Reminiscing?” he asked.

“No,” I said. “Just wishing there was something to take the edge off parenting.”

We have a 12-year-old in the throes of puberty and a 2-year-old in the midst of the toddler stage. Lately, I feel like I have been losing at parenting. After 10 years, I had forgotten the trials of toddlerhood: the tantrums. The stubbornness. But thankfully, I have at least dealt with this stage before. It might take a while to get through it, and I feel rusty, but there are times when everything clicks — at least when it comes to my toddler.

With my older child, on the other hand, I have no idea what I am doing. His back talk seems like a daily occurrence. He has turned his assertive tone, the one I am pretty sure I nurtured throughout his childhood, against me.

What’s more, he is changing at a pace I cannot wrap my head around. Within three months, he grew three inches. Darker, thicker hair lines his upper lip. His feet are just half a shoe size smaller than his father’s. I do not look down to catch his brown eyes anymore because they are level with mine.

He tests limits constantly, and he is turning into a young man right before my eyes. It has been an emotional roller coaster the toddler years did not prepare me for. Sometimes, my weekly yoga classes are not enough to take the edge off.

My fellow moms get me through times like these. They understand that feeling of powerlessness that comes from trying to get a 2-year-old dressed in the morning when that child wants no part in it. And it was another mom who helped me figure out how to deal with the transition from elementary school to middle school for my older son. Having other moms around helps me feel less alone in my parenting journey.

Lately, though, it seems like everywhere I turn, mothers are putting their kids to bed and breaking out the wine to cope with a hard day. On Facebook, the Moms Who Need Winegroup has more than 700,000 followers, and my social media feed is inundated daily with mommy-needs-wine jokes and memes.

There is a book club I would love to join, but each month a member is designated the “wine lady.” Business has made the connection, too, and increasingly, wine and alcohol companies are marketing directly to moms. It feels like this sea of wine flows through just about every corner of mom culture, and trying to navigate these waters can make it hard for sober moms to open up in an authentic way. On top of that, the stigma that surrounds alcoholism makes it difficult to walk into a room where most people are drinking and decline the glass of wine without feeling like we have to offer an uncomfortable (and extremely personal) explanation.

But as I continue to trudge through this season of parenting, something surfaces again and again: I need other moms. I need a community of women who understand my daily struggles. I have been sober long enough to feel pretty comfortable in situations where other moms are drinking, and if I am not comfortable, I am willing to leave. But the same probably is not true for moms who are new to sober parenting, which is why it is so refreshing when a fellow mom takes the first step in taking the pressure off.

A few months ago, I met up with two mom-friends at a local restaurant. Before we ordered, one of them looked at me and said, “I know that you don’t drink, and I just want to make sure that you won’t be uncomfortable if I do.”

That simple acknowledgment put me at ease, and I knew I was under no pressure to explain myself.

When hosting events, we can make the common bond of motherhood — rather than the wine — the center of the party. Provide a sampling of nonalcoholic beverages as well as alcoholic ones. Make sure invitees know they are welcome, either way. In online communities, we can acknowledge that drinking is, indeed, one way to cope with a hard day of motherhood but that deep breathing, tea and good conversation also work.

Many sober moms might be uncomfortable in situations that involve other people drinking alcohol. We feel like an outsider sometimes, but moms who drink can make moms who do not feel more at ease. And since moms — sober or wine-loving — need one another, that inclusive approach can make all the difference.

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Amy Klobuchar On Father’s Addiction: He ‘Sunk To The Lowest Valleys’

From Huffington Post:

The presidential candidate revealed that her father’s battle against alcohol addiction influenced her new plan to combat substance abuse.

Presidential hopeful Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) got personal during a Friday interview on her plan to combat America’s addiction crisis, revealing that she was inspired by her father’s own experience.

Appearing on “CBS This Morning,” the candidate described her father as “a newspaperman and a columnist and a mountaineer” who “climbed to the highest mountains but then sunk to the lowest valleys because of his problems with alcoholism.”

It wasn’t until Jim Klobuchar ran into potential trouble with the law that he began seeking help, his daughter said.

“He had three DWIs, and what I saw was, on the third one, that made him go to treatment,” the senator recalled. “That was it; because he was facing jail time, and when he went to treatment, in his words, he was pursued by grace.”

On Friday, Klobuchar released her $100 billion plan for addressing addiction and mental health in a Medium post featuring an old black and white photo of her and her dad, pointing out that “everyone knows someone who struggles.”

Klobuchar’s initiative would focus on prevention, early intervention, treatment and recovery, including increasing space in facilities for mental health and substance abuse. It would also involve expanding health care and investing in research.

To finance her plan, Klobuchar is proposing a two-cent per milligram fee on opioids, which would be aimed at drug importers or manufacturers.

Other Democratic candidates have made similar proposals, including former Rep. John Delaney (Md.), who unveiled his mental health action plan on Wednesday, and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (Mass.), who introduced the Comprehensive Addiction Resources Emergency Act last year with Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) to combat opioid addiction.

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Amy Klobuchar Proposes $100 Billion for Addiction and Mental Health

From The New York Times:

Senator Amy Klobuchar on Friday released a $100 billion plan to combat drug and alcohol addiction and improve mental health care, focusing one of the first detailed proposals of her presidential campaign on an issue deeply personal to her.

Ms. Klobuchar — who has spoken before about her father’s alcoholism, including memorably at Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearing — said she had developed the plan and made it an early focus in part because of that personal experience and in part because of the number of addiction-related stories she had heard from voters.

The bulk of the plan is divided into three segments.

• Prevention, including funding for mental health programs at schools, training for doctors to recognize early warning signs of addiction and other mental health problems, and a requirement that doctors use prescription drug monitoring programs intended to prevent “doctor shopping,” in which patients addicted to opioids receive new prescriptions from a number of doctors.

• Treatment, including funding for addiction and mental health programs and stricter enforcement of the Affordable Care Act’s requirement that insurers cover mental health care. The plan highlights in particular the need for more hospital beds and community clinics, especially in rural areas: Some of the counties hit hardest by the opioid crisis are rural, and many of them have no psychiatrists.

• “Ongoing recovery,” including job training programs, transitional housing and other social services for recovering addicts. This segment of the plan also calls for treatment instead of incarceration for nonviolent drug offenders and crisis intervention training for police officers. There have been well-publicized instances of officers shooting unarmed people — especially black men — who were behaving erratically because of a mental illness.

The plan also includes funding for suicide prevention programs focused on veterans, farmers, Native Americans and L.G.B.T.Q. people, and for “an aggressive national awareness campaign to combat stigma.”

A summary provided by Ms. Klobuchar’s campaign said she would pay for the plan by charging opioid manufacturers and importers a two-cent fee per milligram, closing the carried-interest tax loophole, barring pharmaceutical companies from paying competitors to keep generic drugs off the market, and reaching a “master settlement agreement” with opioid companies.

(As the opioid crisis has grown, so has the number of lawsuits against pharmaceutical companies and distributors. Ms. Klobuchar’s plan essentially calls for one large settlement with the government, the proceeds of which would go to states to fund treatment programs and social services.)

In a statement, Ms. Klobuchar said that after three citations for driving under the influence, her father “finally got real treatment and was, in his own words, ‘pursued by grace.’”

“The one thing I hear over and over again across the country is people’s stories of battling with mental health and addiction,” she said. “People need help, but they just can’t get it. I believe everyone should have the same opportunity my dad had to be pursued by grace and get the treatment and help they need.”

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My Advice From God

As a physician, I have treated many families with addiction problems and there is addiction in my own family history. But I didn’t see how bad how bad my son’s addiction had become until I was crushed by it.

Josh Used Since 12

My son, Josh, had been involved in drugs and the associated activity since around the age of 12. By the time he could drive there was nothing I could do to keep him in line. As his use escalated, he hid the extent of it. As a physician I am ashamed to say that I didn’t recognize the depth of his addiction. This is so common among families dealing with addiction. I just knew that nothing I did helped in any way.

I Tried Everything

Josh’s addiction and life took on a persona of its own that was not responsive to the normal channels of parenthood. As the sheriff’s visits to my home became more numerous and more frequent, they knew what we as parents were attempting to accomplish. At one point they advised me that, due to Josh’s, age (under 18), I could be held legally liable for his actions (car accidents, stealing things to pawn, etc. We were planning to move.

At The End Of My Emotional Rope

I had developed the habit of waiting up for Josh, hoping and praying that he would arrive home safely. Without anyone getting hurt. One night very late I was lying in the living room on the couch with the lights off. I was curled up in a fetal position, talking to myself, and sobbing hysterically. It was after midnight, close to 2AM, and I had been manning the couch all evening, waiting, waiting. Anyone who has a family member abusing substances knows the desperation of this waiting and worrying.

I Started Talking To Myself

“He’ll be all right. He’ll be home soon. Please God, let him be all right.” I wasn’t sure if I still believed in God, a reaction not uncommon for people when things don’t happen the way we want them to. I was imagining all the possible scenarios. My son’s death, his incarceration, accidents, hurting others, all in living color. Lately, I was saying that if the drugs didn’t kill him, the company and activities required of the drug scene would.

Someone Answered

It was in the midst of all this praying and bargaining with God, sobbing so hard that I could barely breathe, I used a new prayer.

“Please God take me. I’ll lay down here on the floor right now. Kill me dead and in exchange give my son a good life.”I didn’t expect an answer. But suddenly the room became very calm. Out of the darkness came a male voice.  “It doesn’t work that way.”

I jumped up off the couch and then sank down again. The shock was such that I didn’t think to ask who was talking to me. I just responded, “Then please take my pain and give me peace and calmness now.”

A Soothing Rain

Instantly and immediately I felt as though someone was gently pouring warm water over me, starting at my head and covering me. I felt immediately calm and peaceful and not afraid.

The Message I Needed To Hear

Was it a message from God? I don’t know. I was desperate and I received the words that have stuck with me from that day forward. While my message from God didn’t cure Josh or give him the life I wanted for him, it was the first step to get me grounded. I needed to understand what I can and cannot do. As much as I have wanted and tried to save my son from his addiction, the message that I can’t live for Josh, or die for him either, has stayed with me.

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The Breakup Survival Plan

There are many kinds of recovery and addiction. If you have an addiction to a person and the relationship ends not by your choice, you need a breakup survival plan. We happen to have one. Your first goal is to get through it with your power still yours, your integrity still solid, and with love and forgiveness rather than hate and anger in your heart. Love works better than duct tape to put the broken pieces of your heart back together. Furthermore, this is not the time to develop an addiction to any substance to feel better.

Breakup Survival Plan

If you are on the receiving end of a cheating partner, lover, husband, you need useable tactics and techniques to get you through this horrible loss of trust (and relationship if you choose to go, or your partner chooses to leave you). The longer the relationship lasted, the more in depth and detailed the recovery may be.

Warning. If you suffer from an addiction, the breakup of a relationship puts you in danger of losing control of any improvement towards addiction-free life you had acquired. People often use their current addiction substance to help them through this tough emotional process to put salve on a violent wound. And it would be the first go-to for an addict, and a dangerous one!  Spurned lovers want, desire, need something to help them. “Beam me up Scotty” won’t work.

So, let’s look at what I have found to be helpful to get you through to the other side of the fresh new Hell. Understand the breakup survival plan has no specific order, and many tips both overlap and share qualities with each other.

The First 24-48 Hours

This is the hardest time, maybe. Call in any and all friends and coping mechanisms. And for those suffering with addiction, struggling to “use” is hardest right now. Call upon your sponsors if you have one, go to meetings, ask for help, resist the urge to numb your brain and heart with drugs. Do whatever you can that is socially and legally acceptable, but that does not send out bad energy. Some people like to get out the bad energy by throwing and breaking things. Not only do you have one heck of a mess to clean up afterwards, but it is counterproductive in so many ways. Buy a dart board. You might just get good enough to enter and win a contest. I like to scrub things when I have that much intense and possibly destructive and negative energy.

Screaming, crying, ranting and raving seems to be universal. Let it out, and then if necessary repeat until it is all spent. Some people can’t eat at times like these, while others sit down with a container of ice cream and a spoon. Invite your best friend and get two spoons so that he/she can impart some calming and loving words of advice. Keep busy and try to get some rest. I am not advocating more prescription medication here, especially if you have addiction problems, but sometimes in periods of severe grief, a few pills (no more than 5) of something like Ativan, Xanax, or something like Ambien can help you get some rest. And rest is vitally important so you don’t get run down and then, potentially, ill. There are many herbal and homeopathic remedies that might be helpful. A supplement called Theanine 100 mg taken two to three times a day can also help with the stress levels. But short of playing Rip Van Winkle and sleeping until your hair grows to your toes, nothing is going to take the pain away but tincture of time. I don’t know about you, but I’ve never been good at waiting.

The Five Stages of Grief

The stages, developed by Kubler Ross in her book On Death and Dying, relate to the death of a loved one.They include: Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, and Acceptance

You will likely go through these several times, and often in no certain order. While these are normally thought of as pertaining to death, I feel the loss of a relationship is a death of sorts; you have to go on in the world without that person; however, you might have to reconcile the fact that you may still see that person from time to time as you go through life. That also can be very difficult until you are truly beyond the situation.

Consider journaling. Writing down your feelings, the events, the facts, etc. is a great way to get the energy you are feeling out and down in a way that you can use and learn from.

Don’t get stuck in any one stage, and don’t worry if you are not going trough them in order. The key is to get through them, understand the feelings associated with each step, see if you can learn from them, and—most importantly—move on!

Tools

Whether physical or emotional, tools can help here. Just don’t include the pharmaceuticals of your addiction here. Meditation, prayer, yoga, other exercise and other such tools can help you think clearly, get you moving, organize you and keep good energy at play.  If you belong to a religion, go to your “church” and speak to your religious leader. They can help you think about this from a position of forgiveness and love. I firmly believe that forgiveness and love must be the outcome of this kind of living Hell. Send out good energy and when it comes back to you, you will feel blessed. Negative thought and energy do not have a positive outcome for anybody. There are a lot of “self-help” type vehicles that can be useful towards giving you help to analyze the events and feelings you are having. If you can talk to the other person and they are willing to engage in a discussion (a debriefing kind of interaction) of what happened then that is a good thing; this is rare to happen though I have found.

Music and movies/TV are great tools here. Go ahead and play those “somebody done somebody wrong” songs, cry in your beverage of choice, let it out. Then dry those tears and play some good dance tunes. Dance your way around the house until you run out of energy. Don’t watch the Hallmark channel where everybody gets the love they want and they all live happily ever after!! Feel and acknowledge the bad feelings and bad energy and then find a way to dispel it; and of course, in a legally and socially acceptable format! The news and TV are full of bad examples of what people do to each other when they are in the throes of anger and hurt. But then they “wake up” in the early light of day to feel sorrowful, hungover, and maybe in jail!

Emotions

You are going to feel them all. Feel them, look at them, write about them, cry and scream about them. And then send them off with a proverbial kiss and a prayer. You have to be able to love yourself, and for those suffering from an addiction problem, this is the hardest to accomplish. There are so many reasons and psychological issues that cause an addiction, and that is beyond the scope of this article. I’ll repeat it again and again; if you are an addict and you have lost a relationship that you valued and maybe needed, then you are going to need your sponsor and any other agents of help right now. Call on them and use them. Try really hard to stay positive, because negativity is destructive. You’ve already just gone through the negativity of a lost relationship; don’t add to it by sending more negative thoughts out to the universe. It is really hard right now to find a positive, but it’s important that you do. Find a mantra to say to yourself. Here’s one I use: May I be happy; May I feel loved. May all my suffering be healed; May I be at peace.

Friends And Support Systems

I think I covered much of this already, but I cannot stress how important your friends are at a time like this. Use them. They love you. Some day you can repay the favor. They know you best and can provide good counsel.

Therapy

Whether it is with your support groups, or individualized, it can be very helpful. Gaining insight to you and the situation from a third party is unbiased and honest. I’ve mentioned other types above as well, like music, dancing, talking, and journaling.

Trust Issues and Dealing With Your Ex

I’ve combined two here as they are related. If you are able to work out the problem with the ex, that’s good. However, you will have to resolve the trust issues before you can move on. If you caught your ex cheating on you, and you are able to work through it and come back together, the trust issue can make or break the success of a reunion. This requires talking it out at the very least, and possible therapy. If you two go your separate ways, you may have to see each other occasionally unless you move away. Try to be kind and offer a loving friendship, or at least a kind work. Remember, positive energy gives back same as does negative energy.

Goals

I think I have alluded to these in all above, but obviously the main goal is to get through this in one piece, with sanity intact, no broken dishes, and love in your heart for someone you loved very much. You’ll learn something about yourself too, and you can take that forward with you. You may also at some point find yourself in the position of helping someone else through this walk of misery.

Taking Care Of You

This included physical and mental health needs. Staying busy (the last one on the list) is vital to mental health here, I believe. If you can stay busy and focus on a task, then you will be less likely to dwell on the horror you are feeling. You need to eat even when you have no appetite or are so upset that you cannot swallow. Fluids and sugar will keep you going when you can’t eat. Sleep is important, as is exercise; and no, crying yourself to sleep is not considered exercise! Someone I love tells me “one hour, one day at a time”. Sometimes, it’s minute by minute. Get through one day and hope the next day is a bit less painful. I firmly believe that if you come at adversity with love rather than hate and anger, the outcome will be better. Good luck!

So here are the first four steps to get you going forward:

Call on your friends and other support systems for comfort and guidance
Take time to grieve, but not for an open-ended time frame. Set a limit for yourself
Form your analysis of what happened, and then let it go with a kiss to the wind
Allow your normal life’s routine carry you forward, one step in front of the other

And remember, this too shall pass.

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What Is Serenity

What is serenity anyway? People talk about it, and those in recovery swear by the serenity prayer. Some people even recite this prayer in 12-step meetings. Some say it quietly to themselves all day long. Serenity is associated with addiction recovery, but it is a state to which everyone should aspire. Here’s why.

What Is Serenity

Serenity is the state of being calm and tranquil no matter what goes down in your life. It’s the very opposite of fear, dread, anguish, anxiety. People dealing with addiction (either their own, or someone else’s) often feel the stress is killing them. There are many situations and illnesses that bring on the same kinds of helpless feelings. Serenity can be a direct path to happiness.

The Serenity Prayer

 God give me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.

 Here’s How The Serenity Prayer Inspires Change
1.Acceptance

Accepting the reality and not your magic thinking that everything is all right is the first step to healing. Once you understand the reality that you are not in control (of other people and what they think, or illness or job security or whatever worries you) you have left denial behind. Now you can take care of yourself.

2. Courage

It takes real courage to turn away from thinking and behaviors that aren’t working to make things better. It is especially hard to try a new approach to your life if loved ones are involved and don’t want things to change. Bravery isn’t a given, it has to be developed. Courage to change is often the next step after acceptance.

3. Wisdom

It’s virtually impossible to make wise choices when you are in a state of fear and crisis. Imagine the struggle of an animal caught in a trap. When you stop struggling, you can begin to think about solutions. Wisdom comes from calm reflection.

4. Positive Thinking

Positive thinking when you’re in denial is not part of serenity. It just pushes the truth under the rug. Positive thinking that revolves around what is good in your life and where you want your life to be going helps make that a reality.

5 Empowerment

When you no longer feel that you are responsible for someone else’s outcome, you are empowered to act independently and be yourself. Serenity is the tool to help you grow into the best self you can be.

 6. Faith

Some people worry that the God mentioned in the serenity prayer means religion is involved, and even that one religion may try to take the place of your own beliefs. Whose god is the one in the prayer anyway? People who don’t believe in God worry about the word itself. The faith generated by a state of serenity can be thought of more like the confidence, trust, reliance, conviction you need to get through your tough times. Faith is your internal angel that cheers you on.

 7. Letting Go

Letting go means so many things. You can let go of the need to control, the responsibility to fix, the pressure always to be helping out. Letting go can also mean backing off of unhealthy relationships and releasing feelings of fear and anxiety and dread. When you have let go of whatever holds you back, you are in a place of serenity. That is something you can hold onto for a truly happy life.

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