Recovery Michigan

http://bit.ly/2IIpqkW

hen Laurie Couch first joined the Affected by Addiction Support Group, a closed Facebook group with 70,000 members, she felt a sense of belonging. Here were people who understood her struggle to care for a son addicted to drugs, and they were there to support her, any time of the day or night. She began regularly responding to people who were dealing with cravings and comforting parents devastated by their children’s addictions.

Private addiction support groups are abundant on Facebook, and Affected by Addiction is one of the most high-profile. Last June, the group’s owner Matt Mendoza spoke at the Facebook Communities Summit, where Mark Zuckerberg unveiled his plan to get a total of 1 billion people into “meaningful groups.” In July, Zuckerberg posted a glowing review of the support group on his Facebook page. The group was profiled by Good Morning America in February, sparking a flood of new members. In the segment, Mendoza told the hosts that “there have been hundreds, if not thousands, of people that have gotten treatment as a result of this community.” He didn’t expand on the process.

In March, Couch’s son almost overdosed. They live together in rural Kansas, where she doesn’t have access to much in-person support, which is part of what made Affected by Addiction attractive to begin with. In the wake of his near-overdose, she reached out to the group for comfort and encouragement while she panicked and figured out what to do.

Shortly after that, a stranger named Garrett Hall sent Couch a Facebook message.

“Hey Lauri [sic], I saw your name on the Affected By Addiction support group, and I had this weird/strong impulse to just reach out,” Hall wrote to Couch. “[A]re you doing ok?”

Though there’s no indication of it on his Facebook page, and he never mentioned it to Couch, Hall had a professional connection to Affected by Addiction. Between 2015 and 2016, he’d worked for Mendoza’s blog company, Addiction Unscripted, which owns Affected by Addiction.

Hall never disclosed to Couch that he had professional ties to Affected by Addiction. He simply offered to put her in touch with “someone who I have come to love over the last 12 months.”

“She is the woman who helped me get sober and my life back on track and she has helped so many people and families,” he continued. “I honestly believe she is a miracle worker. She is my hero.”

Couch soon got a call from Meghan Calvert, a paid marketer for a treatment center called Pillars Recovery. It’s owned by Darren Orloff, who is part of Affected by Addiction’s volunteer leadership team. Couch, who has a background in sales, knew a sales pitch when she heard it. She told Calvert off for taking advantage of desperate people.

https://cnn.it/2komSdc

"The finding that was most surprising was the proportion, and the severity, of the exposures among the adolescents that were due to intentional exposure. We had three deaths, and all three were in the teenage group," Smith said.

http://bit.ly/2GE3KAN

A confidential, anonymous 24-hour statewide hotline for sexual assault survivors to call for help, counseling and resources will soon be available, Gov. Rick Snyder and First Lady Sue Snyder announced Friday.

“It’s critically important that all survivors of sexual assault have somewhere safe to turn for help,” First Lady Sue Snyder said. “This hotline will connect survivors with a caring, trained professional who can help provide them with the immediate and long-term support they need to begin their journey toward healing.”

“As we continue our work to change the culture surrounding sexual assault in Michigan, it’s equally important that we support the brave survivors who reach out for help,” Gov. Snyder said. “Developing this anonymous hotline is an important step toward ensuring every survivor in Michigan has access to safe and confidential support services.”

The hotline will serve as a confidential and anonymous place for sexual assault survivors to call and be connected with counseling and advocacy services, as well as medical and forensic resources. The 24-hour, toll-free hotline will be staffed by trained counselors and sexual assault service providers who will offer counseling and connect survivors with local resources for long-term support programs.

“This hotline is an important way to reach sexual assault survivors throughout Michigan and provide them with counseling and resources from highly trained, supportive individuals,” said Debi Cain, Director of the Michigan Domestic and Sexual Violence Prevention and Treatment Board. “So many survivors have kept what happened to them a secret—sometimes for many years—feeling they have no safe place to call for help. It’s encouraging to see a widespread, accessible resource in Michigan that will help survivors receive help to start healing.”

The hotline will be led, advised and funded by the Michigan Domestic and Sexual Violence Prevention and Treatment Board, with day-to-day operations conducted by the Michigan Coalition to End Domestic and Sexual Violence. The hotline number and launch date will be announced in the coming weeks.

“The Michigan Coalition to End Domestic and Sexual Violence is honored to be entrusted with this important project,” said Sarah Prout Rennie, Executive Director of the coalition. “This is an important opportunity to provide comprehensive, statewide crisis intervention to survivors of sexual assault and work to make sure survivors are given the dignity and respect to which they are entitled.”

If you or someone you know needs to be connected with sexual assault services in your area, click here. If you are in danger, call 911.

http://bit.ly/2s20vh3

MORE ACCURATELY, I learned of autistic burnout last week, but set it aside for this week as something to read up on. It turns out to be useful new knowledge as lately I’ve been thinking a lot about life post-diagnosis as compared to life pre-diagnosis.

Rather than trying to craft an overview of autistic burnout, or capture here everything I’ve been learning, for context I’m simply going to link articles and posts I’ve found to be relevant or resonant. Most if not all of these links appear in the first-linked piece, which also offers some helpful pullquotes. If you don’t have time for reading, try the embedded video at the top.

When you know you’re autistic, at least you know the nature of the act you’re putting on. For most of my life (to varying degrees of self-awareness), like most other people, I believed that I was a neurotypical person living in a neurotypical world — but badly, as a failure and a fuck-up. I spent decades doing my best to behave as a neurotypical person, because I had no reason to believe I was anything other than that. I didn’t even think in those terms of art, of course; I simply was like everyone else, just far worse at it than most of the other people around me.

There are a lot of aspects of our society not included in this discussion, so for what it is worth......

http://bit.ly/2Ljnb5q

The most depressed generation won’t get help despite having more access than ever before.

More formal research paints a similar picture, especially for millennials navigating the muddy waters of college. Between 2009 and 2015, enrollment in U.S. colleges grew an average of 6 percent, but saw a roughly 30 percent increase in the number of students visiting counseling centers, according to the Center of Collegiate Mental Health. Last year, a major survey of 63,000 students at 92 schools found that almost 40 percent of respondents felt so depressed that it was “difficult to function”; 61 percent said they felt at least one instance of “overwhelming anxiety” in the prior year, per the American College Health Association.

A patchwork of issues is contributing to the generation’s anxiety, though it’s hard to pinpoint the driving force. Is it a fast-paced modern lifestyle? Shifts in parenting styles? The peaks and valleys of an unpredictable economy? Anxieties about student debt and not being able to afford a home? Being the first generation to grow up with the internet and the toxic culture of social media? A debilitating addiction to avocado toast, rosé or all things pink?

Regarding resiliency, a study released in January surveyed 40,000 American, Canadian and British college students and found that millennials are suffering from “multidimensional perfectionism” in multiple channels of their lives, setting unrealistically high expectations and being hurt when they fall short. Researchers say the findings (published in the journal Psychological Bulletin) correlate with increasing rates of anxiety, depression and eating disorders in millennials, too.

“Millennials tend to be more isolationist,” says Reef Karim, who has seen a swell of young people walk through the doors of his Beverly Hills outpatient clinic The Control Center, where he and the staff help treat mental health and addiction issues. “They’re idealistic at the same time, but as much as they feel like they want to connect more through volunteerism, activism and social media, they tend to have less emotional armor. As great as social media is, in many ways, it’s almost preying on the vulnerabilities of some people in terms of creating perfectionistic behavior. And young people feel overburdened.”

For millennial men in particular, a major challenge is understanding that they’re suffering from disorders in the first place — and finding someone who can help shoulder the burden of their struggles. A major British study found that the odds of male “friendlessness” nearly triple between the early 20s and late middle age, with married men especially reporting that they don’t have a close friend to turn to for support outside of the home.

http://bit.ly/2IBv2cD

It all started with ketamine. To some, vets mainly, it’s a horse tranquilliser. To others, a party drug. To those with severe clinical depression, a potential, literal, life-saver. A dose of ketamine can rapidly dull the symptoms of depression, providing immediate relief for those crippled by the darkest thoughts. And while ketamine does not work for everyone, it seems to work in many people who are untouched by standard anti-depressant drugs.

Ketamine could then be our best lead in the hunt for depression. For if we search for where ketamine affects the brain, and for how it affects the brain, we will get vital clues to the cause of depression. And so to a long-lasting effective treatment. Two studies just published in Nature used precisely this trick, and spectacularly uncovered not just compelling evidence of the tiny brain region to target, but exactly what goes wrong in it to create depression — that some neurons are, literally, depressed.

Enter the lateral habenula. Rolls off the tongue, doesn’t it? But it fits the suspect’s profile. It connects to both serotonin and dopamine releasing neurons. When dopamine neurons burst with activity, that’s a signal we just got something better than expected (serotonin neurons might signal a similar thing). And when the lateral habenula releases a burst of activity, it stops the dopamine and serotonin neurons from bursting. Stops them from telling the brain — hey, that was unexpected.

The two studies in Nature from Hailan Hu and team answered both questions. Let’s start, as they did, with probable cause: if we stick ketamine into the habenula, does it alleviate depression? Yes. Depressed rats recover. In a bunch of tests, injecting ketamine into the habenula restores a rat’s élan: exploring, reacting, enjoying the taste of sweet sweet sucrose.

Right, so ketamine can work its magic from within the habenula. But we want evidence that it has any effect on the habenula itself. For, surely, if that over-active bursting of the habenula in some way causes depression then ketamine should clobber the bursts? Remarkably, it does. Ketamine reduces the number of bursting neurons, right down to the same number found in healthy brains. We now have a big wodge of evidence for a probable cause of depression: habenula neurons burst fire when they should not, and stopping this bursting with ketamine stops depression (in tiny rodents).

https://nyti.ms/2IzbOnQ

http://bit.ly/2Gxk1r5 

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration today approved Lucemyra (lofexidine hydrochloride) for the mitigation of withdrawal symptoms to facilitate abrupt discontinuation of opioids in adults. While Lucemyra may lessen the severity of withdrawal symptoms, it may not completely prevent them and is only approved for treatment for up to 14 days. Lucemyra is not a treatment for opioid use disorder (OUD), but can be used as part of a broader, long-term treatment plan for managing OUD.

“As part of our commitment to support patients struggling with addiction, we’re dedicated to encouraging innovative approaches to help mitigate the physiological challenges presented when patients discontinue opioids,” said FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb, M.D. “We’re developing new guidance to help accelerate the development of better treatments, including those that help manage opioid withdrawal symptoms. We know that the physical symptoms of opioid withdrawal can be one of the biggest barriers for patients seeking help and ultimately overcoming addiction. The fear of experiencing withdrawal symptoms often prevents those suffering from opioid addiction from seeking help. And those who seek assistance may relapse due to continued withdrawal symptoms. The FDA will continue to encourage the innovation and development of therapies to help those suffering from opioid addiction transition to lives of sobriety, as well as address the unfortunate stigma that’s sometimes associated with the use of medication-assisted treatments.”

Opioid withdrawal includes symptoms — such as anxiety, agitation, sleep problems, muscle aches, runny nose, sweating, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea and drug craving.

http://bit.ly/2rQT2SU

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a catch-all for autism, pervasive developmental disorder not otherwise specified (PDD-NOS), and Asperger syndrome. ASD affects about 2 million individuals in the United States, and is 4.5 times more common in boys than in girls.

ASD affects individuals to different extents. Individuals with ASD can be highly gifted or mentally challenged, but all have some challenges with socializing and communicating with others. Developmental issues associated with ASD are typically diagnosed in early childhood, but can be noticed as early as 18 months.

Between 44 to 83 percent of children with autism spectrum disorder also experience sleep issues. Most commonly, children with autism have difficulty falling asleep and experience disturbed sleep once they do. Problematically, their sleep problems tend to exacerbate other issues characteristic of the disorder. For instance, daytime sleepiness from lack of sleep often results in hyperactivity, inattentiveness, and aggression during the day.

Common sleep disorders affecting children and adults with autism

In general, children with autism tend to sleep 32.8 minutes less per night and take almost 11 minutes longer to sleep than their typically developing peers. Children with ASD also have a higher prevalence of sleep issues than their typically developing peers. One studyreported the following instances of sleep issues in autistic children:

• 54% displayed resistance to bedtime
• 56% experienced insomnia
• 53% suffered from parasomnias, such as sleepwalking or night terrors
• 25% experienced sleep disordered breathing, including sleep apnea
• 45% had difficulty waking up in the morning
• 31% experienced daytime sleepiness

http://bit.ly/2rPRQPk

Across Michigan, deaths from drug overdoses ‒ fueled by a rise in synthetic opioids such as street fentanyl ‒ are climbing fast and almost no area is immune. Click on a county to get year-by-year statistics and more information.

A few years ago, fentanyl barely registered in state drug overdose tallies.

Today, a street version of the synthetic opioid has overtaken prescription painkillers as the primary cause of overdose deaths. The shift is statewide, fueling huge spikes in overdose deaths, with ground zero in the mostly white, working-class communities surrounding Detroit.

Indeed, eight of the 10 highest overdose death rates in Michigan from 2013 through 2015 were blue-collar cities in Wayne County, according to a Bridge analysis of opioid deaths from report data collected for the state. (The other two highest rates were in neighboring Macomb County.)

“There are days when I walk into the autopsy room and there are 12 to 15 bodies,” Wayne County Medical Examiner Carl Schmidt told Bridge. “Half of those are drug cases.”

In 2017, according to preliminary calculations, about three-quarters of fatal overdoses in Wayne County were tied to fentanyl, an eight-fold increase in three years. The statewide share of overdose deaths tied to synthetic opioids also has risen sharply, from 5.6 percent to 39 percent between 2013 and 2015.