Shantee Woodards of HometownAnnapolis.com writes that Acme began using the decals about a month ago. “(The reactions) tend to change week to week,” said Kevin Epley, the bar’s owner. “The customers are usually surprised to scared to relieved when they come in. They say, ‘Oh my God!’ and then ‘Wow!’”

The Maryland Impaired Driving Coalition oversees the website, which offers state statistics and video interviews with Marylanders who have lost loved ones to accidents with drunk drivers. The site also provides a links and contact information to anyone who might need a designated driver in the state or in Washington, D.C.

The group worked with Annapolis-based Idle Time Advertising Company, which began distributing the cutouts the week before the Super Bowl; they went to 24 bars in the state. Acme and The Whiskey on West Street are the only county establishments to have them.

Another launch will begin in time for St. Patrick’s Day, said Jeremy Gunderson, project coordinator for the program. The group’s next step also includes a plan to illuminate a sign on Madison Street in Baltimore that will announce vacancies for drunken drivers at nearby Central Booking in the city.

The response to the cutouts has been positive so far, with patrons posing with the faux drunkards and posting the pictures on Facebook. “We’re hoping that would-be drunk drivers see the message right before they leave the bar and make that decision,” Gunderson said. “We’re hoping the message isn’t so much fear of incarceration or injury, just to provide and make people aware of all of the alternatives that are out there to driving drunk.”

There were 8,427 accidents in Anne Arundel County in 2008, according to the latest figures available from the State Highway Administration. That includes 663 crashes in which alcohol was listed as a factor.

Both the Maryland House and Senate are reviewing a bill that would require those convicted of drunken driving to have a lock on their vehicle’s ignition that would prevent the car from starting until the driver passed a Breathalyzer test.

The Maryland Highway Safety Office also has community traffic safety coordinators in each county who aim to develop local messages about road safety.

William Meyers, the coordinator for Anne Arundel County, has been trying to get the word out about the drunken driving effort. He has distributed coasters that have messages similar to the cutouts, but hasn’t received any feedback yet.

Still, he said he believed this effort was a fresher way of sending what has become an old message. “So many people have a stake in traffic safety, and they all have a different message and they’re all trying to get the word out there,” Meyers said.

“I think that’s why we have to mix it up a little bit. You hear one thing so much that you kind of block it out. This is trying something new, so that’s why DUI is 4 Losers is out there.”

Lifelike Anti-Drunk-Driving Ads Get Message Across in Annapolis is a post from: Drug Addiction Treatment

“I never used cocaine until after I met Whitney. Before then, I had experimented with other drugs, but marijuana was my drug of choice. At one point in my life, I used drugs uncontrollably,” he writes. “I was using everything I could get my hands on, from cocaine to heroin, weed and cooked cocaine.”

“I used to roll the cooked cocaine and weed up into a joint. This was called a laced joint, which was one of my favorites. It always gave me the blast I was looking for,” he explained. The Grammy Award-winner also said that he nearly died three times, with medics managing to resuscitate him, after he overdosed as he binged with his wife.

Brown, who has a 15-year-old daughter with Whitney, also said he believes his marriage to Whitney was destined to fail from the start. “I think it was doomed from the very beginning. Within the first year we separated, with several more to follow. I think we got married for all the wrong reasons,” he writes.

“Now, I realize Whitney had a different agenda than I did when we got married. I believe her agenda was to clean up her image, while mine was to be loved and have children.”

In 2006, Bobby’s sister Tina Brown claimed Houston was living in squalor, hopelessly addicted to crack cocaine. She released photographs to a US magazine showing the star’s bathroom littered with drug paraphernalia, including a crack pipe.
Houston was said to be disgusted with the claims. An aide said: “Bobby is trying to get maximum impact with the book by releasing it at the same time she’s returning to the world stage.”

Bobby Brown Blames Cocaine Addiction on Whitney Houston is a post from: Drug Addiction Treatment

The link remained after the investigators accounted for several other factors, including the teens’ scores on measures of self-esteem and depression, as well as their exposure to violence on television.

The findings do not prove the Internet addiction breeds violent behavior in children; instead, it suggests that violence-prone teenagers are more likely to obsessively use the Internet, explained lead researcher Dr. Chih-Hung Ko, of Kaohsiung Medical University in Taiwan.

However, the study does add to evidence from previous studies that media—TV, movies, or video games—can influence children’s behavior. Ko told Reuters Health that parents should pay close attention to their teenagers’ Internet use and the potential effects on their real-life behavior.

Some signs of Internet addiction include preoccupation with online activities, withdrawal symptoms such as moodiness and irritability after a few Internet-free days, and missing other activities to devote more time to the computer.

In this study, teenagers who fit the addiction profile were more prone to aggression than their peers, but the type of Internet activity seemed to matter as well. Online chatting, gambling, gaming, and spending time in online forums or adult pornography sites were all linked to aggressive behavior. Teens who spent their time doing online research or studying, on the other hand, were less likely to be prone to violence.

According to Ko, certain online activities may encourage kids to “release their anger” or otherwise be aggressive in ways they normally would not in the real world. Whether this eventually pushes them to be more aggressive in real life is not yet clear, the researcher said.

Ko recommends that parents talk to their children about their Internet use and their general attitudes toward violence.

Link Discovered Between Teen Internet Addiction and Violent Behavior is a post from: Drug Addiction Treatment

After he stopped taking Klonopin, a type of benzodiazepine, Starr found that he couldn’t sleep, his heartbeat was accelerated, he experienced terrible stomach pains, and he felt more anxious than ever. “I went through sheer living hell,” he said of the withdrawal. “I didn’t know if I was going to make it.”

Katie Balestra, special to the Washington Post, tells Starr’s story in her article on benzodiazepines, drugs that are often prescribed to treat anxiety, panic attacks, and sleep disorders, explaining that they were originally recommended as a safer alternative to barbiturates. But health professionals and consumers are reporting that drugs like Xanax, Ativan, Valium, and Klonopin can lead to physical dependence, often resulting in severe withdrawal symptoms.

According to IMS Health, a health-care information company based in Norwalk, CT, 85 million prescriptions were filled for the most popular benzodiazepines, which was an increase of 10 million since 2004. A study by the Department of Veterans Affairs physicians last year showed that in 2004, 66,000 veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder received prescriptions for benzodiazepines.

While some people herald the benefits of benzodiazepines, others say they are over-prescribed and can come with serious side effects. Some patients become tolerant to the drugs, so they take higher and higher doses to achieve the same effect. This can lead to physical and psychological dependence.

Stephanie Licata, a Harvard Medical School behavioral pharmacologist who studies benzodiazepines, explained that the drugs tell your brain to slow down, creating a calming effect. But for some people, this can lead to memory loss and impaired motor skills.

Withdrawing from benzodiazepines can be similar to withdrawing from heroin, with people experiencing hallucinations, seizures, and even death.

Some doctors say that the vast majority of their patients do just fine on the drugs, however. Robert DuPont, former director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, who has written several books on addiction and anxiety, said the drugs are widely successful in treating panic and anxiety. He said that 90 percent of his patients have no difficulty taking the medicine, and those with problems are most likely to be people who’ve had issues with addiction in the past.

“The typical patient that I see with anxiety is taking [benzodiazepines] well within the green-light zone,” he said. Addiction is an entirely different issue, having to do with a person “essentially falling in love with a chemical high,” he said. “For those people, they’re booze in the form of a pill.”

Anxiety Medications Can Lead to Even More Worries is a post from: Drug Addiction Treatment

Science Daily reports that Andrés Ozaita, of the Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Spain, along with colleagues in France and Germany, focused on THC, the main psychoactive chemical compound in marijuana, which acts on a class of receptors known as cannabinoid receptors, which are known to affect the connection strength between neurons.

The researchers found that THC increases the activity of a pathway that promotes protein synthesis in the brains of mice. This transient increase of protein synthesis was mediated specifically by cannabinoid receptors expressed on the brain’s inhibitory neurons, and correlated with long-term memory deficits in mice.

The authors also found that inhibition of this signaling pathway by rapamycin, an immunosuppressant drug used to prevent organ rejection following transplantation, prevents THC-induced amnesia in mice.

Marijuana and Memory Loss is a post from: Drug Addiction Treatment

Fielder-Civil revealed that in August 2007, after they had spent three days using heroin and crack, he was begging her to get some sleep when she suddenly went into a fit. “It was nearly midnight and I’d finally got her upstairs. We were sitting on the bed talking. Her eyes suddenly went blank,” he said. She began foaming at the mouth and “started having a fit on the bed. She slid down on to the floor before I could stop her.”

He continued, “She started quivering again and it suddenly grew into what seemed like a full-blown epileptic fit. I was panicking. I didn’t know how to help her. I was out of it on drugs as well, and was sobbing and crying out, ‘Amy!’”

“I knew it was important to stop her choking, so I turned her over on to her side, putting her in the recovery position. Then I pulled her tongue out of her mouth so she wouldn’t bite it. She had an awful look on her face, just frightened and pale…then suddenly she just passed out and stopped breathing.”

He describes how he was sure she was dying right in front of him, but somehow managed to open her mouth and deliver air down her throat. “At first nothing happened. So I did it again. I was feeling for her pulse because I thought her heart might have stopped. Then she spluttered, and I saw her chest rise. I was still sobbing and panicking but I just felt this huge relief that she was alive.”

But shortly after she awoke, she begged for more drugs. Fielder-Civil and a friend rushed her to London’s University College Hospital, where she was put on a drip after collapsing again.

Fielder-Civil said her behavior left him terrified for their future. He said he begged her to quit her drug habit, which had already led her to having “mini seizures.” “She had everything going for her. But she ended up behaving badly just to shock. After a while that just becomes a bore. I’d warned her to stop…but she always wanted to keep on taking the drugs,” he explained.

He said his ex’s brush with death failed to scare her off of hard drugs, which he fears could still claim her life. “Amy is a fun girl,” he said. “She’s quite wild, but it’s only on drink and drugs with her. It’s just a shame because she’s very funny, very clever, and she’s very loving…but she just put everything going for her—all that talent and personality—and hid them behind drink and drugs.”

“I think having seizures and just carrying on – that is pretty shocking, pretty hardcore behavior. It’s not something I would be able to do,” he said.

He also explained that Amy would smoke crack during her live shows. “Amy would stumble off [stage], with her hands out waiting for the crack pipe,” he said. “She smoked after every song and without her next hit, she wouldn’t go on. It’s no wonder she couldn’t sing properly…The only thing she cared about was her crack pipe.”

In the interview, Fielder-Civil took responsibility for introducing Amy to hard drugs. He admitted that he smoked heroin once in front of her and she asked to try it. “I was out of my mind on drugs and I said, ‘Of course.’ She inhaled the heroin and then just sat back, smiled, and her eyes went a bit funny. She said, ‘I can see why you take this.’ Amy took to heroin like a duck to water, same as me.”

He also explained that Amy funded his heroin addiction while he was in prison and would transfer money—sometimes as much as 1,000 pounds a week—into a bank account for him. He was jailed for 27 months last year for assault and obstructing justice, and was released last November.

Fielder-Civil also told The Sun that Amy stole cocaine from supermodel Kate Moss’s handbag at a star-studded bash in New York. “Kate Moss and another supermodel were there, as well as Hollywood actresses. Kate had told Amy to get a 10 dollar note out of her handbag to snort lines with.”

“But Amy told me she found two grams of cocaine in there, so she nicked them. We did some in the toilets…but we did the rest in front of everyone. Kate was so drunk, she never noticed any was missing.”

Fielder-Civil claims that cocaine was freely available to guests of the party, held at the Gramercy Park Hotel just weeks after he and Amy married in Miami in May 2007. “There was plenty of cocaine on a table in the room available to everyone,” he said.

The former couple’s divorce will be finalized next month, though Amy is refusing to change her name. At her own assault trial last week, she insisted on being referred to as “Amy Civil” and was wearing her Tiffany engagement ring.

Amy Winehouse’s Addiction Detailed is a post from: Drug Addiction Treatment

The official said Jackson regularly received propofol to sleep, which is far outside the drug’s intended purpose. Propofol (also known as the brand name Diprivan) is a quick-acting intravenous sedative used in hospital settings for anesthesia for adults, children, and animals. Investigators are currently working under the theory that the propofol caused Jackson’s heart to stop.

Propofol can depress the respiratory system and lower heart rates and blood pressure, and is supposed to only be administered at hospitals. Instructions on the drug’s package warn that patients must be continuously monitored, and that equipment to maintain breathing, provide artificial ventilation, and administer oxygen must be immediately available.

The official said that Jackson had trouble sleeping and enlisted various doctors to administer propofol, relying on the drug like an alarm clock. He would decide what time he wanted to wake up, and a doctor would stop the intravenous drip at that time.

Murray became Jackson’s personal physician in May and was to accompany him to London for a series of concerts in July. He was staying with Jackson in a rented Los Angeles mansion and, according to Murray’s lawyer, found Jackson unconscious in his bed and attempted to revive him.

Murray, 51, has been identified in court papers as the subject of a manslaughter investigation, and last week authorities raided his office and a storage unit in Houston. Police have not yet labeled him as a suspect, however. Murray’s lawyer has said the doctor “didn’t prescribe or administer anything that should have killed Michael Jackson.”

However, police searching Jackson’s home after his death found propofol and other drugs, an IV line, and three tanks of oxygen in Jackson’s bedroom. Fifteen more oxygen tanks were found in a security guard’s shack.

Michael Jackson and Propofol is a post from: Drug Addiction Treatment

Dr. Sack explained that Suboxone is one of two forms of the medication buprenorphine, which was originally developed to treat pain. Suboxone binds to the opiate receptor in the brain and suppresses pain in the same way that opiate drugs like morphine, heroin, and other opiates do. However, as the dosage increases, Suboxone blocks the opiate receptor and doesn’t allow it to be stimulated. Unlike Subutex, the other form of buprenorphine, Suboxone contains naloxone, which blocks the effects of opiates when injected intravenously.

Put simply, Suboxone acts like other opiates but blocks the level at which someone can experience euphoria, making it impossible for someone to get high from other opiates like OxyContin, heroin, codeine, morphine, and Vicodin. This way, clinicians can use Suboxone to block the withdrawal symptoms without having to worry about the client relapsing. In addition, the naloxone prevents people from getting high on Suboxone by injecting it rather than taking it sublingually.

Dr. Sack explained that 25 to 30 percent of Promises clients are dependent on opiates and that about two-thirds of those clients also abuse other drugs. At Promises, Suboxone is usually used for 3-4 days, but can be used for up to 14 days depending on the severity of the dependence. Once a person starts exhibiting withdrawal signs, he or she is given Suboxone and the withdrawal symptoms are stopped within 12-15 hours.

When asked if Suboxone itself is addictive, Dr. Sack said, “Drugs that have the greatest addiction potential have short half-lives and are absorbed quickly into the brain. Suboxone has a very long half-life and takes a while to reach the brain, so it has a much lower addiction potential. People can and do take Suboxone recreationally, but doctors just need to manage people to make sure they use it correctly. In addition, the euphoric feelings that come with Suboxone are much less intense than other opiates because of its long half-life, so people are less likely to abuse Suboxone.”

Suboxone is approved for maintenance like methadone, but Promises doesn’t use it this way. “For most people who are dependent on opiates and other drugs or alcohol, the goal of recovery is to be off drug completely, so staying on methadone or Suboxone for maintenance kind of defeats the purpose,” Dr. Sack said. He acknowledged that some opiate users will benefit more from maintenance treatment but that the ultimate goal is to get them off of drugs completely.

The advantage of using Suboxone instead of methadone is that if someone does use street drugs while taking Suboxone, it’s very unlikely for that person to overdose. In addition, methadone can only be dispensed from a methadone clinic, and patients must visit the clinic every day to get their dose. Suboxone, however, can be prescribed by a physician.

Of Suboxone’s efficacy, Dr. Sack said, “Data shows that buprenorphine is 50-100% more effective than other available treatments such as clonidine, and that a higher percentage of people who use buprenorphine complete their withdrawal. For maintenance treatment, the results are similar to methadone in that about 60% of people who are given maintenance treatment with buprenorphine stay on the treatment and don’t use illicit drugs while they’re on it.”

Suboxone: Safe, Comfortable Withdrawal from Opiates is a post from: Drug Addiction Treatment

Bennington told Noisecreep, “My life was falling apart in many ways that I was writing about on this record in terms of getting divorced, in terms of diving very hard into alcohol and drugs throughout this process.”

He describes “My Suffering” as a song about how his addiction helped him creatively. “I have been able to tap into all the negative things that can happen to me throughout my life by numbing myself to the pain, so to speak, and kind of being able to vent it through my music,” he said.

Bennington explained that Linkin Park’s 2000 hit “Crawling” is about feeling like he “had no control over (himself) in terms of drugs and alcohol.” “That feeling, being able to write about it, sing about it, that song, those words sold millions of records, I won a Grammy, I made a lot of money. I don’t think I could’ve been inspired to create something like that by watching someone else go through it,” he said. “So in a lot of ways that’s been very constructive for me.”

He also explained that he doesn’t mind being frank about his addiction. “I’m not one of those guys who thinks being anonymous is all that great. I don’t have a problem with people knowing that I had a drinking problem. That’s who I am and I’m kind of lucky in a lot of ways ‘cause I get to do something about it. I get to grow as a person through it,” he said.

“It’s not cool to be an alcoholic, meaning it’s not cool to go drink and be a dumbass. It’s cool to be a part of recovery. This is just who I am, this is what I write about, what I do, and most of my work has been a reflection of what I’ve been going through in one way or another.”

Linkin Park Singer Admits Addiction is a post from: Drug Addiction Treatment

According to an article in the Chicago Tribune, the interlock legislation was the first of New Mexico’s sweeping anti-drunk-driving laws, which include more sobriety checkpoints, tougher mandatory sentencing laws for driving while intoxicated, and the creation of a DWI czar, the first in the nation. From 2004 to 2008, the number of drunk driving fatalities have dropped 35 percent, from 219 to 143.

“We want all 50 states to do what New Mexico has done,” said Chuck Hurley, chief executive of Mothers Against Drunk Driving, whose latest mission is for all states to require interlocks. Hurley said that if each of the more than 1.4 million Americans convicted each year of drunk driving were forced to install one, 4,000 lives would be saved annually.

Since New Mexico passed the legislation, eleven other states have followed suit. However, the ignition lock still has limitations. For instance, in New Mexico, first-time offenders must drive with the interlock for only one year (second-time offenders have it for two years, third-time offenders for three years, and four-time offenders for the rest of their lives).

In addition, according to DWI czar Rachel O’Connor, 70 percent of drunken drivers who kill or injure people in crashes have never been convicted of drunk driving and thus won’t have an interlock device. “The interlock is a saving grace, but the problem has not gone away,” said state Senator Phil Griego.

At the peak of New Mexico’s DWI crash rate in 1990, more than 60 percent of all traffic deaths involved alcohol. When a drunk driver going the wrong way on a highway killed a mother and her three young girls on Christmas Eve in 1992, lawmakers were spurred to lower the legal blood-alcohol level (from 0.1 to 0.08), close the state’s drive-through liquor stores, and mandate jail time for repeat drunk driving offenders.

O’Connor explained that the problem is partly cultural. “New Mexico has typically been a heavy-drinking state,” she said. Because New Mexico is so big and rural, “you can really get out and gun it.”

In 2008 the Automotive Coalition for Traffic Safety and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration launched a five-year, $10 million research program to develop built-in car devices that would sense alcohol on a driver. In the meantime, several states are using the interlock device.

When the bill to mandate interlocks for all convicted drunk drivers came before the New Mexico legislature in 2005, Senator Griego praised the device. He said he had been driving drunk for years, often daily, and was ordered to install the interlock device on his truck after his second DWI conviction in 2001. He says that although the experience was embarrassing, it kept him honest.

Today there are about 9,000 interlocks being used in New Mexico.

Ignition Interlock Device Reduces Drunk Driving in New Mexico is a post from: Drug Addiction Treatment