Pop Stars Continue To Glorify Molly Despite Deadly Consequences

. Posted in Celebrities, Ecstasy, Breaking News

Music is often about rebellion, and many times pop stars purposely court controversy to get media attention. Madonna, Prince, and even Michael Jackson have released music or put on performances that sent the entire world buzzing. Major music icons like Elvis Presley played rock n. roll that was deemed dangerous and overly provocative. So it’s not surprising that the tradition of creating controversial music has continued with the new generation of pop stars. But the subject matter nowadays goes beyond just controversial to dangerous, by the musicians openly endorsing a drug called Molly that has proven to be fatal in many instances.
The Dangers Of Molly
Molly is the street name for MDMA, also known as Ecstasy. Recently, Molly has grown drastically in popularity, because of its use at music concerts and nightclubs. Marketed as a pure form of Ecstasy, it’s known for creating feelings of euphoria that greatly enhance the experience of being at a club. Ecstasy first became really popular during the Rave electronic music scene of the nineties, and seems to have recently experienced another resurgence. Molly has been in the news because of many people overdosing on it, such as:

• Electronic music festival Electric Zoo having four Molly-related deaths
• A 19-year old girl dying from a Molly overdose in Washington D.C.
• Another female student overdosing in New Hampshire
• Four people dying in one week in the Northeast due to overdose

The most dangerous part of Molly is that no one knows what they’re really putting in their body when taking Molly. Law enforcement officials claim that there really is no good batch of Molly and what is sold as Molly is often something completely different. The popularity of Molly is made worse by pop stars openly promoting the drug in their songs. Teenagers and even young adults are greatly influenced by pop-culture and the need to be thought of as cool. Pop stars are acting irresponsibly by continuing to promote the drug even after the increase of Molly-related deaths. Below is a list of some of the high-profile music stars who have chosen to glorify Molly.
Miley Cyrus
Currently the most high-profile of the Molly glorifiers is pop-star Miley Cyrus. In her song We Can’t Stop she sings that she’s dancing with Molly. Cyrus has gone on to say that she sings about Molly because she’s being authentic about what she does in her real life.
Kanye West
As if he wasn’t controversial enough Kanye West also raps about Molly in his song Mercy, where his lyrics include “Something about Mary, she gone off on that Molly.”
Rick Ross
Miami-based rapper Rick Ross finally had to deal with real repercussions over rapping about Molly. His lyrics are perhaps the worst out of any of these songs. He raps in U.E.O.N.O. “Put molly all in her champagne/ She ain't even know it/ I took her home and I enjoyed that/ She ain't even know it.” Due to the disgusting nature of these lyrics he lost a million dollar deal with Reebok. However, at least he apologized for the lyrics later.
Madonna
Although Madonna is a living music legend, she also shows that it’s never too late to be irresponsible, when she namedropped Molly at a concert. Although she later denied the allegations and claims that she was simply talking about a person, she obviously was attempting to connect with the younger crowd by namedropping a popular club drug.
Molly continues to make an alarming amount of appearances in pop songs. Although pop stars may think they’re being cool and rebellious by singing about Molly, they are promoting a drug that is notorious for being impure. The rise of deaths and overdoses on Molly is proof that it isn’t cool anymore to glorify a potentially fatal drug.


Cindy Nichols is the founder of 411 Intervention, a full-service intervention resource that helps individuals with addiction issues find treatment solutions. You can see an interview with Cindy here on Recovery Now TV.

Duck Dynasty Star Si Robertson Opens Up About Alcohol Addiction and Mental Health Issues

Courtesy of recovery Now TV



One of the public’s favorite stars of the reality show Duck Dynasty, Si Robertson, recently released his book chronicling the dark past of his family entitled “Si-cology: Tales and Wisdom from Duck Dynasty’s Favorite Uncle”. The book reveals some of the troubled times that he and his brother Phil experienced before the fame they gained on television as the Louisiana bayou duck hunters. Personal issues such as addiction, mental illness and even suicide attempts affected the family in the past.

When they were young children, Si and his brother had a mother who suffered a nervous breakdown and was diagnosed as manic-depressive. Robertson says that she spent a lot of time in hospitals and in the state mental institution. The book also discusses both Si and his brother, Phil’s struggles with alcohol addiction.

Si drank heavily throughout his young adulthood, especially in the period of time he served in Vietnam. His experience of spending a year in Vietnam was difficult on him mentally and led him to escape the situation through alcohol. He became aware of how much his alcohol consumption was spiraling out of control when he came close to killing an innocent Vietnamese boy and woman. At that point he realized that he had to quit drinking for good when he came back from the war. Si found his spirituality and belief in God helped him to recover from his alcoholism problem.

Phil had his own problems with alcohol and drugs which almost ruined his marriage to his wife Kay. During his 20s Phil worked at a honky-tonk bar and drank heavily, leaving his wife to raise their three children while he was out drinking with friends every night. He was even arrested for seriously injuring a couple during a bar fight. At age 28 Phil, like Si, also came to the realization that he had to quit his alcohol and drug abuse as both brothers became religious and decided to remain sober for good. According to Si, Phil was not a very good person before he found God and religion and finally gave his issues of addiction.

When Si’s son Scott was born, a liver problem caused damage to the child’s brain leading to even more family problems. He had erratic behavior as a child and according to Si, became damaging and out of control. At only age 11, Scott tried to jump out of a second story window. After being taken to a military hospital, he was diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome. Understanding his disorder made it possible for Scott to lead a healthier and happier life. His son embraces the religious beliefs of his father who he now looks up to and respects as the rock of their family.

In spite of the struggles of the Robertson family, they were able to find fame and fortune through their thriving business known as Duck Commander, producing top of the line duck calls and decoys for hunting. The show Duck Dynasty follows the family’s daily life as they operate their booming business which employs half of their neighborhood. The show’s premiere of the fourth season broke ratings records as their popularity only continues to increase. The story of the Robertson brother’s past proves how much they were able to overcome by recovering from their alcoholism and finding positive motivation through their spirituality. Now running a successful business in the Louisiana bayou and starring in one of the most popular shows on television, the Robertson family has left behind their dark past and moved forward to a more positive future.



Cindy Nichols is the founder of 411 Intervention, a full-service intervention resource that helps individuals with addiction issues find treatment solutions. You can see an interview with Cindy here on Recovery Now TV.

False Positive—The Reality of Workplace Drugs in America

It isn’t what you recently heard. A special investigation by The Fix into the report that American employee drug use has declined 74% since 1988.



not so positive Photo: Shutterstock

By Ellen Batzel

12/05/13
This past November 18th marked the 25th anniversary of President Reagan’s signing into law the Drug-Free Workplace Act. The bill required any institution receiving federal funds to establish and maintain an alcohol and drug-free workplaceThe anniversary might have passed without much comment except that one company was quite aware of the date. Quest Diagnostics, the most prominent corporation in the drug testing industry, saw it as an opportunity to grab headlines.Quest that day issued a self-congratulatory report stating—unequivocally—that its own survey of 125 million drug tests from 1988 to 2012 proved that there was a 74% decline in drug use among American workers since the Drug-Free Workplace Act was signed. This figure was then heralded by a number of media outlets. The Wall Street Journal, for example, used exactly the same headline as the Quest press release, stating simply:“Drug Use Among American Workers Declined 74% Over Past 25 YearsThe Journal then cited the Quest press release almost verbatim without undertaking its own closer analysis of the data.

 
“Overall,” the Journal reported straight from the press release, “3.5% of samples came back positivlast year compared with 13.6% in 1988. The vast majority of tests, around 75% in recent years, were conducted for pre-employment screening. The rest were administered following accidents, after employers suspected drug use or as part of regular testing regimens.”

The Quest press release left no doubts that the company was making its bold claim for the entire U.S workforce and not just for Quest's sample of it. It also offered fairly minimal qualifications to its findings, not mentioning major factors that might skew even its own report on those workplaces for which it had some evidence. Instead, its most significant qualification to the news was: “. . .although the rate of positive test results for certain drugs, including amphetamine and opiates, continues to climb."

It then added: ". . .according to a landmark analysis of workplace drug test results released today by Quest Diagnostics (NYSE: DGX), the world’s leading provider of diagnostic information services.” (Quest conducts more than six million workplace drug tests annually, reported $7.4 billion in revenue last year and claims to service 30% of the adult American public with a wide variety of laboratory services, including drug testing.)
It would be a remarkable feat in workplace performance if 74% was an accurate figure. Unfortunately, on closer scrutiny, 74% turns out to be a “false positive.”
A careful inquiry into the details of the Quest study by The Fix reveals the following:

Few workplaces even test for the widely-used new drugs defined by the DEA as currently threatening America’s health and safety, and so they are excluded from the Quest survey.

Many employers do not even have a drug-testing program.

The drugs actually being tested are not tested at uniform sensitivity levels.

There is no complete uniformity in what drugs and how many different drug types are actually tested for by the employers who do test for drugs, and the Quest survey only includes the tests employers request. Most employers do not test for all drug types.

Quest put itself forward as one company speaking for the entire American workplace based only upon its own large but hardly definitive sample.

AN EVEN CLOSER LOOK AT THE QUEST SURVEY REVEALS….
There are numerous and subtle factors that make up the world of drug testings in America. Many people applying for a job think you pee in a cup and cross your fingers that your last imbibe of marijuana moved out of your system; or they pray that the meds they are taking - over-the-counter and otherwise - don't create a false positive.

he varieties of contingencies in the world of drugs and drug tests are in fact extensive and complex - as is inevitably any attempt to measure a large chunk of the population's use of the scores of "Illicit" drugs out there along with the "licit" drugs that have gone black market.
Among the host of data influencing factors are where samples are collected, where they are "read" - it can be instantly like a pregnancy test or at the lab - and what drugs are being tested for and at what levels. Then there are the issues of the chain of custody of the samples, the ability of people to cheat on their tests, the facts that employers treat different drugs with different levels of leniency and may even throw away positive tests of the "lenient drugs."
Beyond this there's the reality that different employers might use tests for say, heroin, that are set at a different sensitivity level of detection than the company across the street uses. Some firms care to test for black market prescription drugs, the vast majority don't. Some want to screen for many drugs; most want to go with the basics, often for cost reasons. Some people fail tests, clean up, and then pass a test with a different employer. No data can track that. It goes on and onAll this a company like Quest needs to take into account in any data survey it releases to the country if it wants it to be credible. Presumably aware of all these factors, Quest notably handles one troubling issue by omission. That is, it doesn’t count in its survey data an untold number of “instant results” urine specimens that employers then send Quest for legally required follow-up testing with more sophisticated lab technology. Quest omits these numbers from its survey of American drug use on the very reasonable grounds that it has no way of knowing by comparison how many workplace instant results tests per year came up negative or how the employer handled the "chain of custody" of the instant tests.
On the same grounds, Quest also excludes all test results submitted by employers who use a mix of instant results tests and standard urine collection devices.
Scientifically and statistically, this makes sense. Yet it leaves hanging the question: how much of the population's test results - positive and negative - are thereby not factored into the broad statement of 74% improvement?Asked whether the complete instant results test information would skew the survey if known, one executive told The Fix that there were a negligible number of such uncounted tests sold by Quest each year. Further questioning of Quest’s chief testing scientist, Dr. Barry Sample, revealed that, in fact, there are “substantially less than one million” such uncounted instant results units sold by Quest (the exact number is “proprietary”). Those test cups that are returned are omitted from the database, Dr. Small said, and no count is kept of how many.Obviously, a large number might alter the glowing survey results if not offset by a known number of negative tests. No number at all leaves the survey to be judged on how Quest treated most of the other complicating factors in the drug testing universe. And that's where the problems with the Quest pronouncement begins.
WHAT THE GOVERNMENT DOESN’T REQUIRE

One of those factors is who must obey government rules and who can do what they want re drug testing. Hugely relevant to the 74% claim is the fact that the federal government issues guidelines naming exactly the drugs to be tested for use by federal workers who are in “safety-sensitive” positions. The government does not otherwise require private sector employers who are not receiving federal funds to test for drugs. The number of employees not being tested therefore is a guesswork moving target. Even so, one unverified survey claimed that while 84% of workplaces conduct pre-hire screening, only 39% did random follow-up screening of hired employers. Even assuming this survey was accurate, that would leave 16% of job seekers not tested, and huge numbers of people never tested once hired.These tens of millions of regularly untested workers, if counted by Quest, would clearly skew any survey one way or the other. Quest doesn't account for them in its data base because it can't - but it gives the impression in its public relations announcements that it has.Equally Alice in Wonderland upside down is the fact that a majority of private employers in the U.S, according to Quest itself, simply ignore the latest federal instructions as to the sensitivity levels they are to use in the first round of drug tests of would-be employees or of already hired employees. Instead, this majority relies on older, pre-2010 test standards with a much higher detection threshold. This would be the equivalent of a police breath test for alcohol set at, say, 1.5 rather than the .08 common in many states, including California.How many additional people would be found to be using drugs if the stricter standards were applied across the board? One clue comes from Quest’s report that amphetamine usage has tripled since 1988, with the largest jumps appearing after the federal government changed its guidelines in 2010 to require a sensitivity level for the first round of testing at 500 ng/ml vs. the earlier standard for amphetamines of 1000 ng/ml.Morphine also showed an increase of 34% between 2005-2012 in the first round of testing. Accordingly, Quest's statement that there was a 74% decline in drug usage really means that there was a 74% decline only in the tests that were included in the database. These tests, of course, only recorded "positives" at whatever level an employer customer of Quest's chose to use from the available range.
(Note here that the federal government sensitivity levels on the first round of tests are not zero but range from a low of 10 ng/ml for the heroin metabolite to 2000 ng/ml for codeine and morphine. The federal standard used to be 300 ng/ml on the initial test for codeine and morphine. These were dramatically changed when both employers and employees complained that standards were too stringent.)Quest’s admission to The Fix that it includes in its database the less stringent sensitivity levels that many employers still use, adds to the mish-mash of conflicting and incomplete data that goes into its Drug Testing Index (DTI) on which the company bases its claim that workplace drug use has dramatically fallen.

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December 14 v 7   TWELVE STEPPING WITH POWER IN THE PROVERB

 Go from the presence of a foolish man,
When you do not perceive in him the lips of knowledge.

STEP :  9 ; I will make direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.

    

Resentment ,bitterness  ,grudges , unforgivenes and I could keep going ,but these emotions are poison to someone in recovery. Carrying these around will slow your recovery and could push you into a relapse that is why step nine must be done.For me it was easier when it was explained ,get the junk out of the trunk.Carrying these emotions around will poison everything in your life.  Making amends is intended to make the ones you hurt feel better including yourself  but don't get discouraged when some wont accept your apology . Forgiveness of self first and then making amends to the ones you hurt is one of the most liberating experiences in your recovery, Time will heal the relationship as it did for me and my daughter and parents. The Proverb teaches get rid of your foolishness and you will receive knowledge.Step nine teaches humility forgiveness and freedom.

Demi Lovato opens up about heavy use of cocaine, alcohol

By Christie D'Zurilla

December 10, 2013, 2:39 p.m.




Demi Lovato may have been shy a few years back about her reasons for going to rehab, but these days she's holding nothing back, telling all about the drug and alcohol abuse that saw her hitting bottom when she was only 19 years old.


Cocaine every half hour and a Sprite bottle full of vodka were the toxic cherries on top of her eating-disorder sundae, she told "Access Hollywood" in an exclusive interview she did Monday accompanied by her mother, Dianna De La Garza.

"With my drug use, I could hide it to where I would sneak drugs," the now 21-year-old said. "I couldn’t go 30 minutes to an hour without cocaine and I would bring it on airplanes."

She said she would "smuggle it basically" and wait until the rest of First Class tuned out, and then she'd sneak to the bathroom to do it, even though she had a sober companion keeping an eye on her.

De La Garza said she had an idea that her daughter was doing drugs but "for a long time I was in denial." She said she didn't actually see Demi, and wanted to believe her daughter when she said things were OK.

Lovato said she hit bottom when she was on the way to the airport at 9 a.m. with a Sprite bottle filled with vodka, headed back to a sober-living facility she was staying at and throwing up in the car. She said she realized that was alcoholic behavior.

"When I hit that moment I was like, it’s no longer fun when you’re doing it alone," "The X Factor" judge told "Access."

Mother and daughter also learned they had something in common during Demi's struggles: Both had eating disorders, and both had to deal with them.

Lovato said hers began well before her teen years, when she was 8 or 9, starting with binge eating then flipping to starving herself and making herself throw up.

"It got really difficult [and] I would throw up and it would just be blood and it was something that I realized if I don’t stop this, I am going to die," she said.

Fortunately, Lovato got the help she needed -- and both women said they're now stronger as a family for it.
http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/gossip/la-et-mg-demi-lovato-drugs-cocaine-alcohol-20131210,0,3778902.story#ixzz2nS4uQKcd