MARCH 11 v 2 TWELVE STEPPING WITH POWER IN THE PROVERB

Pride leads to disgrace,

but with humility comes wisdom.

STEP 1.  I admit that I am powerless over the effects of my separation or lack of fellowship with God, and that my life has become unmanageable.

Pride will never allow you to commit this step freely . It will be at the bottom of a dirty , smelly , awful pit where pride will loosen its grip and humility will begin to help you back up on your feet again . That is the way it was for me thirteen plus years ago . The Proverb is right , I was a disgrace to myself my family and the world. It does not matter who you are , we have to realize we don't know everything and NO we cannot control every situation and everyone in our lives to get what we want. Humility will find its way in even if it has to break you down to the point of desperation and losing it all ,that is where the real healing begins and that is when God can step in and take his rightful place in your life.

Jesus said I am , The truth ,The life , The way no one comes unto the Father except through me !

Daily Quote

"Forgiveness is the economy of the heart... forgiveness saves the expense of anger, the cost of hatred, the waste of spirits." - Hannah More

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PRO-ACT Family Addiction Education Program helps families address drug and alcohol addiction

Next free sessions start week of April 1 at various locations in five counties

When someone is addicted to drugs or alcohol, the disease affects the entire family. Each month PRO-ACT (Pennsylvania Recovery Organization–Achieving Community Together) hosts a free Family Addiction Education Program to help individuals and families recognize and address an addiction problem in a spouse, parent, child or other loved one. Led by trained volunteers who have been in the same situation, these information and support programs begin the first week of each month and run one evening a week for three consecutive weeks. Each session lasts two hours.

Programs are offered at several locations throughout the five-county southeast Pennsylvania region:

· Tuesdays—From 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. in Media and Northeast Philadelphia.

· Wednesdays—From 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. in Pottstown; from 6:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. in North Philadelphia; and from 7 p.m.to9 p.m. in West Chester.

· Thursdays—From 6:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. in Northern Liberties; 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. in Bristol and Colmar.

Sessions are free and confidential—first names only. Pre-registration is required. To register, call 800-221-6333, weekdays 9 a.m. through 5 p.m., or visithttp://councilsepa.org/programs/pro-act/family-education-program/.

MARCH 10 v 18 TWELVE STEPPING WITH POWER IN THE PROVERB

Hiding hatred makes you a liar;
    slandering others makes you a fool.

  STEP 5 -We admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs. Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. (James 5:16)

I need to work on the slandering .When your in the middle of the crowd it is so easy to jump on the bashing wagon . Start practicing walking away ! Someone asks you where you going ,you tell em talking about people behind their backs is wrong and you want no parts of it .When you do get caught by the person you were talking about be honest ,you know Step five. If you don't have something nice to say then don't say nothing at all!

Battle Scars" By Casey Montana Rogers

THE ROCKERS IN RECOVERY OFFICIAL SONG OF 2014.

Rockers In Recovery is proud to announce that "Battle Scars" has won the 2014 RIR Songwriters Contest. Casey Montana Rogers will open the 2014 RIR Music and Art Festival.   

Casey will also be joining us at several RIR Unplugged Events scheduled for 2014.We will also play and feature her song through the year. Casey Montana Rogers has proven our new theory at RIR,  You don't have to be a super star rock icon to write great music.

We have seen the results of people RIR worked with in the music industry here are some quotes: "THEIR A DIME A DOZEN" or "WE WILL NEVER SHARE A STAGE WITH THAT PERSON!! WE HAVE A MUSICAL REPUTATION TO UP HOLD ".

This went on for 2 years. RIR became musically about who was playing, not about the message. We lost sight of our platform of all inclusive. We lost great opportunities to work with some very inspired songwriters and musicians.

Egos can kill a good thing.  It's not about the BIG NAME performer. It's about the person who has the heart and soul to put the feelings on paper and turn it into a great song.  Casey Montana Rogers is one of those songwriters.   

Message From Casey:

READ MORE

MARCH 9 v 12 TWELVE STEPPING WITH POWER IN THE PROVERB


If you are wise , your wisdom will reward you ; if you are a mocker , you alone will suffer .


mocker - : someone who jeers or mocks or treats something with contempt or calls out in derision.



STEP 6 -We were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character. Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up. (James 4:10)



Well I just got a reality check. My wife told me , im a mocker . At first I laughed it off but after looking at the definition shes right . It is so funny after all these years of sobriety working the steps and growing I am still finding out stuff that I need to get rid of. It goes too show you that working the steps ,praying and reading the bible is key in long term successful recovery. Now the hard part , I have to figure out how to change this and in the process of my mocking , have I hurt anyone's feelings.  

 

To raise money for the CLPRM Scholarship Fund, Helping those struggling with Addiction On the Campus of Christian Life Center, 3100 Galloway Rd., Bensalem, PA 19020
Bring a Lawn Chair or Blanket
Rain or Shine Event
12 noon to 7 pm
http://www.christianlifeprisonministry.org/

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Hollywood, Addiction and Recovery - An Insider's View

Norman Stephens produced such recovery-focused movies as My Name is Bill W and My Name is Sarah. He tells The Fix about his interest in portraying recovery, and how Hollywood's attitudes about addiction have changed over the last few decades.

Norman Stephens Cliff Hokansen

By John Lavitt

02/21/14

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• Our Top 10 "Just Say No" TV Specials
• Lois Wilson, My Hero
• How Addicts Are Portrayed on TV
• Is Alcoholism Evolving on TV?
• Martin Sheen Stars as Bill W. in AA Play

Norman Stephens has been a film and TV producer for more than 25 years. He shepherded the TV movie My Name Is Bill W. about the founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, and he has witnessed the evolution of the entertainment industry’s perspective towards addiction. Although he has never had a problem with substance abuse himself, he has maintained a career-long interest in addiction and recovery-related stories. In this interview with The Fix, Stephens shares his observations of the inner workings of Hollywood through the 1970s and 1980s and his involvement in encouraging a more positive social role for entertainment. 
What was the genesis of My Name is Bill W and what difficulties did you face in the development process?
Norman Stephens: Pete Duchow, the producer, had been a friend of both Bill Wilson and James Garner. Together, they had a production company at Warner Bros., and we had them exclusively for the development and production of television movies and miniseries. My Name is Bill W. was their pet project. We were working with the Hallmark Hall of Fame people and the movie that preceded My Name Is Bill W. was Promise about schizophrenia that also starred Jimmy Woods and James Garner. We commissioned several scripts but none of them worked out. This is a time when we were making anywhere from 12 to 15 television movies a year, and the big three networks, ABC, CBS, NBC, had weekly movie nights for new programming. Still, despite the quality of the writers, we couldn’t get a quality script.

It’s important for people to know how good life can be once you free yourself from the cage of being an addict.

And then one day, Pete Duchow walked into my office at Warner Bros. and dropped an envelope on my desk and said, “Norman, I want you to read this tonight.” It was a spec script and the writer was an advertising executive in New York named William Borchert. The script was registered with the Writers Guild, and Pete tracked Borchert down and met him in New York City the next day. I went with Pete.
The script was great, but it was 145 pages long. To make room for the commercials, a TV movie script can’t be longer than 85 to 90 pages. The script included a lot about Lois Wilson and the early days of Al-Anon for families of alcoholics. William Borchert was the designated biographer of Lois Wilson and later wrote her biography that was turned into another television movie in 2010 for the Hallmark Hall of Fame called When Love Is Not Enough: The Lois Wilson Story. I was not part of [that production].
In New York, Pete and I met with Bill Borchert in a room at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel. We sat down with him and went through the necessary cuts that mostly had to do with Lois Wilson and the birth of the Al-Anon movement. I will never forget as we went through the script the powerful reaction of Bill Borchert. With tears in his eyes, he asked, “But why can’t we make the whole movie?” And I had to tell him that it just wasn’t possible and we just didn’t have a market for it. I told him he wasn’t a known writer or a known commodity, but would he please help us edit the script down to size. Let’s turn this script he had in a drawer for years into a movie that people could see and experience. I convinced him that as a TV movie, the story would be guaranteed to reach a wide audience without running the risk of failure as a feature film. Bill agreed, and we finally got it down to the wonderful script that was ultimately shot and took it from there.
How did the production go?
We already had James Garner. We went right back to our friend Jimmy Woods and he had just won the Emmy award for Promise so he came on board. I had a relationship with Jobeth Williams, and she agreed to play Lois Wilson. The last piece of the puzzle was getting the director Dan Petrie who had done the original four-hour version of Sybil with Sally Fields and Joanne Woodward. Then we got Gary Sinise as well to play Bill Wilson’s friend Ebby Thacher.
We shot the movie in and around Richmond, Virginia with little or no interference. We were all accepted pros in the business so they let us do our thing. There was universal support from all the parties involved, and the stars couldn’t have been more into the project.
It was a wonderful movie that did very well for Hallmark, and they still have the poster up in their corporate headquarters in Kansas City. It became one of the most-watched TV movies of all time because so many people have been impacted by alcoholism. It was a truly rewarding experience to be a part of it, and I still have the poster for the movie up in my office as well.
Did you get any resistance from AA members in regards to this film?
None whatsoever. When I made that same query to Pete Duchow and Bill Borchert, I was told the policy of AA was simply not to interfere one way or the other. AA would not give any advice on a film project, but they wouldn’t criticize it either.

You would go to a Hollywood party and there would be a bowl of cocaine on the coffee table right next to the bowl of peanuts. 

Whenever I run into someone who is a friend of Bill W.’s, they always seem to say, “Oh my God, you were involved with that movie. I have seen it ten times and I have a worn-out pirated DVD of the film that has been passed around meetings for years.” Mind you, pirating hurts the industry, and you don’t have to pirate the movie because I understand from the Hallmark people that they still sell a lot of DVDs of the film online and it is available to buy on websites like Amazon. In terms of resistance to the movie before, during or after production, we never had any problems with members of Alcoholics Anonymous or conflicts about the issue of anonymity. Plus this is not the only film I have made where AA meetings were represented.
You mention that this was not the only film you have done where AA meetings were represented. You were the Executive Producer of a Lifetime movie called My Name Is Sarah.
My Name Is Sarah began when the writer Julie Brazier, driving her daughter back and forth to ballet classes, passed a church that always at that hour had people pouring into it. She wondered what was going on, maybe a bible study, [so] she asked a friend who attended the church what was going on. Her friend then confessed to her that she was a recovering alcoholic and the gatherings were AA meetings. [Julie] was surprised; she knew nothing about AA because all of her family [members] were non-drinkers. [The friend] invited Julie to attend several meetings, and the idea for the movie was born.
Inspired, she sat down and wrote a story about a middle-aged woman who returns to her tiny apartment after her best friend’s funeral. All alone, she fixes herself a meager meal and pours herself a glass of wine. As she eats, she looks out the window at the church across the street. She sees people entering the church, and a handsome man catches her interest. By coincidence, she bumps into the same man in a grocery store, and he’s kind to her. When she sees him at the church again, she decides to take a chance. She goes in and sits next to him. Discovering it’s an AA meeting, she pretends to be a recovering alcoholic. Naturally, they develop a romantic relationship.
Later, she’s forced to admit to him that she’s not an alcoholic and she went to the meetings because she liked him. He drops her like a hot potato, and they are miserable. Then she shows up at the meeting and when the group is asked if anyone had anything to share says, “My name is Sarah and I’m not an alcoholic.” She apologizes for violating their trust. She says, “I am so sorry for betraying this man because I love him and I hope he can find it in his heart to give me a second chance.” Of course, our movie ends with their wedding.
But you can see how this film could be controversial with AA members. Did anybody ever approach you and discuss the potential problems of making films about recovery-related issues?
Not at all. We never had anything like that. It was made as a low-budget Lifetime movie that did quite well and ended up winning a Prism Award for movies that deal with important social issues. There was never any backlash whatsoever. Neither I nor the studios involved ever received a letter in regards to either My Name Is Bill W. or My Name Is Sarah that made an issue of portraying Alcoholics Anonymous or scenes with meetings in them. I have no recollection of anything controversial or even slightly critical in that regards.
You have never been directly involved with recovery because you have never had a problem with drugs and alcohol?
I personally have never had an issue with alcohol or drugs, but I have experienced first-hand alcoholism in my family. My father certainly by any definition would have been considered an alcoholic. I grew up the classic only boy with an alcoholic father and became the functioning male adult in my family at a very early age. Through his church, people encouraged him to go to AA, but he never did. He never gave any acknowledgement that he had a problem. And so I have always been interested in alcoholism in families and people who dealt with such abuse in their lives.
I am a very happy casual drinker. I enjoy a Martini a couple of times a week with dinner, but I certainly have never had any issues with either drugs or alcohol. My experimentation with drugs as a child of the sixties is almost embarrassingly limited.
Being in Hollywood since the late 70s, you have experienced first-hand the changes in the industry’s perspective on addiction and recovery. What was it like when you first got out to Hollywood?
When I graduated Princeton in 1964, I had never personally witnessed anyone smoking pot. I never experienced a wide use of drugs until I was drafted into the army. I spent most of 1968 in Vietnam and that’s where a lot of drugs were being used. I didn’t use drugs in Vietnam because I had a top secret security clearance. The number one way to lose your top secret security clearance and wind up on the front lines with a life expectancy of about 48 hours was to be caught with drugs. Before coming to Los Angeles, I never had that much experience with drugs.
When I arrived in Hollywood in about 1977, I had just gone through a divorce so I was back on the dating scene. I was available to go to parties. Before moving to Hollywood, I was living in New York, the home of the two or three Martini lunch. When I got out to Hollywood, I found out that because of all the time that people spend in cars, there wasn’t a lot of drinking going on at lunchtime. But there was a lot of drinking at night and the open use of drugs.
You would go to a Hollywood party and there would be a bowl of cocaine on the coffee table right next to the bowl of peanuts. This was also the age of the Quaalude, which in those days were known as disco biscuits. I would take a date to a disco and people would literally have pockets full of Quaaludes and pass them out like breath mints. In that regard, it was a truly new experience for me.
As the entertainment industry became more corporate in the 1980s, did tolerance of drug and alcohol abuse shift?
There seemed to be a real shift first when it came to drinking. You just didn’t see anyone in the business have a drink either at lunch or even in the evenings. You might have a glass of wine with dinner, but that was about it. I don’t ever remember seeing executives or agents getting even mildly intoxicated. Nobody in the business was ever hammered in public. You just didn’t see it because there was a real stigma at that time. The last thing you wanted to do was have a couple of Martinis at Le Dome restaurant, even at dinner, because the next day everyone would be saying things like, “Wow! That Norm Stephens was really downing those drinks the other night.”
There was a major backlash to the craziness of the late 70s. I can honestly say that during my Warner days from 1985 to 1995, I didn’t see a whole lot of drinking going on. Maybe you would pop down to Ensenada on the weekend and have a few margaritas with your girlfriend, but that was about it. It wasn’t a regular part of your social life if you wanted to keep your reputation intact.
When you ask if the change was due to the entertainment industry becoming more corporate, I think that’s exactly what happened. It was not cool to do drugs. What became the new drug of Hollywood in the late 1980s to the early 1990s was money. Everybody wanted to get rich. They were much more interested in getting a big fat bonus than they were in getting high or getting stoned.
Anything that could be perceived as a career blocker that would keep you from moving up the corporate ladder was avoided like the plague. We all know the classic stories about famous successes in Hollywood who were big drug users and alcoholics. But they were the exception to the rule and many of them paid for their addictions by sacrificing their careers and too often their lives. What is sad is how many we don’t know about because they slipped between the cracks, and I have a feeling there were quite a lot of them and still are.
In 1994, I actually was working for you at Village Roadshow Pictures. Did you suspect that I had a drug problem?
I had no concept about that at all. If I had discovered it or if you had confided in me, I think my instinct would have been to give you kind of big brother advice about it. I certainly wouldn’t have thought it was a reason to punish you. I wouldn’t have seen that as my role. How sad it is to be having this conversation after the death of Philip Seymour Hoffman. It feels like it’s as easy as it has ever been for someone to fall through the cracks if addiction takes hold and you just can’t reach out for help. Back then, without you asking for help, I had no idea that you needed it.
Last summer you co-created and produced a play with the Nevada Shakespeare Company called Voices In The Life that presented a series of real-life monologues, shedding light on the history of prostitution in Nevada. How much of a role did drugs and alcohol play in those stories?
Since Nevada is known for legal prostitution, I had done research for a movie project for Lifetime about trafficked girls in Las Vegas. The subject was too tough for Lifetime but the writer, Richard Friedenberg (who received an Emmy for Promise), and I had done tons of interviews with legal working prostitutes in brothels, with upscale madams and pimps running girls on the streets, with street walkers and cab drivers and Johns. We had all of these monologues recorded with permission to use the material as long as it was used anonymously.
Almost every one of the girls and all of the trafficked girls—many who were as young as 12 or 13 at the start—got involved in prostitution by being controlled with alcohol and drugs. The common story was the girl at the mall with her friends approached by a couple of guys who offered to take them to a party. They took them to a party and gave them what often were their first drinks while telling them how pretty and wonderful they were and how much they liked them.
The next day they bought them clothes and took them out for what seemed like a fancy meal. You realize most of these girls come from broken homes and dicey living conditions. They would tell the girls they were going to Vegas and asked if they wanted to come along. Once they got the girls feeling safe, once the girls felt comfortable, that’s when they started hitting them up with the hard stuff. Cocaine, methamphetamine, heroin, and boom, they were addicted. The way they got the girls to prostitute themselves was the threat of cutting off the drug supply. These girls had no way to buy it themselves, and they were completely isolated. You want your hit of meth tonight, you want your shot of heroin, you better go out there and turn as many tricks as you can.
Most of these young girls were addicted very early and the side effect was they had a very short life of attractiveness. The combination of drugs and selling their bodies burned them out very quickly. By the time they were 21, they were already physically broken down. They went from making a lot of money to being girls on the street, subject to all types of abuse. Whether the girls we interviewed were 30 or 40 years old or whether they were 15 or 16, drugs and alcohol were the dominating part of their lives as prostitutes.
Is that why you decided to do a second installment of Voices In The Life that focuses exclusively on addiction and recovery next year?
Yes, it was a huge success the first time around, and this format gives access to a lot of people in the community and a voice to issues that need to be heard. Next year, we are going to do Voices In The Life of Addiction and Recovery. We have just started, and people are coming out of the woodwork to offer their stories. What is important is we want to hear the recovery side as well as the dark stories about addiction. It’s important for people to know how good life can be once you free yourself from the cage of being an addict.
Back in my Warner Brothers days, I would tell the networks, “You can never go wrong if you do a movie that strikes terror in the hearts of parents.” The goal is to create a dialogue about addiction and recovery. If you get people talking in a positive way, I have found that it leads to progress. I have always believed that using creative stories in film, theater and particularly television has been my way of bringing these issues into the public consciousness. By creating dialogue, I know I have helped to save some people along the way, and that has made it worth all the effort involved.
John Lavitt is a regular contributor to The Fix. He last wrote about treatment for Hepatitis C.

U.S. Attorney General and Republicans Join in Opposition to Stiff Drug Sentencing Laws

By Join Together Staff | March 6, 2014 | 1 Comment | Filed in Drugs, Legal & Legislation

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder is joining with libertarian Republicans, including Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, in opposing mandatory minimum sentences for nonviolent drug offenders.

This political alliance may make it politically feasible to significantly liberalize sentencing laws, according to The New York Times. Libertarian-minded Republicans oppose long prison sentences because they see them as ineffective and expensive, the article notes. Rand is backing a sentencing overhaul bill in the Senate, and the House is considering similar legislation.

In August, Holder announced a Justice Department plan to change how some non-violent drug offenders are prosecuted. Low-level, nonviolent drug offenders who are not tied to large-scale drug organizations or gangs will not face mandatory minimum sentences.

Under the plan, severe penalties will be used only for serious, high-level or violent drug traffickers. Holder will give federal prosecutors instructions about writing their criminal complaints when they charge low-level drug offenders, in order to avoid triggering mandatory minimum sentences. Certain laws mandate minimum sentences regardless of the facts of the case.

In December, President Obama commuted the sentences of eight federal inmates who had been convicted of crack-cocaine offenses. Six of the inmates were sentenced to life in prison. The inmates likely would have received much shorter terms under current drug laws and sentencing rules.

While powder and crack cocaine are two forms of the same drug, until recently, a drug dealer who sold crack cocaine was subject to the same sentence as a dealer who sold 100 times as much powder cocaine.

The Fair Sentencing Act, enacted in 2010, reduced the disparity from 100 to 1 to 18 to 1, for people who committed their crimes after the law took effect. As a result, many defendants who are caught with small amounts of crack are no longer subject to mandatory prison sentences of five to 10 years. Those convicted of crack-cocaine crimes tend to be black, while those convicted of powder-cocaine offenses tend to be white.

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Like us on Facebook                      www.councilsepa.org               Follow us on Twitter       PLEASE SPREAD THE WORD ABOUT TWO SPECIAL SCREENINGS  IN PHILADELPHIA IN APRIL!    Come and see this feature documentary film about the 23.5 million Americans living in long-term recovery, and the emerging public recovery movement that will transform how alcohol and other drug problems are dealt with in our communities.  To view the movie trailer, please click here    Both of these events have been approved for 2.5 PCB credit hours TICKETS to either screening are $15 and can be purchased in advance here or by calling Michael Harper at 215-345-6644, ext 3109 Sponsorship and Expo Opportunities Are Available by emailing Michael here or calling him at 215-345-6644 All proceeds donated will support recovery and assist people in early recovery to attend the event Tuesday, April 8, 2014   National Museum of American Jewish History Corner of 5th and Market Streets on Independence Mall Philadelphia, PA 19106 Doors open 5:30 pm. Film and Discussion 6:30 - 9 pm   The first 50 ticket buyers will receive a free parking pass Everyone welcome!  Wednesday, April 23, 2014   William Way LGBT Community Center 1315 Spruce Street, Philadelphia PA 19107 Doors open 5:30 pm. Film and Discussion 6:30 - 9 pm Everyone welcome! www.councilsepa.org

Obamacare Rolls Out, Transforming Addiction Coverage

Despite the controversy, Obamacare will really change people's lives—including addicts, who can look forward to treatment coverage beginning this year.

Shutterstock

By Michael Dhar

03/03/14

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• Does Obamacare's Victory Hurt Addicts?
• Why You Should Care About Obamacare
• Supreme Court Upholds Obamacare

Amidst all the controversy (and seemingly endless efforts at repeal), President Obama's 2008 healthcare act has and will create real changes in Americans' lives. People struggling with addiction issues may see as many effects as anyone, with some major transformations to addiction coverage beginning this year.
Healthcare's 2014 Addiction 'Sea Change'
Provisions of the health care law — better known as "Obamacare," but officially the Affordable Care Act (ACA) — have been gradually implemented since the legislation's passage in 2008. Some of the major provisions finally take effect in 2014—for example, people can begin receiving health insurance under the so-called health insurance exchanges this year, following the (notoriously imperfect) sign-up period in late 2013.
Several of the most important aspects of the ACA for the world of addiction also finally roll out in 2014. The federal government, for example, released final regulations in November concerning the ACA's requirements that mental health and substance abuse treatment receive equal footing with medical health care.
The changes, despite some potential limitations, will mean big differences for addiction coverage in the United States, said Alden Bianchi, an employee benefits attorney who composed a report on the final regulations for the National Law Review. "These rules are…a sea change in the way that health plans approach the coverage of mental health and substance abuse disorder benefits," he said.
Getting More People Covered
The ACA's effects on addiction treatment, however, begin with the legislation's basic expansion of healthcare access. An estimated 47 million Americans went without health insurance in 2012. The ACA aims to cover many of them, primarily by expanding Medicaid and offering low-cost insurance through the "Health Insurance Marketplaces."
With big implications for those facing addiction problems, the ACA gave every state the option of expanding Medicaid to a greater number of poor individuals and families. 
"It's a big deal that Medicaid expansion is happening in the way that it's happening," said Daliah Heller, a consultant working on issues of health care and U.S. drug policy reform, and co-author of the ACLU and Drug Policy Alliance's report Healthcare Not Handcuffs.
The federally and state-funded Medicaid program provides a basic level of health insurance coverage to people living under the federal poverty line. But that line, as currently constructed, gives a pretty distorted image of "poverty," said Heller. For example, the existing rules state that a family of three living in New Jersey must make less than $25,000 a year to qualify as poor. 
"So that's obviously not much money for a family of three to live on," she said.
By accepting additional federal money allocated by the ACA, states can expand Medicaid coverage to individuals and families living at 133% of the poverty level. This means many more people facing actual, real-life poverty will gain new access to healthcare, Heller said. The ACA will also expand Medicaid coverage to single and childless adults (it had previously primarily gone to pregnant women, families and children).
"Increasing the coverage even that little bit is going to have a significant effect for some people," Heller said. "It actually gives them coverage where otherwise it would be difficult for them to afford it."
A total of 25 states, along with Washington, D.C., have so far decided to implement the Medicaid expansion. This means a great deal for addiction coverage, because the low-income population includes a disproportionate amount of people struggling with addiction, Heller said. 
Even in those states that chose not to expand Medicaid, more people are set to receive healthcare coverage through the healthcare marketplace exchanges. Those exchanges come with incentives, such as subsidies and tax breaks, to help lower-income people buy health insurance, Heller said. This provides both a potential backup in states that opted out of the Medicaid expansion—and an increase in healthcare access in all states. 
All told, the ACA stands to newly insure some 30 million to 33 million people in the United States, according to Congressional Budget Office estimates.
Covering Addiction
Coverage thus expanded, the ACA then specifically addresses addiction by regulating what health benefits insurance plans must cover.
Or, as Heller puts it, "Now you have health coverage, which is step one. Step two is, will that health insurance pay for treatment?"
And the ACA represents a massive step forward in getting insurance plans to cover addiction treatment. First, starting this year, the legislation bars insurers from denying coverage due to pre-existing conditions—including substance abuse. But perhaps the most important changes come from the ACA's expansion of parity rules. In brief, "parity" means that insurance plans must cover mental health and substance abuse treatment at the same level as regular medical care.
In 2008, Congress passed the Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act (MHPAEA). The law closed up loopholes in a 1996 parity act, now requiring parity in terms of both financial and treatment limitations, Bianchi said. The financial side means deductibles and copays, while treatment parity refers to the number of annual visits and geographic limits for insurance networks.
The rules take great pains to be comprehensive and actually, finally impose real parity, Bianchi said. "The regulators did a very good job with this rule," he said.
MHPAEA applied to group health and insurance plans, but the ACA incorporates MHPAEA's parity structure, applying it to the marketplace exchange and Medicaid insurance plans. The healthcare law's parity effects result, at base, from the inclusion of mental health and substance abuse in the ACA's list of 10 "Essential Health Benefits." These 10 items define the areas of coverage that basic health care plans across the country must cover—at parity. 
"So, for example, if there are two medications available for a particular condition, or two types of treatment," you have to have "the same level of treatment available for mental health and substance abuse disorders in that plan," Heller said.
That requirement will give nearly 32 million Americans new access to substance abuse and mental health treatment, according to estimates from the U.S. Health and Human Services Department. And it will expand mental health and substance abuse benefits for an additional 31 million Americans, the HHS estimates.
"This is a big deal for addiction treatment access," Heller said.
The Essential Health Benefits framework, unfortunately, does impose some limits on the extent of addiction coverage, Heller said. Defining benchmark plans for each state, that list of 10 benefits requires only "a bare minimum" of addiction treatment coverage, leaving out medication like methadone, Heller said. Expanding benchmark plans to include such medication treatment will require further advocacy, Heller said.
Criminal Justice
The ACA will have some of its most profound effects on addiction healthcare coverage in the criminal justice system. By default, prisons and jails end up treating a large portion of the U.S. population that has substance abuse problems. 
"Under the old model, really, poor people didn't have access to substance abuse or mental health treatment—unless it was through the criminal justice system," said Christie Donner, executive director of the Colorado Criminal Justice Reform Coalition, which has been convening a panel of criminal justice and health care representatives to plan ACA implementation.
The ACA could help change all that. First, the overall expanded insurance access means lower-income people can get access to health coverage "without having to be involved in the criminal justice system at all," Donner said. This matters because people behind bars frequently come from lower-income backgrounds.
Second, prisoners with substance abuse problems today suffer from a lack of "continuity of care, "Donner said. They arrive in lock-up with substance abuse issues, receive some treatment, then leave the criminal justice system and lose access to care. The ACA, primarily through Medicaid, can keep many of these individuals covered after their sentences, Donner said.
The additional, federal money coming in through Medicaid could also help criminal justice agencies expand treatment access to current prisoners, she said. And, buoyed by ACA money, those agencies could use some of their own funds to improve the quality of care or create incarceration alternatives, like residential substance abuse treatment, Donner said.
Where It Could Break Down
That hoped-for transformation for addiction coverage, both in the criminal justice system and in general, could still stall during implementation, however, Donner said.
"Implementation of ACA with folks in the criminal justice system will require significant changes with how the criminal justice system operates," she said. "Because they are going to have to adapt to the healthcare model, not the other way around."
Prisons and jails, for example, will have to switch from their networks of treatment providers to those approved by Medicaid for some treatments, Donner said. All of that will require effort and advocacy, she said.
"If we don't figure this out…there won't be ACA implementation," Donner said. "There's a million different ways where this could break down."
The healthcare system, too, faces a monumental challenge in implementing the promise of ACA, Heller said. Providers must scale up significantly to deal with all the additional insured individuals in need of substance abuse treatment, she said. 
But as the ACA transforms the funding and payment landscape for substance abuse treatment, healthcare providers are working on expansion, Donner said.
"I know they're crunching numbers to say, okay, how do we have to scale up, how many docs do we need, how many mental health folks do we need?" she said.
One aspect of the ACA could be particularly helpful in scaling up—the integration of behavioral health (mental and substance abuse) with physical health. That coordination provides the opportunity to expand addiction treatment in alternative ways, Heller said. "We may not have enough treatment, so how about supporting, for example, community health centers to build out substance use disorder treatment?"
And the basic regulations, too, could fail to meet expectations, as insurance agencies may try to skirt the rules. For instance, some have pointed out that insurance plans could violate the spirit of the parity laws via pre-authorization rules. Essentially, both medical and behavioral benefits could call for pre-authorization—but, in practice, only the mental and substance abuse treatments would require it, Bianchi said.
'Game Changer'
Still, despite the challenges, the ACA and its associated regulations will make a tremendous difference, particularly among those populations disproportionately affected by substance abuse.
"I think that the ACA is an absolute game changer," Donner said. "And I'm extremely excited about the potential of it."
One of the most important changes in the ACA may come from its larger philosophical implications, Heller said. Essentially, President Obama's health care act enshrines in federal law that substance abuse is a medical issue—not the result of poor morals, and not a criminal justice problem, Heller said.
That reflects a greater societal change, as the country as a whole has gotten over some of the stigma it once held for substance abuse, Bianchi said. "This is a shift that has taken place over generations," he said. "It's not just a matter of a couple of years and a couple of laws."
The ACA's federal definition of addiction as a healthcare issue may even pave the way to greater changes, potentially including decriminalization, Heller said. 
"If we view ACA as this document that is now federal policy…it's sort of de facto recognition that it's not a criminal justice issue. It needs to be addressed as a health issue."
Michael Dahr is a regular contributor to The Fix. He last wrote about the vulnerability of the teenage brain.

Tennessee: A State of Epidemic

Tennessee ranks second per capita in the U.S. for prescription drug abuse. It’s a middle class epidemic. How did it happen in a state known for music and horses?

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By A.J. Dugger III

03/06/14

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Editor's Note: This is the first in a Fix series looking at drug addiction issues in states and localities across the country.
Ask yourself what Tennessee is best known for and you will likely come up with Nashville and Graceland and then maybe mention Miley Cyrus, Dolly Parton, Davy Crockett - and horses galore. All happy stuff.
Then there is this: the state’s growing reputation as the home to a virtual epidemic of prescription drug abuse.
According to the Tennessee Medical Association, the Volunteer state (so named for the bravery of its troops in the War of 1812 and memorialized by the fact that a great many of its people sign up to go to war) ranks second per capita in the country for prescription drug abuse (first is West Virginia). It also has the eighth highest drug overdose mortality rate in the U.S. As Tommy Farmer, assistant special agent in charge of the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, put it: “We’re in jeopardy of losing an entire generation of our youth to addiction if we don’t get a grip on this."
Then there's this disheartening information from David Reagan, chief medical officer of the Tennessee Department of Health: “We unfortunately have a national epidemic of babies being born dependent on legal or illegal drugs their mothers ingested during pregnancy. At birth, the baby is cut off from the drug and goes through a painful process of withdrawal. The condition is known as Neonatal Abstinence Syndrome or NAS, and it is painful for the baby and costly to society.”
“At the current rate this epidemic is progressing, we are projecting more than 800 drug-dependent newborns by the end of this year,” Dr. John Dreyzehner, the commissioner for the Tennessee Department of Health, said late last year. In 2011 there were 629, which startled much of Tennessee. Moreover, 35% of 142 pregnant women that were admitted to state-funded treatment services in Tennessee said prescription pain killers were their primary substance of abuse.
The number of prescription drug-related deaths in Tennessee is alarming. The overdose mortality rate in Tennessee is 16.9 deaths per 100,000 – in 1999 it was 6.1 per 100,000 - according to a 2013 report written by Trust for America's Health (TFAH) called “Prescription Drug Abuse: Strategies to Stop the Epidemic.” The national rate is 12.7.  Around Tennessee you frequently hear this bit of state trivia: more people have died from accidental prescription drug overdoses than auto accidents in recent years.
Among the contributing factors is that Tennessee residents simply seem to need or trust meds more than most others - Tennessee currently ranks among the top three states for the number of prescriptions written per capita, with almost 18 a year for every person in the state. In this "I need my painkillers" and addictive climate, sales of two of the most popular prescription painkillers, oxycodone and hydrocodone, both addictive, soared. Oxycodone sales increased more than 500% from 2000 to 2010, while hydrocodone increased nearly 300%, both accounting for a significant portion of the epidemic.
Another driving force behind the epidemic was that before April 1, 2013, doctor and pharmacy reporting to most drug monitoring databases was voluntary, not mandatory. This was the perfect setup for easily obtaining - and cavalierly writing - scripts; perfect, in fact, for cheating.  
Common belief is that addicts get their drugs from dealers or steal them. In reality, those who can do so get scripts. Those with less access to doctors, according to the Center for Disease Control, tend to obtain their drugs from friends or relatives; only an estimated 16% are bought from dealers.
In Tennessee, friends and relatives have an easy time becoming enablers because huge amounts pass through the state. A controlled substance database report presented to the Tennessee General Assembly in 2012 stated that in 2011, 275 million hydrocodone pills were dispensed in Tennessee, 117 million Xanax pills and 113 million oxycodone pills. That adds up to 22 Xanax pills, 51 hydrocodone pills and 21 oxycodone pills for every Tennessee resident over 12 years old. 
As elsewhere, addictive prescription drugs in Tennessee do not discriminate by gender, race, or social standing - except in a reverse way. In Tennessee, people who are educated, married or successful with their careers are three times more likely to use prescription drugs than others and thus to find themselves addicted, according to the state Division of Alcohol and Drug Abuse Services. 
“People don’t feel as if they are abusing drugs that were prescribed by a doctor,” explains Randy Jessee, senior vice president for Specialty Service at Frontier Health, the state’s largest chain of counseling and mental health centers. “It is also a part of a culture that says taking pills for an ailment is the right way to fix your problems." 
Creating addiction-extending circumstance is the reality that more women become addicted than men, and then more men tend to seek treatment than women. 
According to Jessee, the epidemic began in eastern Kentucky and spread to southwest Virginia before bleeding over to northern Tennessee. “It started in 1998 and by the year 2000, we had serious issues." Hyrocodone (the key ingredient in Lortab, Norco and Vicodin) and OxyContin, he notes, got a boost when they were marketed as non-addictive when first introduced during the 1990s. Then people started crushing the pills and snorting or injecting the drug, giving the user an instant and long-lasting high. In 2010, Tennessee’s per capita spending on prescription addictive drugs grew by 7.2 % to $1,272.94.

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February 7 v 1 TWELVE STEPPING WITH POWER IN THE PROVERB

Follow my advice, my son;
always treasure my commands.



STEP 11 - We sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry it out.





Live the way you always lived and you will continue to be lost empty afraid and addicted . Work the twelve steps and read and follow Gods instruction manual and you will live like you never lived before.

New Road to Recovery Meeting and Concert



Good morning everyone, wanted to let everyone know we will be starting a new road to recovery meeting led by Michael Howard at the self help movement addictions treatment center at 2600 South Hampton Road in Philadelphia it is on the corner of Roosevelt Boulevard and South Hampton Road. Starting next Thursday at 7 p.m. And following every 2nd 3rd and 4th Thursdays. If you are interested in supporting this meeting with Michael please contact him ASAP at 215 205 7749. also we will be doing a concert on March 30th Sunday at 5:30 p.m At the treatment center with full band, testimony and the message. this is an awesome opportunity because they are basically a secular rehab allowing religious programming now to be apart of what they do. I am currently putting the details together for the concert and coordinating with Michael for the meetings if you have any questions you can call me or Michael on both of these upcoming events. Blessings!!

Survey of Women Treated for Addiction Finds Many Used Prescription Drugs, Heroin

By Join Together Staff | March 6, 2014 | Leave a comment | Filed in Addiction, Drugs, Prescription Drugs & Treatment

A new survey of affluent women treated for alcohol and drug addiction finds prescription medication and heroin are their leading drugs of choice.

The online survey of 102 former patients, conducted by Caron Treatment Centers, found many women surveyed said they cared for their children, had careers and volunteered during their active addiction.

Seventy percent of the women who abused prescription drugs said they were initially prescribed the drugs legally for a physical or emotional ailment. The survey found 55 percent of respondents who were treated for an addiction to illegal drugs were also abusing heroin. Significant factors that led to addiction included a critical internal voice, depression and anxiety.

A majority of the women were married with children, but they said they were most likely to abuse drugs or alcohol when they were by themselves. The survey found 61 percent of respondents had a household income of $100,000 or more when they entered treatment.

Michelle Maloney, Executive Director of Treatment Services at Hanley Center, a Caron Treatment Center, said in a statement, “Female addicts often experience a lot of shame about using alcohol and drugs. They often feel they are the only ones with these problems. But we want them to know they are not alone. There are millions of women in recovery and all women deserve to get the help they need to live a healthy and productive life.”