Naloxone Distribution: Saving Lives and Restoring Trust in the Police

Law enforcement departments across the country are finally equipping officers with naloxone—a medication that reverses opiate drug overdose—and teaching them to treat overdose as a medical issue before viewing it as a criminal one. 

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By Tessie Castillo

08/27/14

Just a few years ago, no one imagined that police would save lives at the scene of a drug overdose instead of making arrests. But today law enforcement departments across the country are equipping officers with naloxone, a medication that reverses opiate drug overdose, and teaching them to treat overdose as a medical issue before viewing it as a criminal one. To anyone who has ever questioned our nation’s punitive approach to drug use, it’s a welcome change. But not everyone is celebrating.

Though the practice of law officers carrying naloxone is fairly new, the medication itself has been around a long time. Paramedics have used it for decades to reverse respiratory failure in people who overdose on opiates such as pain pills or heroin. The medicine temporarily blocks the opiate effects, allowing a person to breathe again long enough for help to arrive. In 1996 naloxone became available to lay people through a Chicago-based harm reduction program that distributed it to people at risk for opiate overdose and their loved ones. The program has beenimmensely successful at saving lives in the community and is now replicated in 28 states.

As law enforcement naloxone programs increase in popularity, some states have passed legislation limiting distribution only to first responders

Then in 2010 the Quincy Police Department in Massachusetts launched the first program to equip law enforcement with naloxone. Officers often arrive at the scene of an overdose before paramedics and have a unique opportunity to administer the drug before brain damage or death occurs. But there is one problem. As law enforcement naloxone programs increase in popularity, some states have passed legislation limiting distribution only to first responders—and old stereotypes about drug users are resurfacing: they can’t be trusted to handle a medical situation…naloxone would encourage more drug use…drug users don’t care about their own health.

Such rhetoric ignores that fact that naloxone distribution originated among people who use drugs and that they have successfully used it to reverse over 10,000 opiate overdoses over the last two decades. Overdose prevention advocates are disturbed by the new trend in states such as Delaware, Indiana, Louisiana and Missouri. So are some cops.

Chief Ken Ball heads the Holly Springs Police Department, the first department in Georgia to equip all officers with naloxone.

“I think it’s important for people to keep naloxone in the house as soon as they discover a family member is using drugs,” says Chief Ball.

Since their program launched on June 4, 2014, Holly Springs officers have already reversed two overdoses in the community. Chief Ball’s quick action to implement a naloxone program (less than two months after a new Georgia law made such a program possible) was spurred in part by the urgency of the drug overdose situation in Georgia and in part by tragedy within his own department. In August 2013 a Holly Springs police officer, Lieutenant Tanya Smith, lost her 20-year-old daughter to a drug overdose. Lt Smith became the driving force behind efforts to pass the new Georgia law and to equip law enforcement with naloxone. But as a mother who lost a child to drugs, she is also a firm believer in community access to naloxone.

“Giving naloxone to community members provides us with an opportunity to educate people on how to recognize, intervene and prevent overdose deaths,” says Lt Smith. “With the overwhelming number of households with some form of opioid in the cabinets, we cannot rely solely on law enforcement or emergency services personnel to be there in time to reverse an overdose.”

Many paramedics support community access to naloxone as well. Keith Tamayo volunteers for the Wantagh-Levittown Volunteer Ambulance Corps in New York, one of the first paramedic services to dispense naloxone to lay people. The idea for the program developed after Keith and his team responded to an opiate overdose for a 23-year-old man who had received a naloxone kit from a drug treatment program two years prior. Paramedics arrived to find the young man’s mother desperately trying to assemble an intranasal naloxone injector. Keith thought, “Why not start a program where we give naloxone to people in the community and train them continually on how to use it?” They launched the program earlier this summer.

“By giving naloxone to community members who are likely to be present in an overdose situation, we are getting the drug minutes closer to the person who needs it,” he says.

Further south in North Carolina, Guilford County Emergency Services is considering dispensing naloxone to the community as well.

“We absolutely support the concept of ‘civilian administration’ [of naloxone] as a bridge to treatment,” says Guilford County EMS Director, Jim Albright. “Our agency goal is to treat overdoses as a medical condition, manage the immediacy of the emergency, and get patients into a sustained treatment program.”

Still, Albright and others in the medical and law enforcement community have concerns about giving naloxone directly to drug users. One common concern is that if drug users have the antidote to opiate overdose, they might use more drugs.

Dr. Caleb Banta-Green, a Senior Research Scientist at the Alcohol and Drug Abuse Institute at the University of Washington, has studied overdose interventions, including community naloxone programs, for many years.

“Evaluations done to date show that most people do not use more drugs just because they have naloxone available,” he says. “Are there people that will? Yes, probably a small proportion. But the measure of success of any health intervention isn't that it has the perfect, desired effect for every person, but that on average for most people it has a benefit and that benefit outweighs any potential harm.”

Another concern shared by Albright is that if people are trained on how to respond to an overdose with naloxone, they may delay calling 911 or not call at all. While evidence suggests that this may be true for some people, it may also be the case that people who wouldn’t call paramedics because they have naloxone wouldn’t call paramedics if they didn’t have naloxone either—and would try to revive the victim with a number of common but ineffective methods such as putting the person in a cold shower, placing ice on the groin, or injecting the victim with salt water, milk, or other drugs. While it is difficult to measure how naloxone access would affect 911 calls, delaying or forgoing help from emergency services is certainly a concern. Community groups that distribute naloxone should continue to stress the importance of followup medical care in response to an overdose.

Though there is some debate about which groups to prioritize for naloxone access, there is little doubt as to the benefits of training lay people and law enforcement on overdose response. The shared goal of preventing deaths can help alleviate historic tension between the two groups. Evidence from the Quincy Police Department in Massachusetts, who launched the first law enforcement naloxone program in 2010, shows that offering law enforcement the opportunity to save lives can change how officers view drug users and vice versa. In Quincy, drug users are actively seeking officers for help when a friend overdoses because they have something that rarely exists between drug users and law enforcement—trust. And police are starting to emphasize treatment over incarceration for low level drug offenders.

“Absolutely naloxone programs will improve relationships between law enforcement and drug users,” says Chief Ball of Holly Springs. “They change the mentality of ‘Let’s put everyone in jail’ to one that focuses on saving a life and giving that person another chance to get help.”

Perhaps nothing better illustrates how naloxone is already shifting law enforcement attitude towards drug use than the recent Police Executive Research Forum (PERF) National Summit on Illegal Drugsheld in Washington D.C. in April 2014. During the Summit, more than 200 police executives from across the country joined federal officials and nonprofits such as the North Carolina Harm Reduction Coalition (where I work as the Advocacy and Communications Coordinator) to discuss the issue of opiate drugs and naloxone. Much of the debate centered around law enforcement naloxone programs—and officers were overwhelmingly in favor.

U.S. Capitol Police Chief Kim Dine, remarking on the discussion, said, “This is historic. We are hearing police officials from across the country saying, ‘Heroin is a medical problem.’ That is not the way we have viewed this for the last 40 years…We have put a lot of people in jail, and we have hurt police-community relations in a lot of ways by the way police agencies have historically approached the drug issue.”

As the national discussion on drug policy shifts towards a more health-based approach, overdose prevention and naloxone will likely play key roles. It is vitally important that stakeholder groups such as people affected by drug use, law enforcement, and the medical community avoid territorial issues or the temptation to belittle each other’s contribution towards ending the overdose crisis. There is room for everyone at the table. All that remains is to ensure that everyone feels welcome. 

Tessie Castillo is the Advocacy and Communications Coordinator at the North Carolina Harm Reduction Coalition. She writes a regular column for The Huffington Post on overdose prevention, drugs, sex work, HIV/AIDS, law enforcement safety and health. She last wrote about the rise of naloxone distribution programs and joined The Fix's new Ask An Expert section.

Porn Addiction in the Christian Community: Why Are Rates so High?

For the faithful, porn addiction isn't about how much porn is watched—it's about how guilty they feel when they do it.

Cameron Turner

By Cameron Turner

08/26/14

Standing out boldly against a bright yellow background, the tall red capital letters hover above the highway shouting their promise of sexual stimulation to oncoming motorists: ADULT VIDEO! But as turned-on drivers downshift toward the X-rated invite, they can’t avoid seeing another sign. On it, the familiar face of a bearded, long haired man looks down with gentle, disapproving eyes. Alongside the portrait, another set of capital letters warns that “Jesus Is Watching You.” 

Catholic leaders in San Juan County, New Mexico installed that billboard as a shame-inducing admonition to porn shop patrons – you may be able to hide your “sinful” behavior from other people, but not from God! 

Because of the belief that the Almighty watches everything we do (reflected in Bible verses such as Jeremiah 16:17, “My eyes are on all their ways; they are not hidden from me, nor is their sin concealed from my eyes”) and the traditional church teaching that non-marital sex is immoral, many devout Christians agonize over their experiences with pornography. Feelings of guilt may explain why people with strong religious convictions often believe they are addicted to porn. 

In a piece titled “I’m a Christian Addicted to Porn” for the magazineChristianity Today, Shaun Groves describes the torturous shame he felt after enjoying sexually explicit media: 

“The pleasure faded. And in its wake I fought pounding waves of regret and guilt. I felt a million miles from good, a billion light years from God. I'd often think back to how I saw that first picture of a naked woman. I had used a stick to keep it away from me. I felt like God had the stick in his hand now, poking at me from a distance, trying not to get any of me on him.”

Joshua Grubbs watched students go through similar anguish during his undergraduate years at a conservative college. So, as a doctoral candidate in psychology at Ohio’s Case Western Reserve University, Grubbs was excited to explore the link between religious values and perceptions of porn addiction. 

Grubbs' research team surveyed three representative groups of adults (including undergrads at both a public and a religious university) about their viewing of adult material over the Internet. The study,Transgression as Addiction, concluded that "religiosity and moral disapproval of pornography use were robust predictors of perceived addiction to Internet pornography while being unrelated to actual levels of use among pornography consumers." 

In other words, people who object to graphic sexual entertainment for religious reasons are more likely to see themselves as addicts – no matter how much porn they actually watch. "We were surprised that the amount of viewing did not impact the perception of addiction, but strong moral beliefs did," Grubbs said of the findings which were published in February in the Archives of Sexual Behavior. 

Gospel music superstar Kirk Franklin thrust the issue of Christians and porn addiction into the limelight ten years ago by revealing his personal obsession with sex videos and magazines. Appearing with his wife, Tammy, on the conservative Christian TV show The 700 Club, Franklin opened up about the all-consuming hunger that threatened his marriage and made him feel like a hypocrite in his ministry. He talked about greedily consuming porn in private – especially when he was on the road. He talked about trying to get Tammy to watch porn with him. Franklin also claimed that his addiction took hold suddenly, when he was a small child. “There's always the boy who has the big brother who has the magazine under his bed. That's how it starts. So the first time I ever saw one, I was around 8 or 9. I saw my first magazine, and from there I was addicted,” Franklin said.

Later, in an interview with Oprah Winfrey, Franklin explained that he became so disgusted by his habit that he packed up all of his porn and drove it to a garbage bin far away from his house. But later that night, he started fiending for the triple-X images. "I tried to go to sleep that night, and it was literally like a drug calling me," Franklin admitted to Oprah. "About three or four in the morning, in my flip-flops and boxers, I got in my car and drove back to that dumpster…"

Franklin realized that he was out of control, so he admitted his porn fixation to his wife and sought professional help. After intense counseling, he said he was no longer tempted by adult media. By going public with his personal struggle, Kirk Franklin helped clear the way for open discussions about pornography among Christians. Since then, there have been countless confessional articles, blogs, books, sermons and seminars by churchgoers and clergy who got caught up in porn.

Former Kansas City pastor T.C. Ryan detailed a 40-year battle with pornography in his autobiographyAshamed No More. In a video promoting his book, Ryan discloses that, as he struggled to balance porn with the pulpit, he "increasingly grew into a life of robust spirituality engulfed in shame and self loathing." Therapy led Ryan to a happier place, and he struck an optimistic chord when he told The Fix, “I hope that from my journey people might learn that we are all sexual beings, and that is good…but for a lot of us we don’t learn how to use our sexuality in healthy, self-integrated ways.”

How much pornography do Americans consume? According to the Pew Research Center, 12% of US adults (including 23% of 18 to 29 year-olds) admit that they have watched adult videos online. Pew concedes that those numbers might be low. Since the survey was done over the phone, the polling company says that some respondents may have felt "a reluctance to report the behavior." Meanwhile, other estimates suggest that adult Americans visit porn sites an average of 7.5 times per month. And those visits last an average of 12 minutes. 

As reported by Covenant Eyes, "in a recent survey by the Barna Group, 21% of Christian men say they have thought they were “addicted” to porn or said they weren’t sure. This is more than two times what non-Christian men said (10%). Interestingly, 64% of Christian men say they view porn at least once a month, but a higher percentage (71%) of non-Christians report doing this.

Mental health professionals continue to debate whether frequent or compulsive viewing of pornography actually qualifies as addiction. As The Fix reported earlier this year, New Mexico psychologist Dr. David Ley analyzed the research on porn addiction and found most of the studies to be scientifically weak. (Only 27% of the articles included actual data.) Ley recognizes that many people have trouble controlling how much porn they watch, but he says slapping the “addict” label on them isn’t the best solution. Pointing out that porn addiction has no official diagnosis in the American Psychiatric Association's mental health bible, the DSM-5, Ley wrote: “We need better methods to help people who struggle with the high frequency use of visual sexual stimuli, without pathologizing them or their use thereof.” 

Ley went on to suggest that watching pornography can actually have benefits for adults such as increasing sexual enjoyment within long term relationships, improving attitudes toward sex and reducing the incidence of sex crimes, particularly crimes against children. 

Case Western researcher Joshua Grubbs thinks the startling self-reported figures from the Barna Group survey have more to do with shame than with legitimate addiction. Grubbs says that many Christians who have watched porn believe they are addicts because of their "pathological interpretation of a behavior (that is) deemed a transgression or a desecration of sexual purity." 

David Ley concurs and accuses church-based therapists of promoting religious morality instead of mental health. “Religious groups are framing this as a medical disease and obscuring their religious agenda. (They) are using porn addiction pseudo-science labels to mask their moral attacks on porn and sexual behavior,” Ley told The Daily Banter.

Grubbs argues that clarifying why certain people incorrectly perceive themselves as pornography addicts will empower them to live more fulfilling religious lives. "We can help the individual understand what is driving this perception, and help individuals better enjoy their faith," stated Grubbs. 

Cameron Turner is a writer based in Los Angeles. He last wrote about sobriety and hip hop and how our veterans are being destroyed by painkiller prescriptions.

Big Brother Is Watching You: Paranoia, Surveillance, and the Drug War

Police have new tech to help them predict and enforce the law better than ever—but that also means enforcing the racial bias of drug arrests faster than ever, too.

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By Brian Macaulay

08/25/14

“Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t after you,” wrote Joseph Heller in 1961’sCatch-22. At the time, this comic statement wasn’t necessarily something ordinary people could relate to. Paranoia about powerful conspirators using broad machinations to trap a person belonged in fiction, or to the mentally ill, or—to whatever fraction of the population used drugs like marijuana or speed.

In the post 9/11 age, paranoia has ascended from a vagrant muttering on the sidewalk to a respected participant in any discussion about national security or law enforcement policy. Warrantless surveillance and searches by the government have intermittently dominated the discourse since former President Bush and Congress began formulating strategies on September 12, 2001. Recent revelations about the National Security Agency by the whistleblower Edward Snowden have made clear that the government now has the capability to learn personal details about any American at any time through the collection of metadata—whom they call, where their cell phones go, and more.

In effect, a phone call had the constitutional privacy protections of a person’s statements shouted out a window.

The government has offered assurances that both the purported capability and use of such technology is nowhere near the hyperbolic claims of those like Snowden—former NSA director Michael Hayden has been especially vocal on this point—and maintained that its use is essential in combating terrorism and other threats to national security. But while the use of advanced surveillance methods and their threat to ordinary people are being kicked around and debated as national policy issues, high tech has bled from the shadowy world of spies into the hands of local law enforcement, and in America, local law enforcement is a cornerstone in the (recently retitled, or more appropriately detitled, by the current administration) war on drugs. And like many controversies that have arisen over that war in the last four decades, new spying technology might put civil liberties in the crosshairs.

Several police departments across the country are now believed to be using a device called “Stingray,” a high tech tool manufactured by Harris Corporation, a telecommunications company that contracts extensively with the government and military. Stingray mimics cell phone towers to learn precision locational and identifying details about individual phones. “It’s like the kids’ game, Marco Polo,” says Nathan Wessler, a staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project, “The device is basically saying, ‘Hey I’m an AT&T tower,' or 'I’m a Sprint tower,' and then all the phones on that network report back and say, ‘Oh, hi tower. Here I am.’”

Wessler’s work centers on law enforcement’s use of technology in criminal investigations, which heavily includes alleged drug crimes, an area which police have long contended they need more and stricter enforcement to do battle with. Using Stingray’s method, the police are informed about all of the devices on a network within range, and when they find the particular phone they’re looking for they can identify the location of its owner—their suspect.

Like many other weapons and tactics coming into use in local law enforcement, Stingray’s popularity is due in large part to money from the federal government. The Homeland Security Grant Program provides resources to local police for equipment, weapons, and training all in the mission of preparing the country for response to major attacks from the bottom up. “Invariably, state and local police departments end up using this technology for whatever local criminal investigations they’re involved in,” Wessler says. “There is a trivial amount of Homeland Security work most local law enforcement have, so in all of their investigations of drug crimes, as well as in things like robberies or homicides, they use these devices.”

Stingray puts out a dragnet that could be draped across a public street, sports arena, or, most importantly to defenders of privacy rights, a private home. Police use a variety of tactics to surveil or discover the location of suspects, such as wiretaps, but the application of Stingray has been marked by one vital difference—law enforcement’s belief that they don’t need a warrant to use it.

America has long required approved, specific warrants in investigations where the police seek to violate a person’s privacy, especially where he or she dwells. “Throughout Anglo-American history, the home has had a special place under the law,” says Wessler. The Fourth Amendment to the US Constitution reads: The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized. This prohibition against reckless and unjust searches is rooted in the experience of those living in the British Colonial period. While English Common Law had established in 1604 that the King did not have unbridled access to private homes, the rules were different in the colonies. Using general “writs of assistance,” the British authorities obtained permission from magistrates to conduct broad searches of a person’s property at their own discretion.

Such writs were good until six months after the death of the king in power at the time they were issued, and effectively subjected their target to whatever degree of harassment suited the authorities’ goals, such as sweeping attempts in Boston to stop smugglers from avoiding taxes. The framers of the constitution did not want such powers in the hands of federal law enforcement, and with later rulings and the passage of the 14th Amendment, this protection was expanded to protect citizens from such acts by local law enforcement. Unfortunately for the ACLU and the Americans targeted by new techniques, while the founders may have foreseen the dangers of boundless searches of the home, they didn’t see Stingray—with its ability to reach right inside—coming.

“We were able to get a transcript unsealed in Tallahassee, Florida,” explains Wessler, “where a police detective described how he used a Stingray device first to locate the apartment complex where a suspect’s phone was located, then he switched to a handheld Stingray and walked up to every—as he described it—literally every window and door in the complex until he pinpointed exactly which apartment, potentially which room, the phone was in.” Was it a terrorist the detective sought? No. A high level drug trafficker? Not even. In this instance, Stingray was deployed to locate a suspect in a sexual assault and robbery. In that case, the police had not sought any warrant, and sought to explain this, and their subsequent refusal to reveal to the defendant’s lawyer how they had located him, by citing a nondisclosure agreement they had signed with the device’s manufacturer.

In February, the ACLU filed a motion for public access to sealed records in Florida state court, as well as requests for information to 30 local police and sheriffs’ departments across that state about their acquisition and use of Stingray devices. In June, as the ACLU came extremely close to finally viewing the Stingray records of Sarasota police, that department was saved by an assist by its aforementioned benefactor—the federal government. US Marshals swooped in and seized the records, moving them to an undisclosed location hundreds of miles away. Their pretext? The Marshals Service asserted a right to the docs because they had deputized a relevant Sarasota detective. Citing a lack of authority over a federal agency, a Florida judge then dismissed the ACLU’s request.

What level and quality of discretion do local police use in the application of technology that blurs the lines between surveillance and searches, as well as that between legal methods and constitutional protections? Evidence of police attitudes toward these issues, and their ability to police themselvesmight be seen in their handling of more traditional, low tech conflicts over civil rights in the drug war.

According to Jason Williamson, a colleague of Wessler’s and attorney for the ACLU’s Criminal Law Reform Project, decades old problems of unconstitutional police tactics show no sign of going away. Chief among these is the long criticized implication of racial bias in drug arrests. “No matter where you look, in any state in the country, across counties, rural and urban, big cities and small towns—you see the same levels of disturbing disparities,” Williamson says. Last summer the project published a report titled The War on Marijuana in Black and White, which presented startling findings about how police enforce the nation’s prohibition on the drug. According to the report, while their use of the drug occurs in the same proportions, black Americans are almost four times more likely to be arrested than whites. “This is true even in jurisdictions where the number of arrests may be going down,” says Williamson, “the disparities remain the same.” Williamson stands behind the data’s strength because of the drug studied, pointing out that while racial bias likely exists in the enforcement of other low level drug crimes, “[Marijuana] is the one drug where we have solid data that whites are using at the same rate.”

Where does new technology fit in? It has served only to highlight the racial bias problem, Williams says. “There’s a lot of talk around the country by police departments about predictive policing… …they believe they are able to do this because they have much more sophisticated technology to track where policing is happening and crimes are being committed.” This process creates data that shows in hard numbers what those like Williams already know—police focus is disproportionately in neighborhoods of color. Williams believes this can aid those seeking reform through litigation, and points to the case of Floyd, et al v. City of New York, wherein plaintiffs used available data to demonstrate that 90% of those targeted by the city’s stop-and-frisk program (which subjects citizens in public to physical searches, when deemed suspicious by police) were black or Latino.

How will the law ultimately handle the emergence of new technology and the eagerness of police to use it? The United States Supreme Court has not always shown deference to defendants’ constitutional rights where new innovations were concerned, particularly in drug enforcement. In the famous 1928 case of Olmstead v. United States, during the nation’s first drug war (that on alcohol), the court took on the growing ubiquity of the telephone, and law enforcement’s right to tap it. In that case, the court held that wiretapping did not violate bootlegger Roy Olmstead’s Fourth Amendment rights because listening to a telephone call involved only hearing, and no entry into a home or office. In effect, a phone call had the constitutional privacy protections of a person’s statements shouted out a window. The court didn’t change its mind on the issue for nearly 40 years, finally reversing the precedent in 1967.

However, a few rulings in recent years may indicate that the current court seeks to put a firm leash on police using the wonders of the digital age. In Kyllo v. United States (2001), the justices ruled that the use of warrantless thermal imaging to discover an unusual amount of heat emitting from a suspect’s home and thereby discover a cache of indoor marijuana plants violated his right to privacy. In United States v. Jones (2012), it was decided that attaching a GPS device to a suspect’s car to track his movements also required a warrant. In June, the court went so far as to rule that in an arrest, the police cannot search a suspect’s cell phone.

Why does using a Stingray to peer into a home through the phones contained therein differ from using thermal imaging? Why does using the device to collect a phone’s location vary from using a GPS device to track a person’s car? Under the law, technicalities are everything. If Stingrays, or any other existing or emerging technologies don’t measure up constitutionally, the courts will need to say so, specifically.

Until then, engineers will keep developing, police will keep up the questionable exploring, and Americans will remain subject to paranoia’s ominous—or reasonable—appeal.

Brian Macaulay is a regular contributor to The Fix. He last wrote about the celebrity distortion of rehab reality.

Do You Find Stress Relief Online? If So You Might Find Addiction As Well

Digital life is less stressful and complicated than the real world. Here's the FAQ on its potential costs.

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By Liz Karter

08/28/14

Have you ever caught yourself in a moment of stress, picking up your smart phone and checking Facebook, Twitter or getting cravings to go to the next level on Candy Crush? If so, join the club of thousands feeling that living life online is a lot less stressful and complicated than living life in the real world. 

If life online offers some escapism, isn’t that a good thing? 

The answer to that question is complex. Yes, we all need a little healthy escapism when life gets tough, but through my work I have learned to be concerned about any behavior that starts to take up a little too much space in our lives and I do have concerns about the amount of time we spend online. Working in the field of addiction I have learned that there is a very fine line between healthy escapism and spending so much time out of the real world that we lose the skills and the desire to come back.

If we immediately scroll through our online social networks when we are feeling bad, we are absorbing our thoughts and suppressing our feelings, just as we do in addiction. 

More traditional ways of forgetting our troubles might be pouring a glass of wine, smoking a cigarette or self medicating with recreational drugs. We all well know the glass of wine can become damaging if it leads to bottle after bottle, the cigarette if we need so many that our health suffers in our attempt to soothe our thoughts and feelings. And yet we are less aware of the potential danger of the seemingly innocent hour spent online. If that hour multiplies and becomes hours that we cannot afford from our real world commitments, if it causes us to be preoccupied and distant with partners, our real world feels like a battle ground and we keep running from reality and into the comparative fantasy of a life online. 

In fact, if we take the elements that time online offers: complete absorption, escape from troubling thoughts and feelings, the appealing ability to lose ourselves, track of time and sense of reality, all we would need to do would be to add the ability to win or lose money and we would have the ingredients that mixed together make addiction to online gambling. Despite what we might imagine, gambling addiction is not all about winning money; that obsession is usually a consequence of the addiction. Once vast sums have been lost the person with the addiction will then become desperate to win back their losses. The initial drive to the online gambling addiction is the self-soothing quality offered by staring at a smart phone, a tablet, a computer screen and focusing just on that activity. Just for that time all problems seem to disappear and the person playing becomes a disembodied version of themselves, free from all anxieties or depression caused by life problems. Too much time, too much money spent eventually only causes an additional set of problems. Then it is increasingly tempting to escape the now double-trouble in the world of online gambling addiction. 

Do we begin to see worrying similarities with gambling addiction and too much time spent online?

Understandably we might argue that a little too much time spent online is not going to have the devastating financial costs that gambling addiction has. True, but what I have heard so many times from gamblers in recovery is that it is not the lost money that causes the most regret. Lost money can be recouped, but lost time cannot. Losing time online is all too easy and along with it, losing our life skills, our sense of self and ability for authentic relating.

We are socializing more than ever before. Online we are less inhibited, seemingly less reclusive, personal information less exclusive than it has ever been. But are we really relating healthily?

Our online profile picture tends to present an airbrushed version of ourselves. In just the same way that we choose our most flattering profile picture, it is easier to choose the most flattering version of personality to present to our hundreds of online friends. The smiley face icon can hide our low mood, low self esteem or empty existence. We can pretend to others and even ourselves that our lives are much more fulfilling and interesting than they really are. We can be the person we wish we were rather than the person we actually are. If we can continue to play ‘let’s pretend that life is okay’, when actually it is not, it gives us less motivation to make positive life changes. If we do not make positive changes, then why would we not prefer to keep living most of our life online?

Do our hundreds of Facebook friends really give us a social network we need to stay mentally and emotionally healthy? 

It can seem that way; which of us does not enjoy that feeling when someone has "liked" our post, or retweeted our thoughts? It makes us feel validated, accepted, a part of a community. These are all good healthy things to feel. And yet, maybe some of us find ourselves craving that feeling, perhaps feeling a little disappointed and agitated if our phone stops notifying us that we are liked and that we belong? If the likes and retweets give us a high, when we do not receive them we will feel low. If we find ourselves then seeking out that high from the same source, checking our social networking sites more frequently, putting out more and more tweets, more posts to try to get that high, maybe preoccupied with social media when at work or with friends and family, we are at risk of developing addiction.

We are talking about developing online addiction, but can living our lives online lead to addiction to other things? 

In my professional opinion and experience, yes it can. If Twitter constantly feeds us the thoughts of others, we spend less time contemplating our own, and so less time cultivating a strong individual identity which we all need to deal with life and relationships. If we cannot deal with the world we are vulnerable to addiction of all kinds to escape from it. 

Our online social networks often are people of similar world view and so do not challenge too much our opinions, values and morals in the same way that meeting within a group of real, live, randomly selected individuals might. If we live our lives mostly within these comfortable online social groups we have less opportunity to learn to deal with challenge and conflict and through doing so develop good strong relational skills. Many relationships online tend to be those who we might count as low risk relationships. Much of the time, we have never met our Facebook friends, so we have less invested in these friendships, so less to lose. If when somebody upsets us online, all we have to do is press the ‘unfriend’ button, but we lose the opportunity to develop relational skills of endings and finding closure we need in the real world. And we absolutely do need to develop them. If we cannot allow ourselves the risk of being in real relationships with all the risk of abandonment, conflict and rejection, we also do not allow ourselves the sources of attachment, comfort and acceptance from those potential supportive life partners and community groups. Without those sources of support, we do not have sources for healthy expression of feeling. If we do not have sources for expression of feeling, we look for means of suppressing feeling. We are then are much more vulnerable to looking for somewhere to hide from our thoughts and feelings, be it in the bottom of the wine bottle, in drug abuse, in gambling or online addiction.

So how do we stay safe?

Next time you feel low or stressed and find yourself picking up your phone to scroll your social network feeds- pick up the phone and call or meet a friend instead. The danger lies in imagining that relationships online nourish us in the way that healthy real life relationships can and so we stop growing real world friends who truly like us for our entire profile – both the airbrushed and the more candid shots. Family and friendships providing healthy, real life social networks can stop us seeking solace from the sometimes messy reality of real life, in the sanitized online version. A life led in part online can be fun, informative and promote a wider world view and need not be a pathway to addiction. The art is to keep it in balance so it does not narrow down our lives and suck us right through the screen. If we continually create a real life world in which we actually want to be, we lower the risk of being lost in cyber space.

Liz Karter is an addiction expert and author of two books, specializing in gambling addiction.

The Other Kardashian - Stasie, The Interventionist

An exclusive interview with a Kardashian—but this one's been handling interventions before Kim, Khloe and Kourtney were anywhere near the spotlight.

Photo via

By Amy Dresner

08/29/14

You know wheninterventionist Stasie Kardashian walks into a room. She may be short in stature, but she is a bigger-than-life personality with a loud gravelly voice that was earned through years of bad habits. She’s intense, talkative, open and eager to help. Despite her moneyed upbringing, she has that swagger of the streets and that wearied wisdom of somebody who hasn’t just been to hell, she’s lived there and is back to tell the tale and help other people escape. 

What is your relationship to the Kardashians?

My father was their father’s uncle. I’ve never met them. It’s just so weird. And it’s actually a hindrance to my work. People think I’m going to be a typical “Kardashian” - flash, glam, attitude - and that’s not what you want in an interventionist.

They took me to the hospital and I found out I was pregnant with a cocaine baby wrapped around my left fallopian tube. I had 10 minutes to get into emergency surgery. 

When you started doing interventions 14 years ago, Kim and Khloe and Kourtney weren’t even known social commodities, right?

Nobody even knew how to spell or pronounce my last name. Now they have no problem. 

You had a reality series on the OWN network. Tell me about that. 

Yeah, I had my own show. It was green lit. It was called “Stasie Kardashian—A Life Worth Living.” And basically, it was about my life growing up, all the trials and tribulations and why I’m so effective in my life’s work as an interventionist, specializing in teens and young adults. The way I grew up here in LA, all the insane things I’ve experienced give me an unspoken understanding with clients. Kids confide in me. They know I’ve been there just as an addict knows an addict from across the room. My crazy background has always given me an edge with interventions right out of the gate. Because it’s really like me intervening on myself as a kid.I get it. I was also an overindulged, entitled, bratty thrill seeker. 

We shot a lot of the pilot in New Orleans. It never aired. There were a few reasons for that. OWN network was 2 years late in launching it. And the director of creative development got fired. To further complicate matters, my ex-girlfriend was a producer on the show. I had been moved back to New Orleans when I was 17 instead of being put into a California Youth Authority so it was very triggering to be back there, in the projects, where all the insanity had gone down. The producers wanted to shoot me going to my mom’s house without giving her a heads up that I was coming over with a crew. They wanted the grit and the surprise. But that whole scenario felt unethical to me. They told me I had creative control but nothing had ever been signed so I walked. And the new director of development cancelled all the shows that were slotted. So take your pick on why it never came to fruition. 

You were one of the first interventionists approached by Intervention, and you turned it down. Why?

I didn’t know the premise of the show until I got there, saw video clips and met with Sam Medler, the producer/creator. I found the show incredibly exploitative. You get families and addicts at their worst possible moment who can’t afford treatment or an intervention. And then you cattle them up and put them on national TV. I was totally turned off by it and I said so. I will admit that it’s been a great public service but it has also created a glitch in the system. Now families think they can do an intervention themselves because they’ve seen the show. There is a modality and structure to doing it. My mentorEd Storti said it takes a lot more to be an interventionist than to just be a sober member of AA. All these yahoos think they can get sober and be an interventionist or open a sober living. You have to innately have a certain skill set to be a successful interventionist. And you either have it or you don’t. It can’t be taught. 

You were first in recovery at age 14. Is anybody ever too young to get sober?

Nobody is ever too young however I went in and out for 8 years….from 14-22. But I always felt a lot of love there. The seeds were planted for me. I just had to do more research. 

Why do you think you’re successful as an interventionist?

I can read a situation and anticipate what will happen, especially with young adults and teens. My ability to predict things makes me one step ahead of the curve. Ed (Storti) has referred clients to me that nobody wants to touch: scary, high risk situations. I’ll stroll right up to a crack house. I know the deal. I’m pretty fearless. I will be the one who will scale a wall at a clothing optional gay male hotel. I’ve stolen people’s cars, tracked their credit cards. Being an interventionist is like being a combo of an exorcist, Dog the Bounty Hunter and a private investigator. 

The most successful interventions are when the whole family gets help and most people don’t know that. A lot of people think the intervention is for the addict. It’s not. The process is for the family. It’s a bonus if the addict goes into treatment. The key is to get the family out of the addict’s crisis, get them financially separated from the addict and get them into Alanon. 

Before you started working as an interventionist, you worked in treatment. How was that? Why did you make the switch?

I worked with teens and young adults for ten years, from when I was 23 to 33. It was good. I feel like I was effective as a counselor but the work was very repetitive, same drill day after day. That’s not my personality. I’m not the 9-5 girl. 

How I made the switch? Well, Cher called me and asked me if I could be involved in an intervention. (I used to date Chas) I had no idea what an intervention was. I called in sick to work and showed up at the Mondrian on Sunset. It was all industry people and an interventionist. And by the end of the pre-intervention, I was totally blown away. I was like, “Oh my God, I have to do that! I don’t know how you do that but I have to. Do you have to be a doctor?” I was so impressed with the whole formula and structure of what I had just witnessed. The next day was the intervention and there were over 20 people there. I didn’t think I should read a statement letter because there were people there who knew the guy much better than I did. People were going around the room, reading their letters, crying. They asked the guy if he’d go into treatment and he said, “I want to know what Stasie has to say.” I had nothing prepared but I said, “There is nothing that I can say that hasn’t already been said. Your addiction is far stronger than anything anybody can say that’s in this room.” Afterwards, when I was in the lobby, the interventionist pulls me aside and says, “You need to be an interventionist. I want you to come to the corporate office and meet with my team. Your presence and what you said….You’re incredibly talented and gifted.” I was in shock. Talk about not knowing what’s going to happen if you just show up! I was put in charge of calling all his friends and telling them to cut him off: no more drugs, no more money. I was told he’d reach out to everybody in the room and he did. He called everybody at the same time and we all had the same script: “I’m sorry but I can’t help you if you don’t go to treatment.” And he went to rehab a week and a half later….which is what happens if the protocol is followed correctly.

When you started you were the youngest interventionist in the business. Was that a good thing or did you face prejudice?

I didn’t face prejudice because of my age but one woman came up to me at a function and said, “You know what? We don’t need another interventionist in LA.” I got a lot of that. It was wild back then. We were all super busy but it wasn’t as competitive as it is now. I also got some prejudice because of my energy and how fearless I am. 

Speaking of prejudice, you’ve mentioned to me that you have lost jobs because of your sexuality. Why? 

Certain families have Googled me and found out I was in a relationship with Chas for 3 years. That freaks out some super conservative wealthy families, especially in the South. Honestly, I was shocked that that still exists. 

Tell me about your education. You dropped out at sixth grade but still went to college. Explain. What did you study? 

I was institutionalized for four years after sixth grade starting at age 14. They said I was “incorrigible.” There were no adolescent treatment centers in L.A. at that time. I was just a rebellious addict but I was put into adult psych hospitals. I was locked up in the now defunct Thalians for two years. I decided to check out college when I dropped my friend off one day. My major was psych and administration of criminal justice, the only two things I happen to know anything about. 

Give us a little background on your using and sobriety.

I celebrated 25 years of sobriety on July 26th. When I was using, I would take anything. I never even asked what it was. I was addicted to 3 tabs of acid a day when I was 17. Then I was a heroin addict. I started shooting crystal at 16. From that I moved to cocaine becoming a crazy crackhead at 21. When I finally got clean, I had been up for seven days. I was barefoot, walking on glass, weighing a total of 87 pounds and coughing up blood. 

Every now and then my sister would go down to ghost town in Venice and try to find me, see if I was still alive. I’d go to her house, sleep for a few days and eat. On one occasion I started projectile vomiting and had the most intense pain in my rib cage. They took me to the hospital and I found out I was pregnant with a cocaine baby wrapped around my left fallopian tube. I had ten minutes to get into emergency surgery. 

I used to score on 6th and San Pedro on Skid Row. One night it was three in the morning and I had no syringe. I found a needle in the gutter. It was so old that there were no unit marks on it anymore. I bent the needle back into place and shot up in my friend’s car. And I am HIV negative which is a miracle. So there is no question in my mind if there is a God. But that’s how I rolled….impulsivity at a level 10, reckless, fearless. I turned tricks for drugs at 17. I was the only kid who was homeless in Hollywood by choice. I just liked being with the action at Motel Hell, a famous 80’s abandoned motel on Sycamore. It’s where all the kids squatted. And Okie dogs…you can buy drugs there 24/7. I hung out there a lot. 

I almost lost my left arm when I was 20 from shooting up undissolved Percodan. I got an abscess. I went to the hospital and the doctor said “I have patients dying of illness and car accidents. You are just some junkie. You’re wasting my time.” She refused to give me stitches. So I had to pack it and unpack it 3 times a day. And I never thought, “Uh oh. I should really get clean.” I just thought, “Well I won’t shoot up in my left arm anymore.“ That’s the insidiousness of this disease. 

What are your thoughts on Celebrity Rehab?

Hideous. It’s the same as Intervention. I don’t think non addicts, like Dr. Drew, can fully grasp the spectrum of addiction. It’s really about one addict helping another. 

When do you know if an intervention will be successful?

If an addict doesn’t go to treatment that day it doesn’t mean it’s a failed intervention. It’s what we call a “holding pattern.” The key is the family getting help. If they don’t stop enabling the addict, the addict is not going to stop using. If they can follow the guidelines set up by the interventionist, eventually the client will go to treatment. It falls on the family. If there is one co-dependent enabler in the mix, it can be difficult. The addict will say they will never talk to you again to scare you into changing your mind to keep enabling them but if you hold strong, down the road they will thank you. 

Amy Dresner is a columnist for The Fix.

If you missed this week's excellent new episode of "Wellness in Recovery", it's now in the online archive.             Click here to listen In this show, Nancy talks about how exercise can boost recovery, and talks with recoverees who enjoy surfing, yoga and other fun activities. Find out how exercise can be easily added to any recoveree's program and learn about resources available from COA and other groups.     Listen to past COARR shows any time: For "Women & Addiction" with Terri Thomas, click here. For "Hope Fiend" with Minister Rich Mollica, click here. For "Emotional Sobriety" with Andy Finley MFT, click here. For "Journey Thru the 12 Steps with the Life Recovery Bible," click here. For "Share Your Scars" with Vicki, click here. For "Wings Over Water: Creativity in Recovery" with recovery musician Kathy Moser,  click here. For "Laughter & Recovery" with stand up comic Wil B. Kleen, click here. For "Relationships in Recovery" with Alexa, click here. For "Saving Lives" with COA Director of Interventions Tom Redneck Clark, click here. For "Nar-Anon Families of Addiction Information Line" click here.

The Addict Lights of Hope is approaching quickly...On Monday September 1st at 9pm ESTaddict's mothers and family members of addict's will be lighting candles. The Flyer below explains what each candle represents. To learn more visit www.addictsmom.com If you are participating in the Addict's Mom Lights of Hope please post below where you are located, if it is a public event list all the details who what why where and when and o...f course what time! Even if you are lighting candles alone or with a few friends at your home please post a few words A white candle is for the sustained recovery of those who have found their way out. I am profoundly grateful I get to light a white candle, not just for my son Peter, but for the many people in recovery who have become such an important part of my life. A Red Candle is for those who are still actively battling this horrific disease. Black, or silver, is the candle we light to remember those who have lost the battle with addiction. I will be lighting one of these too, for the addicts I have known, loved, and lost to this hellish, unforgiving disease. REMEMBER TO LIGHT A GREEN CANDLE IN HONOR OF YOU...SEE BELOW.. **TAM Blogger Barbara Stoefen wrote about what the green candle symbolizes...**. "I wonder if there should also be another candle? A fourth candle for we moms? A candle for every mother who has loved an addict, chased after an addict, advocated for an addict, hoped for an addict, prayed for an addict, grieved for an addict." I think I will choose the color green. Not only is green my favorite color, but it also represents life and rebirth. While I’m powerless over the lives represented by the red, white, and black candles, I do have some power over my own life and that is also worth honoring. I can choose life and recovery for myself." If you are a TAM State Coordinator please share in your group, if you are a TAM member and you are comfortable please share on your page or in another group.

Visit The Addict's Mom at: http://addictsmom.com/?xg_source=msg_mes_network

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