Drug & Alcohol Intervention Help - We Get Them In to Treatment : NYC Intervention Specialists

NANCY GRACE, HOST: Straight out to Brad Lamm, board certified interventionist www.changesomeoneyoulove.com. Brad, thank you for being with us.

BRAD LAMM, BOARD REGISTERED INTERVENTIONIST, CHANGESOMEONEYOULOVE.COM: Thank you.

GRACE: You`re hearing all this about a staged intervention, Jackson locking the family out of Neverland, sticking his fleet of bodyguards on his own family. Not taking calls from his 79-year-old mother. That`s not unusual behavior for a drug addict.

But, Brad, here`s my question. To use this drug, as like your sedative, in the OR, the operating room, you`ve got to be hooked in. That means the doctor has got to be there the whole time you`re hooked in and we know the personal chef that we just saw says he sees oxygen tanks coming in and out and that a doctor would come at night and leave in the morning.

LAMM: Well, I think it`s speaks to the relationship between a person and the drug which is as close as a lover. You know when you step in and try to intervene, it`s like pealing the bark off the trees. So as we here reports about them trying to step in, they did a few things that could have been better.

One, showing up en mass and not taking no for an answer. Really, at an intervention NO is a conversation starter. And, two, and this is really important and I think a lot of people can relate to this. If the kids are involved like in this case they were, you step in and you get the kids out of the situation and oftentimes that will be the thing that will help break through the denial of addiction.

GRACE: But it`s just amazing to me that a doctor — can you just imagine.

LAMM: But Nancy.

GRACE: Can you conjure up the image of a doctor there in a mobile unit, a van, shooting Jackson up and keeping the catheter in the arm overnight?

LAMM: Unfortunately, I can. And if you and I were to step out the studio here at CNN and walk two blocks, we could get these drugs and other drugs within blocks of CNN here. It`s just that easy.

GRACE: Diprivan? You can get that.

LAMM: Absolutely.

GRACE: How?

LAMM: There are just that many doctors.

GRACE: I`ve never in all my years of prosecuting drug use, drug trafficking, I`ve never heard of a Diprivan addict, ever.

LAMM: Well, I think if you can equate a drug dealer with a doctor that`s mis-prescribing, you`ve got a pretty good correlation there.

GRACE: Have you ever seen a case where somebody takes Diprivan every night to sleep intravenously?

LAMM: I haven`t seen Diprivan but I`ve seen other intravenous opiate to use like this.

GRACE: Overnight?

LAMM: To sleep.

GRACE: Or 10 straight hours?

LAMM: I`ve never seen anything like this, to be honest. Yes.

GRACE: You said we could get it a block from CNN?

LAMM: No, I`m sure we could go get Diprivan, though.

Take three and call me in the morning. Three breaths that is. I invite you to do something different. Different action yields different results. I promise.

I spent an hour on WFAN this morning, the nation’s biggest AM radio station. I share it with you here: http://podcast.wfan.com/wfan/1821613.mp3

Onward,
Brad

Sad news coming out of LA this evening. A family loses a son, a brother, a dad. And a nation loses a performer who for all his strange quirks and oddities, spoke to people of all colors and got our toes to tapping.

This photo is from 1984. The year I graduated High School, and before his own personal fall along the lines of molestation and chaos. Also happens to be before the addiction which had already began in my own world got the best parts of me.

I remember this time. Things were still 99.9% good.

Whatever the cause of death is determined to be, families have power in the funk, the crisis, the darkness. That’s what we’re here for in so many instances – to shed light in the darkness. To make hope happen in the face of a loved one who spirals and is in pain.

So tonight I think of a family in pain. And a guy that seemed to be in pain for a long, long time.

Looking for the help to arrive like the cavalry seldom occurs. The change we seek begins right here, and now with a powerful loving invitation to make change begin  – not later, but now. Right now.

Onward, Brad

Alcohol abuse by GIs soars since ‘03

Soldiers diagnosed by Army substance abuse counselors with alcoholism or alcohol abuse, such as binge drinking, increased from 6.1 per 1,000 soldiers in 2003 to an estimated 11.4 as of March 31, according to the data. The latest data cover the first six months of the fiscal year that began in October.

“We’re seeing a lot of alcohol consumption,” Gen. Peter Chiarelli, the Army’s vice chief of staff, told top officers during a briefing on the Army’s growing number of suicides.

In a statement to USA TODAY, Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, expressed concern. “I’m sure there are many factors for the rising numbers (of enrollments) … but I can’t believe the stress our people are under after eight years of combat isn’t taking a toll,” he said.

Likewise, Marines who screen positive for drug or alcohol problems increased 12% from 2005 to 2008, according to Marine Corps statistics. In addition, there were 1,060 drunken-driving cases involving Marines during the first seven months of fiscal 2009, which began in October, compared with 1,430 cases in all of fiscal 2008.

In an interview last week, Marine Corps Sgt. Maj. Carlton Kent said alcohol abuse is an indication of the stress, particularly with the ongoing cycle of combat deployments. “Alcohol can tie into a lot of things, and we’re just keeping a close eye on it,” Kent said.

Mullen and Chiarelli said the U.S. needs to reduce the overall number of deployed troops as planned to ease the strain.

Concerns about alcohol abuse led Chiarelli to issue a memo in May urging commanders to treat and, where necessary under Army rules, punish soldiers who test positive for substance abuse or fail blood-alcohol tests. During a visit to six Army installations this year, Chiarelli said, he found hundreds of cases where soldiers who failed those tests, in some cases more than once, were not treated for the problem or processed for possible discharge, as required by Army regulation.

Enrollments in drug abuse treatment programs have remained largely unchanged in the Army during the war, rising from 3.7 per 1,000 in 2003 to an estimated 4.2 as of May.

Chiarelli said top staff officers might not properly deal with the problem because of a need to “keep their numbers up” for combat deployments.

He said identifying and treating substance and alcohol abuse will help improve the Army’s mental health care and curb suicides, which reached a record 142 cases in 2008. There have been 82 confirmed or suspected suicides this year among active-duty, compared with 51 for the same period in 2008.

Interesting article. Check this out!
Some will say, “a pill?! never!!!”
I’m not so sure. A small percentage of folks who express a desire to stop, will actually stay stopped through 12 Step. So here’s to medicine and thought and remaining teachable.
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CLICK CLICK:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=102974699&sc=fb&cc=fp

The deal is this – it’s not metabolism or genes. It’s the food we put in our bodies that make them swell and hurt and grow beyond what they are intended. From the headlines today, the not-so-shocking claim that one in five preschoolers are obese.

We see them on the street, at the store, in our own home. It’s not the food – but it’s the food.

Huh!?

We confuse our wants with needs, then over time these become cravings answered as a matter of habit. We are dying to eat.

So here is the wake up call to every parent, caregiver, aunt, uncle, brother or sister – the answer starts with you. I call you to share and model how to eat, how to move, how to live in relationship with food rather than being enslaved by it.

You are the change you seek.

Talk it out and be in relation with one another instead of in relation to food. Listen for that tiny bell that signals FULL. Let your conversation expand; allow your love and care be a balm to living. A thing that fills you up on the inside that doesn’t expand your outside.

- Brad

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20% of U.S. preschoolers are obese

Researchers were surprised to see differences by race at so early an age.

Overall, more than half a million 4-year-olds are obese, the study suggests. Obesity is more common in Hispanic and black youngsters, too, but the disparity is most startling in American Indians, whose rate is almost double that of whites.

The lead author said that rate is worrisome among children so young, even in a population at higher risk for obesity because of other health problems and economic disadvantages.

“The magnitude of these differences was larger than we expected, and it is surprising to see differences by racial groups present so early in childhood,” said Sarah Anderson, an Ohio State University public health researcher. She conducted the research with Temple University’s Dr. Robert Whitaker.