All Posts Tagged Tag: ‘substance abuse’
Inside Philip Seymour Hoffman’s Quiet Descent Into Addiction
People Magazine
By MICHELLE TAUBER
02/05/2014 at 08:00 AM EST
Among friends and locals in his longtime West Village neighborhood, actor Philip Seymour Hoffman was known as a low-key fixture, a family man who rarely drew attention.
But in the wake of the Oscar winner’s death at 46 on Feb. 2 of an apparent heroin overdose – and an arrest of those suspected of selling him the heroin – some who knew him say Hoffman had two sides.
“He’d go over to Oliver’s restaurant with his [10-year-old] son, Cooper,” a neighborhood friend tells PEOPLE in this week’s cover story. “They’d have lunch, and you’d see them talking and laughing for hours at a time.”
NIDA’s Dr. Nora Volkow Discusses Marijuana’s Effects on the Brain, Body, & Behavior
Hear a fascinating presentation by Dr. Nora Volkow, Director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, about the effects of marijuana use on the brain, body and behavior. Dr. Volkow’s remarks were given on Feb. 4th at CADCA’s 24th National Leadership Forum.
Deadly ‘Ace of Spades’ Heroin
Philip Seymour Hoffman’s Deadly ‘Ace of Spades’ Heroin
Philip Seymour Hoffman was found dead with a needle in his arm and envelopes of heroin stamped with an Ace of Spades logo. This isn’t the first time the brand has been in the news.
At approximately 3 p.m. on Sunday afternoon, actor Philip Seymour Hoffman was found dead in the bathroom of his Greenwich Village apartment. He lay on his side in a t-shirt and shorts with a hypodermic needle in his left arm. According to police, five empty heroin envelopes were in the trash, and two full ones were found near his person. Some of the envelopes were branded with an Ace of Spaces logo, others with an Ace of Hearts. Whoever sold Hoffman this brand of narcotic aided in his untimely death.
He left behind his longtime partner and creative collaborator, Mimi O’Donnell, and their three young children.
Heroin, in general, has seen a major surge in the New York City-Long Island areas in recent years. On March 24, 2009, the New York field division of the Drug Enforcement Agency arrested 13 men in Long Island in a heroin-trafficking operation that moved large quantities of the drug from Elmhurst, Queens, to western Suffolk. The “ringleaders” were Gilberto “Macho” Rivera, 25, of Oakdale, and Felix Cruz, 29, of Brooklyn.
Attorney General Holder: All Drugs, Including Alcohol, Are “Potentially Harmful”
Attorney General Eric Holder told a Senate committee Wednesday that all drugs, including alcohol, are “potentially harmful.” He was responding to a question about whether he agreed with President Obama’s recent comment that smoking marijuana was less dangerous than alcohol “in terms of its impact on the individual consumer.”
Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama, in a hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said, “It’s difficult for me to conceive how the President of the United States could make such a statement.” President Obama made his comment about marijuana in an interview with The New Yorker. He told the magazine he does not think marijuana is more dangerous than alcohol. He added smoking marijuana is “not something I encourage.”
Problem Behaviors Can Signal Risk in Prescribing Opioids to Teens
In the years 2007 to 2009, more than 1 in 5 high school seniors nationwide had used an opioid painkiller (e.g., Vicodin, OxyContin, Percodan, Percocet, Demerol, Dilaudid, morphine, or codeine) at least once in their lives. Roughly 1 in 8 had used these medications without a doctor instructing them to do so. Any history of such nonmedical opioid use should raise a red flag for a person’s potential engagement in multiple problematic substance-related behaviors.
The findings, by Drs. Sean Esteban McCabe, Carol Boyd, and Brady West at the University of Michigan and Dr. Christian Teter of the University of New England, highlight the need for physicians to exercise caution in prescribing opioid analgesics to teens. The research also identified several problem behaviors whose presence can alert physicians that a teen requires particularly close monitoring when treated with these medications. The behaviors include using an opioid for motives other than pain relief, co-ingesting an opioid with other drugs, and using non-oral routes of opioid administration.
