Troubled actor Charlie Sheen celebrated one full year of sobriety this week, USA Today reported. The former star of Two and a Half Men shared a photo of his one-year Alcoholics Anonymous medallion on Twitter. “So, THIS happened yesterday! A fabulous moment, in my renewed journey,” Sheen captioned the image of the sober coin, adding a number of heart emojis and the hashtag “#TotallyFocused.” USA Today noted that Sheen’s year of sobriety comes after a “long battle with substance abuse, multiple bouts of rehab and a once-unfavorable view toward Alcoholics Anonymous.” Sheen told the Today Show in 2011 that rehab wasn’t on his radar and that the AA Big Book was “written for normal people, people that aren’t special, people that don’t have tiger blood, you know, Adonis DNA.” The 53-year-old first confirmed his renewed focus on a healthy lifestyle in January 2016, saying that drinking “just didn’t fit in” to his regiment of swimming, yoga and basketball.
CDC Ranks The Deadliest Drugs in America
As 2018 winds down, it seems as if every website out there is running some kind of “Top 10 of 2018” list or another. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released a list of their own this week—one that ranks the 10 deadliest drugs in the United States. The rankings for 2016 (the most recent year that data is available to the CDC) show that fentanyl is the “most frequently mentioned drug in relation to overdose deaths.” Use of the synthetic opioid has exploded in recent years, as it only accounted for 4% of American drug overdoses in 2011 yet, by 2016, it accounted for 28.8%. The list is also notable in that it’s the first time in four years that heroin hasn’t been listed as the most deadly drug. (It accounted for 25.1% of overdoses on the CDC list.) Other drugs on the list include oxycodone, cocaine and diazepam.
Bar Chain Changes Name of Its ‘Crack Fries’
HopCat, a Michigan-based bar and restaurant chain, announced Wednesday that it will be changing the name of its “Crack Fries” in January. While the recipe and ingredients for the seasoned french fries will remain the same, its current name doesn’t match the vision of BarFly Ventures. HopCat’s parent company. HopCat picked the name over a decade ago “as a reference to the addictive quality of the fries and their cracked pepper seasoning, without consideration for those the drug negatively affected,” BarFly Ventures CEO Mark Gray said. He added that the crack epidemic “is not funny and never was.”
Should Pregnant Women with Opioid Addiction Be Treated?
According to a brand-new study released this week, infants who are exposed to opioids in the womb are significantly more at risk than others when it comes to mental health and physical development. Published in the journal Pediatrics, the study found that those infants were “three times more likely” to have a head circumference that measured in the bottom 10% of all infants. Additionally, the study’s lead author Dr. Craig Towers found that the issues weren’t limited to babies exposed to opioids, as infants whose mothers were on medication-assisted treatment such as methadone or buprenorphine were also at risk. “What we’re recommending these moms do, which is get on methadone and buprenorphine, may result in a smaller head size of the baby,” Towers said. “This is going to have to make us re-look at what we’re doing.” Maintenance therapy remains the best current option, Towers said, despite knowing the risk factors remain more or less the same as babies exposed to opioids. “I don’t want anyone to think putting them on methadone or buprenorphine is not the way to go. If they continue to use street drugs, that’s exponentially worse,” Towers said. Many in the medical community are bracing themselves for the worst. “I think there’s going to be pushback on it,” observed Dr. Mark Hudark, a pediatrics professor at the University of Florida College of Medicine.“The whole pillar of opioid maintenance therapy is based upon the fact this is better for the mother and the baby in the sense that the mother is in therapy, she is more closely monitored, she’s more likely to access good prenatal care, she’s less likely to engage in behaviors that would be harmful to her or the fetus,” Hudark said. “You now have to ask, is that the only or the best way for all women?”
James Bond Is Officially An Alcoholic
According to a new academic study from the University of Otago, Ian Fleming’s fictional super-spy James Bond has been officially classified as an alcoholic. The study, published this week in The Medical Journal of Australia, analyzed all of the Bond movies (as well as the Fleming novels) and tallied up the number of times 007 imbibed. The study noted that the agent drank an alcoholic beverage 109 times in the films (an average of 4.5 times per movie). The study said that Bond “fits at least six of the 11 criteria of Alcohol Use Disorder [AUD],” concluding that he “has a ‘severe’ drinking problem.” Researchers argued that his “stressful” line of work is to blame, driving many of high-risk behaviors. “More field support and a stronger team approach are needed so that his duties do not weigh as heavily upon him,” the study explained. Researchers also recommend that the British government “should fund counseling or psychiatric support services to address their agent’s drinking problem as well as to check for signs of post-traumatic stress disorder.”
Hong Kong Considers Health Warnings for Alcoholic Drinks
Hong Kong’s health minister, Sophia Chan, is considering the use of health warnings on alcoholic drinks, including beer and wine. Chan revealed the potential move this week during a radio interview, just one day after the city’s ban for alcohol sales to minors became effective. “Alcohol is classified as a group one carcinogen,” she noted. “As a health bureau, we are obligated to spread the message.” She also suggested warning messages would be implemented for tobacco use, too, during the interview. “There are for sure other intervening measures. We would do it step by step,” Chan said. “According to the experiences of regulating tobacco, we have to do it in a multipronged approach.” Meanwhile, the plan is to reduce binge drinking by 10% over the course of the next seven years.
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