Former Melrose Place star Heather Locklear took to Instagram on Wednesday to pay tribute to a friend who’d just passed away. “Addiction is ferocious and will try to take you down. Recovery is the best revenge,” she wrote in the emotional post. “Be kind to everyone you meet, your light just might change their path. Rest In Peace beautiful Josh. You touched my [heart emoji].” In June, the 56-year-old actress was arrested for attacking a police officer as well as the emergency crew dispatched to her home, following calls regarding a domestic disturbance. Just one day later, reports emerged that she was seeking treatment for alcoholism—the second time in 2018 that she’d sought professional help, following a rehab stint in March for an undisclosed addiction.
Demi Lovato’s Mom Opens up About Her Daughter
Dianna De La Garza opened up this week about her daughter Demi Lovato’s post-overdose progress. In an interview with NewsMax TV, De La Garza detailed the first harrowing hours after her daughter was rushed to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. “I was in shock. I didn’t know what to say,” De La Garza says. “It was just something that I never, ever expected to hear as a parent, about any of my kids. And I hesitated to ask, but I had to ask her—I remember it just seemed like the words took forever to come out of my mouth. I said, ‘Is she OK?’” She added that she didn’t despair or lose hope during the ordeal. “She was in bad shape but I said to her, ‘Demi, I’m here. I love you,’” De La Garza said. “And at that point she said, ‘I love you too.’ So from that point on I never allowed myself to think that things wouldn’t be OK.” De La Garza, who is currently promoting the book Falling with Wings: A Mother’s Story, claims that she’s optimistic about her daughter’s recovery. “I can honestly say today that she is doing really well,” De La Garza said. “She’s happy, she’s healthy, she’s working on her sobriety and she’s getting the help she needs, and that in itself encourages me about her future and about the future of our family.”
Can A Breakthrough Skin Graft End Cocaine Addiction?
Researchers at the University of Chicago believe they’ve developed a unique approach that will curb cocaine craving and addiction, CNBC reported on Tuesday. According to the results of a brand-new study (published in the journal Nature), researchers discovered that a skin graft successfully blocked cocaine-seeking behavior in mice. The study zeroed in on the enzyme “BChE” (short for butyrylcholinesterase), which is responsible for breaking down cocaine into harmless components. While BChE is found in blood and in the human liver, lead researcher Qingyao Kong advised that it’s not a simple matter of injecting the enzyme to cure addiction. “Instead of giving the enzyme to the animals, we decided to engineer skin stem cells that carried the gene for the BChE enzyme,” Kong said. “This way the skin cells would be able to manufacture the enzyme themselves and supply the animal.” The stem cells produced high levels of hBChE (a more intense form of the enzyme), which then formed a skin-like tissue. The tissue, once transplanted onto hosts, releases the enzyme for up to ten weeks at a time. In fact, Kong observed that skin grafts actually “immunized” the mice against cocaine overdoses. When they were given potentially lethal doses of the drug, not one test mouse died. The study’s results are encouraging for human use, the CNBC story noted, not to mention being potentially useful in curbing nicotine and alcohol cravings, too.
Company Tries Direct Approach to Help Smokers Quit
As concerns around nicotine addiction in the US grow, Vox reported, one direct-to-consumer startup company might have a solution that’s as straightforward as it is long lasting. Zero offers a personalized smoking cessation program that uses a progress-tracking app, as well as a physical “Quit Kit,” which includes the anti-craving drug buproprion and nicotine gum. Zachariah Reitano, Zero’s CEO and co-founder, maintains that their option will eclipse all other smoking cessation options. “They go to the doctor and the doctor says, ‘Great, here’s a prescription,’” Reitano told Vox. “Then it’s maybe 45 minutes to the pharmacy, then it’s a wait for 45 minutes, and then they also have to figure out which gum to chew, and then they also have to download an app. There are so many steps where someone can, frankly, mess up or not have everything they need.” While cigarette sales have sharply declined in the US (down 37% between 2001 and 2016), increased per-pack pricing and the booming e-cigarette market has more than made up for any losses: the smoking industry’s revenue is higher than ever in the US, boasting sales of $93.4 billion in 2016 alone.
Senate Overwhelmingly Approves Bill to Battle The Opioid Epidemic
The Wall Street Journal reported that the US Senate passed “sweeping, bipartisan legislation at combating the opioid epidemic” on Monday. The Senate’s Opioid Crisis Response Act of 2018 (OCRA), which passed 99-1, will “establish or expand programs dealing with prevention, treatment and recovery,” the story said. Among the measure’s 70 bills include requirements for the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to prescribe smaller quantities of opioid pills, incentives for the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to actively develop non-addictive painkillers, and strict guidelines for cracking down on shipments of fentanyl into the US, among other provisions. The Senate package arrives just months after a similar, 58-bill opioid package cleared the House, fueling hopes that the two measures can be reconciled and passed together by year’s end.
Steve-O Celebrates 10 Years of Sobriety with a Triathlon
Former Jackass star Steve-O (born Stephen Glover) celebrated a decade of sobriety with a triathlon last weekend, according to Men’s Health. The 44-year-old competed in the 32nd annual Nautica Malibu Triathlon in Los Angeles, the story said, noting that he finished a half-mile swim, a 17-mile bike ride and a four-mile run. “I really can’t believe how far I’ve come on this journey of life,” he tweeted after placing tenth in the celebrity division. Men’s Health added that Steve-O has dedicated himself to a healthier lifestyle since getting sober (he’s been a vegan for the last ten years), though he stepped it up in 2018: “For my birthday this year, I decided to get in the best shape I’ve ever been in. I may be old, but I’m healthy as fuck! #HappyBdayToMe,” he wrote in a June Instagram post, showing off his physique.
Did an ‘Incompetent’ DEA Fuel the Opioid Epidemic?
A contentious New York Times op-ed published on Monday took the nation’s Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) to task for its failure to handle the opioid crisis. Leo Beletsky and Jeremiah Goulka, both of whom work in Northeastern University’s Health in Justice Action Lab, penned the scathing critique. As the death toll continues to steadily rise, the op-ed observed, the DEA “deserves much of the blame for these deaths,” calling into question the agency’s overall mission. “Because of its incompetence,” they wrote, “the opioid crisis has gone from bad to worse. The solution: overhauling the agency, or even getting rid of it entirely.” The DEA’s strategies, the piece argued, have fueled everything from abusive police tactics to the erosion of civil liberties, including “warrantless surveillance” and “arbitrary seizures of billions of dollars of private property without any clear connection to drug-related crimes.” The writers also contend that the DEA has unwittingly fostered a huge black market for prescription painkillers. The op-ed suggests that the DEA should be completely reinvented, with its regulatory authority becoming dispersed across the FDA and the FBI, among other agencies. “The Drug Enforcement Administration has had over 40 years to win the war on drugs. Instead its tactics have fueled the opioid crisis,” they concluded. “To finally make a dent in this national emergency, we need to rethink the agency from the bottom up.
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