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It was a shock to learn that yesterday’s tragic death of Mary Richardson Kennedy, the separated wife of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., was due to suicide. While many of the details are still unclear and undisclosed, apparently the 52-year-old was found dead in her home in Westchester County, N.Y. after she had hanged herself. It’s disturbing, to say the least. And it makes us wonder if her drug and alcohol problems were to blame.
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It’s not hard to prove that meth is a bad idea, but the Faces of Meth™ photos from Oregon’s Multnomah County Sheriff department definitely help the case. They’re also one of the most convincing arguments I’ve ever seen for the idea that we aren’t doomed to whatever our genes have in store for us: Proving that in the argument of nature vs. nurture, nurture can have an astounding—and sometimes catastrophic—effect. More
Damn the media! Former Olympic swimmer, Amanda Beard, was on the Today show yesterday and revealed just how damaging the media has been to her, causing her to become bulimic, depressed, a drug user and a cutter–all because she was trying to live up to their body-image ideals of what was perfect and thin and beautiful enough. More
Sad news came out today. Whitney Houston, the troubled 48 year old singer, has passed away. Her death came just a few days after the star was photographed intoxicated outside an LA nightclub. After a long battle with drug addiction, … More
Lindsay Lohan‘s Playboy shoot just leaked, and it’s…creepily similar to the iconic shoots of Marilyn Monroe that ran in the magazine’s first issue. This isn’t the first time Lindsay’s posed like Marilyn (back in 2008, she imitated “The Last Sitting” photo shoot for New York Magazine, pouting in platinum locks and nothing but bedsheets). But this shoot is so literal, it’s hard not to see all the other parallels between Lohan and Marilyn. In the spread, she even bears an eerie resemblance to Anna Nicole Smith, who also suffered from mental and drug problems before her untimely death. Looking at the new images, it’s hard to ignore the eerie (and detrimental) drug connection between the three women. More
We all know how painkillers, particularly the good stronger ones, can become addictive (thank you, Nurse Jackie). But apparently, it’s not uncommon for painkillers like Vicodin, OxyContin and Percocet to trigger a hypersensitivity to pain, even in response to things that weren’t painful before, Jeff Forester at Alternet reports.
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Do you know Seth Jaffe? I didn’t, but now I kind of do, which makes me lucky. Seth is a sober coach for drug addicts who appears on the A&E docu-reality show Relapse. A few weeks ago, I wrote a Blisstree post called 6 Reasons to Watch A&E’s Relapse Even If You’ve Never Met a Junkie, and in it I said some positive things about Seth regarding his sober coaching techniques and the very affecting presence he projects on the show. Seth saw my post and liked it. He found my email and contacted me. I was both surprised and thrilled: I knew I had a million questions for him about drug addiction and being a sober coach that I’d want to get answered for Blisstree readers. Also, I respect Seth, and it’s always fun to interview someone you hold in high regard. Being the good sport that he is, Seth agreed to answer my questions. (Okay, there are seven, not a million.) So prepare for some sober coach schooling, and then watch Relapse, because it’s fascinating, thought-provoking, and terrifying. More
I don’t smoke pot. (It just makes me sleepy. Plus, I’m 35 weeks pregnant, so it’s probably not the best time to be taking up weed as a hobby.) But when it comes to marijuana, I’ve always adopted kind of a live-and-let-live mentality. Oh, I know full well that it’s illegal in all but 15 U.S. states, but like a lot of people I know (and Willie Nelson, who I don’t know), I don’t think pot should be illegal in any of them. I even know someone who knows someone who knows someone who’s related to someone who may be (or may not be ) a full-time, professional ganja dealer to rich people who like to have their drug of choice delivered to them directly and regularly in a civilized manner. And near where my husband and I own a weekend country home, there’s a really nice estate that everyone always knew housed a grassroots pot-growing establishment. (Of course, the people finally got busted and, needless to say, don’t live there anymore.) I know lots of people who smoke weed on occasion, but they don’t bother me and I don’t bother them. Frankly, I’ve never seen pot as being any more dangerous than alcohol. But it is as dangerous, and may actually be worse. More
I think the thing that scared me the most about Kelly on last night’s episode of Relapse on A&E was that she looked so normal. Okay, well, maybe not normal, exactly. (Poor thing wears waaay too much makeup, tacky jewelry, and maybe applies too much self-tanner. Oh, and the color of her dyed blonde hair could electrically power a small city.) But to me, overall Kelly looked like a fit and healthy young woman who gets enough sleep and cares about her appearance. Turns out, she’s a serious meth addict who has already lost custody of her young daughter and is facing a year in jail. More
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I know people who never think about having another drink once they’ve given up booze. They hit their bottom line, came to their senses, and walked away from the stuff with little afterthought. They are not tempted.
I sure as hell wish I were one of them.
The truth is that for me, not drinking is still hard. Sure, it’s much easier than it was 22 years ago, when I white-knuckled it through every weekend on a campus of 20-year-olds whose favorite pastime was getting completely trashed. I’m pretty sure that staying sober throughout my four years of college will go down as one of the hardest things I’ve ever done in my life – an impressible feat that nurtured with me a source of self-esteem and self-confidence I didn’t know I had.
So, yes, it’s far easier today. But it’s not easy. More
My reasons for watching TV are manifold: Escapism, boredom, I-can’t-sleep-ism, it’s like having company over, (which I think was my grandma’s reason), to make myself feel better about myself, and just out of plain old (mostly bad) habit. But sometimes I watch TV simply to terrify myself to the core. Not by watching anything in the horror genre, but by catching a show like Relapse on A&E.
This network is king of docu-reality series that focus on serious mental and physical health issues (Heavy, Hoarders, and Intervention are also very well done, though Intervention is a little too “Dateline NBC” for my tastes.) Relapse makes tough-love weight-loss reality TV shows like Heavy and The Biggest Loser look like springtime picnics in the park.
You don’t have to be a genius to figure out that Relapse is where, as a last resort, they sic a professional sober coach (on this show, Seth, pictured at left, a recovering addict and former federal prison convict who is nothing short of phenomenal) on a junkie or two. Then hardcore, amazing Seth tries to intervene, work with any family members, and get that junkie into serious rehab so they can get clean – STAT, and for good.
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Prescription painkillers like OxyContin are a dime-a-dozen these days. They’re easy to get; they help take the edge off; and best of all, they’re legal. But if you think popping one for a fun time now and then isn’t a big deal, think again: You’re one step away from becoming a junkie.
When Colleen Miller was growing up, the life of junkie was the furthest thing from her mind. She was pretty, and came from a good, hard-working Irish Catholic family. She prided herself on her Gucci sunglasses and True Religion jeans, and although she sometimes drank with her friends, she never did drugs.
That all changed in April 2008, when Colleen picked up her first OxyContin pill. By December of that same year, she was a homeless heroin addict.
“You don’t want to admit it,” she says. “But heroin became my best friend.”
At first, Colleen stuck to Oxys. The pills were easy to get, and she loved the way they made her anxiety disappear, leaving her feeling energized and social. But soon, the Oxys weren’t getting her high anymore, and she was running out of money. Enter heroin, which was just as easy to get as Oxy – and a third of the price. More
Thank you, Grace Kelly, for making a night of erotic indulgences seem ladylike. I don’t have a Mark Cross bag in which to secret overnight essentials like Lisa Carol Fremont did in Rear Window, but a boxy Ferragamo works just as well. And, for those times when you don’t plan ahead, run like hell. Don’t do a walk of shame – rather, run to the nearest subway, bus, or train stop. Not out of actual shame, but because your makeup is half-eaten-off, and you really don’t need the entire worshiping congregation of the Baptist church near your latest conquest’s home to see you ambling crookedly down the street in four-inch heels, with bedhead and ripped stockings to boot.
After a very sexually-deprived marriage (how do you not have sex on your honeymoon?), and a subsequent clinical depression and various addictions to numb the pain of the void, it really was time to jump back into the dating game. And it is a game; don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. When you’re 35 +, all those familiar dating rituals and crane dances are nonexistent. What you have at your disposal are other divorcées with baggage, young men, and very strange characters that don’t fit into any tidy category. I’ve run into all of them during the past few years. More
When I published a recent Blisstree post called Drug Addiction: I Was an Ambien Junkie and Didn’t Know It, I didn’t get into specifics about how I acted when I was out of my head on the prescription sleep aid Ambien (other than acting asleep). This was mostly because, at the time, I didn’t actually remember how I acted when I was out of my head on Ambien. (Turns out, Ambien can erase memories like shaking an Etch A Sketch makes your painstaking on-screen drawings disappear. Who knew?) Of course, I’d also forgotten about these Ambien antics because they occurred almost a full decade ago. But now that I’ve taken some time to recall one of my finer Ambien-fueled moments in particular (perhaps “finer” isn’t the right word — how about: would-be-hilarious-if-it-weren’t-so-disturbing), I’m ready to overshare, as any respectable blogger should know how to do. More
