Legal High Mexxy, Alternative To Ketamine, To Be Outlawed

 

legal high known as "mexxy" is to be outlawed, the Government has announced. It follows concerns that two people whose bodies were found in Leicestershire in February may have taken some form of the drug after buying it over the internet. Methoxetamine, or mexxy, will initially be made illegal for 12 months while Government advisers decide whether to ban it completely. Crime Prevention Minister Lord Henley said: "Making this drug illegal sends a clear message to users and those making and supplying it that we are stepping up our fight against substances which are dangerous and ruin the lives of victims and their families. "But making drugs illegal is only part of the solution. "It is important for users of these harmful substances to understand that just because they are described as legal highs, it does not mean they are safe or should be seen as a 'safer' alternative to illegal substances." Anyone caught making, supplying or importing the drug faces up to 14 years in prison and an unlimited fine. Under the change in law, police and border officials will also have new powers to search or detain anyone they suspect of having the drug and seize, keep or dispose of a substance they suspect is methoxetamine. After its growing use as a party drug, the Home Office referred mexxy to the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) for its views on controlling it earlier this month. The drug, used as an alternative to ketamine, is widely available on the internet. Its effects include a faster heart rate, hallucinations, hypertension, loss of balance, higher blood pressure, agitation and cardiovascular conditions. Tests by the ACMD also found evidence that use of methoxetamine can lead to "significant additional toxicity". Professor Les Iversen, chairman of the ACMD, said: "The evidence shows that the use of methoxetamine can cause harm to users."

Facebook App Lets You Add Enemies Online

 

Forget friending. A new Facebook app allows users of the social network to identify and share people, places and things as “enemies” for all to see. The app, called EnemyGraph, lets you list anything with a Facebook presence — ranging from “friends,” to foods, to products, movies or books — as an enemy. Since the app launched March 15, it’s seemed to appeal especially to users with a liberal bent. Some of its most-selected nemeses so far include Rick Santorum, Westboro Baptist Church and Fox News. The app was developed by a professor and two students at the University of Texas at Dallas. Dean Terry, who directs the school’s emerging media program, helped conceptualize the project, while graduate student Bradley Griffith and undergraduate Harrison Massey built the app. Griffith said EnemyGraph has so far accumulated some 400 users. But more importantly, its creators say, press coverage has helped meet the team’s goal of sparking a larger conversation about the nature of social media and Facebook in particular. “One thing that has always struck me is the enforced niceness culture,” Terry told Mashable. “We wanted to give people a chance to express dissonance as well. We’re using the word enemy about as accurately as Facebook uses the word friend.” But the app has utility beyond simply sparking a philosophical debate, Terry adds. Researchers and marketers have long gathered information on social media users based on what they support, but at the expense of possibly overlooking another valuable data source. “You can actually learn a lot about people by what they’re upset about and what they don’t like,” Terry says. “And the second thing is that if you and I both don’t like something, that actually creates a social bond that hasn’t been explored in social media at all, except with Kony and some big examples like that.” Terry and Griffith teamed up last year to create Undetweetable, a service allowing Twitter users’ deleted tweets to be uncovered posthumously. That project gained some attention as well but Twitter quickly forced it to shut down. Terry wouldn’t be surprised if EnemyGraph meets a similar fate from Facebook. “My guess is it goes against their social philosophy and purpose,” he says. “It is a critique of their social philosophy for sure.” Do you like the EnemyGraph idea? Let us know in the comments.

socially disruptive narcissists More Facebook Friends You Have, the More Unhappy You Are

 

A  study has discovered a direct link between the number of friends you have on Facebook and how much of a “socially disruptive narcissist” you are—giving us one more reason to tone down our Facebook addictions. Researchers at Western Illinois studied 294 college students and found that those with more friends on Facebook tended to score higher on the Narcissistic Personality Inventory questionnaire. They tended to respond more aggressively to comments, change their profile pictures more often, and updated their news feeds more regularly than others. This may not be all that surprising, but it does provide a bit of motivation to re-evaluate what Facebook does for you, if you fit into one of these categories (and if not, at least you can stop feeling bad about not having very many Facebook friends—it’s probably a good thing). None of this is to say Facebook is inherently bad, of course. It’s still a great way to keep in touch with family and friends, especially after you’ve fixed all of its annoyances—you might just want to dial back on all the photo tagging. While you’re at it, you can also move some of those friends to your Acquaintances list using Facebook’s new tool, which will hide them from your news feed more often.

Whitney Houston full autopsy report to offer more details

Whitney Houston’s full autopsy report may offer more clues about whether the singer suffered a heart attack before her drowning death, officials said Friday. The full report, which is expected to be released in a few weeks, may include test results and physical descriptions of the singer’s heart that will show whether she suffered a heart attack, Assistant Chief Coroner Ed Winter said. The report is being compiled and Winter said he did not have access to its findings, which might show whether there were any obvious signs such as discoloration of her heart that would suggest Houston had a heart attack before slipping underwater in a bathtub at the Beverly Hilton Hotel on Feb. 11. Houston’s death has been ruled an accidental drowning, with heart disease and cocaine use listed as contributing factors. The report also will include detailed toxicology results that will show how much cocaine and its byproducts were in Houston’s system when she died. Coroner’s officials said Thursday that the results showed the singer used cocaine shortly before her death, and there were indications of chronic use. Beverly Hills police detectives will use the full coroner’s report to complete their investigative file, which is not expected to be publicly released. The department has said there were no signs of foul play in connection with Houston’s death. Houston’s death on the eve of the Grammy Awards stunned the music industry and fans worldwide. The singer had battled addiction for years, but friends and family have said she appeared committed to making a comeback in the months before her death.

Celebrity addicts: Who dies, who survives, and why

 

Singer Whitney Houston's death last month from accidental drowning from the effects of cocaine use and heart disease throws bright light on a dark corner of the world of celebrities who wrestle with substance abuse.  Living on the edge: Whitney Houston's longtime drug habit eventually played a part in her death. Whitney Houston's longtime drug habit eventually played a part in her death. The toll of celebrity addiction — to street drugs, prescription drugs, alcohol or a mix — is long and mournful, and seems particularly heavy right now thanks to the deaths of Houston, 48, and Amy Winehouse, 27 . And not just them: In recent years, Michael Jackson, Heath Ledger and Anna Nicole Smith have succumbed to overdoses; going back further, the list includes John Belushi, Marilyn Monroe, Elvis Presley and Judy Garland. Americans these days can't escape the steady stream of news about celebrities and their controlled substances. Take Lindsay Lohan, 25. After years of erratic behavior, multiple arrests and five stints in rehab, Lohan says she's finally cleaned up her act. She promises to stay away from drugs and alcohol , and even completed her comeback gig hosting Saturday Night Live March 3 (the ratings were good but the reviews were mixed). Recent weeks also brought news that Scottish actor Gerard Butler (300), 42, and comedian Artie Lange,44 , both successfully completed rehab for addiction and are back working. But actress Demi Moore, 49, who was hospitalized after smoking something that gave her convulsions , sought "professional assistance" for her problem. And Australian actor Alex O'Loughlin, star of CBS's Hawaii Five-0, has announced he would take time off to get "supervised treatment" for pain drugs prescribed after a recent shoulder injury. This sort of thing is not uncommon in Hollywood: Actress Tatum O'Neal, 48, who comes from a family of addicts and has long battled to overcome substance abuse, also is in "supervised treatment" to prevent a recurrence of addiction, to painkillers recently prescribed for back surgery. "She will always seek supervision when taking prescription medication that has addictive potential," according to a statement issued by her manager, Angela Cheng Caplan. But it's fair to ask: Is there a fatal attraction between celebs and controlled substances? Why do some survive and some die? How do you step away from addiction when the spotlight is always on? "It's that caustic mix of sudden celebrity and being strung out and it being condoned by the people around you," says Duff McKagan, 48, the original bass player for rock band Guns N' Roses and a longtime drug and alcohol addict who had to nearly die from an exploding pancreas in 1994 at age 30 before he was motivated to get help. His mother weeping in her wheelchair over her youngest child, and his eventual discovery of the physical and spiritual strengths of martial arts also helped, he says. Houston's death brought up painful memories for daytime talk-show host Wendy Williams, who walked away from her secret cocaine addiction years ago because she wanted a better life, because it was breaking her parents' hearts and because she knew that otherwise she was headed to an early grave. "Whitney and I, same age, and both plagued with the demon of substance abuse," Williams said tearfully on her show shortly after Houston's death. "It's been almost 15 years since I smoked last from a crack pipe. It's been almost 15 years since I waited on Jerome Avenue in the Bronx for my drugs." Williams, 47, a former radio star whose three year-old talk show has been renewed for two more years and is syndicated in more than 150 markets, started dabbling in drugs when she was in college, but later fame and success didn't prevent her escalating habit. She looks back on those years now with her signature mix of humor and sharp self-awareness. A middle-class girl with middle-class values, she says she could not have survived the "TMZ era" of salacious attention on celebrity addiction. "I never wanted to shame my family so I just stopped. It was a slow stop," she says. "The unspoken disappointment of the people closest to me was tearing me apart. That girl who went through that, it made me the woman I am today, but I would have ended up dying. "And if I hadn't died of dying, I would have died of embarrassment! I would have lost my job or been written up in the New York Post!" Addiction experts say it's a misleading assumption that celebs are more prone to addictive behavior, because anyone can inherit that DNA. "Addiction does not discriminate, it cuts across all socioeconomic classes," says Kevin Hill, addictions psychiatrist in charge of drug abuse treatment at Harvard Medical School's McLean Hospital. "People use according to psycho-social stressers. Celebrities might have slightly different stressers, such as fame, but they use drugs like regular people — they just use better drugs." What actors, singers, athletes, even CEOs have that regular people might not have is more access to drugs, more time to indulge, more money to pay for it, and often a horde of enabling hangers-on who are financially dependent on them and thus more motivated to supply substances for them. It adds up to a situation hard to walk away from, McKagan says. "Some can do (drugs) and move on and some do it and get stuck," he says. "In the last year before ending up in the hospital, I had given up, I said I can't stop this," says McKagan, author of the memoir, It's So Easy (And Other Lies). "I had to be scared to death." Winehouse's demise in her London home last July was likely due to accidental alcohol poisoning, according to the coroner's report. Her grieving parents are setting up a foundation in her memory to help people overcome addiction. Houston was found submerged in a Beverly Hills Hotel bathtub last month, with bottles of prescription pills found in her room. Her family said she was taking anti-anxiety drugs, and she was seen drinking the night before. Appearing on CNN last month, one of the Republican presidential candidates, Rick Santorum, said celebrities such as Houston are "the royalty of America" who set a bad example by their deaths by drug use. "Ridiculous," scoffs Hill. "He implies that she chose to suffer such a fate, when in fact she made multiple efforts to treat it. To say that someone makes a conscious decision to have her life go down the drain is preposterous." But one of Houston's close friends, R&B legend Chaka Khan, a recovering drug addict herself, said on CNN that her best memories of Houston involve getting high with her and Houston's ex-husband, Bobby Brown. "Talking crazy and having a really, really, really good laughing, and a really, really good time," she said. With the non-stop coverage of Houston's death and also Michael Jackson's drug overdose death in 2009, it's easy to forget that there are more survival stories than tragedies among celebrity addicts. Rocker/American Idol judge Steven Tyler, 63, who came close to dying from drug abuse, appeared with the other members of Aerosmith on 60 Minutes , talking about the ravages of addiction on bodies, band and relationships. But after 40 years, and lots of rehab, they've managed to make it into their 60s; they're still rocking, about to tour the U.S., about to make another album. Tyler told People he's been transformed. "I'm on Idol now — the last thing I'd want the world to see is me slurring my words," he says. "I don't ever want to be a bad example again." Actress Kirstie Alley, 61, was "way into drugs" when she was Lohan's age, she recently told Access Hollywood. "If you don't die doing them, you just screw up your life sort of royally," she said. Actor Robert Downey Jr., 46, may be Exhibit A for the possibility of a successful celebrity comeback from addiction. Not so long ago, he was looking glum, wearing an orange jumpsuit and being sentenced to jail for drug-related offenses; now he's out, he's recovering and he's a bigger star than ever with lead roles in the Iron Man and Sherlock Holmes movies. Actress Mackenzie Phillips, 52, was so drug-addled (she was first exposed to drugs at age 11) that she spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on cocaine, lost jobs and lovers, used while pregnant with her son, watched as close relatives died from drug abuse, and was even reduced to a years-long incestuous relationship with her equally drug-addled father, iconic '60s rock musician, John Phillips, of The Mamas and the Papas. She should be dead, she says, giving herself credit for battling back from the brink. True, most of her family cut her off because she spilled the creepy beans about her now dead father, but she feels she's finally escaped her past. "At last I'm living the health and happiness that I always described but never experienced," she wrote in her 2009 memoir, High on Arrival. "I'm living my life instead of watching it happen. I'm free." There's nothing new about celebrity addiction. Billie Holiday, the great jazz singer who died in 1959, may have been one of the first major celebrities to go to her grave too early (she was only 44) because of the effects of alcoholism and drug addiction. Nor is there anything new about addiction among non-celeb Americans. According to the government's Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, 23.5 million people aged 12 or older needed treatment for a drug or alcohol problem in 2009, but only 2.6 million actually were treated at a specialty facility (aka rehab). As for addiction deaths, those happen among ordinary people, too, but we just don't hear about them because they're not celebs. What is new is that increasingly Americans — celebrity and regular folks — are getting hooked on prescription drugs, and ending up dead or close to it by accidentally taking too much or mixing them with alcohol. The number of overdose deaths from painkillers more than tripled from 1999 to 2006, to 13,800 deaths that year, according to Center for Disease Control statistics released in 2009. Take rightwing radio king Rush Limbaugh, 61. Prescribed powerful painkillers after back surgery, he ended up hooked in 2003, got caught trying to acquire them illegally, was arrested and spent a month in rehab. Prescription drug addiction has become "an epidemic" in recent years, says psychiatrist Marc Galanter, director of alcoholism and substance abuse treatment at NYU Langone Medical Center/Bellevue, and former president of addiction medicine and addiction psychiatry groups. "There's a whole new raft of (narcotic) drugs available that will compromise you and you don't have to be a celebrity to afford them — middle-class people can afford them," Galanter says. "Some people get them (initially) for medical procedures, and before they know it they're addicted. And because it's not 'illegal,' as it were, it's easier to feel it's OK." Why do people who are rich, famous, beautiful and talented feel the need for drugs and alcohol? Life coach and family advocate Lisa Nkonoki, who says she helped Ray Charles Jr. overcome his addictions, has offered her services to her longtime friend, Bobby Brown, father of Houston's teen daughter, Bobbi Kristina, who as the child of addicts is at risk of stumbling down the same path. Nkonoki says that celebs, like anyone else, can become addicts because they don't feel strong or good about themselves at some level. "It's an escape (from) the persona people want them to be instead of the person they truly are," she says. Successfully stepping away from addiction, she says, comes only after accepting that it's a disease. "No one wants to wear this badge, no one wants to go through this struggle. But when you get this disease, you have to deal with it, manage it, emerge from it and move on." The key factor in treating addictions, celebrity or otherwise, is recognizing that there's usually an underlying mental-health issue, says Kathleen Bigsby, CEO of The Canyon at Peace Park, an expensive, exclusive and super private comprehensive treatment center in Malibu that has treated celebrities (no names, she says) for addiction and "co-occurring disorders." "Just addressing the addiction isn't enough — there's anxiety, depression, trauma," Bigsby says. "Addicts need a new skill set to learn how to manage their stress." Actress/writer Carrie Fisher, 55, was addicted to drugs and drink (and food) almost from the time she became a star at 19 playing Princess Leia in Star Wars. Was it fame that made her a mess? Probably not, since she's also bipolar and her wacky childhood as a Hollywood princess (daughter of Debbie Reynolds and singer Eddie Fisher) left her plagued by insecurity and despair. But fame didn't help. Fisher turned her difficulties into successful comic memoirs and stage shows, writing in her latest book, Shockaholic, that she tried everything to cure herself over the decades — therapy and retreats, overeating and fasting, 12-steps, meditation, re-birthing, walking over hot coals, jumping out of airplanes, climbing up mountains, floating down the Amazon, speaking in tongues…you get the picture. And yet, "I still did not feel — how shall I put this — mentally sound," she writes. So she turned reluctantly, fearfully, to electroshock therapy, which to her surprise seems to have worked. True, it erased some of her memory but at least she's still alive and recovering. And writing. The problem for celeb addicts is they have to struggle and recover in public, in the glare of social media and the 24/7 celebrity-media industrial complex, Bigsby says. Nowadays even D-list celebs are in the spotlight, unlike in Billie Holiday's era. "There's always been curiosity about celebrities, knowing about their personal lives and their experiences with pain and suffering," says Bigsby. In the old days of Hollywood, they were protected. "Now we're seeing even more about their struggles because we know more about them through social media. Now they're out there texting and tweeting every thought, so there's instantaneous exposure to everything." Meanwhile, tragic deaths can sometimes be educational, sometimes not, says addiction expert Galanter. "It alerts people to the danger but can also make it attractive, because if a celeb is doing it, people think maybe they can risk it, too," he says. "Deaths might sober people up, but it depends on how sensible people are. I hope so."

Cheap drugs abroad could pay for break

HOLIDAYMAKERS can pay for the cost of a break in the sun by buying their prescription drugs while abroad. Legally they can purchase their prescribed drugs -- at a fraction of the cost here over the counter -- in Malaga, Marbella , Faro or Lisbon. Those on long term medication and covered by the Drug Payment Scheme, who cough up €132 a month, can particularly benefit. For example, a patient on holiday in Marbella recently bought the three main elements of her prescription. Prescribed for the treatment of high blood pressure, high cholesterol and to reduce risk of cardiovascular problems they cost her almost four times as much in Dublin as in Spain. The products -- Lipitor, Cozaar Comp and Tritace -- in their generic form came to €108.13 in Dublin for a month's supply. In Marbella the same medicines are sold under a different name for €63.72 for two months' supply. That is a saving of €152.54 for two months. On that basis a six month prescription for the three tablets would cost €648.78 in Dublin as against €191.16 in Spain -- a staggering saving of €457.62. The Irish Medicines Board and the Revenue Commissioners both confirmed that medication, prescription and non prescription, bought for personal use within the EU or outside may be brought back in to the State legally. imported They agreed that travellers are permitted to import on their person or in their baggage "a reasonable amount of such medicines for personal use". "Anyone entering the State may bring their personal medication with them and that personal medication should be no more than any amount that may be obtained on a prescription, for example up to a three months supply. "Any amount being imported above a level that would be considered to be normal personal use, could be considered to be a commercial quantity and for business purposes." This "personal use" exemption does not apply to products imported by other means, ie. in the post, by express couriers or in merchandise. Revenue said that the law of the country where you are visiting will dictate whether your Irish prescription will be accepted or whether you will require a doctor's prescription from that country. They advised it is always a good idea to have a copy of your prescription in your possession so that customs officers can verify it by contacting the dispensing pharmacy and the doctor who issued it.

Brian Regan: Brookside star to cocaine addict

 

Brian Regan found fame playing loveable rogue Terry Sullivan in the Liverpool soap opera Brookside. In the show's 1980s heyday, his character's antics were regularly watched by up to seven million viewers a week. But when Regan left the soap in 1997, his acting career petered out and he plunged into a life of drug dealing and addiction. Now he is behind bars, serving a five-year jail sentence for lying to police over his role in the murder of Iranian doorman Bahman Faraji and selling drugs. Regan's jail sentence can now be reported following the conviction of Jason Gabbana, 29, for ordering Faraji's murder. Details emerged in court of the actor's descent into drugs and supplying members of Liverpool's criminal underworld. During the trial, Regan told Liverpool Crown Court how he started taking cocaine at weekends at the end of his Brookside career. It was through his use of cocaine he became involved with Edward Heffey, convicted of murdering Mr Faraji with a sawn-off shotgun in a quiet Liverpool street. Simon O'Brien, who played Damon Grant in Brookside, said Regan's involvement with drugs was a "slow burn". Snorting cocaine "It is a very difficult place when you're acting, particularly on something as high-profile as a soap, because fame and infamy attract each other," he said. "Actors and gangsters, for some reason, almost get off on each other. It's a really strange mutual attraction because I think the hard man gives the actor a kind of security out in public and the actor gives the gangster kudos. "The two worlds often get intertwined and when that happens, inevitably drugs become involved. So it was kind of a slow thing from what I remember, it was a slow burn." Regan was charged with Mr Faraji's murder and was cleared - but he was convicted of giving a false alibi to police about where he was on the night in February 2011. Actor and presenter Simon O'Brien said actors and gangsters get off on each other" During the trial, he told Liverpool Crown Court he supplied Heffey with cocaine "about three or four times a day". When Heffey asked him for a lift on the night of the killing, he said he thought he was taking him to collect a debt so he could pay for the drugs. In fact, once they arrived in Aigburth in Regan's Ford Escort, Heffey got out, walked round the corner and shot Mr Faraji in the face with a sawn-off shotgun. Regan told the court he knew nothing about the incident - because he was waiting in the car, snorting a line of cocaine. He said he then "drove away normally" from the scene and took Heffey home. Regan was cleared of murder at his trial which ended in January. 'Lose control' However, when he was first interviewed by police he lied about driving Heffey to the pub, but CCTV evidence put him at the scene and he was found guilty of perverting the course of justice. Mr O'Brien, 46, who was friends with Regan in their Brookside days, said getting involved in drugs was a tragedy that is "not uncommon" in the entertainment industry. "Brian is just one example of what happens when you're in the limelight and everything is flying and you lose control," he said. "You feel you're invincible when you're at the top of the game and you're not. "Sadly, if anyone wants to know what happens if you get involved in taking cocaine, this is an example of someone who was at the top of the tree and because of cocaine, he ends up behind bars."

Study Suggests Link Between Narcissism And Facebook

There may be a direct link between the number of friends you have on Facebook and just how much of a “socially disruptive” narcissist you are, according to a recent study published in the journal of Personality and Individual Differences. Facebook habits of 294 students between the age of 18 and 65 were studied by researchers at Western Illinois University. They also measured two of what they describe as  ”socially disruptive” elements of narcissism- grandiose exhibitionism (GE- having to be at the center of attention), and entitlement/exploitativeness (EE-  having a sense of self entitlement/deserving of respect) of the students. The study found that those who scored highly on the Narcissistic Personality Inventory questionnaire changed their profile pictures more often, responded more aggressively to negative comment about them on their Facebook walls, tagged themselves more often, and updated their news feeds more regularly. Carol Craig, a social scientist and chief executive of the Centre for Confidence and Well-being stated: “Facebook provides a platform for people to self-promote by changing profile pictures and showing how many hundreds of friends you have. I know of some who have more than 1,000.” According to the Guardian, Christopher Carpenter, who ran the study, said: “If Facebook is to be a place where people go to repair their damaged ego and seek social support, it is vitally important to discover the potentially negative communication one might find on Facebook and the kinds of people likely to engage in them. Ideally, people will engage in pro-social Facebooking rather than anti-social me-booking.” Are we really narcissistic? Or could it simply be we are just bored? Or maybe just really friendly and outgoing, looking to meet new people? Do you think these researchers are reading just a little too much into it?

Minimum price for alcohol introduced in bid to tackle Britain's binge crisis

The cost of a pint of beer will be at least 80p and a pint of strong cider would be at least £1.60. Mr Cameron said he was trying to tackle the country’s binge drinking culture and was targeting those who ‘pre-load’ on cheap supermarket drink before going out. He wants a 40p minimum charge for each unit of alcohol, following similar moves in Scotland. The prime minister said: ‘We’re consulting on the actual price but, if it is 40p, that could mean 50,000 fewer crimes each year and 9,000 fewer alcohol-related deaths over the next decade.’ The minimum price was welcomed by police and health campaigners, who say drink was behind 1.2million hospital admissions and 1million crimes last year, and  cost Britain £21billion a year. Critics, however, say it will unfairly punish the vast majority, who are sensible drinkers and comes just hours after a five per cent rise in duty on drink was confirmed in the budget. Mr Cameron also wants to give pubs more powers not to serve people who are drunk, a zero tolerance approach to drunken behaviour in hospitals, a ban on multi-buy discounts and a late night levy on pubs and clubs to help pay for policing. A consultation will take place in the summer, with a new law introduced by the end of the year. He said: ‘Binge drinking is a serious problem. And I make no excuses for clamping down on it.’ Supermarkets will oppose a minimum price. At Asda, a can of Smartprice lager costs 22p. The supermarket is also selling wine at £2.30 a bottle. It contains 8.3 units of alcohol, meaning it will rise in price by at least £1.

Whitney Houston drowned after cocaine use, says coroner

Whitney Houston's death was caused by accidental drowning, but drug abuse and heart disease were also factors, a coroner has ruled. Coroner's spokesman Craig Harvey said drug tests indicated the 48-year-old US singer was a chronic cocaine user. The announcement ends weeks of speculation over the cause of Houston's death. She was found submerged in the bath of her Los Angeles hotel room on the eve of the Grammy Awards on 11 February. In a statement, the LA County Coroner's office described Houston's manner of death as an "accident", adding that "no trauma or foul play is suspected". The cause was cited as drowning and "effects of atherosclerotic heart disease and cocaine use". Other drugs found in her blood included marijuana, as well as an anti-anxiety drug, a muscle relaxant and an allergy medication. But these were not factors in her death, the coroner's statement said. Patricia Houston, the singer's sister-in-law and manager, told the Associated Press news agency: "We are saddened to learn of the toxicology results, although we are glad to now have closure." The pop star was laid to rest at a cemetery in her home state of New Jersey after a funeral that was attended by celebrities including Oprah Winfrey, Alicia Keys, Mariah Carey and Mary J Blige. The singer, who was one of the world's best selling artists from the mid-1980s to late 1990s, had a long battle with drug addiction.

Liver deaths at all-time high

 

Liver disease is killing more people than ever before in England, especially in deprived areas, shows a report out today. Deaths from liver disease: implications for end of life care in England, the first national report into the problem, finds that between 2001 and 2009, deaths from liver disease rose by 25% – and that more than a third of these were from alcohol-related liver disease. In England in 2001, 9321 people died from liver disease, but by 2009 this had risen to 11,575; at the same time, deaths from other major causes fell. The report, from the National End of Life Care Intelligence Network, also showed that liver disease was a disproportionate killer of younger people, accounting for one in ten of all deaths in people in their 40s. Death from liver disease, especially alcohol-related, was much more common in men than in women – 60% of all deaths from liver disease occurred in men. Alcohol-related liver disease was responsible for 41% of deaths from liver deaths in men, and 30% of liver disease deaths in women. The most economically deprived areas of England were the most likely to have high levels of death from alcohol-related liver disease, where it accounted for 44% of all liver disease deaths, compared with 28% in the least deprived areas. Mortality also varied between regions: it was highest in North West, North East and London, and lowest in East of England, South West and South East. Professor Martin Lombard, national clinical director for liver disease, said: “The key drivers for increasing numbers of deaths from liver disease are all preventable, such as alcohol, obesity, hepatitis C and hepatitis B. We must focus our efforts and tackle this problem sooner rather than later.” Professor Julia Verne, lead author of the report and clinical lead for the National End of Life Care Intelligence Network, said: “It is crucial that commissioners and providers of health and social care services know the prevalence of liver disease in their local areas, so that more people can receive the care they need to allow them to die in the place of their choosing.”

A Nation 'Addicted' To Statins...

Dear Reader,

In the UK alone, more than 7 million people are taking cholesterol-lowering statins. This is extremely worrying when you consider the damage these over-prescribed drugs can inflict, with side effects ranging from liver dysfunction and acute renal failure to fatigue and extreme muscle weakness (myopathy).

Slowly tearing us apart

Even more concerning are the side effects that crop up after long-term use, which are often not linked to statins. For example, one study monitored the symptoms of 40 asthma patients for a year. 20 of these patients started statins at the outset of the study, while the remaining 20 did not.

The results showed that those patients on statins used their rescue inhaler medications 72 per cent more often than they had at the start of the study, compared to a 9 per cent increase in those who were not taking statins. The researchers also reported that patients taking statins had to get up more frequently at night because of their asthma and also had worse symptoms during the day...

Worsening asthma symptoms is just the beginning. More recent research has linked statins with an increased risk of developing type 2 diabetes, depression, Alzheimer's disease and dementia.

Still, doctors are very quick to reach for their prescription pads and push these drugs. There appears to be an unofficial (but widely practiced) 'statins for all' approach... especially if you are aged 50 and over.

Luckily, some mainstreamers are slowly catching on to what we've been saying for nearly a decade. In 2011, research published in the Archives of Internal Medicine drew attention to the fact that there is inadequate medical data available that proves the benefits of statins, and that many studies fail to acknowledge the most commonly reported adverse effects of statins.

The fact remains (and your doctor may still deny this) that in total, statins cause serious damage in about 4.4 per cent of those taking them, in comparison to the 2.7 per cent statin users benefiting from them... and it looks as if this message is finally getting through to medical authorities.

A case in point is simvastatin or Zocor. After being on the market for almost 3 decades and causing havoc and distress with its horrendous side effects, the American Food and Drug Administration (FDA) finally issued a warning about the use of this drug... saying that even the approved dosage can harm or even kill you!

Yep! Kill you!

All well and good

It's all fair and well and good that the FDA flagged this warning, but what's the point if doctors continue to prescribe these drugs left, right and centre?

Professor Sarah Harper, director of Oxford University's institute of population ageing, recently said that the UK's "love affair" with prescription medicine, shows how people choose to pop pills rather than follow a healthy lifestyle.

She cited the widespread use of statin drugs to 'help' protect against heart disease and lower cholesterol, instead of eating healthily, quitting smoking, reducing alcohol intake and taking regular exercise.

By all means, I applaud Prof Harper for pushing the message that living a healthy life plays a big part in preventing disease, but why blame patients for being a bunch of pill poppers when doctors hand out drugs with reckless abandon... and recommend taking preventative drugs to ever younger age groups. So in fact, the white coats should be labelled as Big Pharma's drug pushers, because they're part of the problem... especially considering that so many people put their entire trust in their doctor and would never dream of questioning their advice. Most people take what they say as gospel.

Then there's the media, inundating Joe Public with inflammatory headlines like: 'Statins could help fight breast cancer' or 'Statins can prevent infections like pneumonia'... Not to mention their reporting on botch studies showing the 'unintended benefits' of statins, like their potential to prevent pneumonia, combat diabetes, reduce the risk of oesophageal cancer, breast cancer and prostate cancer — all of these so-called benefits are of course not yet proven, and highly unlikely. Still, they reach the front pages!

So, yes we might have turned into a pill popping public, but it's the mainstream and the media that have created this monster all with the help and backing of the puppet master: Big Pharma. Because as you and I know all too well, it's all about the money. 

Could abolishing tax havens solve Africa's financing needs?

 

The past month, the spotlight has been on James Ibori, the governor of Nigeria's Delta state from 1999 to 2007, who pleaded guilty at in a London court to 10 counts relating to conspiracy to launder funds from the state he governed. Ibori was accused of siphoning off an estimated $250m and laundering it in London through a number of offshore companies and financial intermediaries to fund his extravagant lifestyle of lavish mansions, expensive cars and private jets. This mode of illicit capital flight is by no means restricted to one rogue Nigerian governor or even African leaders at large, nor is it the most important means by which capital leaves the continent (and developing countries generally) illicitly. True, $250m from one source is substantial. But this pales into insignificance compared with the estimated $100bn that left Nigeria illicitly between 1970 and 2008, according to Global Financial Integrity (GFI). The bulk of this haemorrhage, contrary to popular belief, is not through the laundering of corrupt money but through commercial activities, and particularly through multinational corporations. According to GFI's conservative estimates, more than $1.8 trillion left African shores illicitly between 1970 and 2008. Of this, only 3% is attributable to bribery and theft by government officials, 30%-35% results from the laundering of criminally acquired wealth (drugs, illegal arms sales, human trafficking, etc), and the bulk – 65%-70% – is from commercial activities, especially through trade mis-pricing of goods. Over the last 10 years, the average annual outflows of this sort exceeded $50bn. This compares with annual aid inflows of less than $30bn. The outflows are largely to avoid or evade tax and to conceal wealth. This week's proposed change by the chancellor, George Osborne, on how foreign subsidiaries of multinationals based in the UK are taxed, will give even less incentive to keep money in poorer countries. Reform of these controlled foreign company rules in the upcoming budget would strengthen the financial case for shifting money to tax havens by making profits made by multinationals abroad and retained in offshore jurisdictions free from UK tax. This could cost developing countries £4bn a year in lost tax revenue, according to ActionAid estimates. These outflows undermine the rule of law, stifle trade and worsen macroeconomic conditions. They are facilitated by around 60 tax havens and secrecy jurisdictions that enable the creating and operating of millions of disguised corporations, shell companies, anonymous trust accounts and fake charitable foundations. They allow the likes of Ibori and many multinational corporations to cripple Africa financially and politically. Given that about 50% of global trade passes through tax havens, these jurisdictions facilitate trade mis-pricing by making it difficult for documentation to be traced. Transnational companies have the ability to set up multiple trusts and shell companies in these jurisdictions. This is significant because about 60% of global trade takes place between and within multinational companies. Secrecy also attracts criminal activity, and the laundering of corrupt money through concealment of the natural beneficiaries behind shell companies and trusts. Africa is experiencing economic growth, and for the increasing wealth to be channelled to public services, development and the achievement of the millennium development goals by 2015, it is urgent the problem of tax havens as a conduit for illicit outflows is addressed. The high-level panel set up by the African Union, the African Development Bank and the UN Economic Commission for Africa, and chaired by former South African president Thabo Mbeki, is a significant step forward – and testifies to the importance of this issue for Africa's development. The ball is now in the court of the rich countries.

Facebook's 'dark side': study finds link to socially aggressive narcissism

 

Researchers have established a direct link between the number of friends you have on Facebook and the degree to which you are a "socially disruptive" narcissist, confirming the conclusions of many social media sceptics. People who score highly on the Narcissistic Personality Inventory questionnaire had more friends on Facebook, tagged themselves more often and updated their newsfeeds more regularly. The research comes amid increasing evidence that young people are becoming increasingly narcissistic, and obsessed with self-image and shallow friendships. The latest study, published in the journal Personality and Individual Differences, also found that narcissists responded more aggressively to derogatory comments made about them on the social networking site's public walls and changed their profile pictures more often. A number of previous studies have linked narcissism with Facebook use, but this is some of the first evidence of a direct relationship between Facebook friends and the most "toxic" elements of narcissistic personality disorder. Researchers at Western Illinois University studied the Facebook habits of 294 students, aged between 18 and 65, and measured two "socially disruptive" elements of narcissism – grandiose exhibitionism (GE) and entitlement/exploitativeness (EE). GE includes ''self-absorption, vanity, superiority, and exhibitionistic tendencies" and people who score high on this aspect of narcissism need to be constantly at the centre of attention. They often say shocking things and inappropriately self-disclose because they cannot stand to be ignored or waste a chance of self-promotion. The EE aspect includes "a sense of deserving respect and a willingness to manipulate and take advantage of others". The research revealed that the higher someone scored on aspects of GE, the greater the number of friends they had on Facebook, with some amassing more than 800. Those scoring highly on EE and GG were also more likely to accept friend requests from strangers and seek social support, but less likely to provide it, according to the research. Carol Craig, a social scientist and chief executive of the Centre for Confidence and Well-being, said young people in Britain were becoming increasingly narcissistic and Facebook provided a platform for the disorder. "The way that children are being educated is focussing more and more on the importance of self esteem – on how you are seen in the eyes of others. This method of teaching has been imported from the US and is 'all about me'. "Facebook provides a platform for people to self-promote by changing profile pictures and showing how many hundreds of friends you have. I know of some who have more than 1,000." Dr Viv Vignoles, senior lecturer in social psychology at Sussex University, said there was "clear evidence" from studies in America that college students were becoming increasingly narcissistic. But he added: "Whether the same is true of non-college students or of young people in other countries, such as the UK, remains an open question, as far as I know. "Without understanding the causes underlying the historical change in US college students, we do not know whether these causes are factors that are relatively specific to American culture, such as the political focus on increasing self-esteem in the late 80s and early 90s or whether they are factors that are more general, for example new technologies such as mobile phones and Facebook." Vignoles said the correlational nature of the latest study meant it was difficult to be certain whether individual differences in narcissism led to certain patterns of Facebook behaviour, whether patterns of Facebook behaviour led to individual differences in narcissism, or a bit of both. Christopher Carpenter, who ran the study, said: "In general, the 'dark side' of Facebook requires more research in order to better understand Facebook's socially beneficial and harmful aspects in order to enhance the former and curtail the latter. "If Facebook is to be a place where people go to repair their damaged ego and seek social support, it is vitally important to discover the potentially negative communication one might find on Facebook and the kinds of people likely to engage in them. Ideally, people will engage in pro-social Facebooking rather than anti-social me-booking."

It's Not Dementia, It's Your Heart Medication: Cholesterol Drugs and Memory

 

One day in 1999 Duane Graveline, then a 68-year-old former NASA astronaut, returned home from his morning walk in Merritt Island, Fla., and could not remember where he was. His wife stepped outside, and he greeted her as a stranger. When Graveline’s memory returned some six hours later in the hospital, he racked his brain to figure out what might have caused this terrifying bout of amnesia. Only one thing came to mind: he had recently started taking the statin drug Lipitor. Cholesterol-lowering statins such as Lipitor, Crestor and Zocor are the most widely prescribed medications in the world, and they are credited with saving the lives of many heart disease patients. But recently a small number of users have voiced concerns that the drugs elicit unexpected cognitive side effects, such as memory loss, fuzzy thinking and learning difficulties. Hundreds of people have registered complaints with MedWatch, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s adverse drug reaction database, but few studies have been done and the results are inconclusive. Nevertheless, many experts are starting to believe that a small percentage of the population is at risk, and they are calling for increased public awareness of the possible cognitive side effects of statins—symptoms that may be misdiagnosed as dementia in the aging patients who take them. Fat and the Brain It is not crazy to connect cholesterol-modifying drugs with cognition; after all, one quarter of the body’s cholesterol is found in the brain. Cholesterol is a waxy substance that, among other things, provides structure to the body’s cell membranes. High levels of cholesterol in the blood create a risk for heart disease, because the molecules that transport cholesterol can damage arteries and cause blockages. In the brain, however, cholesterol plays a crucial role in the formation of neuronal connections—the vital links that underlie memory and learning. Quick thinking and rapid reaction times depend on cholesterol, too, because the waxy molecules are the building blocks of the sheaths that insulate neurons and speed up electrical transmissions. “We can’t understand how a drug that affects such an important pathway would not have adverse reactions,” says Ralph Edwards, former director of the World Health Organization’s drug-monitoring center in Uppsala, Sweden. Two small trials published in 2000 and 2004 by Matthew Muldoon, a clinical pharmacologist at the University of Pittsburgh, seem to suggest a link between statins and cognitive problems. The first, which enrolled 209 high-cholesterol subjects, reported that participants taking placebo pills improved more on repeated tests of attention and reaction time taken over the course of six months—presumably getting better because of practice, as people typically do. Subjects who were on statins, however, did not show the normal improvement—suggesting their learning was impaired. The second trial reported similar findings. And a study published in 2003 in Reviews of Therapeutics noted that among 60 statin users who had reported memory problems to MedWatch, more than half said their symptoms improved when they stopped taking the drugs. But other studies have found no significant link between statins and memory problems. Larry Sparks, director of the Laboratory for Neurodegenerative Research at the Sun Health Research Institute in Sun City, Ariz., goes so far as to say that “you’ve got a better chance of buying a winning lottery ticket, walking outside and getting hit by lightning and dying” than you do of suffering a cognitive side effect from statins. Vulnerable Genes? Many experts agree that for most people the risk is quite low, but they are beginning to believe the effects are real. “A subset of the population is vulnerable,” argues Joe Graedon, co-founder of the consumer advocacy Web site the People’s Pharmacy, which has collected hundreds of reports of cognitive-related statin side effects in the past decade. Some researchers believe these people have a genetic profile that puts them at risk.

Statin side effects: How common are memory loss, diabetes, and muscle aches?

 

When the US Food and Drug Administration told the makers of cholesterol-lowering statins to add new side effect warnings to their labels last week, many of the 40 million statin users may have been unaware of the extent of the risks associated with these drugs that have been touted by some cardiologists to be safer than aspirin. No question, statins -- which include Lipitor (atorvastatin), Zocor (simvastatin), and Crestor (rosuvastatin) -- are relatively safe drugs, and they’ve saved thousands of lives over the past 20 years, particularly in men with established heart disease. But like any drug they can cause problems in some, including muscle aches, an increased risk of diabetes, and, gaining recent attention, memory loss. University of California-San Diego researcher Beatrice Golomb published a paper two years ago describing 171 statin users who reported that they had developed memory problems and dementia-like symptoms that the statin users attributed to their use of the medications. The vast majority experienced an improvement in their symptoms after stopping the drugs and many saw their symptoms return after going back on statins. Robert Grindell, a state employee from Makinen, Minn., told me his short-term memory began to deteriorate after he started taking Zocor in his early 50s. (He contacted Golomb after hearing about her research.) “My co-workers told me I was coming in to ask them the same question three times in one day,” he said. “I had a CT scan to determine if I had a stroke, but it came back fine; the next day, I couldn’t even remember where I had the test performed.” After learning that Zocor caused memory problems, Grindell decided to go off it and said within a few days he noticed an improvement in his memory, not having to glance down several times at a printed phone number as he dialed it to remember the digits. Unfortunately, the exact incidence of these memory problems isn’t known. Manufacturer-sponsored clinical trials show that they occur in fewer than 1 percent of users, but statin researcher Dr. Paul Thompson, chief of cardiololgy at Hartford Hospital, said the real incidence is probably much higher. He has a study expected to be published sometime this year that measured cognitive effects in statin users compared with those on placebos that he said will provide a better estimate; the findings can’t be disclosed until the study is published. The diabetes risks of statins are more well-established. One review study published last year calculated an extra two cases of type 2 diabetes in every 1,000 patients who took a high-dose statin (80 milligrams per day) compared with those who took a lower dose (20 to 40 milligrams). And one clinical trial found that statin users had about a 25 percent increased risk of developing diabetes over a two-year period compared with those who took placebos. Experts, though, agree that in people at high risk for heart disease, the increased diabetes risk is outweighed by the statin’s protection against heart attacks and deaths from any cause. The danger of muscle destruction from statins -- which can damage the liver and kidneys -- is also clear but slight. According to Thompson, about 1 in every 1,000 statin users will develop severely elevated levels of the enzyme creatine kinase, which indicates muscle death, and only 1 in 10 million die from developing an extremely severe case of the condition called rhabdomyolysis. Muscle aches are far more common: occuring in about 1 in 10 users, according to Thompson. “It seems to be more common in people who do a lot of exercise.” In fact, a study he conducted found that marathon runners taking statins developed a greater increase in creatine kinase right after their race compared with runners who weren’t on statins. “We also see more muscle aches in older people and women since they have less muscle mass,” he said. Lowering the statin dose or switching to a different statin doesn’t always help, Thompson said. “In our studies, those who develop statin myalgia tend to get it again and again; they’re body may get sensitized to statins.” There may also be a genetic component, with statin muscle aches occuring more often in those whose parents also had them. And there may be a link between memory loss and muscle aches. “In our database, the majority of patients who had cognitive problems also had muscle problems,” Golomb said. She recommends that those who are having memory loss or muscle aches speak to their doctor about going off statins -- especially if they’re not in a high-risk group for heart attacks. Those who get the most benefits are men under 65 who’ve already had a heart attack, she said. Women, elderly people, and those without heart disease get much smaller benefits from statins, and it’s unclear whether the drugs extend their lives. “Many patients have told me that their doctor said going off statins would kill them,” Golomb said, “but that’s not an accurate representation of the evidence.”

Evidence builds that meditation strengthens the brain

Earlier evidence out of UCLA suggested that meditating for years thickens the brain (in a good way) and strengthens the connections between brain cells. Now a further report by UCLA researchers suggests yet another benefit. See Also: Health & Medicine Nervous System Psychology Research Brain Tumor Mind & Brain Neuroscience Intelligence Brain Injury Living Well Reference Thalamus Alpha wave Cerebral contusion Functional neuroimaging Eileen Luders, an assistant professor at the UCLA Laboratory of Neuro Imaging, and colleagues, have found that long-term meditators have larger amounts of gyrification ("folding" of the cortex, which may allow the brain to process information faster) than people who do not meditate. Further, a direct correlation was found between the amount of gyrification and the number of meditation years, possibly providing further proof of the brain's neuroplasticity, or ability to adapt to environmental changes. The article appears in the online edition of the journal Frontiers in Human Neuroscience. The cerebral cortex is the outermost layer of neural tissue. Among other functions, it plays a key role in memory, attention, thought and consciousness. Gyrification or cortical folding is the process by which the surface of the brain undergoes changes to create narrow furrows and folds called sulci and gyri. Their formation may promote and enhance neural processing. Presumably then, the more folding that occurs, the better the brain is at processing information, making decisions, forming memories and so forth. "Rather than just comparing meditators and non-meditators, we wanted to see if there is a link between the amount of meditation practice and the extent of brain alteration," said Luders. "That is, correlating the number of years of meditation with the degree of folding." Of the 49 recruited subjects, the researchers took MRI scans of 23 meditators and compared them to 16 control subjects matched for age, handedness and sex. (Ten participants dropped out.) The scans for the controls were obtained from an existing MRI database, while the meditators were recruited from various meditation venues. The meditators had practiced their craft on average for 20 years using a variety of meditation types -- Samatha, Vipassana, Zen and more. The researchers applied a well-established and automated whole-brain approach to measure cortical gyrification at thousands of points across the surface of the brain. They found pronounced group differences (heightened levels of gyrification in active meditation practitioners) across a wide swatch of the cortex, including the left precentral gyrus, the left and right anterior dorsal insula, the right fusiform gyrus and the right cuneus. Perhaps most interesting, though, was the positive correlation between the number of meditation years and the amount of insular gyrification. "The insula has been suggested to function as a hub for autonomic, affective and cognitive integration," said Luders. "Meditators are known to be masters in introspection and awareness as well as emotional control and self-regulation, so the findings make sense that the longer someone has meditated, the higher the degree of folding in the insula." While Luders cautions that genetic and other environmental factors could have contributed to the effects the researchers observed, still, "The positive correlation between gyrification and the number of practice years supports the idea that meditation enhances regional gyrification."

Shisha cafes should have prominent notices saying, “Smoking shisha can kill” - just like you would on a cigarette packet

 puffing on a Turkish waterpipe is the latest trend to hit British bars and cafes.

The flavoured tobacco, which is smoked via a long pipe connected to a vessel filled with water, is particularly fashionable among young people, with the number of specialist bars rising 210 per cent since 2007.

But the World Health Organisation has warned that a one-hour shisha session can be as harmful as smoking 100 cigarettes.

Trend: Zaky Ali ,40, owner of Marhaba Cafe in Birmingham, with a hookah pipe for smoking shisha, which is becoming more popular among the young. But experts warn it can do more damage than cigarettes because users take more puffs of smoke

This is because a cigarette smoker typically takes between eight and 12 puffs, inhaling 0.5 to 0.6 litres of smoke.

But during hour-long shisha sessions smokers may take up to 200 drags, ranging from 0.15 to 1 litre of smoke each. 

 

 

More...

• Britain's drink death capital: How more people die from alcohol in Sunderland than anywhere else

 

‘Shisha smoking is a growing concern because people aren’t aware of the risks like they are with cigarette smoking,’ says Professor Robert West, director of tobacco studies at University College London.

‘The greater the exposure in terms of duration and amount smoked, the greater the risk to your health’

That’s because although shisha tobacco tastes nicer than cigarettes, it contains all the same toxicants known to cause lung cancer and heart disease.

Risk: Smokers typically take in 12 puffs on a cigarette compared to up to 200 for hookah pipes

Among the risks are heart disease, respiratory problems, lung and mouth cancer and problems during pregnancy.

‘Smoke from tobacco contains a number of carcinogens which damage the DNA in cells,’ explains Professor West. ‘Just one damaged cell can divide and multiply uncontrollably and quite quickly develop into a large tumour. This is what causes lung cancer,’ explains Professor West

Enthusiasts claim that as the smoke passes through water most of the harmful chemicals are absorbed, however there is no evidence to support this.

‘If people think it’s safer than cigarettes, when it’s not, they need to be informed otherwise,’ said Professor West.

There are other risks. As the mouthpiece is passed around from person to person, this raises the risk of transmitting diseases such as tuberculosis and hepatitis.

The waterpipe has been used to smoke tobacco for centuries, primarily in Africa, Asia and the Middle East.

A rise in travel to countries such as Egypt and Turkey has seen the pipe transported to the UK.

The waterpipe is heavily sold as a souvenir, and is popular with tourists who like to take it back home as a gift or decorative object.

The waterpipe can also be purchased in various shops in London for as little as £20, with shisha tobacco costing £5-£10.

The tobacco is burned with charcoal in a bowl that sits above the vessel.

The smoke it produces passes through the water in the container and goes down the pipe so the user can sit by the vessel and an inhale it with their mouth. 

Middle Eastern inspired: A shisha user in Iraq, the pipe's traditional home

The smoke is cooled by the water and makes it feel less ‘harsh’ - and experts warn that as a result people inhale it more deeply into their lungs, which increases the risks even further.

Shisha tobacco is flavoured with fruit molasses such as apple and strawberry, so the residual redolent smoke is sweet.

Because it doesn’t taste like a cigarette, people often think of it as being safer or better. Many young people who don’t usually smoke are attracted to this seemingly harmless activity.

It’s also a cheaper option than buying a round at the pub. One shisha usually costs between £7-£20, and is often shared by two or three people throughout an evening.

In the borough of Westminster, London, the number of shisha cafes have gone up approximately by 68 per cent since 2007.

The smoking ban hasn’t stopped this trend from growing. Restaurant and café owners offering shisha have been able to flout the ban by creating garden terraces or patio seating outdoors.

But as the weather gets warmer, and shisha becomes more and more fashionable, experts are calling for better health warnings.

Professor West suggests: ‘Shisha cafes should have prominent notices saying, “Smoking shisha can kill” - just like you would on a cigarette packet.’

Having a cocaine binge at the weekend followed by three or four diazepam to get to sleep on Sunday messes up the brain's chemistry

 

Having a cocaine binge at the weekend followed by three or four diazepam to get to sleep on Sunday messes up the brain's chemistry, a consultant psychiatrist says.Many people who use drugs recreationally also take prescription medicines such as tranquillisers, sleeping pills and painkillers to deal with the effects of a weekend high and get back to work on Monday, new research reveals. An international survey carried out by the Guardian and Mixmag magazine found that about a third of the 7,700 people from the UK who revealed their illegal drug use also took prescription sleeping pills – 22.4% had taken benzodiazepines such as temazepam in the last year and 7.2% had taken the newer "z-drugs" – zopiclone and zolpidem. Those taking part in the survey were predominantly well-educated working people who felt they were in control of their lives. But Dr Richard Bowskill, consultant psychiatrist and medical director of the Priory rehabilitation centre in Brighton, said he saw the fallout years later from this pattern of illegal and prescription drug-taking among "highly functioning" clients. "People think they are being their own pharmacist. They have a major binge of cocaine over the weekend and three or four diazepam to get to sleep on Sunday night. They think they understand what it is doing to their body and they think they are in control, but their brain chemistry is getting messed up," he said. "They know the effects of the drug. It's often being used following cocaine to self-medicate for the downswing and it causes chaos. It's a really common scenario. Then they can't get to sleep on Monday and they take some more sleeping tablets." While recreational drug users think prescription medicines are safe, because GPs hand them out and the tablets are what they purport to be, benzodiazepines and opioid painkillers are highly addictive if taken regularly for any length of time. Anna, who had a high-pressured job requiring her to make frequent long-haul flights, was not a recreational drug taker but started taking zopiclone to help her sleep on the plane or when she arrived in a different time zone and needed to be fresh for work in the morning. "Your body gets accustomed to the drugs. I didn't really understand their addictive nature," she said. "They weren't having an effect so I was having to up the dosage." She ended up taking five tablets at a time, but they just made her more anxious, irritable and sleepless. "I lost a lot of friends." She talked of the societal "pressure to perform" and her regret that there was so little help. GPs did not want to know, she said. With the help of the Council for Information on Tranquillisers, Antidepressants and Painkillers (CITA), a support group, she had been switched to a different drug and was slowly cutting down. Against expectations, most people in the Guardian/Mixmag survey did not get their prescription drugs from the internet, but from their own GP or a friend who had been prescribed them. GPs were in a bind, said Dr Peter Swinyard, national chairman of the Family Doctor Association. When people arrived in the surgery complaining of pain or insomnia "we are predisposed to believe what people tell us", he said. "We always work from the premise that they are being honest with us." Nonetheless, a survey the association did last summer showed that 52% of GPs were worried about prescription drug abuse in their area. Eight out of 10 of the 197 GPs who responded to the survey said they were aware of prescribing to people who they thought were addicted. Half were aware of occasions when prescriptions had been sold on. "People tell us they lose their prescription or it got eaten by the dog. A lot of general practices have systems like a book at reception recording those who say they have lost their prescription," Swinyard said. But there are people who GPs would not characterise as liars or cheats. "There is the traditional little old lady who is taking her sleeping pill prescription and selling it down the pub. I'm sure there is a cohort of elderly people supplementing their pension by selling their prescription drugs," he said. Although the Guardian/Mixmag survey responders mostly said they used sleeping tablets for sleep and painkillers for pain, they had often tried them to get high – 57.8% in the case of the anti-hyperactivity drug Ritalin, nearly 40% in the case of the benzos and 28% who had taken opioid painkillers. In the US, prescription opioids have caused a huge problem since oxycodone – better known by its brand name OxyContin – was licensed for use outside cancer treatment in the mid-1990s. In 2008, 15,000 Americans died from overdosing on prescription opiates, according to the Centres for Disease Control (CDC), which is more than on heroin and cocaine combined. The opioid epidemic appears not to have hit the UK. "There has been a rise in oxycodone deaths, but it is pretty small," said James Bell, addiction consultant at the South London and Maudsley NHS trust. "I have been trying to look for evidence here and it is not a big problem." Demand was fuelled in the US by direct advertising to the public. In the UK this is not allowed and most people are registered with a single NHS GP so cannot shop around. The Guardian/Mixmag study, which was conducted by Global Drug Survey, shows that a quarter of responders had taken prescription opioid painkillers and 9% had taken other painkillers. More than three-quarters said they took them for pain relief, 24% said they took them to get to sleep and 18% said they took them for mood-changing purposes.

20-STRONG ‘dog squad’ is taking on disobedient dog owners in Marbella.

 

The pet owners are being targeted in a crack down on those breaking strict bylaws with 440 summonses being issued in just 30 days. The most common offence involved dogs not being kept on leads, while others included owners not clearing up after their animal and dogs not being muzzled. Fines ranged from 75 to 3,000 euros depending on the offence. The most serious breach of the law involved 24 summonses for owning potentially dangerous breeds that weren’t registered or did not have the necessary paperwork.

Regular drinking habit comes with age

 

PEOPLE over 45 are three times more likely to drink almost every day as those who are younger, according to new figures. Some 13 per cent of adults over 45 drink almost every day compared with 4 per cent of those under 45, Office for National Statistics’ data shows. And as people get older they tend to drink more – with over a fifth of men aged 65 and over drinking almost every day compared with just 3 per cent of men aged 16 to 24. Among women, 12 per cent of over-65s consume alcohol almost every day compared with just 1 per cent of 16 to 24-year-olds. However, the survey, of more than 13,000 adults in 2010, found younger people were more likely to binge drink.

LSD could treat alcoholism

 

The new study published in the Journal of Psychopharmacology found that LSD had a positive effect on alcohol misuse in each of the trials, with 59 per cent of patients who took the drug having improved at follow-up, compared with 38 per cent who took a placebo.  A single dose of LSD produces benefits which last between six and 12 months, and repeated doses along with modern treatments could ensure longer term results, the researchers said. The drug, which causes hallucinations that make users experience the world in a distorted way, is not physically addictive but some experte believe users can become dependant on its effects, for example from a need to distance themselves from reality. Pål-Ørjan Johansen, a Norwegian researcher and fellow of Harvard Medical School, who led the research, said: "Given the evidence for a beneficial effect of LSD on alcoholism, it is puzzling why this treatment approach has been largely overlooked." Dr David Nutt, former advisor on drugs to the government, said: "I think this study is very interesting and it is a shame the last of these studies were done in the 1960s. "I think these drugs might help people switch out of a mindset which is locked into addiction or depression and be a way of helping the brain switch back to where it should be, in a similar way that Alcoholics Anonymous programmes do."

The Next Frontier: Emotional Sobriety

 

"The Next Frontier: Emotional Sobriety" by Bill W I think that many oldsters who have put our AA "booze cure" to severe but successful tests still find they often lack emotional sobriety. Perhaps they will be the spearhead for the next major development in AA -- the development of much more real maturity and balance (which is to say, humility) in our relations with ourselves, with our fellows, and with God. Those adolescent urges that so many of us have for top approval, perfect security, and perfect romance -- urges quite appropriate to age seventeen -- prove to be an impossible way of life when we are at age forty-seven or fifty-seven. Since AA began, I've taken immense wallops in all these areas because of my failure to grow up, emotionally and spiritually. My God, how painful it is to keep demanding the impossible, and how very painful to discover finally, that all along we have had the cart before the horse! Then comes the final agony of seeing how awfully wrong we have been, but still finding ourselves unable to get off the emotional merry-go-round. How to translate a right mental conviction into a right emotional result, and so into easy, happy, and good living -- well, that's not only the neurotic's problem, it's the problem of life itself for all of us who have got to the point of real willingness to hew to right principles in all our affairs. Even then, as we hew away, peace and joy may still elude us. That's the place so many of us AA oldsters have come to. And it's a hell of a spot, literally. How shall our unconscious -- from which so many of our fears, compulsions and phony aspirations still stream -- be brought into line with what we actually believe, know and want! How to convince our dumb, raging and hidden "Mr. Hyde" becomes our main task. I've recently come to believe that this can be achieved. I believe so because I begin to see many benighted ones -- folks like you and me -- commencing to get results. Last autumn [several years back -- ed.] depression, having no really rational cause at all, almost took me to the cleaners. I began to be scared that I was in for another long chronic spell. Considering the grief I've had with depressions, it wasn't a bright prospect. I kept asking myself, "Why can't the Twelve Steps work to release depression?" By the hour, I stared at the St. Francis Prayer..."It's better to comfort than to be the comforted." Here was the formula, all right. But why didn't it work? Suddenly I realized what the matter was. My basic flaw had always been dependence -- almost absolute dependence - on people or circumstances to supply me with prestige, security, and the like. Failing to get these things according to my perfectionist dreams and specifications, I had fought for them. And when defeat came, so did my depression. There wasn't a chance of making the outgoing love of St. Francis a workable and joyous way of life until these fatal and almost absolute dependencies were cut away. Because I had over the years undergone a little spiritual development, the absolute quality of these frightful dependencies had never before been so starkly revealed. Reinforced by what Grace I could secure in prayer, I found I had to exert every ounce of will and action to cut off these faulty emotional dependencies upon people, upon AA, indeed, upon any set of circumstances whatsoever. Then only could I be free to love as Francis had. Emotional and instinctual satisfactions, I saw, were really the extra dividends of having love, offering love, and expressing a love appropriate to each relation of life. Plainly, I could not avail myself of God's love until I was able to offer it back to Him by loving others as He would have me. And I couldn't possibly do that so long as I was victimized by false dependencies. For my dependency meant demand -- a demand for the possession and control of the people and the conditions surrounding me. While those words "absolute demand" may look like a gimmick, they were the ones that helped to trigger my release into my present degree of stability and quietness of mind, qualities which I am now trying to consolidate by offering love to others regardless of the return to me. This seems to be the primary healing circuit: an outgoing love of God's creation and His people, by means of which we avail ourselves of His love for us. It is most clear that the current can't flow until our paralyzing dependencies are broken, and broken at depth. Only then can we possibly have a glimmer of what adult love really is. Spiritual calculus, you say? Not a bit of it. Watch any AA of six months working with a new Twelfth Step case. If the case says "To the devil with you," the Twelfth Stepper only smiles and turns to another case. He doesn't feel frustrated or rejected. If his next case responds, and in turn starts to give love and attention to other alcoholics, yet gives none back to him, the sponsor is happy about it anyway. He still doesn't feel rejected; instead he rejoices that his one-time prospect is sober and happy. And if his next following case turns out in later time to be his best friend (or romance) then the sponsor is most joyful. But he well knows that his happiness is a by-product -- the extra dividend of giving without any demand for a return. The really stabilizing thing for him was having and offering love to that strange drunk on his doorstep. That was Francis at work, powerful and practical, minus dependency and minus demand. In the first six months of my own sobriety, I worked hard with many alcoholics. Not a one responded. Yet this work kept me sober. It wasn't a question of those alcoholics giving me anything. My stability came out of trying to give, not out of demanding that I receive. Thus I think it can work out with emotional sobriety. If we examine every disturbance we have, great or small, we will find at the root of it some unhealthy dependency and its consequent unhealthy demand. Let us, with God's help, continually surrender these hobbling demands. Then we can be set free to live and love; we may then be able to Twelfth Step ourselves and others into emotional sobriety. Of course I haven't offered you a really new idea -- only a gimmick that has started to unhook several of my own "hexes" at depth. Nowadays my brain no longer races compulsively in either elation, grandiosity or depression. I have been given a quiet place in bright sunshine.

There is something beautiful about the essence of Step 12 in recovery

 There is something beautiful about the essence of Step 12 in recovery. It is about the "joy of living" and talks about how working the previous 11 steps now gives the person in recovery a new compass in which to live by: their spiritual beliefs and principles. One moves from the experience of being driven, to more consciousness about who they are, what they are doing, and why they are doing it. If taken directly from the program, the spiritual principles that correspond to each step, and that serve as a guide are as follows:

1. Honesty

2. Hope

3. Faith

4. Courage

5. Integrity

6. Willingness

7. Humility

8. Brotherly Love

9. Justice

10. Perseverance

11. Unity and Spirituality

12. Service and Gratitude

One of the gifts of living according to principles is that they can support us no matter what our history, our patterning, or our circumstances. They can orient us when objective realities have lost their command. Spiritual principles become the ultimate navigation system. You may have lost a job or a promotion, you might be in an argument with a friend or partner, but you can always turn to the principles for a soft place to land, to serve as a guide, and to put your current position in context.

Step 1 for example, "Admitted we were powerless over alcohol and that our lives had become unmanageable," starts with the poignant word, "admit." I've always appreciated the double meaning—it implies that we have to be honest but it additionally signals admittance, as in "admit one." So, right off the bat, the navigation system orients the person in recovery over a threshold that had been previously impassable. Denial begins to be shed and honesty becomes something to strive for.

Each of the principles are not only guides, but anchors, allowing for an experience of grounding in what can often be a challenging and chaotic ride. The spiritual path becomes the perfect container for the ups and downs we all experience. This means that sometimes, the direction we are given is to stay put. In times of loss, doubt, and uncertainty—courage allows us to lean in to such experiences, to face our fears and our demons when all we want to do is flee. Hope and faith provide additional support by reminding us that the dark places aren't static states and that we will survive the ride.

Integrity is something I talk about a great deal in Recovering Spirituality. To me, it is about embracing the fullness of the human condition, being intimately and integrally connected to the whole. It allows for greater compassion for ourselves and others because we understand that we will never overcome our humanness, which means that we are all perfectly flawed.

So, when life steers you in a direction that you never imagined going, or when you feel like you can't find the purpose or meaning in your life, see if you can find some grounding and direction in the principles. They are perfect when our lives are not—the ideal GPS (Global Positioning System). Maybe the task at hand is to orient yourself towards service to others, or perhaps the unity of the fellowship can provide some laughterright when you thought it was impossible to smile. No matter the challenge, there is a guiding principle that can shine some light on the darkened path. 

And if all is going well, don't let this discourage you from leaning in even further to the principle driven life. Pain may be the touchstone to spiritual growth, but the path is always available to us.

Ice cream as 'addictive as drugs' says new study

 

Researchers concluded that cravings for the dessert were similar to those experienced by drug addicts. They found that the brain was left wanting more while eating ice cream in the same way as a person who regularly uses cocaine. Their study, published online in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, appears to add weight to previous studies that people can be left feeling "addicted" to some foods. Dr Kyle Burger, from the Oregon Research Institute, in Eugene, about 110 miles south of Portland, said overeating "high-fat" or "high-sugar" foods appeared to change how the brain responded and in turn downgraded the mental "reward". "This down-regulation pattern is seen with frequent drug use, where the more an individual uses the drug, the less reward they receive from using it," said Dr Burger, the study's co-author.

Sheen's ex-wife charged with cocaine distribution

Charlie Sheen's ex-wife has been charged in Colorado with possession and distribution of cocaine stemming from her arrest in Aspen. Brooke Mueller was arrested by police on Dec. 3 after a woman reported being assaulted at a nightclub. Pitkin County chief deputy district attorney Arnold Mordkin said Friday that Mueller has also been charged with third-degree assault. Both drug charges are felonies. Possession with intent to distribute is the most serious and carries a penalty between four to 12 years. Conviction on the possession charge could result in up to 18 months behind bars. Mueller has vowed to fight the charges. Sheen and Mueller divorced last year after Sheen was arrested on suspicion of assaulting her in 2009. He pleaded guilty to misdemeanor assault and completed his probation in 2010.

Ex-drug prosecutor who handled Las Vegas celebrity cases gets 9 months in jail in crack case

 

A former top Las Vegas drug prosecutor who handled the high-profile Paris Hilton and Bruno Mars cocaine possession plea deals was sentenced Monday to nine months in county jail in a felony crack possession case. Former Deputy District Attorney David Schubert apologized to the court for what he called “a tragedy,” and then stood silently as a state court judge berated him as “a disgrace to his oath as a prosecutor and a lawyer.” 0 Comments Weigh InCorrections? Personal Post (Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department/Associated Press) - This undated police booking photo released by the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department showes former Deputy District Attorney David Schubert. Schubert a former top drug prosecutor who handled the Paris Hilton and Bruno Mars cocaine possession plea deals in Las Vegas has been sentenced to nine months in jail in his own felony cocaine possession case. Clark County District Judge Carolyn Ellsworth also said that the terms of a plea deal that could have gotten Schubert probation and a chance to clear his record were “offensive.” “I’m not going to give you the special treatment,” the judge said. Police arrested Schubert in March 2011 after they watched another man get out of Schubert’s car, go into an apartment complex and return. Officers found Schubert with a $40 rock of crack cocaine and confiscated an unregistered 9 mm handgun from his car. Schubert once handled Clark County’s highest-profile drug prosecutions as the district attorney office’s liaison to a federal drug task force. Hilton, 30, was arrested after police said 0.8 grams of cocaine fell out of her handbag following a Las Vegas Strip traffic stop in August 2010. The celebrity socialite received a year of probation on misdemeanor cocaine possession and obstruction charges. She successfully completed probation last fall. Mars, 26, was cleared in January of a felony cocaine possession charge after staying out of trouble for a year and meeting other conditions of a plea deal. The Grammy-winning pop star, whose real name is Peter Hernandez, acknowledged in court in February 2011 that he had 2.6 grams of cocaine after a performance at a Hard Rock Hotel & Casino nightclub. Schubert resigned from the prosecutor’s office after his arrest and underwent two months of inpatient substance abuse counseling. The 48-year-old has been undergoing outpatient alcohol and drug counseling since May, and has been practicing criminal defense law in some of the same courtrooms where he was a prosecutor for 10 years. Schubert pleaded guilty to a felony charge of unlawful possession of a controlled substance not for sale. The conviction could threaten his law career, depending on a review by the State Bar of Nevada and action by the state Supreme Court, bar official Phil Pattee said. The judge ordered Schubert to surrender March 12 to begin his jail sentence. Defense attorney William Terry said he may appeal the sentence or ask the judge to take the rare step of setting it aside.

Kathryn Fuller, who barely survived taking contaminated cocaine that killed her 'Amazing Race' producer boss, is likely to be arrested and prosecuted by police

Kathryn Fuller, who barely survived taking contaminated cocaine that killed her 'Amazing Race' producer boss, is likely to be arrested and prosecuted by police in Uganda when she is released from the hospital. 

Police spokesman Asuman Mugyenyi said Monday that Miss Fuller is being treated as a witness and suspect after she was found unconscious on the floor of her hotel February 18 alongside Jeff Rice, who died.

The announcement casts doubt on her ability to fully recover from paralysis that has left the right side of her body limp. Her father said she must return home to South African for medical treatment.

'Suspect and witness': Kathryn Fuller is subject to arrest in Uganda when she is released from the hospital, where she is recovering from taking contaminated cocaine

Bad drugs: Jeff Rice (left) has produced episodes of 'The Amazing Race' and other shows for American TV. He was working on a film in Uganda when he and Miss Fuller (right) took cocaine laced with fatal additives

'Ask people to pray that we come home,' Stuart Fuller, her father, told The Mercury newspaper.

Mr Fuller has been staying in the Ugandan capital of Kampala since Miss Fuller was discovered ill. 

Mr Rice, American TV and film producer, was found dead bleeding from his mouth and nose after taking the cocaine in hotel room he and Miss Fuller were sharing.

The pair were in Uganda working on a film Mr Rice was producing. 

 

 

 

Miss Fuller is currently recovering at a clinic in Kampala, but her father said she needs medical facilities and expertise only available in South Africa. 

'She can regain the use of her right side, but needs to come to South Africa for treatment and to recuperate,' Mr Fuller said.

However, Miss Fuller must likely face charges of consuming cocaine in Uganda.  

The case has alerted officials there to the possibility that Uganda is becoming a 'consumption destination,' a spot for adventurers and addicts to take illegal drugs with little risk of police detection.

Family man: Mr Rice is the father of two small daughter, aged 7 and 1. He and his wife worked out of Durban, South Africa

Mr Fuller said he was disappointed in his daughter for taking the drugs, but says she has already paid the price for her mistake. 

'I am cross, extremely cross. She’s an extremely bright woman who made a mistake,' he said.

'After this, she’ll have to prove herself. We’ve been through hell, but which father wouldn’t rush to support his daughter?'

Police arrested Moses Kalanzi, a 23-year-old 'special hire driver,' for supplying contaminated cocaine and heroin to Mr Rice. 

The driver is co-operating with police and could face charges for his role in the transaction, according to Ugandan newspaper the Daily Monitor.

Work: Rice helped producers on The Amazing Race, which follows teams as they travel around the world for a prize of $1 million. He worked on its latest season

 

'There was constant communication between the special hire driver and Rice on phone about the purchase of the drugs,' said a police spokesman. 'So we want to know the source of the drugs and how it is trafficked into the country.'

Father-of-two Mr Rice, 39, who worked on the series The Amazing Race, was discovered slumped over a table bleeding from his nose and mouth at the Serena hotel in the capital, Kampala. 

 

Family: Miss Fuller's father Stewart Fuller traveled Kampala in the hopes of taking his daughter back to south Africa for treatment

An official toxicology report confirmed the narcotic with a 'lethal additive' was in Mr Rice’s blood, dispelling initial suspicions he had been poisoned by attackers or that he had swallowed it to conceal the drugs from police.

Mugenyi, the Ugandan police spokesman, said: 'Rice… used cocaine which had lethal additives and that’s what killed him.'

Brad Nathanson, a private investigator and friend of Mr Rice, said he had been shown the toxicology report by police and there was no evidence of 'foul play' in Rice’s death.

He said: 'In fact it was as a result of buying bad drugs, cocaine to be specific … it was a bad concoction.' 

'I have read the toxicology report … it shows that there were small traces of cocaine in their blood and urine.' 

Mr Nathanson said he had traveled to Uganda as a favor to the Rice family following rumors he had been poisoned.

Miss Fuller was found unconscious at the same time Mr Rice’s body was discovered 

Mr Rice and Ms Fuller were believed to have voluntarily consumed the drugs, meaning she could be prosecuted under Uganda’s drug laws. Drug use can carry a jail term in Uganda.

As well as the Amazing Race, Mr Rice also worked on Animal Planet's Whale Wars and the South African version of The Biggest Loser.

He is survived by daughters, ages 2 and 7.