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Heroin today is regarded as a deadly drug which is contributing to the growing number of opioid overdose deaths happening every day in Canada, the US, and other countries around the world. Most people understand that heroin is an illegal drug bought on the black market and primarily comes from either China or Mexico. However, few are aware of the curious history of heroin, like when it was an over the counter drug.

According to the Anxiety and Depression Association of America, anxiety disorders are the most common mental illness in the United States – approximately 40 million people aged 18 or older suffer from one. Anxiety attacks are an unfortunate yet common aspect of anxiety disorders – people often experience chest pain, chills or heat sensations, trembling, sweating, heart palpitations, fear of “going crazy”, nausea, fear of dying, and more. In 2016, Medical Today accurately defined anxiety as nervousness, fear, apprehension, and worry. When we feel extremely anxious or nervous about something, our body activates its stress response, which causes the body to secrete stress hormones into the body where they travel to targeted areas that bring about physiological, psychological, and emotional changes that enhance the body’s ability to perform “fight or flight”. Our stress response triggers energy to help us deal with a threat – and the degree of our stress response is directly related to the degree of our perceived threat. This is incredibly important for us to remember because this explains why we may “suddenly” experience anxiety attacks.   Anxiety can make us feel debilitated and helpless, and can significantly impact all aspects of life. If we experience an anxiety attack, it may feel like the world is falling apart. However, anxiety attacks alone are not deadly and there are several steps that we can take if we are experiencing an anxiety attack to help relieve the symptoms:

Fentanyl is a prescription opioid medication without any morphine. Some people have a natural inability to metabolize morphine. For such patients, typically those in need of treatment for chronic pain, pharmaceutical companies created fentanyl. Instead of being based in morphine, it is a synthetic opioid. In order for the drug to work, however, it has to be stronger than morphine. Fentanyl is reported to be up to 100 times stronger than morphine. In recent years, overseas manufacturers found the public files which contained information on the formulas for producing fentanyl and other synthetic opioid types like W-18, carfentanil, and U-47700. Once drug producers found a way to make fentanyl for cheap, they started selling it on the black market. Discovering the intense addiction and effect of the drug, they also started putting it into other illegal medications including heroin, cocaine, and pills meant to mimic benzodiazepines. Fentanyl is considered highly dangerous because of how strong the drug is. Most frighteningly, in its powder form, fentanyl is undetectable. Translucent and almost invisible, as well as tasteless, the presence of fentanyl in any drug is impossible to predict without laboratory testing. In March of 2017, the United Nations declared fentanyl as one of the most dangerous drugs in the world, according to The Daily Mail. Two of the ingredients used to create fentanyl were put on the UN controlled substances list. “Overtime, fentanyl can increase your risk for anoxic injury (damage due to significantly decreased oxygen in the body tissues) and multiple organ system damage,” the article writes. “It can also initiate or worsen pre-existing mental health conditions, including depression and/or frequently changing moods.” Fentanyl can also cause an addiction, which some have described like playing russian roulette using a ticking time bomb on the wheel. Overdose on fentanyl is possible at any moment, whether or not a tolerance has developed. Abuse of fentanyl happens through intravenous use, pill form, and through the use of medicated patches.

Toxic people are of a wide variety – some are just fleeting interactions while others are relationships, whether intimate or not, that we have held on for a little too long. Toxic relationships can lead us into a depth of despair – clinging on for more, even when more isn’t available. This holding on causes us to sink rather than swim, and we deserve more thriving connections in our lives. It can become so easy to give all our energy to others, but that leaves us feeling depleted both mentally and physically. Toxic people, whether they act in overt cruelty, passive aggressiveness, or out of sheer pleasure – never want to take responsibility for their actions. They either dismiss, deny, or place blame on others and refuse to admit they have done anything wrong. For those of us who are willing to admit when we’re wrong, it can be hard getting blamed by those we care about and we can accidentally take on that blame – a weight that does not need to be carried. Peg Streep, author and co-author of 11 books and writer for Psychology Today, provides an effective strategy for stepping out from underneath the toxic people in our lives:

Individual therapy sessions are an important part of the treatment process for substance use disorders and co-occurring mental health disorders. Working with an individual therapist helps a treatment team understand where a client is in their treatment process. Each session helps a therapist unpeel the ubiquitous onion of their client as they discover more layers of underlying issues. With each discovery, a therapist can better report to the treatment team what needs to be worked on. As a result, each modality of healing and treatment will be specifically catered to helping the client work through what they are currently processing. How does this come to be? For starters, a conversation. Therapists can employ different therapy techniques including cognitive behavioral therapy and dialectical behavioral therapy. Motivational interviewing, meta therapy, narrative therapy, and many other modalities can be used as well. Typically, specific therapy types are reserved for group therapy sessions where all clients can learn how to apply the tools of the therapy type to their everyday lives in recovery. Individual therapy sessions are for talking and discovering. A therapist might ask to hear about a client’s past, more about their addiction, or how they are doing in treatment. Withdrawing from drugs and alcohol, being on new medications, and a change in environment can also cause dreams. During treatment, dreams can be especially useful in helping a therapist identify what is coming up for their client, even though their client might not be able to identify it themselves. Generally, individual therapy during treatment is for helping clients begin to process their emotions and seek the source of their drinking and using or their co-occurring mental health disorders. More often than not, substance abuse and even conditions like depression or anxiety happen in reaction to a significant life event. Therapy helps the client work through the layers covering up their sources of suffering to find a way to heal.

If you’ve seen the YouTube star Logan Paul’s horrific video from Aokigahara, a wooded area in Japan also known as the “Japanese Suicide Forest”, you saw the aftermath of a life lost. The disturbing footage left many distraught, traumatized, saddened and upset – understandably, considering the video footage should not have been filmed in the first place. Paul insensitively filmed parts of the victim’s body, shouted insensitive comments, and ultimately proceeded to publish all of the disturbing content. We can’t take back the images seen, but we can bring to light an important conversation of how suicide should be discussed, how we can best honor those that have become victims to suicide, and how we can prevent our loved ones, our communities, and our world from going through this. First, we must focus on the language that we use surrounding the topic. Much of the words used further perpetuate the stigma that suicide is a crime. Instead of saying “committed suicide”, “successful suicide”, “completed suicide”, “failed attempt at suicide”, or “unsuccessful suicide”, we must say “died by suicide”, “ended his/her life”, “took his/her life”, or “attempted to end his/her life”. When discussing suicide, it’s more important that we focus on the life lived rather than how the person took their life. By focusing on the life they lived, we place the focus in a more positive place that recognizes the contribution they made while they were alive. This brings respect and honor to the person. Second, we must discuss this topic directly with those whom display symptoms of suicidal thoughts. If there is someone you are concerned about, make sure that you have suicide resources available, such as the National Suicide Prevention Hotline number, 1-800-273-8255. Instead of asking the person a question that will elicit a “no” answer, such as “You’re not thinking about killing yourself, are you?” ask the person, “Are you thinking about ending your life?” This type of question is direct and will inform your loved one that you are open to talking about this with them without judgment. Lastly, we must recognize the symptoms that could lead to suicide. Warning signs of suicide include feelings of hopelessness and despair, anxiety, agitation, sleeplessness, mood swings, feeling as though there is no reason to live, rage or anger, engaging in risky activities, increasing substance abuse, withdrawing from friends/family, and more. Immediate attention is needed if a person is thinking about or seeking ways to hurt/take their life, talking about death, dying, or suicide, and taking part in destructive behavior whether it’s through substance abuse, weapons, etc.

Depression affects a lot of us – 350 million of us, to be exact. The symptoms of depression can leave us feeling hopeless, lonely, empty, and fatigued, to name a few. During those times where we feel depressed, it’s incredibly important to take steps towards easing that depression so that we can feel more calm, relaxed, and content. Thankfully, there are several activities that one can do to help alleviate the symptoms of depression:

Cocaine is highly mentally and physically addictive, and crack cocaine is an especially menacing form of cocaine. Smoking crack brings on an intense feeling of exhilaration because it causes the release of excess dopamine that is picked up by neurotransmitters. The high becomes so desirable to the pleasure centers, it is believed the brain begins rewiring itself even after the very first hit. Someone using crack will typically have an elevated heart rate, dilated pupils, dry mouth, rapid breathing and tense muscles. They may sweat a lot. Someone experiencing crack addiction will be hyperactive and overconfident, talking a lot and not sleeping. The effects of crack are not as long lasting as with powder cocaine, and therefore the need for another hit, and then another, will mean the user is often disappearing, going off to get high. The intensity of the addiction will make the person uncharacteristically irresponsible, and sometimes paranoid or aggressive. Little bags with off-white rocks or residue may be found in places the crack addict frequents. There may be crack pipes of metal or glass found around. Crack addiction may lead to burns on fingertips from holding onto the pipe as it heats up, and smoking from a hot pipe can lead to cracked or blistered lips. Work performance suffers from the restlessness of the crack addict, and because work tasks cannot compete with the allure of the high. Driving under the influence of crack is very dangerous as crack addiction may make a person feel invincible, or they may experience paranoia and hallucinations. A crack user may think there are bugs crawling on or under their skin. The contents in crack are not always the same, which adds to the danger for users. Stroke, seizures, heart failure and severe breathing problems can result from crack use. Funding the extreme pull of crack addiction can lead some to theft or prostitution. Over the long term crack addiction will typically lead to depression. Damage to the body’s vital organs such as the liver, kidney and heart lead to signs of premature aging, and possibly a compromised immune system. Crack addiction is a dramatic example of life out of balance. The elation and agitation the drug causes are far outside of the more normal range of human ups and downs. While a body and a life are severely impacted by crack addiction, compassionate treatment is available and recovery is possible.

Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is a tool most often used to help people change their negative thought patterns and develop newer, healthier mind scripts. CBT has been proven to be an extremely effective way of training emotion regulation skills. A 2013 meta-analysis conducted by researchers from Boston University found that CBT has been most used to treat substance use disorder, schizophrenia and other psychiatric disorders, depression and dysthymia, bipolar disorder, anxiety disorders, somatoform disorders, eating disorders, insomnia, personality disorders, anger and aggression, criminal behaviors, general stress, and so much more.  If you are currently in therapy and are learning about cognitive behavioral therapy, or you are researching this on your own, there are some necessities of CBT that can be challenging but are worth it, and you need to be prepared for these to be most successful:

Gambling addiction is listed in the Diagnostic And Statistical Manual Of Mental Disorders. When gambling becomes a problem wellness is on the line mentally, physically, and spiritually. Gambling addiction is often co-occurring with alcoholism and drug addiction.

New Year’s is a time to reflect on the past year and have hope for the future. It’s a time to celebrate with friends and loved ones, converse with those you haven’t seen in awhile, and have fun. Many people have been choosing to throw “sober parties”, an event where the host can control the temptations of alcohol to help their own and others’ recovery, or to create a welcoming environment for a sober loved one. Hosting a sober party is a fantastic way to connect with others in a safe and clean environment. The following are steps you can take to host your own sober party for NYE:

Perhaps you have just received a call from your loved one, and they are scared. They may have taken many drugs or aren’t feeling too well after consuming a lot of alcohol. Substance abuse can bring about a lot of unpleasant side effects such as mood swings, anxiety, depression, irritability, euphoria, hyperactivity, blackouts, and more. There is a fine line between drug misuse and drug overdose, and knowing when to call for help is important. Understanding the signs of an overdose could save you or your loved one’s life. Symptoms of overdose include: