I was left to my own devices
Many days fell away with nothing to show
And the walls kept tumbling down
In the city that we love
Grey clouds roll over the hills
Bringing darkness from above
But if you close your eyes,
Does it almost feel like
Nothing changed at all?
And if you close your eyes,
Does it almost feel like
You’ve been here before?
How am I gonna be an optimist about this?
We were caught up and lost in all of our vices
In your pose as the dust settles around us
Oh where do we begin?
The rubble or our sins?
Oh where do we begin?
The rubble or our sins?
Music is the soundtrack to our lives. Songs become power anchors to memories of the best and worst of our lives. We believe music can have a healing effect. Every Monday, we share some our favorite positive tracks that help us through life.
Ozzy Osbourne has reverted back into bad, old drug habits.
That may not surprise anyone who watched the heavy-metal patriarch stumble, mumble and bumble for several seasons on MTV’s reality show “The Osbournes.”
But his recent struggles highlight the age-old debate about nature vs. nurture and offer instructive lessons about the fragility of sobriety.
First, the back story: The frontman of Black Sabbath has been the fodder of rumors for months and was reportedly estranged from his longtime wife, Sharon. Many speculated it was because the senior citizen once known as the Prince of Darkness was back on booze and drugs.
Those rumors were true, his son, Jack Osbourne, told the Toronto Sun.
“He’s sober now but he did have a relapse … He fell off the wagon, but he does what we’re taught to do and he got right back on. It’s a tough battle,” Jack said.
Jack knows from experience. He’s a recovering OxyContin addict. So is his sister, Kelly, who was taking 50 painkillers a day during the height of her addiction. Both are sticking by their pop.
“I love and respect that he’s honest enough to say, ‘Yes, I did this. It was my fault,’” Kelly told Cosmopolitan magazine in its July issue. “He’s a real man. Most people would hide, and he doesn’t.”
It’s easy to dismiss the Osbournes as the products of their environment. Ozzy Osbourne has been a rock star for 40 years and drugs are practically part and parcel with the industry. His children grew up on television, surrounded by wealth and excess, and both were addicts in their teens.
Most know families who struggle with substance abuse. Often, children seem to inherit their parents’ troubles. But scientists have debated for years whether that’s because they’re genetically predisposed to become addicts or if they learned how to become them by watching their role models.
Swedish doctors are the latest to weigh in on the debate in a study that examined nearly 40 years of medical records of nearly 150,000 spouses and children in Sweden. The study published in the “Archives of General Psychiatry”
It found that younger children — like Jack — of addicts are more prone to abuse drugs if their older siblings — like Kelly — do first. If the older child resists temptation, the younger one is more likely to do so as well.
The results perhaps aren’t shocking — after all, monkey see, monkey do — but they seem to add more grist to the “nurture” side of the debate.
Ozzy’s relapse also is a reminder that recovery is a long-term proposition. Studies vary, but an estimated 40-80 percent of abusers will relapse within a year after conventional rehab.
“He’s an addict; I’m an addict,” Kelly Osbourne said of her dad. “It’s going to be one of those things we battle for the rest of our lives.
There is an alternative.
Clarity Intensive Outpatient Opiate Treatment (I.O.O.T.) has a success rate five times higher than traditional detox. At Clarity’s state-of-the-art facility in affluent West Bloomfield, Michigan, heroin, OxyContin and other addictions are treated in four days, not months with safe, FDA-approved medications. It’s a confidential, fast and painless way to get clean — and stay clean through a specialized treatment plan that vastly improves success rates for long-term recovery.
Talk to a certified addiction specialist NOW. Call 877-327-5710. We can help you every step of the way, but the first step has to start with you. Get Clarity.
OxyContin can be a wonderful drug. No, really.
Despite its risks of abuse, the drug truly was a revolutionary breakthrough in pain management, providing slow relief to chronic patients in a 12-hour formula that broke a cycle of constantly popping pills to combat persistent pain.
Used properly, it’s a godsend for the truly suffering. Trouble is, it’s not always used properly — and even when it is, tolerances to it build up quickly, requiring more and more for the same benefit.
So researchers are optimistic about a University of Michigan research that may promise all the benefits of OxyContin, Vicodin and other opioid painkillers without the risks.
It works like this: Traditional opiates provide relief by binding to opioid receptors in the brain and spinal cord that regulate pain. Specifically, they target what’s known as the “orthosteric” or primary mu-opioid receptor. Doing so, though, not only dulls pain, but also causes side effects including constipation and increased tolerance.
In a June study in the “Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,” researchers say they’ve found new compounds that bind to a different site on the receptor that have none of the side effects.
The results, published this month in the “Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,” are preliminary. But researchers believe they could hold the promise of using lower doses of painkillers to provide the same relief.
“The newly-discovered compounds bind to the same receptor as morphine but appear to act at a separate novel site on the receptor and therefore can produce different effects,” study co-author Dr. John Traynor, a pharmacology professor at U-M Medical School, told Medical Daily.
“What’s particularly exciting is that these compounds could potentially work with the body’s own natural painkillers to manage pain.”
The research comes amid heightened awareness of the epidemic spawned by OxyContin, Vicodin and other drugs that were once considered harmless and non-addictive. They’re blamed for some 16,000 overdose deaths per year, more than cocaine and heroin combined.
The study is encouraging, but researchers could be years away from a breakthrough. Until then, hundreds of thousands of users are stuck living with an addiction they never sought to a drug they thought would only help.
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There is help now.
Clarity Intensive Outpatient Opiate Treatment (I.O.O.T.) offers a confidential, fast and painless way to get – and stay – clean. Clarity is the only detox program that combines patented, effective process with safe, FDA approved medications. Its success rate is five times higher than traditional detox. Heroin and other addictions are treated in four days by Clarity, not months.
Talk to a certified addiction specialist NOW. Call 877-327-5710. We can help you every step of the way, but the first step has to start with you. Get Clarity.
