Hundreds of young doctors training in San Antonio will learn new ways to spot substance abuse problems and get help for their patients quickly.

That's the purpose of a new federal grant for The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio.

UTHSC pediatric resident Tony Uranga is one of the next generations of doctors being trained at San Antonio's UT Health Science Center. Besides learning how to diagnose disease, he'll be getting special training on how to screen families for substance abuse.

"It's not something that they readily teach you in medical school," he said. "It's a very sensitive topic, so it's hard to broach, so there's definitely an art in the way you bring it up."

It's difficult to talk to people about questionable personal habits — activities like binge drinking, illegal drug use, prescription drug abuse, even legal activities like smoking.

Yet Dr. Janet Williams, a UTHSC pediatrics professor, who is training new physicians, says these students need more guidance in how to tackle these tough topics.

"We want to screen people through special interview techniques and briefly intervene on their lives, get them to understand this is a problem," she said.

The training program will start with pediatric and family medicine residents, and expand to included departments like OB-GYN, psychiatry and trauma. Over the next five years, the UTHSC hopes to arm budding doctors with ways to spot abusive behaviors, inspire their patients to change and get them the help they need.

"We want them to be much more aware of what are the resources out there? What can people do? How can people stop smoking? Cut down on their drinking? Stop drinking? Stop using drugs at all?" Dr. Williams said.

The UTHSC will spend almost $2 million in federal grant money over the next five years for this substance abuse training. The school is one of only 11 sites in the country to be awarded this grant money.

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The Admissions Office viewbook contains many images of Yale: students studying in the Bass Library, lounging on Old Campus and performing with a cappella and dance groups. Yet absent from the ivy-strewn pictorials are images of grungy off-campus parties and the Saturday night lines outside Toad’s Place. There are no images of students partying, drinking or — heaven forbid — doing drugs.

But just as alcohol-fueled pregames and crowded frat parties flavor some students’ Yale experience, so too do alternative and mainstream drugs shape the experience of some subgroups of Yale’s undergraduate population — though no more or no less than at the average university, a News survey has found.

In a poll sent last week to 600 undergraduates, 35 percent of the 300 respondents said they have used drugs while at Yale. That puts the Yale student body’s drug use almost exactly on par with the average at other schools: 36.6 percent of undergraduates nationwide said in 2005 that they had used an illicit drug at least once in the previous year, according to a study by the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University.

Meanwhile, 47 percent of respondents to the News poll indicated that, even if they themselves do not use drugs, they know more than 10 Elis who do.

In the wake of the University’s decision in September to create Yale’s first-ever director of alcohol and substance abuse initiatives, a new Dean’s Office post the University is trying to fill by next fall, it seems an apt time to explore an activity that remains largely hidden at Yale: drug use. In extensive interviews with seven Yale students concerning their experiences using drugs at Yale, it became clear that hard drug use tends to be concentrated in certain social groups on campus — which themselves cannot be stereotyped or categorized, but rather are defined by their reasons for using drugs.

Alcohol vs. Drugs

One point of agreement among students interviewed — whose names have been changed to protect their privacy — was the clear rejection of the social perception that drugs are morally wrong.

Sam, a senior in Jonathan Edwards College, said that although he feels Yale and society at large assign a moral judgement to marijuana use because it is illegal, he himself does not subscribe to the doctrine that just because something is illegal, it is therefore morally wrong.

In a similar vein, Sue, a sophomore in Jonathan Edwards College, said she is constantly surprised when people who look down on harder drugs take prescription medication.

“There is this culture of, ‘Oh, you do Adderall, you’re normal. Oh, you do acid, that’s scary!’ ” she said, “when they are both amphetamines.”

John, a senior in Jonathan Edwards College, added that drug use is not “sanctioned” at Yale the same way that alcohol use is and that for that reason, students at Yale abuse alcohol to a much greater extent than they do illicit drugs. (Indeed, last year, the University twice took disciplinary action against students for drug law violations, compared to 74 times for liquor violations, according to U.S. Department of Education records.)

James Perlotto ’78, chief of student medicine for Yale University Health Services, and Marie Baker, a YUHS clinical psychologist and substance abuse counselor, said in interviews that alcohol is by far the most common drug used and abused by students here. Of the respondents to the News poll, 3 in 4 students said they have imbibed alcohol at least once while at Yale.

The seven students interviewed said they found the perceived double standard especially ironic, given the significant harm that alcohol can do.

John, in particular, said that a sort of “why bother” attitude persists on campus due to the school’s pseudo sanctioning of alcohol use and the ease with which alcohol can be obtained.

“But alcohol can really mess you up,” he said.

Underground ‘Social’ Network

One of the reasons that drugs may be less prevalent than alcohol on campus is that they are simply harder to find, John said. While alcohol is relatively easy to acquire, when it comes to drugs, he said, one must “know the right people.”

Indeed, the seven students interviewed said their social circles were integral to the development and support of their drug use.

Those supply chains and activities, in turn, reinforce existing social groups since they also function as a shared interest, many of the students said.

However, despite the fact that New Haven is an urban area, all the students interviewed said that the drug market in the surrounding area leaves much to be desired. Sue, who said she experimented with drugs while living in New Haven over the summer, found that the minute students arrived on campus for the fall semester, demand for drugs went up — and so did prices.

As a result of the high prices, she said, the only Yale students who buy drugs from townies during the school year are “rich frat boys.”

Recently, a sophomore in Morse College who is also a Yale fraternity brother familiar with the use of drugs in Greek life said that, while last year cocaine use in his frat had been confined to a small group of seniors, this year, a number of brothers from several fraternities began using cocaine recreationally on the weekends as part of their Toad’s pregame.

Even several freshmen new to Yale’s social scene said in interviews that they understand the need for social connections to obtain drugs.

One freshman in Ezra Stiles College, Fred, who described himself as “overly social,” said that because his acquaintances span class years and residential colleges, he has access to a wide array of possible suppliers.

Fred also said he is not surprised that other Yalies use drugs.

“You have a lot of smart people in one place,” he said of Yale. “Of course there are drugs.”

But even those in the know are not always able acquire what they want.

Recently, John said, “everyone is looking for LSD.” But, he said, nobody seems to know anyone who has any.

Enhancing Mental Performance

Though the students interviewed had similar ways of acquiring drugs, their reasons for using differed. For John, experimenting with drugs such as ecstasy and acid allowed him to think about advanced mathematical theories from an entirely different perspective, as he explained it. He said he was profoundly affected when a professor he once had at Yale attributed his mathematical brilliance to the fact that he did “nothing but acid” in the ’60s.

John suggested a correlation between being a successful mathematician and using drugs. For instance, he pointed out, the late Paul Erdos, an eccentric and renowned Hungarian mathematician, regularly used amphetamines.

As the story goes, Erdos’ addiction got to such a state that his friend famously bet him that he could not stop taking amphetamines for a month. After Erdos won the bet, he said that because he had not used drugs for a month, his research had stagnated.

“Before, when I looked at a piece of blank paper my mind was filled with ideas,” Erdos said of his mental state on amphetamines. “Now, I get up in the morning and stare at a blank piece of paper. I’d have no ideas, just like an ordinary person.”

Sam similarly finds that it is the mind-expanding properties of marijuana that draw him to the drug. Indeed, it has been while high that Sam said he has gotten some of his best senior thesis ideas and that it has been while high that he has done his most creative graphic design work.

He added that he has found marijuana allows him to think in different ways and be conscious of things he did not think he would be otherwise.

‘Drug Nerds’

On the other hand, Sue said it is a combination of understanding and experiencing the biological effects of experimental drugs that most interests her.

“There are druggies and there are drug nerds,” Sue said. “Drug nerds know the science behind them, know the way it affects the individual’s biochemistry. They are smarter about their use.”

Sue described her first night doing drugs — a summer night in New Haven — as a regular evening. She said that she understood what she was about to do very clearly before she took the plunge.

Within her circle of friends, Sue said that drugs are always done under safe circumstances. For instance, they consider frat parties and Toad’s Place as not fit for their kind of use. Sue further explained that she believes there is a sort of implicit “druggie code” at Yale that nobody she knows breaks: Nobody gives anyone anything without first telling him or her what it is and educating him or her about it.

In particular, Sue said that the first time anyone ever does a drug, he or she should have complete information about its effects. First-time users, she added, should never take a high dose, and they should be with people who have done the drug before.

Fred, who also refers to himself as a drug nerd, said that the appeal of acid is its ability to show a person life from a completely different perspective. Having one’s reality shattered in this way, he said, is “consciousness-expanding.”

“It’s like seeing the world from the top of a mountain, except, instead of walking it, you took the ski lift,” he said, quoting Aldous Huxley, informally considered to be the “spiritual father” of the hippie movement.

‘Don’t ask, Don’t Tell’

Indeed, despite their belief that drug use is looked down on by society at large, students interviewed who do not use drugs said they believe Yale to have a fairly permissive campus — one that doesn’t pass judgment on drug users.

“There’s not a lot of space for people to be judgmental about more serious drugs,” community health educator Elizabeth Deutsch ’11 said, adding that she does not personally know many people who use drugs other than alcohol and marijuana. “I feel there just isn’t that much [abuse] to be judgmental about.”

Should a student run into trouble or feel that he or she is approaching that point, campus resources abound, Perlotto said, adding that there are many options available at YUHS for students who are concerned about substance abuse.

“They will find that we are very non-judgmental, very understanding and very committed to helping students,” he said.

Walden Peer Counseling, a student-run group, offers a nightly support line for students dealing with personal issues, including substance use issues. Students dealing with substance use issues can also attend the Narcotics Anonymous meetings held at St. Paul’s Church on Chapel Street, Baker said.

But these seven students said they feel they are in control. They call it substance use, not abuse. They said they have come to fit their drug use into their lives at Yale, though what role drugs will play, if any, in their post graduate lives remains unclear.

Sam said that although he has heard from friends who went to work in banking or consulting of bosses or supervisors using drugs with subordinates, he cannot fully imagine what that would be like.

“When do you stop?” he asked. “When you have kids, a family? Do you? I don’t know.”
Click here for more information on top rated drug rehab programs

Edmonton — No matter how much Lana Marie Christophersen tried to get clean, the world of drugs kept dragging her back down.

The 26-year-old found herself in a vicious cycle that may have eventually took her life, a friend suggested.

“She had been involved with drugs before, and it was an uphill battle. She’d kick it, then she was back on it. Then when she got pregnant, she kicked it again. It was a hard struggle,” said her friend Sherry Reinhart.

Last Saturday, the Beaumont-raised Christophersen was killed in an East Vancouver apartment explosion. She had just moved in after answering an ad from her new roommate, a 21-year-old man who is now in critical condition after the explosion.

Vancouver police on Wednesday charged Jamie Cliff, 34, with second-degree murder and attempted murder. Cliff was Christophersen’s ex-boyfriend.

Her friends are trying to piece together what happened.

Reinhart, who has known Christophersen for the past nine years, says her friend was a wonderful person who would bend over backwards for you.

“She was really strong and felt she could do everything on her own. Even though people would give her a helping hand, she would say, ‘No. I can handle it,’” she said.

Another friend who didn’t want to be identified said she was a sweet girl and a good mom to her son, Chase, who is now with his grandparents.

Reinhart said Christophersen moved to Vancouver a year ago so her son could grow up near his grandparents, and when Reinhart went out west to visit her last year, Christophersen was clean. But in the past few months she started getting involved with a guy and became difficult to get ahold of.

Reinhart doesn’t believe Christophersen was doing drugs again but got caught up in that world.

“If your boyfriend is in a gang, even if you’re not in a gang you get dragged down with it,” she said.

A Facebook site has been set up in memory of Christophersen. One post by Shannon Wilck said she was a beautiful, free-spirited soul who had an impact on so many lives.

 

'He has a disease, just like cancer': David Hasselhoff's wife reveals how his wild drinking wrecked their marriage

By Caroline Graham
Last updated at 9:06 AM on 05th October 2008

Slumped in front of an empty minibar in an anonymous hotel room, David Hasselhoff somehow managed to concentrate for long enough to phone home.

‘I’m drunk and I think I’m dying,’ the veteran star of Baywatch and Knight Rider slurred to his wife. Then the line went dead.

It was June 2002 and for Pamela Bach Hasselhoff the call came like a hammer blow. ‘It was only two days after I had dropped him off at the Betty Ford Centre in Palm Springs,’ she says with tears welling in her eyes. ‘After years of drinking, he’d finally admitted he had a problem and had agreed to go into rehab. It had all been such a huge relief. But then I got that phone call.

‘I called the clinic and discovered he had checked out. I knew I had to go to him. I chartered a private plane and flew from LA to Palm Springs.’ Pamela learned that David had been taken to a local hospital, but didn’t know which one. ‘I got into a taxi and went to every hospital until I found him.’

She discovered later that he’d drunk the entire contents of the minibar and had been found by a maid, semi-conscious and half-naked on the floor. The police had been called. This sordid episode, like so many before, was covered up by Pamela and a team of minders. Hasselhoff was, after all, America’s most bankable TV star at the time.

‘Had news leaked out, it would have destroyed the image he created for himself and the image I created for my friends and family,’ says Pamela. ‘We were both living a lie but the biggest tragedy was that David loved the bottle more than me.’

To his fans – and he has thousands of them in Britain – David Hasselhoff is simply ‘The Hoff’, a  perma-tanned hunk of Hollywood beefcake.

He shot to fame in the Eighties as crime-fighter Michael Knight in the cult series Knight Rider, starring alongside a talking super-powered car called Kitt. But he is most famous, of course, for his starring role in Baywatch – the all-action series that followed the adventures of the muscled-up boys and gorgeous girls who made up a team of LA beach lifeguards.

With ratings boosted by swimsuit-clad co-stars such as Pamela Anderson, the series became, according to Guinness World Records, the most watched in TV history with 1.1billion viewers in 140 countries.

Even when the starring acting roles dried up ten years ago, Hasselhoff managed to reinvent himself thanks to his self-deprecating charm and an ability, rare among Hollywood stars, to appear not to take himself too seriously.

To the woman who recently divorced him, however, Hasselhoff’s image as a self-aware, post-modern celebrity is a sham. ‘David is a falling-down drunk and I covered up for him for years,’ Pamela says. ‘Alcoholism destroys you whether you are a regular Joe or the biggest star on the planet.’

Today, Pamela sits in the sun-dappled garden of the former family home and nervously plays with a packet of Marlboro Lights as five dogs and two cats roam around her. The £3.2million white-painted mansion in the well-heeled LA suburb of Encino is now on the market since the decree absolute came through last month.

She appears to be exhausted after Hasselhoff v Hasselhoff became one of the nastiest divorce battles Hollywood has seen in recent years. Ever since the relationship began to disintegrate there have been lurid claims and counter-claims of drug abuse, drunkenness and physical violence.

There were leaked court papers in which Hasselhoff countered his wife’s sworn deposition that he broke her nose during a drunken row with the words: ‘The only person who broke my wife’s nose was her plastic surgeon.’

Then, mysteriously, video footage appeared on the internet showing a massively intoxicated Hasselhoff trying to eat a hamburger while one of his teenage daughters pleads with him to stop drinking.

Pamela, meanwhile, was vilified as a gold-digger with designs on Hasselhoff’s £25million fortune. It is an accusation she angrily rejects, pointing out that she was happily married to Hasselhoff for many years, is mother to his two daughters, Taylor Ann, 18, and Hayley, 16, and gave up her career to run the family home while he was the main breadwinner.

Blonde, trim and strikingly attractive, Pamela, 44, says: ‘I wanted to be the perfect wife and the perfect mother. I ran a house with five staff, had dinner parties, dressed beautifully, was a member of the PTA, ran dance classes and did all the after-school things. When David didn’t feel well I would stroke his hair and make him hot tea with honey and tell him everything would be OK.’

She is immaculate in skin-tight black jeans, a revealing lime green blouse and heels. Her make-up, carefully applied for our photoshoot, is perfect. As our  four-hour conversation progresses, it becomes clear that she still has deep feelings for Hasselhoff. Indeed, it was her devotion to him that made his career and – some would say – his covert alcoholism possible.

At first, says Pamela, he covered up his problem drinking, caused, she believes, by deep-rooted insecurity, anger and unhappiness. His father, Joe, now in teetotal retirement in California, had been an alcoholic.

‘I never really noticed when we were dating,’ she says. ‘But when we married, it was clear David was drinking a lot. He couldn’t hide it. He is fundamentally unhappy even though there’s no real reason for his unhappiness.

‘David wanted to come home from work, have dinner with the children and then relax. I looked after him. He was my baby. I knew he liked a drink at night, so I would set my alarm to get him up in the morning and ready for work by the time the car from the studio arrived.

‘Did I know he had a drinking problem? Yes, probably. But I protected him and our children because that was my job. He provided for us and I saw my role as making his life as easy as possible. I know he loved me.’

Despite his popularity, Hasselhoff had few friends and often drank alone.

‘The drinking got worse,’ says Pamela. ‘He went from social drinking to getting sick. With an alcoholic, you never know where that first glass of wine will end up. Sometimes they can drink normally and stop after dinner. Other days, one glass goes on to a three-day binge.

‘I would cover for him with the Baywatch producers if he was late getting to work. Sometimes I would get up in the middle of the night and find him passed out on the sofa. Other times he would say cruel things and we’d start rowing and the girls would hear.

‘Everybody thought he was the golden star in swimming trunks on the beach with Pamela Anderson but the drink was taking over his life. To me, he was the man who fell over on the bedroom floor.’

At this point she catches herself. ‘I don’t want this to be an attack on David. I love him. I always have. He’s a good man. He’s tried desperately hard to get sober. But he’s an alcoholic. He has a disease, just like cancer. And just like cancer, it ate away at our family from the inside.’

She refuses to elaborate on stories about his violent outbursts except to acknowledge they happened. ‘I can’t tell you the truth about the nose-breaking incident. It would destroy David and I can’t do that.

‘What I can say is that I went from having two children to having three. I looked after David and he liked being looked after. He could come home, turn on the television and be himself. And he could drink.’

She says their life together was based around the home, and the Hasselhoff family house is surprisingly homely – though there are now few signs that The Hoff ever lived there. Pamela points out a prized antique music box she and David bought during a trip to Germany and a magnificent gilt mirror above the fireplace that was bought in Louisiana. There is a cream baby grand piano in the living room where he used to serenade her with love songs.

The detritus of the divorce – the final financial settlement is yet to be thrashed out – is, however, clear to see. The guest room is filled with dozens of boxes of paperwork and in Pamela’s bedroom, boxes full of legal files are stacked up in one corner opposite the four-poster marital bed.

It is clear that it’s the gold-digger jibe that most hurts her. Given her humble background, it is, perhaps, easy to see why. She was born in small-town Tulsa, Oklahoma, to a mother who married and divorced four times. She was a 17-year-old high school cheerleader with a head stuffed full of Hollywood dreams when she dropped out of school and drove to Los Angeles with a girlfriend in 1982.

She was taken on by the Ford Model Agency but her height – she is 5ft 5in – and pretty, girl-next-door looks meant she was directed towards catalogues and knitting patterns rather than the catwalks of Paris and Milan.

Pamela says: ‘I was the girl on the paper wrap on the outside of a ball of wool. I was very good at it.’ She began landing bit-parts in television shows including Knight Rider, Cheers and Baywatch.

‘The first time I met David was on Knight Rider in 1986,’ she says. ‘I got a message from the assistant director saying, “David would like to see you in his trailer.” I declined because he was still married (to actress Caroline Hickland, who had also appeared in Knight Rider). I don’t think many girls in my position would have turned him down. He was a big star.’

They met again on the set of Baywatch in 1989, the year Hasselhoff and Hickland divorced. Pamela says: ‘I was an extra. We went out for dinner and he invited me to Hawaii. I knew what that meant. I told him he’d have to woo me if he wanted me.’

By Hollywood standards, Hasselhoff obliged. The pair dated for nine months before Pamela fell pregnant. She laughs nervously: ‘We were in love, we truly were. But, of course, me being pregnant brought the wedding forward a bit.’

At first, married life was ‘blissful’, Pamela says. ‘We were never into the whole Hollywood scene. David had been around and I’d had my fair share of boyfriends so neither of us felt like we were missing out.’ They bought the big home in Encino, had their two daughters and as Hasselhoff’s career took off, she says the marriage was happy, despite his chronic drinking.

She was able to contain his drinking until a terrible motorcycle crash in February 2003 fundamentally altered the balance in their relationship.

The couple were returning home from lunch in Santa Monica when Hasselhoff’s custom-built Harley-Davidson motorcycle veered off the road. Pamela was a pillion passenger. ‘I can’t tell you if he’d been drinking. I remember nothing except waking up in hospital,’ she says. Hasselhoff escaped with minor injuries. Pamela was thrown from the bike and seriously injured. She was in hospital for two months, needed 17 operations and had two steel rods and 27 screws in her left leg.

‘When I got out of hospital, I was on prescribed painkillers. I spent a year in bed. Later, David’s lawyers used this in the divorce to say I became a drug addict. I had been the glue that held the family together and suddenly Mummy was sick. David tried to be supportive but he got bored of me being ill. He needed to be looked after but I wasn’t capable. We started drifting apart. He would either go out or sit downstairs and drink.’

She doesn’t believe he was unfaithful. ‘I know he got constant offers. But I also know David. He always chooses the booze. Even if he wanted to, he couldn’t.’

Bizarrely, Pamela claims their split happened ‘by accident’ after she and Hasselhoff went on what was supposed to be a romantic break to Cabo San Lucas in Mexico in December 2005 to celebrate her recovery. ‘David went on a four-day bender. I wanted him to love me but instead he drank and told me he hated me. I went home early.’

At this, Pamela breaks down weeping. She claims she asked Hasselhoff’s business adviser for the name of a lawyer so she could discuss ‘her options’. When she arrived at the lawyer’s office, her cellphone was ringing. ‘It was David. He said, “I know you’re at the lawyer’s. I am going to file for divorce.” Then the nightmare began.’

Of course, there are two sides to every story and Hasselhoff’s publicists issue elaborate explanations for his sometimes ‘eccentric’ behaviour – on one occasion he was refused permission to board a plane at Heathrow and on another managed to cut himself on a chandelier in a bathroom of a London hotel.

Pamela shrugs her shoulders and says: ‘People are still covering up for him. I don’t believe this divorce would have got nasty if David hadn’t been so vulnerable. He’s angry at me for going to the lawyer but I also think a lot of people have taken advantage of him because he’s a drinker.

‘At the end of our marriage he kept telling me how unhappy he was. But if he’s disappointed by life, so am I. The man I fell in love with disappeared in the bottom of a glass.

‘He would drink and I couldn’t reason with him. He passed out, he would urinate on himself. He’d become violent. He would become verbally aggressive. When we would get photographed for People magazine looking shiny and lovely, David would be drunk. When the photographer left, the real David would emerge. It was like Jekyll and Hyde.

‘The girls know what went on. They know what is going on now. They love their dad and they love me. David is renting a place in Bel Air now. One of my girls said to me the other night, “Dad’s lonely.” It broke my heart. But I also know the bitterness we’ve had between each other has gone too far.

‘What I will say is that he’s a fantastic father. He has always been there for our girls. He came to the hospital immediately after Hayley was involved in a minor car accident last week.

‘David and I will always be a part of each other’s lives. I see him and I worry. He’s very thin now. No one is looking after him. I know he is drinking but no one cares whether he is eating or not.’

She walks around the marital home pointing out the peeling paint and chipped marble and says: ‘This is a house that needs a man. David was the man, then he became the man who could pay for things. Now everything he and I worked for is for sale. It’s a sad story.

‘I always believed in happy Hollywood endings but our story doesn’t have one. And that’s the truth.’

 

 

October 9, 2008

News Summary

Addiction treatment and recovery advocate William Cope Moyers has written a new book titled "A New Day, a New Life: A Guided Journal" that explores the rewards and challenges of the first year of addiction recovery, the Fort Wayne (Ind.) News-Sentinel reported Oct. 6.

"Treatment is where the journey starts," Moyers said, but the road to successful recovery "requires daily commitment and effort."

In the book Moyers discusses different approaches to addiction treatment and recovery. Writing about addiction science, Moyers noted that for 10 percent of the population drugs or alcohol "turns a switch on in your head that you can't turn off." The book also talks about the 12-step approach to recovery and the work done by Alcoholics Anonymous.

This is the second book for the author, the son of television journalist Bill Moyers. It follows his 2004 memoir, "Broken: My Story of Addiction and Redemption." Moyers is currently an executive at Hazelden's Center for Public Advocacy.

"A New Day, a New Life: A Guided Journal" is published by Hazelden Publishing.