Martha Rosenberg

Will We Ever Stop Craving Things That Aren't Good for Us? Author Interview

2013-05-06T15:44:59-04:00

Cravings? Interview with Omar Manejwala, MD, Author of
Craving: Why We Can't Seem to Get Enough

Dr. Manejwala, a psychiatrist, is the senior vice president and chief medical officer of Catasys in Los Angeles and is the former medical director at Hazelden Foundation. Dr. Manejwala is a leading expert in addiction medicine and public speaker who addresses the topic of addiction and compulsive behaviors.

Your book draws close parallels between cravings of an alcoholic or drug addict which can be life-threatening and cravings for food or exercise or sex in so-called normal people. You say both originate from similar parts of the brain and both can destroy lives.

Process addictions -- addictions to behaviors -- can wreak as much havoc as drugs and alcohols in people's lives as the examples in my book illustrate. A person can be so addicted to food and counting the calories and working them off at the gym, he or she is unavailable to family, friends and his or herself. I asked one patient how she would react to a clinical study that required her to temporarily stop exercising and she said she would drop out. Another way in which the addictions or cravings are similar is they aren't overcome by treating so-called "symptoms" but in outgrowing the symptoms and learning a new way of life.

Is this similar to the recovery concept that addictions cannot be overcome by the sheer force or willpower or a headlong assault?

Yes. There's a reason that most, if not all, diet books stress a new way of living and eating. Because the danger starts when you get to your correct weight and return to your old ways.

Your book does a phenomenal job of identifying what is called in recovery circles "relapse thinking"; someone is no longer drinking or using drugs -- or is at their correct weight -- and they think they have somehow gotten or regained control and are "cured."

In Craving, I describe many of these biases that lead someone right back down the same path to their compulsive behavior or addiction. They include Hindsight Bias, in which someone says, "I never really had a problem to begin with," and cognitive biases in which people think they have a new "understanding" which will stop their cravings or they are "different" from others suffering from the same cravings.

You describe in your book a doctor who continually went into rehab for alcoholism and as soon as he felt a little better, left against the advice of rehab professionals who felt he should remain a lot longer. Each time he thought he had things "under control" -- and each time he relapsed.

The feeling of not being in control of our own thinking and desires is so unpleasant, we create false beliefs that we have control over them. Humans are wired to have such a strong desire to feel safe and secure, our brains will "short circuit" to give us the false belief that we are in control. This protects the self or ego -- not the person's self-esteem or identity but the person's ability to be an actor and enact purposeful behavior in life.

You provide some very useful suggestions to overcome cravings that are also a little bit counterintuitive.

The things that work for cravings are not the things you would think would work for cravings. First of all, the focus can't be on the 5 percent of someone's life when he or she is ruled by the cravings. The focus cannot be on "treating" the symptoms as our instant fix culture seems to emphasize. Instead, it has to be on the 95 percent of a person's life where he or she is not craving. Recovery from cravings is mostly about what you start doing, and much less about what you stop doing.

People who are alcoholics or drug addicts can go to 12 Step meetings and "work a program" as it is said. But how do other people fighting cravings change their lives?

I devote many pages to this in Craving and most of the same principles apply. First of all, a person needs to be responsible to someone else and to develop a wider, fuller life built on integrity and helping others. He or she also needs to develop human bonds based on identification, trust and compassion.

As alcoholics and addicts do in their self-groups?

Yes. Sharing enables people to lower their boundaries. It humanizes love. Cravings flourish in secrecy and many people suffering from cravings do not have intimate bonds. The acceptance and love from others who truly know a person can cure that person of the shame that drives so many cravings. Love is the only thing that cures shame.

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When the Publication Plan Is Ready, the Research Will Appear

2013-04-05T08:00:00-04:00

Click here to read an original op-ed from the TED speaker who inspired this post and watch the TEDTalk below.

Where did the medical community get the idea that Vioxx, Trovan and Baycol were safe and the benefits of Prempro, Neurontin and bisphosphonates outweighed their risks? From research published in medical journals written by drug companies or drug-company funded authors.

Scratch the surface of many blockbuster drugs that went on to be discredited, or even withdrawn as risks emerged, and an elaborate "publication plan" emerges, developed by the drug company's marketing firm. For example, at least 50 articles promoting hormone replacement drugs like Prempro were planted in medical journals by Pfizer's (then Wyeth) marketing firm DesignWrite, according to documents posted on the University of California, San Francisco's Drug Industry Document Archive.

"Is There an Association Between Hormone Replacement Therapy and Breast Cancer?" one such article in the Journal of Women's Health, planted by DesignWrite, is titled -- concluding that there is not. A second paper, supplied by DesignWrite and appearing in the Archives of Internal Medicine, is titled "The Role of Hormone Replacement Therapy in the Prevention of Postmenopausal Heart Disease." A third, also from DesignWrite, in the Archives of Internal Medicine, is titled "The Role of Hormone Therapy in the Prevention of Alzheimer's disease." Though the marketing firm's "science" is egregiously flawed -- HT has strong links to breast cancer, heart disease and Alzheimer's -- the papers have not been retracted.

Another example is Parke-Davis/Pfizer's publication plan to make seizure drug Neurontin become the prescribed drug of choice for migraines, bipolar disorder and other conditions for which it was not approved. In just three years, Parke-Davis planted 13 ghostwritten articles in medical journals promoting off-label uses for Neurontin including a supplement to the prestigious Cleveland Clinic Journal of Medicine that Parke-Davis made into 43,000 reprints for its reps to disseminate.

Researching, writing and submitting papers to medical journals -- and reworking and finessing them if accepted -- is a demanding, time consuming job which drug companies have made into pay dirt. Court obtained documents at the UCSF Drug Industry Document Archive show drug companies' "publication plans" for their products -- elaborate grids with the names of journals where papers have run, are slated to run, have been submitted and have been resubmitted, the marketing firms apparently not taking "no" for answer. Do the journals know they are part of such machinations?

As hot new drug classes are rushed to market and net billions in a few years only to crash and burn from undisclosed risks and lawsuits (think: SSRI antidepressants, atypical antipsychotics, long acting beta agonist asthma drugs (LABAs) and antiepileptic drugs) some blame journals for publishing marketing disguised as science and serving as de facto medical stenographers. In addition to ad sales, journals can earn hundreds of thousands of dollars from reprints of articles that the drug companies want to disseminate.

Under criticism, medical and scientific journals have tried to improve their disclosure of authors' financial links to industry -- but not too hard. Often the disclosures are relegated to a barely readable paragraph linking authors identified by initials not names to 60 or more drug companies. Worse, the disclosures don't appear in abstract databases like PubMed but are hidden behind a financial firewall available only to paid subscribers who have access to the full articles.

But planting drug industry-funded papers that extol new drugs or smooth over safety concerns is too lucrative for journals or drug companies to quit. The latest case is TNF (tumor necrosis factor) blocker drugs such as Humira, Remicide, Enbrel and Cimzia which are the drug industry's new profit center now that so many blockbuster pills have gone off patent.

The conditions such biologic drugs treat -- rheumatoid arthritis, psoriatic arthritis, ankylosing spondylitis and plaque psoriasis -- are rare but drug companies now call them under-diagnosed and offer quizzes to help patients self diagnose. Watch out. Worse, papers written by drug industry-funded authors are appearing in journals to minimize the many dangerous side effects that accompany TNF blockers because they suppress the immune system. Recently research by drug industry-funded authors has appeared in medical journals to dispel data linking TNF blockers to increasing incidences of hospitalizations, malignancies, cardiovascular events and Herpes zoster. Looks like another publication plan.

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A Way to Force Sane Gun Laws -- Boycott Starbucks

2013-04-04T10:41:52-04:00

Despite its reputation for global consciousness and socially aware customers, Starbucks is actually a huge ally of the NRA by welcoming lethal weapons in its stores. By refusing to ban guns from its premises as it is allowed to as a property owner, Starbucks facilitates gun proliferation and the gun lobby's stated goal of universal armament of citizens at all times in all venues.

While forward-thinking corporations like California Pizza Kitchen, Peet's, IKEA and Disney banned guns from their premises when presented with a petition from the Brady Campaign with 33,000 signatures over a year ago, Starbucks refused. Among the guns Starbucks openly welcomes into its coffee shops are the FN Herstal 57 (which enabled the Fort Hood shooter to fire 100 bullets in 10 minutes, killing 13 and wounding 30), the Glock 19 used by Jared Loughner against Rep. Gabby Giffords and the AR-15 of Aurora and Newtown fame. Thank you, Starbucks.

In response to a 2012 campaign called the Brew Not Bullets Boycott, Starbucks said, "We believe that supporting local laws is the right way for us to ensure a safe environment for both our partners [employees] and customers." But "local laws" clearly allow businesses to prohibit firearms on their property and other companies are clearly doing it. Worse, Starbucks admits the risk to its employees and customers by banning guns at its Starbucks' corporate headquarters. Why should only senior management be protected? Gunshot accidents have already been reported in Starbucks stores.

Starbucks' stance has earned it unexpected support from gun lovers, though they are not its traditional customers. Starbucks is "a Seattle-based, trendy, slightly artsy-crafty chain to begin with, but they have correctly assessed that they're now in middle America and they don't want to offend the sensibilities of middle America in order to pacify a few left-leaning gun-control supporters," said Paul Valone, director of Grass Roots North Carolina about the boycott, according to the Christian Science Monitor.

But most see the opposite situation -- a few, fear-based extremists obsessed with amassing more and bigger weapons and creating a society in which everyone is armed. "If you're someone who is feeling the need to tote around a gun everywhere, ask yourself, 'What it is you're so afraid of,' not, 'Which other pointless location can I suddenly feel the need to be armed?'" wrote Christian Science Monitor reader Lynn Gleason.

According to Elliot Fineman, CEO of the National Gun Victims Action Council (NGAC), we are at the "secondhand smoke" moment in the gun debate -- the moment when people realized that smokers endangered everyone not just themselves and they were no longer tolerated. When corporations and consumers stood up to Big Tobacco and banned smoking in stores, restaurants and public spaces, laws soon followed.

As of March 7, 2013, 9,721 former Starbucks customers have renounced Starbucks' products both at coffee shops and in supermarkets. At an average expenditure of $21.58 per week per former customer or $1,122 per year per, that represents an annual loss of $10.9 million to Starbucks.

An estimated 100 million people want sane guns laws and only one million do not, says Fineman. That means that consumers have the numbers to move both corporations and lawmakers and force sane laws like they did with second-hand smoke. People tolerated smoking in public, says Fineman, until the dangers of secondhand smoke were revealed. Gun proliferation is more dangerous to children and innocent bystanders than secondhand smoke. Why do companies like Starbucks and lawmakers ban public smoking while allowing... lethal weapons?

Boycott Starbucks
http://gunvictimsaction.org/starbucks-boycott/

Make the Tell and Compel pledge
http://gunvictimsaction.org/blog/2013/03/pledge-tell-and-compel/

Chicago Gun Shop Linked to Thousands of Street Guns Screams 'Unfair' About $25 Gun Tax

2013-04-03T15:10:39-04:00

2,370 crime guns were traced to just one gun shop located in suburban Chicago between 1996 and 2000. Over 1,300 have been traced to the shop since 2008 -- as well as 20 percent of all Chicago crime guns used within a year of their purchase. Yet Chuck's Gun Shop, in Riverdale, far from being shut down as a virtual ATM for crime guns, has actually brought suit against Cook County calling a $25 gun tax that went into effect April 1 unfair.

Last week, Chuck's and other Chicago area gun dealers and owners filed a lawsuit in Cook County Circuit Court claiming a new $25 tax on every gun purchase in Cook County infringes on the right to bear arms. The tax violates "the right of law-abiding citizens to keep and bear, and law-abiding retailers to sell, arms as guaranteed" says the suit. Law abiding as in 3,670 crime guns seized on the street.

Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle, who served as a Chicago alderman for 19 years, proposed the tax to cover some of the costs related to gun violence by generating $600,000 in tax revenues per year. "Gun violence is a real problem for us. It's a problem for us in our criminal justice system and it's a problem for us in our health care system, and I make no apologies for the proposal," said Preckwinkle when she proposed the tax, reported the Chicago Tribune last October.

Cook County, where Chicago resides, pays approximately $52,000 for each gunshot victim it treats, reports the Chicago Sun-Times -- and 670 gunshot victims came through the county hospital's emergency room doors in 2011. Clearly, the gun tax covers the cost of less than 12 patients, leaving 658 gunshot victims the responsibility of taxpayers. Thank you NRA.

This is not the first time Chuck's Gun Shop has been in the news. After 16-year-old Blair Holt, the son of a Chicago Police gang investigator and a Chicago fire captain, was shot and killed riding the bus home from high school in 2007, Father Michael Pfleger, the outspoken pastor of Chicago's St. Sabina Church and Rev. Jesse Jackson led 200 Chicagoans in a march to Chuck's Gun Shop. More guns involved in crimes are traced to Chuck's than any other gun shop, say police.

Then, like now, Chuck's Gun Shop fought back. First it hired a semitrailer truck to park in front of the gun shop to block protesters' access (the doors were tightly shut and locked). Then it hired an attorney who called Pfleger's "kill-the-umpire"-like rhetoric against the gun shop owner "alarming" and "slanderous" and threatened legal action. Gun extremists deluged the archdiocese with complaints and Pfleger's superior, Cardinal Francis George, sided with the gun lobby and not the priest. Yes, the Cardinal supported a business that sells lethal weapons over its own priest.

Thanks to the gun lobby, Illinois gun owners enjoy almost complete freedom from regulation. They are unlicensed, their weapons are unregistered and they don't even have to carry insurance like people who own pools and vicious dogs not to mention car owners. Still, extremists portray themselves as "victims" and actually whined that the massacre at Sandy Hook had the effect of abridging their "rights."

The $25 tax is bringing out the same victimhood. "There's enough taxes on those [guns] already -- we pay a sales tax," Chuck's Gun Shop co- plaintiff Deborah Gowder told the Chicago Sun-Times this week. "I had to pay $100 to qualify to purchase a gun -- and I think I've paid enough."

At $52,000 for each of 670 gunshot victims a year, Cook County taxpayers probably think they have paid enough too.

Use your buying power to force sane gun laws. Make the Tell and Compel pledge.

The Macabre Déjà Vu of "Armed While Angry"...and a Solution

2013-03-27T18:14:58-04:00

Like William Spengler, the convicted felon who killed firefighters on Christmas Eve in Webster, N.Y. with a weapon bought by a straw purchaser, Kurt Myers also allegedly set his home ablaze and began a killing spree last week in Herkimer County, N.Y. Like Spengler, Myers was a loner who acted strangely and whose apparent only motive for the murders seems to be being armed-while-angry.

Forty-nine-year-old Jacqueline Bouvier Hardy was pulled off a city bus in Northern Indiana this week by a former boyfriend and shot to death in front of horrified bystanders, including children. Hardy had filed an order of protection against the shooter, Kenneth Knight, to no avail. Nearly half the women killed every year are murdered by intimate partners, most with a firearm, reports the New York Times. Gun rights activists fight successfully to allow those, like Knight, who are under orders of protections to keep their guns. Thank you NRA.

This week 18-year-old T.J. Lane was sentenced to life in prison for the Chardon high school cafeteria shooting in Ohio a year ago, which left three dead and three injured. Remorseless and wearing an undershirt emblazoned with the word "killer," Lane hurled obscenities and sexual insults at the families of victims in the courtroom. Like Jeffrey Weise of the Red Moon Indian reservation massacre and Adam Lanza of Sandy Hook, Lane obtained his lethal weapon from a family member.

The only thing more predictable than gun murders committed by disturbed loners, enraged boyfriends and disaffected high school students who easily got guns, is lawmakers' ability to look past them to their toady ties to the NRA. Neither a congressman shot in the head or a bloodbath of four-foot-tall first-graders just learning to print, will pry our politicians out of the NRA's trigger-happy hands. Is anyone surprised that Senator Harry Reid stripped the assault weapon ban from the pending gun bill this week? Did anyone think the laws would change?

The NRA is like the Mafia during its heyday. Small in numbers but ruthless and amoral, for many year the Mafia held the U.S. government itself hostage through horse-head-in-the-bed extortion and blackmail. The NRA has only four million members, only one million of which are extremists, yet it dictates pro-gun laws and blocks gun safety laws for a country of 300 million? What?

It is time to force lawmakers to serve the 100 million who want sane gun laws, according to polls -- the people who elected them. Asking lawmakers to serve their constituents instead of the NRA has failed; it is time to "tell and compel" them with the message of collective economic power!

New Gun Bills Reveal the Firearm Free-for-All We Are Living Under

2013-03-11T13:10:08-04:00

Remember after 9/11 when authorities decided to better screen flight schools and ban box cutters on airplanes? And most people thought, "You weren't doing that already?... "
This month's proposed gun laws are producing the same, "I-can't-believe-I'm-hearing-this incredulity.

Make gun trafficking a felony? You mean it isn't already?

Mandate universal background checks? You mean they aren't already? (40 percent of gun buyers are background-check free!)

Limit gun purchases to one a month? You mean people are buying multiple guns a month?
(Yes, straw buyers purchase hundreds a month, according to the Illinois Council Against Handgun Violence.)

Medical providers should share the mental health records of "prohibited buyers" like Seung-Hui Cho of the Virginia Tech massacre and at least ten other mass shooters with law enforcement authorities? They don't already? (In Illinois last year only two counties out of more than 100 reported prohibited buyers to authorities.)

Both citizens and lawmakers have been sleeping at the wheel while the NRA has stripped away one right after another from people who do not want to live in an armed camp. No insurance is required of gun owners though they are capable of inflicting infinitely more damage than car owners and even vicious dog owners, both of whom are insured. What?

Gun owners are not registered like car owners and dog owners, to protect innocent children who go into their homes not to mention law enforcement officers called there. How did that happen?

And where were mothers, fathers, gun victims, teachers, medical professionals, community members, school officials, employers, employees and city, state and federal officials when the "Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act" was passed in 2005? This law gives complete legal immunity to "manufacturers, distributors, dealers, or importers of firearms or ammunition for damages resulting from the misuse of their products" that might be brought by those killed and maimed by guns. The entire gun industry in suit-proof to protect it from "reckless lawsuits" says the NRA. The gun lobby is "protected"; what about us?

Thanks to the black hand of the NRA and its lobbyists, toy guns are better regulated than real guns!

Luckily, the nation is taking a look at the firearm free-for-all we have been living under and enacting anti-straw buyer laws. Thanks to a straw buyer, convicted felon William Spengler, who killed his own grandmother, waltzed into a Gander Mountain in Henrietta, N.Y. and chose the weapons with which he killed firefighters on Christmas Eve 2012. Thanks to straw buyers, 1,300 firearms seized on Chicago's street were traced to one dealer, Chuck's Gun Shop, since 2008.

Just like 9/11, we have been lulled into a false sense of security about existing laws... and Sandy Hook was the wakeup call.

Obama's Home Town Turns out for Universal Background Checks

2013-02-25T12:04:56-05:00

Carrying photos of lost loved ones and signs reading, "We Deserve a Vote," a strong crowd turned out in the freezing Chicago rain in support of universal background checks on Friday.

Organized by 10 Illinois and Chicago based anti-gun violence groups, the rally comes weeks after the Obamas attended services for slain Hadiya Pendleton in Chicago and as Illinois' ban against concealed weapons has been overturned.

The stakes to curtail gun violence cannot be higher said Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle, because legislation to ban assault weapons is in the Illinois legislature "right now." Preckwinkle, who served as a Chicago alderman for 19 years, was able to pass a $25 county tax on firearms last year but noted the loopholes in Illinois that perpetuate gun violence.

Firearms Owner's Identification (FOID) Cards are issued in Illinois, for example, for 10 years and there is "no checking" if the owner has been charged with crimes since issuance, said Preckwinkle. And, "designated streetpersons" who supply weapons through straw purchase operations simply say they "lost" their weapon or "it was stolen" when they are identified or apprehended.

"We have a Sandy Hook every month," proclaimed Tio Hardiman from Ceasefire IL, which focuses on street violence and works with 1,100 high risk individuals. While a "full court press" is necessary, said Hardiman, the recent attention to gun violence in Chicago after the shooting death of Hadiya Pendleton, who had appeared at President Obama's inauguration, has produced a rare drop in shootings and gun deaths in February.

April 16, 2007 changed the life forever of Garret Evans. That's when he witnessed a .22 pistol appear in his Virginia Tech classroom and his instructor shot in the head, falling to the ground, Evans told the crowd. Shot through the leg himself, surrounded by wounded friends and dying classmates, Evans says the mass shooting of 33 was so "surreal" that six people were admitted to psychiatric units within 24 hours. An appropriate background check would have stopped the shooter, Cho Seung-hui, whose mental incapacitation slipped through loose laws, according to published reports.

In a short interview after his remarks, Evans said he now speaks about gun violence and glorification at schools and organizations and that "no venue is too big." His hardest challenge since the shooting was finishing his degree program in economics at Virginia Tech, he says. Through faith, he has forgiven the troubled shooter since "pulling a gun on someone is not a joyous act."

Also addressing the crowd was Stephen Young, who lost his son to gun violence in 1996. Public outrage ended the Vietnam War, which cost 58,000 lives, Young told the crowd, yet gun violence claims an equal number of lives every two years in the United States and there is not similar outrage.

Many are watching gun policy in Illinois for a reason other than the shooting of Hadiya Pendleton. On December 11, the same day as the deadly Oregon mall shooting, the U.S. Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals sided with the gun lobby in determining that Illinois' longtime ban on carrying a concealed weapon was unconstitutional. A subsequent request by Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan for a rehearing was rejected by a federal appeals court on Friday -- and the ruling was announced at the rally by Lee Goodman of Stop Concealed Carry. Undaunted, Goodman expressed hopes that Madigan would take the fight to the Supreme Court. The crowd chanted "We Deserve a Vote.

Heckling the Bereaved, Threatening Civilians -- Should These People Really Be Armed in Public?

2013-02-14T14:21:52-05:00

The same people who heckled relatives of slain gun victims at a January town hall meeting in Illinois will soon have guns on their hips as the ban against concealed weapons is repealed.

Anti-gun control activists "laughed and joked about the terminology used by Linda Jenkins as she described the cold-blooded murder of her pregnant sister," at the Guns and Public Safety meeting recently held in the Chicago suburb of Glenview, reported Marjorie Fujara, a participant. Anti-gun control activists turned the event into a "raucous afternoon of... heckling and jeering at panelists," photographing the crowd and speakers with phones and cameras and yelling about abortion, reported the Chicago Sun-Times. They booed and screamed "liar" and "loser" at speakers from the Stop Concealed Carry Coalition and other anti-gun violence groups, reported the Glenview Patch. Let's arm these people!

A mass email from the Illinois State Rifle Association urged anti-gun control activists to pack the event to "ensure that there are more of OUR people there than THEIR people," reported the Patch. "Remember, this is our Lexington, this is our Concord," cajoled the email. "Be prepared to teach the gun controllers a lesson in liberty."

When asked to move from front row seats reserved for the elderly at the event, activist Steven Zahareas posted that he replied, "My name is not Rosa Parks and I am not going to the back of the bus," according to the Guns Save Life website. (See: the NRA's self-characterization as the "oldest civil rights organization in the United States.")

NRA lobbyists too are, if anything, emboldened by the new debate about gun laws and Illinois' impending repeal of a concealed weapon ban. "We went to court and we prevailed," bellowed Illinois lobbyist Todd Vandermyde at a Chicago town hall meeting this week, even taunting alderman over how much they spent and lost in legal fees. The U.S. Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals said Illinois' ban on carrying a concealed weapon in public was unconstitutional on the same day a gunman killed two at an Oregon mall, two days before Sandy Hook. The ruling gave Illinois 180 days to revise the carry law; Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan has asked for a second hearing.

If no law is passed by the Illinois legislature to restrict the right to carry in the weeks to come, "We get what we want!" thundered Vandermyde to legislators: if you have a Firearm Owner's Identification Card, you can "have a gun on your hip" he thundered to the cheering audience. No one should be a "second class citizen based on the zip code they live in," he proclaimed. (See Rosa Parks.)

Other Illinois gun lobbyists are sounding a similar note of victimhood. "They will never stop asking for more," said Richard Pearson, the Illinois State Rifle Association's executive director on a Chicago radio station recently, about people seeking new gun laws. "Gun owners are always the ones asked to compromise. It will never end!"

Of course, anti-gun control activists calling themselves civil rights victims while heckling families bereaved by gun deaths is like the boy who killed his parents and asked for pity because he was an orphan. And, as Illinois prepares to allow guns in movie theatres, malls, parks, churches, schools, offices, stores, bars, industrial parks, restaurants and other pubic places, it is not the people seeking gun laws who will "never stop asking for more."

Don't Reveal My Identity Say Proud Safe Gun Owners

2013-01-08T16:12:41-05:00

Gun owners have gone ballistic, pun intended, over the Journal News publishing the names and addresses of handgun permit holders in two New York counties in December. Reaction has been so violent, it is apparent that the only thing gun extremists love more than the Second Amendment is an anonymous Second Amendment in which ownership is hidden and documents are sealed.

But there are several contradictions. First of all, these proud but anonymous people are asking for protection from the same jackbooted government thugs whom they fear will grab their guns and against whom some are actually stockpiled. Why don't they make up their mind? Is the government a friend or enemy or does it just depend?

Secondly, these are the same people who declare no one would put a sign in front of their home saying NO GUN and they are now fearing the opposite. Do criminals target homes because they believe the home has no firearms or because they believe the home does? Or, again, does it just depend?

Third, these are the same people who dispute that more firearms mean more gun crimes and more armed criminals. They now admit the opposite and say criminals will steal their firearms when they are not at home if they know they have them. It doesn't sound like the firearms keep them or society safe at all -- unless the government they hate protects their identity.

Finally, the proud and loud gun owners always say they are the "good guys" protecting the world against the "bad guys." But Journal News employees have received death threats, threats against their children and packets of white powder in the mail. Doesn't sound like the good guys are good guys at all. Plus, they are armed.

New Year's Resolutions for the NRA

2013-01-01T14:17:46-05:00

We will stop referring to ourselves as a "civil rights" organization that defends "human rights." It is a sacrilege to people actually killed or harmed by civil and human rights abuses.

We will acknowledge that our membership of four million is dwarfed in both size and sympathy by 7.2 million teachers, 76.6 million students and over 18 million health care workers in the U.S. living with our depraved gun policies.

We will stop our Black Hand, horse-head-in-the-bed bully tactics against lawmakers. Congress has figured out we are all hat and no horse and lawmakers now fear the gunmen our policies arm more than us, starting with Jared Lee Loughner who shot Congresswoman Gabby Giffords.

We will admit we have made background checks a joke. Mass shooters Seung-Hui Cho (Virginia Tech), Stephen Phillip Kazmierczak (Northern Illinois University), Sulejman Talović (Trolley Square mall), Vincent J. Dortch (Philadelphia Naval Shipyard), Jiverly Voong (Binghamton), Richard Poplawski (Pittsburgh police killer), Bruce Pardo (Santa Claus killer), Latina Williams (Louisiana Technical College) and Jennifer San Marco (Goleta postal facility) sailed through background checks. So did James Holmes who shot 70 in an Aurora movie theater.

We declare that the "gun show loophole" is actually gigantic and that such private sales amount to 40 percent of U.S. guns sales. Yes, almost half.

We regret our obstruction of "one firearm a month" laws to stop straw buyers. Thanks to our obstruction, convicted felon William Spengler, who killed his own grandmother, waltzed into a Gander Mountain in Henrietta, N.Y. and chose the weapons with which he killed firefighters on Christmas Eve. A straw buyer was at his side.

We will stop blaming gun crime on "failure to enforce existing laws" and confess that it is our lobbying that has blocked sharing and computerizing of national firearm sales data so crimes cannot be solved. We also block weapon microstamping, further making sure the "bad guys'" never get caught.

We admit that arming bad guys through such loose laws and then blaming them for the need for more firearms is like killing your parents and crying you are an orphan.

We will see the contradiction in being proud safe gun owners while asking authorities to protect our identities. We realize our belief that criminals will target homes because they believe the homes have no firearms or because they believe the homes do have firearms sounds paranoid and invalidates our core belief that firearms keep homes safe.

We will stop pretending our fear to go anywhere unarmed is somehow a public service and we are the real law enforcers. None of our George Zimmerman-style, self-proclaimed deputies stopped Jared Lee Loughner in Tucson despite Arizona's many conceal carriers. We'll take a hard look at all the people -- including elderly and 80-pound women -- who get to work everyday without a firearm and ask ourselves if, maybe, our problem is us.

We will stop whipping up "preppers" and citizen army extremists into stockpiling bigger arsenals because jack-booted government agents are about to storm their homes and disarm them. Though we love the melodrama of being "victims," the 2008 Supreme Court decision District of Columbia v. Heller means that will never happen. Never. And if we are victims, we're the best armed victims in the history of the world.

We will stop our compulsive firearms talk about clips, magazines and how a semiautomatic weapon shouldn't be considered an assault weapon. Though the blather is designed to reveal how ignorant the public is about firearms, even as it tries legislate them, the truth is we get buzzed just talking about weapons.

Finally, we will retire our shopworn "guns don't kill people, people kill people" slogan and our mantra that gun laws won't stop the bad guys and mentally disturbed people. Mentally ill people are everywhere, like a man in China who attacked over 20 school children on the same day as the Sandy Hook massacre. Because he had a knife and not a rapid fire weapon, the children did not die and 40 parents in China still have their loved ones. Unlike in Newtown.

As First Graders and Fire Fighters Are Gunned Down, NRA Calls for More Firearms

2012-12-24T14:42:35-05:00

After the murder of 20 first graders in the days before Christmas, the US gun lobby, the NRA, has called for more guns. Hours after its belligerent refusal to take responsibility for the six and seven-year-olds' deaths, fire fighters were shot and killed on Christmas Eve Day by another nut armed by guns-for-everyone lobbying. Merry Christmas from the NRA.

The NRA's post-Newtown sabre rattling is not the first time it has responded to massacres by reaffirming its More! Faster! Bigger! Stronger! Better! firearm extremism. During the spring of 2009 when 50 victims were shot in rapid succession - 14 in Binghamton, NY, eight at a Carthage, NC nursing home, six in Santa Clara, CA, five in Miami, 10 in Alabama (by a gun 'collector'), two policemen in Oakland, and five policeman in Pittsburgh (by a man armed with a semi-automatic AK-47-style rifle, a shotgun and three handguns - a .357 Magnum revolver, a .380-caliber handgun and a .45-caliber handgun, wearing a bulletproof vest) - the NRA said, lawmakers shouldn't legislate "on the fresh graves of tragedy." And they didn't!

Three years ago, like now, the NRA said we need more guns not less to protect ourselves against the bad guy criminals the gun lobby arms. How does it arm the bad guys? Through patty cake background checks that many, perhaps most mass shooters pass. Through obstructing background check laws governing private sales and gun shows which account for 40% of weapons sold. And through obstructing 'one firearm a month' sale limits which give green lights to straw buyers to arm the 'bad guys' and keep illegal guns on the street.

It is almost like the NRA is working for the bad guys! Who realizes the gun lobby has put 'Tiahrt restrictions' on the books that literally obstruct prosecution of criminals with illegal guns by restricting law enforcement officials from fully accessing and using Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) gun trace data, which can show where illegal guns come from, who buys them and how they get trafficked across state lines and into our communities.

The gun makers also seem to be working for the bad guys. Three years ago in Connecticut, where the first graders were killed this month, they defeated a "microstamping" bill that would require new markers on guns to facilitate tracking of illegal weapons. Gun makers routinely tell state officials if gun legislation is passed, they'll move their operations to another state, taking the jobs with them. Are they including the jobs they create in emergency rooms, operating rooms, hospitals, rehabilitation facilities and morgues?

The NRA's lobbying also lets criminals carry concealed weapons. More than 1,400 probable felons in Florida were granted valid concealed weapon licenses reported the Sun-Sentinel a few years ago, including a man who shot his girlfriend in the head as she cooked breakfast, a pizza deliveryman wanted for fatally shooting a 15-year-old over a stolen order of chicken wings, and six registered sex offenders. Lest someone should go unarmed just because they are a violent criminal, the NRA also got a program passed to help people whose gun purchasing rights were revoked petition for them to be restored as part of a provision for states to share more illegal firearm information with the federal government. What?

Wild eyed and his voice croaking, NRA ceo Wayne LaPierre said at a press conference last week, "The truth is that our society is populated by an unknown number of genuine monsters - people so deranged, so evil, so possessed by voices and driven by demons that no sane person can possibly ever comprehend them." Was someone holding up a mirror?

Interview With Gail Collins: How Texas Hijacked the American Agenda

2012-12-14T12:00:21-05:00

A native Ohioan, Gail Collins says her fascination with Texas began when she heard Gov. Rick Perry deliver an Alamo-like speech at a 2009 Tea Party rally. "We didn't like oppression then; we don't like oppression now," he roared. The problem was, says Collins, "this was a rally about the stimulus package."

Collins' new book is titled As Texas Goes...: How the Lone Star State Hijacked the American Agenda (Liveright Publishing/W. W. Norton & Company). The first woman editor of the New York Times' editorial page, she is also author of America's Women: Four Hundred Years of Dolls, Drudges, Helpmates, and Heroines and When Everything Changed: The Amazing Journey of American Women from 1960 to the Present. Now a columnist at the Timesf, Collins is known for unshrinking criticism of the gun lobby, small-minded politicians and discrimination against women. While covering the 2012 election, Collins reminded readers that Mitt Romney had crated the family dog and strapped it to the roof of the Romney's car during a family vacation. The reference appeared 68 times.

Rosenberg: In As Texas Goes, you debut the concept of people who live in "Empty Places" versus "Crowded Places" and say they don't feel the need for laws to deal with everyday intrusions like neighbors. How is this different from the rural/urban concept?

Collins: It is more a mentality than the actual places people live, as Jefferson and Hamilton would argue about -- city versus country. For example, someone could have an empty place mentality yet be living in a condo in Boca Raton. Of course, Texas is so huge it really is empty places; people can easily drive an hour and a half to work every day, so even if they're actually living in the suburbs, it sure feels as if they're in a remote location.

Rosenberg: Is Texas' size part of the reason for the resistance you cite in the book to environmentalism and the threat of climate change?

Collins: Certainly people in empty places feel they have the right to do what they want to their property and don't necessarily see the effect of their pollution or pesticides on others. But Texans have an appreciation for water problems and are very aware of the droughts. I write about how in Midland, the mayor instituted water conservation measures like restrictions on car washing. He made a point though that they were only "suggestions" and not government telling people what to do. But then his constituents got very ticked off at the sight of their neighbors breaking the rules and demanded that they be made into actual laws with penalties.

Rosenberg: Many Texas politicians do not come across too well in As Texas Goes, especially Rick Perry, the current governor and a presidential candidate over the summer. Did he really "name" his boots Freedom and Liberty?

Collins: Yes.

Rosenberg: Did he really reply when asked by the Texas Tribune's Evan Smith for actual statistics proving abstinence reduces teen pregnancy, "I'm sorry, I'm going to tell you from my own personal life. Abstinence works."

Collins: Yes.

Rosenberg: Did Perry really vote against legislation that would have kept farm workers out of the fields while the fields were being sprayed with pesticides?

Collins: Yes, but the owners argued that they could work out their own plans for protecting the workers, not that they intended to spray them.

Rosenberg: That's a relief. The conflicts of interest you cite in the book between government and industry are shocking, like the former lobbyist for the Texas Chemical Council, Ralph Marquez, becoming the Texas Natural Resources Commissioner. "At the time," you write, the Council's members were "responsible for 74 percent of all EPA-tracked toxic chemical emissions in the state, 98 percent of the toxic water pollution, and 67 percent of the toxic air pollution." Why are such fox-guarding-the-henhouse arrangements tolerated in Texas?

Collins: Well of course that's how lobbying works in general. Lobbyists really are experts in their fields and know what they are talking about. That's why the government always listens to them as they tell the government what it's doing wrong and what it should be doing instead...

Rosenberg: Since the book has been published, three topics you address have been in the news. The Texas secession movement has gained momentum, the Daughters of the Republic of Texas lost their exclusive stewardship of the Alamo and state representative Henry Aldridge (R-NC) made his infamous remark that women "who are truly raped" don't get pregnant because "the juices don't flow." Were you surprised to see these issues newly debated?

Collins: The idea that if you don't like how things are going, you can just leave is so engrained in Texas, the secession movement is no surprise. In a November New York Times column, I quoted Peter Morrison, treasurer of the Hardin County Republican Party, as saying in defense of secession, "We must contest every single inch of ground and delay the baby-murdering, tax-raising socialists at every opportunity." I also quote him saying, "in due time, the maggots will have eaten every morsel of flesh off of the rotting corpse of the Republic, and therein lies our opportunity."

At first, I felt bad judging an entire state by one county political official, but then I found out Morrison had also helped screen public school textbooks, a topic which is another chapter in my book. The Alamo is managed by the Daughters of the Republic of Texas, a group whose members can claim a relative who was living in Texas during the revolution. The fight over mismanagement of the Alamo has been going on for years.

Rosenberg: You write, "Quite a bit of the information Texas students are getting seems to have arrived from another era. An abstinence-only program used in three districts assures them that if, 'if a woman is dry, the sperm will die' -- which harks back to colonial-era theories that it was impossible for a woman to get pregnant unless she enjoyed the sex." What's surprising is that within this backward milieu, Perry also mandated that all girls be vaccinated with the HPV vaccine, Gardasil, which many charge promotes teen sex. This was also a case of lobbying since Perry's former chief of staff had just turned Merck lobbyist.

Collins: Over the long run, many of Perry's stances boil down to following the money.

Rosenberg: Many forgotten national stories like the presidential campaign of H. Ross Perot and Enron have origins or connections in Texas. So do present and past political figures, according to your book, like Phil and Wendy Gramm, Karl Rove, Tom Delay, Dick Armey, Bill Bennett, Newt Gingrich and of course the Bushes. Still, I had no idea until reading your book how instrumental some figures, like Phil and Wendy Gramm, were in deregulating the financial markets and making the world safe for swaps. They were also linked to Enron.

Collins: Phil Gramm had a stump speech about how his mother's devotion kept him from being an academic failure in life. She got him into a special school that turned him around -- under a government program for the children of deceased veterans. He was repeatedly asked at press conferences why he would then turn around and support draconian cuts in federal funding for education. He never had an answer.

Rosenberg: Your book also reveals that the original deregulation of S & Ls and lending standards which caused the1980's S & L crisis and Keating Five scandal began in Texas. Deregulated lending standards are also what sparked the 2008 mortgage meltdown and subsequent U.S. recession we are still in.

Collins: Yes it is one of many agendas that Texas gave to the rest of the country in the book. Charles Keating, by the way, spoke to my Catholic girls' high school in the 1960s on behalf of Citizens For Decent Literature long before he went to Arizona. He cautioned us about the danger of wearing shorts and told an anecdote in which a mother who was wearing Bermuda shorts and pushing her child down the street in a stroller so aroused a male driver, he drove up on the sidewalk and struck and killed the baby. He made it clear that this was her fault for wearing shorts.

Rosenberg: You are kidding!

Collins: It was a very Catholic message.

Rosenberg: Looking back on writing As Texas Goes, were there any memorable high and low points?

Collins: The high point was that the people are really nice -- despite the crazy politics -- and I loved being there. The hardest part was knowing some of the things I was probably going to write about Texas would make those nice people very unhappy.

Rosenberg: Did you get any angry phone calls or emails after the book came out?

Collins: Yes, one man told me he would shove a rattlesnake down my throat.

An earlier version of this interview appeared on AlterNet.org

Martha Rosenberg is the author of the expose Born with Junk Food Deficiency: How Flaks, Quacks, and Hacks Pimp the Public Health (Prometheus, 2012)

Is Genetically Modified Salmon Safe to Eat?

2012-12-11T13:02:48-05:00

Many are hoping that AquAdvantage salmon (AAS), often referred to as a "Frankenfish," is not approved by the FDA. The genetically modified salmon, created by Boston-based AquaBounty Technologies, is created to grow twice as fast as wild Atlantic salmon -- reaching its full size in 18 months instead of three years. It was created by inserting genetic material from Chinook salmon and ocean pout into wild Atlantic salmon. No wonder it's called a Frankenfish.

Ninety-five to 99 percent of AAS are sterile, said AquaBounty at FDA hearings in 2010, so they are unlikely to breed and threaten wild salmon stocks if they escape. (If they did breed, though, it could be Jurassic Park-like since AAS eat five times more food than wild salmon and have less fear of predators, according to background materials.) Nor is 1 to 5 percent a small amount considering the 15 million eggs AquaBounty plans to grow: that could amount to 750,000 fertile fish.

To prevent such risks, AquaBounty told an FDA advisory committee it plans to grow the eggs at a facility on Prince Edward Island in Canada, where escapees could not survive. "Water from the facility, including effluent from all floor drains, fish tanks and egg incubators, eventually discharges" into a tidal river that flows into the Gulf of Lawrence, says the AquAdvantage FDA briefing package. Because water temperatures in the winter months are very low and the water has a high salinity, "it is highly unlikely that early life stages of any Atlantic salmon at the facility would be able to survive if they were able to escape."

But escapes into the Gulf of Lawrence is not the only risk. AquaBounty also has safety plans for the adult salmon, which it plans to grow out and slaughter in the country of Panama because that environment is also hostile to survival. "In the lower reaches of the watershed, the water temperature is in the range of 26 to 28 degrees Celsius, near the upper incipient lethal level for Atlantic salmon," says the FDA report. "As a result, it is extremely unlikely that AquAdvantage Salmon would ever be able to survive and migrate to the Pacific Ocean."

In the FDA briefing report, AquAdvantage salmon were also found to have high incidences of "jaw erosion" and "focal inflammation" (infection), though the defects are said to be "of low magnitude and not likely to be debilitating to fish in a production setting." What about the people who eat them? The report also identified low glucose levels and a possible "increase in the level of IGF-1 [insulin-like growth factor-1] in the AquAdvantage salmon compared to sponsor control fish."

Perhaps most troubling at the FDA hearings was AquaBounty's policy for handling dead fish in Panama. In its Environmental Assessment report, it says,

As dead fish are deposited, they will be covered with caustic lime, followed by another layer of dead fish and caustic lime, and so on, until the burial pit is ~0.5 meters deep, at which point it will [be] sealed with plastic and covered with soil. Successive pits will be located at a minimum distance of 0.5-1.0 meters from those used previously; the aggregate collection of such pits will be located on high ground that is not within the 100-year flood plain... In the event that disposal capacity at the site is inadequate to handle the immediate or aggregate waste volume, alternative means of disposal will be sought.

Why are so many fish expected to die? Why would people want to eat such unhealthy fish? Why is the health of the environment, humans and fish overlooked when considering GMOs like the AquAdvantage salmon?

The complete story of the AquAdvantage salmon is found in Martha Rosenberg's acclaimed expose, Born With a Junk Food Deficiency: How Flaks, Quacks and Hacks Pimp The Public Health (Prometheus Books, 2012.

Third Party Nominees Have Their Say in Obama's Home Town

2012-10-29T09:03:54-04:00

Lambasting the "duopoly" and "Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee" tone of the Obama/Romney presidential debates, a slate of third party candidates at the Hilton Chicago on Tuesday offered voters fresh and impassioned views about the economy, war on terrorism, war on drugs and election, legislative and educational reform. Participating in the debate, moderated by broadcast icon Larry King, were Green Party nominee Jill Stein, Justice Party nominee Rocky Anderson, Constitution Party nominee Virgil Goode and Libertarian Party nominee Gary Johnson.

Even though two candidates leaned toward the left and two toward the right -- according to Christina Tobin of the Free and Equal Elections Foundation, which sponsored the debate -- all agreed the two-party contest, which they say is swimming in corporate and special interest money, has stifled debate on issues of crucial importance to the public. In fact, Green Party nominee Jill Stein was arrested with another activist at the presidential town hall debate in Long Island last week for protesting the debate's lack of openness. She was handcuffed and anchored to a chair for eight hours, she told the Chicago debate audience.

When asked about U.S. military policy, Stein said repeated bombings of weddings and funerals in war zones "don't win us the hearts of minds," of civilians. Stein, trained as a medical doctor, also urged the abolish of drone programs both here and abroad, which drew strong audience applause.

The United States gives financial aid "to pump up foreign dictators," agreed Libertarian Party nominee Gary Johnson, touching on events since the Arab Spring. "We have not learned anything." Johnson, a favorite of the crowd, is former governor of New Mexico.

There are too many soldiers and "troopers scattered around," agreed Constitution Party nominee Virgil Goode, adding that no armed conflicts should occur that are not declared by Congress. Goode's conservative proposals of a moratorium on Green Card admissions to help U.S. job seekers and defunding Planned Parenthood did not warm the crowd. But his opposition to PACs and Super PACs accorded with the other candidates.

Raiding the U.S. treasury for "wars of aggression" is "wasteful" and "treason," charged Justice Party nominee Rocky Anderson, who also noted the urgency and peril of climate change. Anderson is the former Salt Lake City mayor.

Decriminalization of marijuana and the plight of college students, saddled with student loans but few job prospects, occupied much of the debate, which was attended by an overwhelmingly youthful crowd. (Chicago's Loop is home to several universities.) College-age students and other economically squeezed Americans are "indentured servants," Jill Stein observed twice. Colleges are "immune" to the market pressures that would normally bring costs down, remarked Libertarian Party nominee Gary Johnson, thanks to guaranteed federal loans.

All nominees agreed that term limits would solve the universal problem of politicians spending much of their first term seeking funding and courting special interests to be elected for a next term. Would elected officials vote themselves out of office, asked King rhetorically, by supporting term limits? The terms limits would have to be grandfathered in, replied the nominees.

Neither the nominees at the Chicago debate or the audience seemed in denial about the prospects of a third party candidate actually taking office. "Waste your vote on me," said Gary Johnson facetiously, noting that voting for "someone you don't believe in," is the real way to waste your vote.

For his part, Larry King reminisced about other third party candidates he has interviewed, from Ross Perot to John Anderson to Ralph Nader. "You are like Don Quixotes in a way," he told the nominees, but this debate is a way to "salute you."

Martha Rosenberg is a health journalist whose first book, "Born With a Junk Food Deficiency" was recently published by Prometheus Books.

How Can an Addict and Addict's Family Heal? An Interview With William Moyers

2012-10-26T15:10:46-04:00

Interview with William Moyers, author of Now What? An Insider's Guide to Addiction and Recovery.

William C. Moyers, the eldest son of television journalist Bill Moyers and his wife, Judith, is known for his 2006 bestseller, Broken, which describes his near-fatal addiction to alcohol and other drugs. In his new book, Now What?, Moyers uses his recovery experiences to help addicts and their loved ones recognize when help is needed, find and navigate treatment programs and establish support systems to maintain sobriety and abstinence. Moyers is executive director of Hazelden's Center for Public Advocacy.

Rosenberg: Your new book about alcoholism and addiction, Now What, is very different from your popular memoir Broken, published in 2006.

Moyers: This book is not profound or deep like a memoir. It is meant to be practical and get people from the problem to the solution. The book tries to break down the walls of denial that stand between the addict, the addict's family and the community. The solution is really very simple and I stress the Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous because this is how I stopped drinking and drugging, and how many millions of people like me recover.

Rosenberg: Certainly denial is the signature of addicts and often their families. But you give examples of society's denial too like a case in which a woman drove drunk on the wrong side of the highway near New York City and killed her daughter, three nieces and three men in the other vehicle. Despite national attention over the accident, you write that the question of whether she was an alcoholic and addict and needed treatment did not come up.

Moyers: Yes, there is tremendous public indifference, intolerance and misunderstanding about addiction and how alcoholism is manifested. Addiction is a chronic disease like diabetes.

Rosenberg: Yet you write that people don't usually blame someone for a chronic disease like diabetes.

Moyers: That is right. People with chronic diseases sometimes say of addicts, "I didn't choose this condition," but no one chooses to be an addict. The other way addiction behaves like other chronic diseases is -- the person has to accept the condition before he or she can begin to improve or recover. The addict has to become part of the solution and admit powerlessness over the disease.

Rosenberg: Your family's attempts to help you are a subtext of Broken, and in Now What you describe actually hiding in a closet when your family showed up to "rescue" you at a crack house. What advice do you now give families from what you have learned about this disease?

Moyers: The family needs to set clear boundaries, avoid issuing threats and make abstinence from drugs and alcohol a condition of shelter and any other help. They can't let the addict run all over them. Lines of communication also need to be kept open because the family is often the key for the addict to get the help he or she deserves.

Rosenberg: You also say that the family can play a role in a "facilitated bottom." Can you explain what that means?

Moyers: Almost always, the addict will only accept help when he or she hits "bottom." The ultimate bottoms are prison and death, of course, so anything short of that is a way out. For example, an addict may have to go through several treatments to emerge from denial. It takes what it takes. No one can make an addict willing but the addict his or herself.

Rosenberg: Does being the son of a famous person change the way that you carry the message?

Moyers: Because of my visibility I get hundreds and hundreds of requests for information and help. I serve as a something of a lighting rod and am able to reach a lot more people. Still the message I carry is the same simple message any addict carries.

Rosenberg: You wrote in a recent column that online meetings and social media will become more popular as younger people populate recovery groups. What other changes are you seeing?

Moyers: I think Twelve Step programs will continue to find relevance as healthcare dynamics change, because an abstinence based approach that emphasizes the whole person -- mind, body and spirit -- has appeal and works. Especially since access to outpatient care is increasing even as residential treatment options decrease; people will need to embrace recovery outside of a treatment setting. And since addiction is a disease of isolation, recovery meetings are our antidote.

Rosenberg: How do you personally work your program to prevent relapse? Especially since it is said that the "ism" in alcoholism stands for "incredibly short memory"?

Moyers: I read from the literature like 24 Hours a Day, One Day at a Time and Alanon books every day and attend my regular meetings like my home group on Monday nights. I stay vigilant about medication and have told my doctor and dentist about the risks with any pain pills I would have to take. And, every morning I thank my Higher Power for giving me a new day and every night for helping me get through the day without a drink or drug.

Now What
An Insider's Guide to Addiction and Recovery
Softcover, 208 pp.
William Cope Moyers
I3982
Hazelden
2012

Martha Rosenberg is a health journalist whose first book, Born With a Junk Food Deficiency was recently published by Prometheus Books.