Search Results for: drugs

How a Local Police Chief Took on the Drug War

After 25 years of fighting a losing war on drugs and with a heroin epidemic raging in his home state of Massachusetts, Gloucester Police Chief Leonard Campanello decided to take matters into his own hands. He opened his police station’s doors to any addict seeking help, promising to get them into treatment. Writing for Boston Magazine, Chris Sweeney delves deeply into Campanello’s work, and the unlikely success of his initiative: in just three short months, 145 individuals have already come to Campanello seeking help. But first, the story of the Facebook post that started it all:

Campanello, heavyset with jowls and thinning hair, knew his limitations: just a small-town cop with a tiny budget and no power to enact laws. So on the morning of May 4, he logged into the biggest platform he had—the Gloucester Police Department’s Facebook account—and, for the first time, began typing out his defiant approach. Starting June 1, he wrote, “Any addict who walks into the police station with the remainder of their drug equipment (needles, etc) or drugs and asks for help will NOT be charged.” Instead, he and his officers would help them get medical care. It didn’t matter what insurance you had, or whether you had insurance at all—Campanello promised to shred the red tape that entangled so many who sought treatment. “I’ve never arrested a tobacco addict, nor have I ever seen one turned down for help when they develop lung cancer, whether or not they have insurance,” he concluded in the post. “The reasons for the difference in care between a tobacco addict and an opiate addict is stigma and money. Petty reasons to lose a life.”

He read the message over for typos, floated the cursor over the “Post” button, and clicked his mouse at 10:55 a.m. It instantly went viral, shared by more than 30,000 people, “liked” by 33,000, and viewed more than 2 million times.

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How to Get SuperBetter

Photo: Kiyash Monsef

Jessica Gross | Longreads | September 2015 | 18 minutes (4,658 words)

 

In 2009, while game designer Jane McGonigal was writing her first book, Reality Is Broken, she hit her head. The concussion didn’t heal. A month later, she was still plagued by intense physical discomfort and was told to avoid reading, writing, video games, alcohol, and caffeine. She became depressed and anxious, and had suicidal thoughts for the first time in her life.

By then, McGonigal had been researching games, and how the skills they build can help improve our real lives, for nearly a decade. She realized she ought to put her findings into practice. She designed a recovery game called “Jane the Concussion Slayer,” which involved recruiting allies (her sister and her husband) and identifying “bad guys” (symptom triggers) to avoid, “power-ups” (little boosts, like eating walnuts) to seek out, and quests to complete. That game became SuperBetter, which invites players to choose a specific challenge to overcome and, in the process, develop “gameful” abilities.

McGonigal’s new book, SuperBetter: A Revolutionary Approach to Getting Stronger, Happier, Braver, and More Resilient, takes readers through the game, as well as research supporting its efficacy and the theory behind it. We spoke by phone about games’ benefits and limitations, how playing games affects the brain, and what she’s using SuperBetter to tackle now.

* * *

You cite some fascinating studies in this book. One that I found particularly surprising, from Stanford’s Virtual Human Interaction Lab, was that watching an avatar who looks like you work out and show physical improvement makes you more likely to go exercise yourself. Was that surprising to you?

It wasn’t surprising. By the time that study came out of the Stanford Lab, they had done many studies of avatars and how they impact how we think and act in real life. There was, for example, a finding that if you play with an avatar that is highly attractive, you are more confident flirting afterward. The only thing that does surprise me is that this hasn’t been commercialized more quickly, because everybody is looking for that extra motivation to do the things we want to do, like exercise more. Read more…

The Girl Who Slept with God

Val Brelinski |The Girl Who Slept with God | Viking | August 2015 | 9 minutes (2,100 words)

 

Below is an excerpt from the debut novel by Val Brelinski, as chosen by Longreads contributing editor Sari Botton, who writes:

On the approach to my fiftieth birthday, I’ve discovered a new hero: Val Brelinski, who at 58 has just published her debut book, The Girl Who Slept with God (Viking), a compelling, compassionate autobiographical novel about three daughters who’ve been raised by devout evangelical Christians in Idaho. After Grace, the oldest–and most devout–daughter returns from missionary work in Mexico pregnant with a baby whose father she claims is none other than God, she and tween-age middle daughter, Jory, are banished to an abandoned house in an isolated area until it’s time for the baby to be born. They’re deposited there by their eccentric science professor Dad, who is as fervent about jogging in circles around their back yard late at night in street clothes as he is about religious observance. At their new, temporary home, Jory befriends a sketchy guy who provides a series of opportunities for her to try out transgressing. Like Jory, Brelinski was the rebel daughter in her family, and eventually broke free, turning her back on religion for good. Here’s an excerpt.

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A Reading List for My 25-Year-Old Self

Photo: Omer Wazir

This week I’m turning 25 and have decided (based on anxiety attacks and several recent horoscopes) to say what I really want: to pursue writing seriously. It terrifies me, because I’m having the following thoughts: 1) now it’s no longer a secret and everyone will see me fail; 2) my best writing samples are several years old; 3) so many folks I know who are younger and far, far more talented than me are Living Their Best Lives Now, and I feel hopeless in the face of so much talent. What do I have to offer? What can I say that hasn’t already been said?

But then I read something, and I realize I do have opinions and original thoughts. I can contribute to a larger conversation. I only need to commit to my potential and take risks. I need to contact the folks who’ve made offers I was too scared to accept, and I need to seek out these opportunities for myself. I need to believe in my value, and I need to hold myself accountable.

This list is a birthday gift to myself and, I hope, of use to you, too. It’s a mix of practical advice for freelancing, things that make me feel good, and examples of excellent writing. I included advice from professional women who get shit done, slideshows, links to YouTube videos, interviews with my favorite celebs, and other stuff. (Oh, and a post from Arabelle Sicardi’s Tumblr that makes me cry and is always open in my tabs.) Read more…

A San Francisco Story

Leah Rose | Longreads | August 2015 | 12 minutes (2,876 words)

 

On a Saturday afternoon in February, a group of 15 men stood chatting on the back patio of the Eagle, a leather-themed gay bar on 12th Street in San Francisco. The lone female of the group, 55-year-old Donna Merlino, known as Downtown Donna, untangled a heap of heavy extension cords and powered up a Crock Pot full of lamb stew. Wearing a black leather vest and sturdy black boots, Donna set up two tables of food for the guys, who sipped pints of beer surrounded by paintings of pantless Freddie Mercury lookalikes with enormous genitalia. Read more…

Welcome to Libertarian Summer Camp

Longreads Pick

Livia Gershon on drugs, philosophy, and guns at “the freest place on Earth”—a weeklong Libertarian summer camp.

Source: Maxim
Published: Jul 23, 2015
Length: 10 minutes (2,605 words)

Romantic Landscape: Going Mad in the Eternal City

Photo by Bert Kaufman ((CC BY-SA 2.0).

How terrifying. I’m glad you’re recovering, I write back. I’m at a dinner party in Rome and I think I’m having some kind of breakdown. I’m scared. I’m not sure who I am anymore and I don’t have a concussion to blame it on. Or Percodan. Can you email Percodan?

Sounds like we’re in the same place, he writes back. But listen: I know who you are. You are passionate and joyful. Try not to be scared. That is not your true nature.

It hits me like a slap that if my husband has ever said anything like that to me, I cannot remember it. That in fact his last words to me were along the lines of “You think you’re so put together and you don’t even see yourself. You’re a fucking trainwreck.” And that mine to him were “Thanks. Happy anniversary: enjoy your celibacy.”

I turn my face to the wall because I’m tired of crying in front of people.

Amy Glynn, in berfrois, takes us through an identity-shattering — and rebuilding — experience: the simultaneous decline of a marriage and withdrawal from psychotropic drugs in the dizzying, intense eternal city, Rome.

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No Room at the Inn for Innocence

Longreads Pick

There are more than half a million homeless children in California and budget motels have become the last resort for many families with nowhere else to go. Joe Mozingo profiles a group of kids growing up in the shadows of drugs and despair at a San Bernardino motel.

Published: Jul 22, 2015
Length: 7 minutes (1,908 words)

Who Killed Dolly Wilde?

Dolly Wilde, photographed by Cecil Beaton

Megan Mayhew Bergman | Almost Famous Women | Scribner | July 2015 | 36 minutes (6,383 words)

 

Our latest Longreads Exclusive is a short story from Almost Famous Womena collection by Megan Mayhew Bergman, as recommended by Longreads contributor A. N. Devers, who writes: 

“In her vital and poignant themed story collection, Megan Mayhew Bergman explores the interior lives of women who lived on the precipice of notoriety before falling into obscurity. The story here, ‘Who Killed Dolly Wilde?,’ delves into the unusual life and mysterious death of Oscar Wilde’s niece, Dorothy Wilde, building a rich portrait of a witty and wild bon vivant who dated both men and women (but mostly women), drove an ambulance in World War I, and fell prey to dangerous addictions. Bergman daringly imagines Wilde’s last days suffering with cancer and her addictions as something other than what history has recorded, which leaves a unsettling and dangerous aftertaste in the reader’s mouth—if we write women out of history, we never know the truth of things.”

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Jennifer Nix on June Carter Cash’s Influence on Her Life

Photo via Jazz Guy/Flickr

In our hotel room that night, I broke out “Press On” and we took turns listening to songs on my Discman. Johnny and June’s duet “The Far Side Banks of Jordan” visibly stirred my dad, and at song’s end he said, “I wonder which one will go first. The other won’t last long after that.” A room service tray holding two plates relieved of pecan pie sat on the bed between us—I remember that detail because it was the last time I was alone with him. Three months after he walked me down the little white church’s aisle, and just three days short of a new millennium, my 57-year-old father collapsed by the Christmas tree in our cottage and died of congestive heart failure…

…I first set out to write a tidy piece about my love for June’s voice because it is equated with some of my greatest happiness, and with pretty much the whole world I shared in celebrating the popular myth about the love between Johnny and June. After digging into the reality of that love and life, I am boundlessly inspired by the real woman’s story and my heart is open wider. Anchored in Love showed me June not only had to deal with Johnny’s continual addictions, but she saw her son and two daughters, Carlene Carter (from her first marriage to Carl Smith) and Rosie Nix Adams, struggle with alcohol and drugs, which also led to various estrangements. That they found roads to rapprochement before her death gives me hope and some courage to try to find a way back to my mother. I am a writer, and after five years of impasse, this is how it had to start for me.

—From “Pressing On,” an essay by writer Jennifer Nix about the impact of June Carter Cash’s music on her life, and the parallels between Carter’s family struggles and her own–originally published at The Rumpus. It’s now included in Here She Comes Now: Women in Music Who Have Changed Our Lives, a new anthology edited by Jeff Gordinier and Marc Weingarten, which includes essays by Rosie Schaap, Elissa Schappell and many others.

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