Are You AWFULIZING or ACTUALIZING?

It is important for us to see and own our thoughts, feelings and behaviors. All three have a direct impact on those around us and shape the environment in which we live. They especially effect our children.

The beginning of the new school year is the perfect time to modify our thoughts, feelings and behaviors to create positive surroundings for our kids.

One of my favorite books is Our Children Are Watching by Susan Ford Collins. Susan taught a course on success filing, a skill that helps to get that awful, nagging voice out of our head. You know the one…the one that tells you that nothing is ever good enough. The awfulizing voice goes through a litany of what’s wrong…from the weather to the traffic to fill in the blank.

Save The Date!

National Prescription Take-Back Day, sponsored by the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) will take place in communities across America on September 26th from 10am-2pm. Those who live in Pennsylvania and Delaware will have their event on September 12. As with the DEA's previous nine Take-Back events, sites will be set up throughout communities nationwide so local residents can return their unwanted, unneeded, or expired prescription drugs for safe disposal.  

Collection sites in every local community can be found by going to www.dea.gov. This site will be continuously updated with new take-back locations, beginning on September 1st.

4 Ways To Prevent Prescription Drug Abuse

The National Prescription Drug Take-Back addresses a vital public safety and public health issue. Many Americans are not aware that medicines that languish in home cabinets are highly susceptible to diversion, misuse and abuse. Rates of prescription drug abuse in the U.S. are at alarming rates, as are the number of accidental poisonings and overdoses due to these drugs. Studies show that many abused prescription drugs are obtained from family and friends, including from the home medicine cabinet. In addition, many Americans do not know how to properly dispose of their unused medicine, often flushing them down the toilet or throwing them away – both potential safety and health hazards.

“Prescription drug abuse is a huge problem and this is a great opportunity for folks around the country to help reduce the threat,” DEA Acting Administrator Chuck Rosenberg said.  "Please clean out your medicine cabinet and make your home safe from drug theft and abuse.”

In the previous nine Take-Back events nationwide from 2010-2014, 4,823,251 pounds, or 2,411 tons of drugs were collected.

Of all the brilliant Dave Barry lines, "You can't make this stuff up" remains high on my list--an extension in a sense of Mark Twain's, "Truth is stranger than fiction. Because fiction has to make sense."

A Florida couple was recently arrested for giving marijuana and cocaine to their middle school children in order to encourage the kids to go to school, do their homework, that sort of thing.

Yes, I wish I were making this up.

GOT PURPOSE? INTRODUCING THE RED RIBBON WALK & WRAP™ 

Effects of marijuana – with and without alcohol – on driving performance

Using the most sophisticated driving simulator of its kind to mirror real-life situations, new research shows that marijuana use impairs one measure of driving performance. People driving with blood concentrations of 13.1 µg/L THC – the main psychoactive ingredient in marijuana – showed increased weaving within the lane, similar to those with 0.08 breath alcohol, the threshold for impaired driving in many states. Drinking alcohol and smoking marijuana had an additive effect, so that drivers using both substances weaved within lanes even if their blood THC and alcohol concentrations were below the impairment thresholds for each substance alone. Alcohol, but not marijuana, increased the number of times the car actually left the lane and the speed of weaving. The National Institute on Drug Abuse, the Office on National Drug Control Policy, and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration funded the study.

The first time Sarah* used drugs — at age 13 — the experience was pretty unremarkable, she recalls. Now 18 and newly graduated from high school, Sarah does recall that it happened during the summer at a party. Other kids were drinking beer and smoking marijuana, so she tried them. She continued to smoke marijuana off and on during high school, and she occasionally drank alcohol to excess.

“It wasn’t like I needed something to make me feel happy,” she said. “I didn’t personally go seek it out. It was around.” Seated in a loose circle, Sarah is talking with other teenagers, who in one moment are sharing serious insights and life experiences, then joking and teasing in the next. These teens, ages 16 to 18, are participating in a group therapy session for adolescents at South Miami Hospital’s Addiction Treatment & Recovery Center.