Date: Tuesday Jan. 10, 2012 6:04 PM CST

The Saskatoon Health Region plans to lay off one of three youth addictions counselors at the Saskatoon Mental Health and Youth Addictions Centre. The move comes following a review of spending in all health region programs.

But the decision has attracted some criticism from groups across the city, including the Health Sciences Association of Saskatchewan. Karen Wasylenko, from the HSAS, says eliminating a counselor is an ill-advised plan. “There are other options here that the region could’ve addressed.”

Wasylenko says youth are waiting more than one month to get in to see a counselor, and with only two available she now expects the wait time to double, which could be dangerous. She says waiting may give teens who have made the tough decision to get help enough time to change their minds about treatment.

For the rest of the story visit:

http://saskatoon.ctv.ca/servlet/an/local/CTVNews/20120110/sa-addiction-120110/20120110/?hub=Saskatoon

“I have a crack cocaine problem,” said Jennette. “I started using when I was 11 or 12.” That was 20 years ago; along the way she hit bottom, crawled up, had kids, fell back down, and lost her family.

But Jennette has not used drugs for a couple of years now. She got clean with strength she didn’t know she had, and also with the help of the Canterbury Clinic.

You have walked past this place often enough but, because you have never seen a sign on the door, and because you have never been an addict, you did not know it was there.

But unless there is a miracle, the clinic will close in a few weeks.

It was founded 15 years ago by Michael McCrimmon and two colleagues; they wanted to treat people who use drugs or alcohol but who don’t fit the usual treatment models: people who have mental health problems, who have lost their kids, who have trouble with the law, who can’t find help elsewhere.

For the past several years, the clinic has had the financial support of an angel, Generex Biotechnology, a small drug research company.

But Generex yanked its support 10 days ago, without a word of warning or a period of grace. A spokesman for the company confirmed that over the phone the other day.

McCrimmon said, “We lost $150,000.” That’s about three-quarters of his budget. How did he find out he was cut off? “Our April cheque was late. I called. I was told they were going in another direction.”

The loss is devastating.

McCrimmon said, “I can last six weeks, but unless I find some money, I’ll have to close the doors. I need —” and here, he paused and grasped at an imaginary straw — “10 people with $12,000 each to buy me a year to find alternative funding.”

How many people will be affected if he closes? “We treat 200 or 300 people a year; it’s open-ended treatment, not eight weeks and out you go. We get referrals from detox centres, from doctors, from courts, from other programs. Half our work is with women who have kids.”

What makes the clinic a success? “The patient doesn’t have to fit our treatment; here, the treatment has to fit the patient.”

[End Excerpt]

For the rest of the story read here …

http://www.thestar.com/article/974999–fiorito-fifteen-years-of-miracles-at-clinic-for-addicts-may-end

Source: Toronto Star

The Caritas program, which is only offered to men, consists of four phases.

His drinking was so bad, his parents were afraid to leave the house.

“They didn’t know what they would come back to,” said John, who asked his last name not be published.

When he overdosed in November 2007, his parents enrolled him in a 30-day treatment program.

“I came out and relapsed the same day,” said John, who continued drinking on and off during the following months.

“It was two steps forward and four steps back.”

In September 2008, John was hospitalized after drinking himself unconscious.

His parents gave him an ultimatum: get help or he could no longer live at home.

When John agreed to treatment, his parents directed him to North York’s Caritas, a 25-month “school of life” addiction rehabilitation program that is the only one of its kind in Canada. Clients have addictions to alcohol, drugs, sex, gambling or food or are completely unable to cope with life.

“I was volun-told to come to the program,” John laughed at the Tuesday, April 12 grand opening of Caritas’ new home at 1880 Ormont Dr., southwest of Steeles Avenue and Weston, a move prompted by a dispute with the centre’s former landlord.

His parents told him: “You have to see Father John.”

Father John is Father Gianni Carparelli, a popular and unconventional priest who founded Caritas in 1989 after witnessing the devastating affects of addiction in his St. Clair Avenue neighbourhood in the mid-1980s.

[Snip]

Clients begin by living in a Caritas residential home and attending therapy sessions, which include cleaning and cooking in addition to counselling.

Participating in basic life skills on a consistent basis teaches clients about taking responsibility, said Andrea Taylor, director of administration.

Often, enabling families of addicts have taken care of their routine chores so they have been let off the hook for even the most mundane duties in life, case manager Micki Tiano added.

The next phases of the program, which include a seven-month stay at the Caritas farm north of Toronto, transition clients from facing their addiction free of denial, looking at themselves with humility and truth, and making often painful connections in their lives, to taking responsibility, mentoring other clients and reintegrating into society. John graduated from the program in September. He is living in a Caritas guest house and is studying health management at York University.

“I am a new person approaching a new situation. It (being tempted to drink again) is something that is there, but it is not who I am. It is not helping me. I choose not to do it,” he said.

“I don’t have to do anything to make anybody else happy. I’m free to be me. That is probably the greatest revelation. It sounds so simple, but doing what makes you happy really makes you live a different life.”

The Caritas residential program, partially funded by the Ministry of Health, costs $900 a month to attend. There is also a day program, which is offered at no cost.

[End Excerpt]

For the rest of the story see …

http://www.insidetoronto.com/news/local/article/993511–caritas-enrolls-addicts-in-school-of-life

Source: Inside Toronto

The two panel speakers at the drug awareness event have lived very different lives. Dr. John is a physician and BJ works at the Parkdale Community Health Centre. Both have histories with addiction and shared their stories: Dr. John’s of abstinence and BJ’s of harm reduction.

Dr. John graduated from the University of Toronto in the 80s and set up a family practice in Mississauga. He worked there for 10 years gradually focusing his work as a general practitioner on psychotherapy. He moved to downtown Toronto and built a caseload with clients he felt he was maintaining and not curing.

“I had all the trappings of success,” Dr. John said. “But I wasn’t contributing in a way I felt I could.”

Dr. John, who had used recreational drugs in the past, started using cocaine when he was in his 40s.

“Looking back I can see elements of why I started in substance abuse,” he said, “but I will never know 100 per cent why.”

Dr. John developed a problem with cocaine, until one day, while using, he said he accidentally reported himself to the College of Physicians and Surgeons.

He got into a recovery program designed specifically for people working in the medical field and celebrated five years of abstinence last January and volunteers with withdrawal management at St. Joseph’s Hospital.

Also on the panel was BJ, who has a long history of drug use, and now works with the Parkdale Community Health Centre in harm reduction.

“I am still an active user, I am just safer about it,” BJ told the room of people.

[End Excerpt]

For the rest of the story see …

http://www.insidetoronto.com/news/local/article/979651–two-stories-shared-at-drug-education-day

Source: Inside Toronto

A drunk driver who killed an innocent mother while behind the wheel of a stolen van will get out of prison this week, having failed to complete programs to battle booze and drug addiction, the Winnipeg Sun has learned.

Rachelle Leost, 38, a mother of three, was driving to work at Costco about 4:40 a.m. on May 12, 2007 — the day before Mother’s Day — when a van sped past a stop sign at Arlington Street and Cathedral Avenue and smashed into her van.

On paper, Ashley Richard was handed a six-year prison term. But after receiving double credit for the time he spent behind bars before trial, his sentence was reduced to two years, eight months. According to National Parole Board documents, he will be let out on statutory release Thursday.

Richard, 35, must live in a halfway house until he completes his sentence on Feb. 25, 2012. He remains untreated for “serious substance abuse issues,” the documents state.

[End Excerpt]

For the rest of the story see …

http://www.winnipegsun.com/news/winnipeg/2011/04/04/17876476.html

Source: Winnipeg Sun

Of the hundreds of Inuit women who travel south to make a new life, an unlucky few get no further than Montreal’s streets.

There, they face disease, violence and sometimes death, far away from home and their loved ones.

But there’s hope and help.

Inuit women living on Montreal’s streets can now seek out a kind and familiar friend to give them a hand.

Last month, the Chez Doris day shelter hired Annie Pisuktie for a three-year contract as a street caseworker, thanks to money from Makivik Corp..

Pisuktie, who moved south from Iqaluit many years ago, formerly worked as an outreach worker with the Montreal Native Friendship Centre.

As a street caseworker for Chez Doris, Pisuktie walks the streets each day, checking in with the 40 or so women who frequent the downtown neighbourhood.

Located at 1430 Chomedey St., Chez Doris lies close to the old Forum, the Montreal Children’s hospital and Cabot Square Park, a popular hang-out for indigent people.

It’s also near a strip whose nightlife draws women with traumatic pasts away from the North, and then holds them, captive, in the city.

Pisuktie tries to help these women meet their basic everyday needs, said Josée Roy, an executive assistant at Chez Doris.

[End Excerpt]

For the rest of the story read …

http://www.nunatsiaqonline.ca/stories/article/130455_montreals_chez_doris_day_shelter_hires_new_inuit_caseworker/

For the rest of the story read here …

http://www.globalnews.ca/world/Colourful+Sask+politician+LeClerc+dies/4628778/story.html

Source: Global News

Nova Scotia’s opposition parties are asking what the government is hiding by refusing to release a draft report on the social and economic impacts of gambling that it shelved 18 months ago.

Liberal Leo Glavine accused the government Thursday of trying to hide the report because it doesn’t like what it says.

“We all deserve better than a government which hides opinions and facts it disagrees with,” Glavine said in the legislature. “The NDP have ushered in a new era of control, secrecy and manipulation.”

The government has refused to release the report because it says there are problems with its research techniques. Dulcie McCallum, the province’s freedom of information and privacy review officer, has recommended the report be released after conducting a formal review of the case.

Conservative Keith Bain wondered why it took six weeks for the Labour Department to confirm it had custody and control of the report after McCallum asked for it.

In her review, McCallum said delays caused by a departmental reorganization meant she couldn’t begin working on the final review until April 1, about a week after the province held a news conference announcing its plans for a new gaming strategy.

“It seems quite strange that through the (departmental) reorganization, the government was able to determine which department was responsible for the new gaming strategy, but it took 48 days to decide which department was responsible for the consultant’s study,” said Bain. “What was the government trying to hide?”

The final draft of the gambling report was submitted by a consultant in September 2009, a couple of months before his contract was terminated under the direction of the province’s NDP government. It was expected to delve into the costs to society of gambling addiction tied to video lottery terminals.

[End Excerpt]

For the rest of the story see …

http://www.metronews.ca/edmonton/canada/article/832972–opposition-wants-release-of-gambling-study

Source: Metro News

The chief of police in Kentville issued an urgent cry for help with the growing prescription drug problem in the Annapolis Valley about 15 months ago, but he says little has been done to address the issue.

“This has become the unspoken pandemic in Nova Scotia,” Chief Mark Mander of the Kentville Police Service wrote in a three-page letter to the provincial ministers of justice, health and community services, dated Jan. 15, 2010

The letter, addressed to Ross Landry, Maureen MacDonald and Denise Peterson-Rafuse, was written one week after the death of Brandon Strickland, 18.Strickland was living with his girlfriend, Kayla Houghton, who was two months pregnant at the time. They were attending the Kingstec campus of the Nova Scotia Community College in Kentville.

The medical examiner’s report said he died Jan. 8, 2010, from a lethal combination of prescription painkillers and alcohol.

Annapolis Valley Fighting Addictions, a new group of recovering addicts and their families, says 11 people under the age of 27 have died in the Valley since last December.

“This story is like the many other ones of people in my community who have died needlessly because of an addiction to prescription opiate painkillers, such as Dilaudid, Percocet and OxyContin,” Mander wrote of Strickland’s death.

[End Excerpt]

For the rest of the story see …

http://thechronicleherald.ca/Front/1238031.html

Source: Chronical Herald

An Ontario court has struck down Canada’s laws that prohibit the possession and growing of marijuana after ruling that the medical marijuana program is unconstitutional.

Ontario Superior Court Justice Donald Taliano found that the marijuana program is failing to ensure that patients who need the drug can get the necessary approvals. So the St. Catharines, Ont. justice declared the “Marihuana Medical Access Regulations” invalid.

And, because the problems with the program force medical marijuana users to resort to illegal means to obtain their marijuana, Taliano also struck down two sections of the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act that prohibit possession and cultivating marijuana.

He deemed the sections unconstitutional because they can be used to charge medical marijuana users who haven’t been able to obtain medical marijuana licences.

“Rather than promote health – the regulations have the opposite effect. Rather than promote effective drug control – the regulations drive the critically ill to the black market,” he wrote.

The ruling doesn’t immediately make pot possession legal: the judge suspended his ruling for three months, giving Ottawa until July to fix the problems his ruling identified.

[End Excerpt]

For the rest of the story …

http://montreal.ctv.ca/servlet/an/local/CTVNews/20110413/medical-marijuana-laws-110415/20110413/?hub=MontrealHome

Source: CTV Montreal