Sober N Clean

Texas town reels from horrific abuse in its midst

Sunday, June 22, 2008 5:44 PM EDT
The Associated Press
By PAUL J. WEBER Associated Press Writer

MINEOLA, Texas (AP) — In the windowless front rooms of a former day care center in a tiny Texas community, children as young as 5 were fed powerful painkillers they knew as “silly pills” and forced to perform sex shows for a crowd of adults.

Two people have already been convicted in the case. Now a third person with ties to the club, previously known in town only as a swingers group, is set to go on trial Monday not far from Mineola, population 5,100.

“This really shook this town,” said Shirley Chadwick, a longtime resident of Mineola. “This was horrible.”

Patrick Kelly, 41, is charged with aggravated sexual assault of a child, tampering with physical evidence and engaging in organized criminal activity.

In all, six adults have been charged in connection with the case, including a parent of the three siblings involved.

Jurors this year deliberated less than five minutes before returning guilty verdicts against the first two defendants, who were accused of grooming the kids for sex shows in “kindergarten” classes and passing off Vicodin as “silly pills” to help the children perform.

Jamie Pittman and Shauntel Mayo were sentenced to life in prison. Kelly also faces a life sentence if convicted, and Smith County prosecutors hope for another swift verdict.

Thad Davidson, Kelly’s attorney, said his client passed a lie-detector test proving his innocence and worries about getting a fair trial in Tyler, 25 miles southeast of Mineola, which is in Wood County.

“I think it’s impossible to get a fair trial within 80 miles of Smith County,” Davidson said.

Mineola, about 80 miles east of Dallas, is a close-knit, conservative bean-processing town of with more than 30 churches. Residents there want to put the scandal behind them as quickly as possible.

The one-story building where prosecutors say four children — the three siblings, now ages 12, 10 and 7, and their 10-year-old aunt — were trained to perform in front of an audience of 50 to 100 once a week has been vacant since the landlord ousted the alleged organizers in 2004.

Down a slight hill is a retirement home, and even closer is the office of the local newspaper. Doris Newman, editor of The Mineola Monitor, said rumors of swinger parties spread around town but that no one mentioned children being involved.

Newman, who can see the building from her office window, said she remembers the parking lot filling up with more than a dozen cars at night.

In August 2004, an editorial under the headline “Sex In the City” opined that if the swingers left quietly, “we’ll try and forget they’ve infiltrated our town with their set of moral standards.”

“It’s not that we’re trying to look the other way,” Newman said. “But there’s a lot more to Mineola than that.”

According to a Mineola police report, the department first investigated a complaint in June 2005 in which the siblings’ foster mother said one of the girls described dancing toward men and another child saying that “everybody does nasty stuff in there.”

In the second trial, Child Protective Services caseworker Kristi Hachtel testified, “I’ve seen a lot and I never in my wildest dreams imagined this. They were preyed upon in probably one of the most heinous ways possible.”

The children are now doing better, the welfare agency said.

“Through counseling and therapy sessions, these children are now finally feeling secure and safe,” agency spokeswoman Shari Pulliam wrote in an e-mail.

Permanent custody of the three siblings was given to John and Margie Cantrell. This week, prosecutors in California charged John Cantrell with sexually assaulting a child in the state 18 years ago. Margie Cantrell said her husband is innocent.

Kelly’s attorney moved Friday asking to postpone the trial in light of the allegations against Cantrell, a state witness. Texas Child Protective Services said it would be “common” for the agency to investigate.

The Rev. Tim Letsch is opening a church in the yellow-plastered building where the children were abused. He acknowledges that building a congregation might be difficult because of the stigma attached to the property.

“You got to decide whether you’re willing to forgive those kind of things,” Letsch said. “It’s a hard deal. Especially for a spiritual person to walk in and say, ‘This happened here.’”

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Drug and Alcoholism Interventions

Drug and alcoholism intervention is an attempt by family members and friends to help a chemically dependent person get help for his or her addiction. The purpose of an addiction intervention is to help the substance abuser see the physical and mental destruction their addiction creates. Interventions are usually successful and often enable the abuser to move on to successful drug and alcohol treatment programs.1

As with all addictions, drug and alcohol abusers are usually the last to admit there is a problem. Or, the abuser may realize there is a problem but just cannot seem to seek help. Family, friends and careers also suffer and can be destroyed by the abuser’s addiction. Jay notes, one out of 3 people is living with or related to someone with an alcohol or other drug problem. Intervention is the most effective technique families can use to help a loved one suffering from chemical dependency - alcoholism or other drug addiction. It is also the most ignored. But just as CPR is often the first, life saving step in helping a heart attack victim, intervention is the most powerful step that a family can take to initiate the recovery process.2 By taking action, families and friends can get help for their loved one and help for themselves as they cope. According to Addiction Intervention Resources, 92 percent of those intervened on go to treatment and have the opportunity to change their lives.

Treatment centers and 12-step programs offer counseling, psychotherapy, support groups, and family therapy.3 These 12-steps consist of:
1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol–that our lives had become unmanageable.
2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
5. Admitted to God, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God, as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.
12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.3
In addition, medications can also aid in suppressing withdrawals or cravings and in blocking the effects of drugs.

The National Intervention Referral process gives an example of a step-by-step approach to how intervention works. First, contact and intervention facility and speak to a staff member. Second, set up a meeting with an intervention specialist to discuss the history and circumstances of the person in crisis. Third, before the actual intervention occurs, the intervention specialist will meet with the family and friends to discuss each person’s role in the intervention, their boundaries, and the consequences for the substance abuser if he or she does not follow through with the intervention. Fourth, conduct the intervention. Fifth, after the intervention has taken place, the intervention specialist will continue to spend time with the abuser and provide transportation to an arranged-in-advance treatment center. Sixth, once the individual is undergoing treatment, the intervention specialist will continue to keep contact with him or her. The intervention specialist will remain active in the recovery process and act as a liaison between the family and the recovering patient.1 According to National Treatment Referral; the treatment centers with the greatest success rate are those treating the whole person. These treatment centers are offering physical and psychological assistance, education and training.4

In conclusion, a drug and alcoholism intervention can and will save the life of a loved who is addicted to drugs and alcohol. Families and friends must choose to not look the other way but to proactively seek help for themselves and the substance abuser.

The smuggling of dissolved drugs, especially cocaine, in bottled liquids can be decreased with the use of multidetector CT (MDCT) according to a recent collaborative study conducted by researchers at the Centre for Forensic Imaging, Institute of Forensic Medicine at the University of Bern and the Federal Customs Administration (FCA), in Bern, Switzerland.

The study initially consisted of MDCT scans of three wine bottles that contained cocaine solutions that were confiscated at the Swiss Border, said Silke Grabherr, MD, lead author of the study. Once the researchers conducted the scans of the three wine bottles, they did a simulated test using 12 wine bottles with six spiked with cocaine in various concentrations ranging from 10-120 grams. MDCT accurately detected the bottles with the dissolved cocaine because cocaine shows an increase of the X-Ray attenuation, said Dr. Grabherr.

“Fluoroscopy, conventional radiography and sonography have been used to detect hidden drugs, however, these techniques cannot detect dissolved drugs, she said. “MDCT allows us to quickly detect cocaine solutions inside bottles without opening them and even without opening the cargo,” Dr.Grabherr said.

“If a suspicious cargo is scanned with a positive result, it can be tracked without arousing the suspicion of the smuggler. By using the MDCT-screening method, the investigation does not leave any trace, therefore smugglers won’t know if their cargo was examined or not,” she said.

“The fast acquisition of the data also allows screening of a large amount of cargo, for example a whole shipment, without delaying delivery of the cargo. By using the MDCT screening, the possibility that the drug (if it exists), is detected is much higher because every bottle in the cargo is examined,” said Dr. Grabherr.

The study appears in the May issue of the American Journal of Roentgenology.

So what exactly is the Problem? Or does that even need to be addressed? I believe that the problem should be addressed, however there is so many forms of the problem that it would be so hard to pinpoint it all into one area of any particular area of our lives that sometimes we will spend way too much time looking for what the problem is that we miss the solution to the problem. However we need to set up a blueprint if you will allow me to use this phrase for without a solid blueprint of a building you wouldn’t have a solid building now would you? So we need to address the issue of what is the problem. That is a individual opinion and I am sure that there are many that will disagree with me here.

In my Own Experience I have came to believe that until we are sure of what the problem is there is no process to regain control over our addiction or over our addictive thinking which is my own opinion. I believe that we need to get down to the root and the cause of each of the addictions that are ailing us and than once we have opened up that door we will than be able to proceed to the next level of the recovery process.

Since the word addiction as we saw has what is now coincide with our minds and the way in which we react to the issues at hand it means that we have now discovered that we are not only physically, and mentally ill from the use of the substance, but it also processes some sort of bad vibes in the process also and this process never ceases until we do actually face the fact concerning the Problems that entail our everyday lives not just the days that we cleaned up from our main DOC (Drug Of Choice).

We start by recognizing our Problems with each other through our active drug use and being able to relate to the situation that got us there. This is the first part of the recovery phase that I like to call the truth has hit ya in the face but is that enough. Yeah the truth will set you free but only if you are willing to actually accept the truth for the truth. It is not just knowing the truth for knowing the truth and living the truth are two very different things. One may know that they have a sex issue, drug issue, gambling issue, but knowing it isn’t anything unless we are willing to accept this to be the truth and once that is done than we are than able to move into another direction from what some would say is the denial stage of recovery into the active process of the recovery road.

I believe that I finally accepted the truth to the fact that crack, meth had me licked on May 25, 2006 and yet I had know the truth for many years before that. But until I could accept the fact that these substances was making a huge mess up in my life nothing seemed to happen very effectively in my recovery road. Although I had sometime being clean the the process wasn’t the same than as it is now. I actually believe that it was easier to stay off of the stuff while I was actually only acknowledging my problem rather than accepting that it was my problem. You see there that is what I am saying that while it was actually only acknowledge the fact rather than accepting that it was the fact of my problems and the word was is also a key thing here because it isn’t in fact a part of myself that is hurting my sound mind although it still does from the damage that I have caused to the brain cells all of these years.

The fact remains that those two substances I had to get out of my life, also with any other drug/alcohol to start the journey into the recovery field. Today I am still haunted by the addiction to Nicotine that sounds harmless but my story is still being told and this part of my addiction is still causing me insane and unsound mind decisions, although it would be a lot worse which we all would have to agree if I were still using those other substances PERIOD. So Now I have set up the problem as I had to search for within myself. Maybe you have the same problems or not, maybe it is Nicotine, Sex, Pot, Speed, Crack, Meth, Porno, whatever is causing this obsessive/compulsive behavior that is making the wrong choices than we identify that and move on to the next step in our recovery path toward freedom from our addiction to whatever addiction it is for you. As many of forms of addiction there are at least that many forms for recovery, I use multiple ways to recover and it works for me. Today

A Comparison of Addiction to Cocaine and Methamphetamine

Cocaine and methamphetamine are two drugs that are often linked together because they produce similar effects and because they belong to the same class of drugs called psychostimulants. In addition, they both have the potential for causing dependence and abuse which further strengthens the bond associate between them. Though there are many similarities, a fair number of differences do also exist, which will be discussed here.

Where Do They Come From?

Methamphetamine is man made, while cocaine is derived from the coca plant.

Is There A Difference in the Way They Are Used?

Both can be smoked, injected intravenously or snorted. The difference being that methamphetamine can be taken in pill form. In addition, cocaine can be used medically as an anesthetic and as an appetite stimulant while methamphetamine has no proven medical use.

Where and By Whom Are the Drugs Used?

Out of the two drugs, Methamphetamine has a much more defined area of use as well as stereotype of user. Statistics show that use of methamphetamine is highest in western areas of California, Honolulu, Hawaii, and western areas of the continental United States. Urban areas of California, Oregon, Arizona, Colorado and Washington, show increased use of methamphetamines. In recent years however, use of methamphetamine has increased in rural and urban areas of the South and Midwest.

Cocaine use varies so there is no geographic pattern that clearly delineates where the drugs are used. Cocaine use however, is usually significantly higher in large cities and metropolitan areas as opposed to non-metropolitan areas.

A possible reason for the difference between cocaine and methamphetamine addiction by area is that in rural areas, cocaine is not as easily accessible. Methamphetamine however, can be made in a garage or basement with household products, making it quite easy for individuals to make their own high.

Do They Produce The Same Effects?

* Perhaps the reason why cocaine and methamphetamines are confused is because both produce a very well received rush almost immediately. This is followed by feelings of extreme happiness or euphoria which is referred to as a rush.

* Methamphetamine’s high can last from eight to twenty four hours and fifty percent of the drug is removed from the body in twelve hours. Cocaine’s high on the other hand, lasts from twenty to thirty minutes and fifty percent of the drug is removed from the body in one hour.

* Both cocaine and methamphetamine, when injected intravenously or smoked, can cause an almost immediate rush which is followed by a high.

* When ingested nasally, which is referred to as snorting, neither methamphetamine nor cocaine cause a rush or a high. A similar effect is produced when methamphetamine is ingested orally.

Are the Physiological Effects Similar?

* Both methamphetamine and cocaine can cause immediate effects of irritability, anxiety, increased heart rate, blood pressure, body temperature and possible death. Methamphetamine’s and cocaine’s short-term effects also can include increased activity, respiration, and wakefulness, and decreased appetite.

* Chronic use of cocaine or methamphetamine can cause dependence and possibly stroke.

* In either case, cocaine or methamphetamine can lead to psychotic behavior. These behaviors are characterized by hallucinations, paranoia, violence, and mood disturbance.

* Some data suggests that violence is more common among methamphetamine users than among cocaine users. Drug craving, paranoia, and depression can occur in addicted individuals who try to stop using either methamphetamine or cocaine.
Is there a difference in neurotoxicity?

* Neurotoxicity refers to the toxic damage these drugs can incur on the brain, specifically on neuron transmission. Neurons are responsible for the processing and transferring of information. Methamphetamine can be neurotoxic in animal species ranging from mice to monkeys. Methamphetamine specifically damages neurons that produce serotonin and dopamine. Since the usual doses taken by humans are comparable to the doses causing neurotoxicity in animals, it is reasonable to believe that this also causes the same effect in humans.

* On the other hand, cocaine does not cause neurotoxic damage to dopamine and serotonin neurons.

More than half of women in France continue to drink alcohol during their pregnancies, according to a new French study. However, the researchers also found that most of these women are uninformed about the risks to their babies’ health.

“Our results surprised us because we didn’t think that the women were so massively going to answer that they were so ignorant of the dangers of alcohol during pregnancy,” said Ingrid de Chazeron of the Centre Hospitalier Universitaire, who led the study.

The study, published in the May issue of Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research, compiled data from 837 pregnant women at public and private obstetric centers who participated in the study between July 2003 and June 2004.

The women responded to a survey that asked about their drinking patterns during pregnancy, and 52.2 percent said they had used alcohol having at least one drink during the time. The researchers noted this was a “huge difference” from the United States, where only 12 percent of pregnant women report any alcohol use. Moreover, 13.7 percent of the participants said they had at least one binge-drinking episode where they had five or more drinks on one occasion.

de Chazeron and her colleagues said that drinking wine and beer is part of the “regular eating habits” in France and there is a lot of controversy over the safety of occasional drinking during pregnancy.

“At the time of our study, I don’t think that women had been aware of the risks to their baby’s health about drinking,” de Chazeron said. “First, there was not enough campaigning about the dangers of alcohol during pregnancy … and [women] do not believe that small consumptions, even regularly, can influence the future of their child.”

Past evidence has proven that drinking alcohol during pregnancy can lead to fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS), one of the main causes of mental retardation and birth defects. In the new study, two women gave birth to babies with FAS.

The question of how much alcohol is safe to consume during pregnancy is not as controversial in the United States, where the advice from ob/gyns is mostly consistent.

“The common advice given by ob/gyns is that abstinence is the safest way to eliminate the possibility of your child having FAS,” said Chemen Tate, M.D., chief resident of obstetrics and gynecology at Indiana University School of Medicine. “When pressed [by patients], with ‘c’mon, one drink won’t hurt,’ most ob/gyns would admit that one drink in nine months would not likely result in full-blown FAS, but we do not know the amount of alcohol it takes to cause any one of the fetal alcohol spectrum disorders. The potential outcome is definitely not worth the gamble.”

de Chazeron I, et al. Is pregnancy the time to change alcohol consumption habits in France? Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research. 32(5), 2008.

ScienceDaily (Apr. 22, 2008) — New drug research suggests that teens may get addicted and relapse more easily than adults because developing brains are more powerfully motivated by drug-related cues. This conclusion has been reached by researchers who found that adolescent rats given cocaine — a powerfully addicting stimulant — were more likely than adults to prefer the place where they got it. That learned association endured: Even after experimenters extinguished the drug-linked preference, a small reinstating dose of cocaine appeared to rekindle that preference — but only in the adolescent rats.

The research, performed at McLean Hospital, Harvard Medical School’s largest psychiatric facility, was reported in Behavioral Neuroscience.
Evidence that younger brains get stuck on drug-related stimuli reinforces real-world data. Epidemiological studies confirm that of people in various age groups who experiment with drugs, teens are by far the most likely to become addicted. Thus, the new findings may be useful in developing new treatments for youthful addiction.

In the study, psychologists Heather Brenhouse, PhD, and Susan Andersen, PhD, who directs McLean’s Developmental Psychopharmacology Laboratory, introduced rats that were 38 or 77 days old (equivalent to 13 or 20 human years) to an apparatus with one central and two larger side chambers that had different flooring, wall colors and lighting. For three days in a row, the researchers injected the rats with saline solution in the morning and placed them in one side chamber for an hour. Four hours later, they injected them with a preference-forming dose of cocaine (either 10 or 20 mg per kg of weight, to assess two doses known to be habit-forming) and placed them in the opposite-side chamber for an hour. Conditioning this way kept the rats from associating the symptoms of withdrawal with the non-drug chamber.

On Day 4, the researchers let the rats freely explore the entire apparatus in a drug-free state for 30 minutes, to test for “conditioned place preference” for the chamber where they got cocaine. Brenhouse and Andersen calculated how long each rat spent in the drug-paired side relative to total time spent on either side. They repeated the procedure every 24 hours until each animal’s place preference was extinguished, when the time they spent in the drug-paired chamber was cut in half — suggesting no lingering preference for either side.

Relative to adults, adolescent rats required around 75 percent more trials to extinguish a preference for the place where they were given the drug.
After each rat’s last extinction trial, the researchers waited 24 hours, injected a low 5 mg/kg “priming” dose of cocaine, and put it back in the apparatus to test for place preference. During this test for “reinstatement” of extinguished preferences, adolescent rats showed a significantly greater renewed preference than did adults for the drug-paired chamber. Those that had originally learned on a 10 mg/kg dose of cocaine showed 40 percent greater reinstatement than the few adult rats that showed a place preference at the lower dose.

Interestingly, both adolescent and adult rats who were conditioned at the 20 mg/kg dose renewed their place preference to a similar degree. Brenhouse and Andersen view this as a sign that adolescents form stronger memories for even less potent rewards. Thus, they wrote, “Adolescent vulnerability to addiction involves robust memories for drug-associated cues that are difficult to extinguish.” They speculate that the context of drug use is more salient to adolescents, perhaps because the frontal cortex is still developing.

Brenhouse and her fellow researchers found in prior studies that during adolescence, dopamine — a neurotransmitter that signals “reward” — may trigger more focused messages traveling from the frontal-cortex area involved with learning to a central area involved with reward and addiction. This biochemical express lane, which appears to fade as the brain matures, may result in the adolescent brain’s capacity for building stronger memories for rewarding stimuli — including the people, places and events associated with addicting drugs.

This heightened salience, say Brenhouse and Andersen, “may require atypical strategies for drug abuse intervention during the adolescent period, such as extended treatment that involves substitution with different rewards, for example, exercise or music.” Brenhouse wonders whether teens may learn best when rewards are involved. “Harnessing their acute ability to learn well and form strong associations with stimuli that predict rewards may be helpful,” she says. “In addition, it may be important to realize that adolescents might need longer treatment programs.”

Needle-exchange programs in Washington, D.C, likely will expand by the summer, when $494,000 in city funding will begin “flowing to four organizations on the front line of the fight against HIV/AIDS,” the Washington Post reports (Levine, Washington Post, 4/25). City officials in January announced that the district would invest in needle-exchange programs to help prevent the spread of HIV among injection drug users in the city. The announcement came after President Bush signed a fiscal year 2008 omnibus spending bill (HR 2764) that effectively lifted a ban on city funding for needle-exchange programs in the district. Since 1999, the district has been the only U.S. city barred by federal law from using local funds for needle-exchange programs. A report released in November 2007 by district health officials found that injection drug use was the second most common cause of HIV transmission in the city (Kaiser Daily HIV/AIDS Report, 1/3).

More than half of the city funding will go to PreventionWorks!, which plans to expand its outreach efforts to include more comprehensive screening for the clients of its mobile van service. According to Shannon Hader, director of the district’s HIV/AIDS Administration, the three other not-for-profit groups that will receive funding bring “very different” approaches to needle exchanges. The groups are:

• Helping Individual Prostitutes Survive, which focuses on men and women who engage in commercial sex work;
• Bread for the City, which assists impoverished and homeless people through a variety of programs; and
• Family Medical and Counseling Service, which operates as a “more tradition health care provider” in the city’s Ward 8, according to the Post.

Hader said that each group will build on work it already does with IDUs, adding that funding is expected to double in 2009 and be continued through 2010 (Washington Post, 4/25).