Addiction

It was April 1978, and singer Judy Collins hadn't had an inspirational thought in four years. She'd been an alcoholic for 23 years — "and I was proud of it. " She'd toured and made records, but she knew the ride she was on — her father had been an alcoholic — and "as long as I was on it, I was going to enjoy every minute. " But in those last four years, she'd been drinking around the clock. Three-black-outs-a-day drinking. Jelly-jars-full-of-booze drinking. So her accountant and her assistant, the only people who would have anything to do with this version of Judy Collins, put her on a plane to a rehab facility.

The day after her ex-husband's funeral in January, Sabrina Lumpkin started calling every public official she could think of, trying to get someone to pay attention. Warren Lumpkin, 34, had died in a Southwest Baltimore house of heart complications related to using methadone, the prescription drug typically used to treat heroin addiction, according to an autopsy from the state medical examiner. But Sabrina Lumpkin said he had no such prescription - he took his roommate's methadone the night before he died.

America has suddenly become aware that there is a trade problem with China ("Export policy No. 1: getting China to play by the rules," Sept. 21). Once again, who could have predicted it? The American public is an addict. China is our supplier and the big discount chain stores are the dealers. We are addicted to easy money and bargain prices. The problem is that now we recognize that this is killing us and we want out of the arrangement. Whatever the solution, when an addict and his supplier break up, somebody is going to get hurt.

In 2009, Congress passed legislation reversing the decades-old ban on the use of federal funding for syringe exchange but, for unclear reasons, in late 2011, it reversed this decision, again withholding federal funding from programs that provide drug users with sterile needles and syringes. This month, Congress approved the health spending budget for the rest of this fiscal year without lifting the ban. This lack of action worsens public health problems, makes our communities less safe, and increases future financial burdens on taxpayers.

I think it's fantastic that Rev. Milton Williams is sticking his neck out on behalf of addicts in Baltimore by proposing to open his clinic to more people in serious need of methadone treatment ("Pastor to open on-demand methadone clinic at church," June 24). One thing the article did not mention is that methadone does not make addicts high but reduces cravings that lead to drug-seeking behavior and crime. However, it's imperative that readers know that methadone is also a highly effective primary treatment for chronic pain.

America is witnessing an epidemic of hand held phone lust! We have become a nation of techno-addicts — and there is a trillion-dollar industry feeding the hunger! Those overnight lines for the new Apple device are a clear symptom. Why are we relentlessly tethered to instant communication? Today Americans suffer from isolation and loss of physical contact from one another. It's frightening to see folks crave the iPhone 4s ("Apple fans get early dose of iPhone fever," June 25)

G eorge Gregory "Blue" Epps, a recovering addict and an addiction counselor whose struggle was depicted in "The Corner," the book which later became a critically acclaimed HBO miniseries, died of undetermined causes Nov. 15 at Johns Hopkins Hospital. The Highlandtown resident was 59. "We are waiting for the results of an autopsy for a cause of death," said his wife of nine years, the former Valerie Bolling. Mr. Epps was born in Baltimore and raised in West Baltimore.

Howard Markel's "An Anatomy of Addiction" starts, like a shot, on May 5,1884. A Bellevue Hospital orderly summons Dr. William Stewart Halsted to save the leg of a laborer who has fallen from a scaffolding. Famous for the speed and virtuosity of his surgery, Halsted notes the shattered shinbone piercing through the skin — and abruptly retreats from the examination table, because he's not fit to operate. He takes a cab home and sinks "into a cocaine oblivion that lasted more than seven months.

More than 20 years ago two neighborhood women, Jaye Burtnick and Gloria DeBarry, established a safe and warm place for the street people of the Cross Street Market area. "Their first epiphany was that almost all the guys who came there were veterans and they had addiction issues," said Michael Seipp, executive director of what is now called the Baltimore Station, an agency that defines its mission as "a therapeutic residential recovery program for men who are homeless largely due to chronic substance abuse.

The first interim report on Baltimore's efforts to reduce heroin addiction through expanded use of a promising drug shows that the city's strategy is working relatively well, but that results could be even better with broader participation by doctors and hospitals. In a city with such abundant medical talent, that should not be an impediment to helping eliminate a major scourge. Baltimore's buprenorphine initiative is a worthy effort, led by the city's Health Department, to help addicts by using a synthetic opiate that is an effective antidote to heroin.

Has it been mentioned anywhere that the couple who ran the Dogwood Restaurant in Hampden tried to change the lives of desperate people while serving good food and drink? There aren't a lot of businesses willing to hire ex-offenders and recovering drug addicts. It's a bother. It comes with risks, and there are plenty of attorneys to warn clients about "negligence in hiring," and the liability that brings. But the Dogwood believed in giving second chances, so attention must be paid, however late the notice.

Guns are instruments of death. Their purpose is to kill, to bring an end to life. Yet we have romanticized these killing machines with shoot 'em up westerns, Sopranos entertainment, and clubs to kill animals. But let's face it, make no mistake about it, guns are anti-life. That is the brutal fact of the matter. The gun debate still ignores this simple fact, giving a nod to gun owners in a touchy-feely way because they want to kill animals for fun. Nobody wants to say what a friend of mine recently posted on his Facebook page: "Get another hobby.

Health officials still aren't certain what is causing the alarming uptick in heroin overdoses that has occurred across Maryland recently. But it would be especially disturbing if the trend turns out to be an unintended consequence of state efforts to crack down on prescription drug abuse and fraud. The concern is that people addicted to prescription drugs are now finding them harder to get, and as a result may be turning to illegal narcotics like heroin, which are cheap and relatively easy to obtain on the street but which pose even greater public health and safety risks.

We're almost a month away from another legislative session, so it was no surprise to read The Sun's editorial in favor of higher cigarette taxes ("A life-saving tax," Nov. 25). While lobbyists like Vinnie DeMarco prepare their annual push to punish smokers, the rationale to raise cigarette taxes is as flawed as ever. Higher cigarette prices may discourage smoking, but there is hardly the direct connection between declining rates of smoking and higher tobacco taxes as The Sun claims.

Dorsey Nicola was shaking the dice and staring down the green felt, where chips were stacked like miniature skyscrapers and multiplying. The craps table was hot last week as a half-dozen students lined the perimeter and Nicola kept throwing sixes. The winnings went ignored in this windowless room tucked into a back corner of an Anne Arundel Community College satellite campus. Students glued their attention instead to the dealer's clever tricks to coax tips from players and calculate payouts, crucial skills for someone hoping to secure a job in the state's newly expanded gambling industry.

When David Kwiatkowski was found slurring his words and smelling of alcohol in a Boston-area hotel room littered with prescription pills late one July night, his life as a traveling medical technician had largely unraveled already. In his early 30s, he was living out of hotels, hopping among hospital jobs - including four in Maryland - and addicted to the powerful narcotic fentanyl, according to court and police documents. Federal investigators, meanwhile, were hot on his trail as they probed an outbreak of hepatitis C at a hospital where he had worked.

A report last week that the University of Maryland Medical Center is one of 10 hospitals across the country this year that will begin offering new residency programs in addiction medicine is welcome news for Baltimore, which for decades has suffered from epidemic levels of drug and alcohol abuse and a violent drug trade that claims hundreds of lives every year. Estimates of the size of Baltimore's substance abuse problem range anywhere from one in 10 to one in six city residents. No city can make progress when such a substantial portion of its residents are mentally and physically disabled by substance abuse problems.

Carroll Lutheran Village in Westminster will host the program "Challenges of Grandparenting in the 21st Century: Looking at Addiction Through the Eyes of Grandparents" on Friday, Sept. 14, from 1 to 3 p.m., as part of the center's recognition of National Grandparents Month. The workshop will feature presentations from Chuck Bosley, addictions coordinator at Carroll Hospital Center, and Dr. Janet Buchanan, vice president of philanthropy at Carroll Lutheran Village, who will discuss the signs and symptoms of addiction in youth and the use of technology in promoting substance abuse.

Even at the depths of a drug addiction that cost him a fortune and dulled his world-class poker skills, Greg Merson believed he could do something great. "He always had a lot of faith in himself," said his father, Stan. "I never saw him lose that. " Wednesday morning in Las Vegas, the North Laurel native showed the world that his faith was well-placed, winning the $8.5 million first prize in the World Series of Poker Main Event. "He's been through a lot, and a lot of people have told him he wouldn't make it at poker," said Stan Merson, still running on emotion as he watched a television replay in his hotel suite a few hours later.

For some people, poker is a game. For others, it's a career. To Greg Merson, it's the reason he's still alive. "As cheesy as it sounds, poker saved my life," he said. "I don't know where I'd be, if I'd even be alive, if I didn't have this passion. " Merson is 24 and has played poker since he started watching it on television in 2003. Now in his fifth year of playing professionally, he has already won a gold bracelet and is one of the nine players who have advanced to the World Series of Poker final table.