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Hug That Baby!
Stop reading this right now, grab your kid and give them a great big hug. Or better yet, run to the couch and engage in a nice long snuggle session. Don’t do this just because you love them or because there nothing is better than a child’s embrace. Do it to prevent your child from becoming a drug addict.
What does hugging and preventing drug abuse issues later in life have to do with each other? According to new studies from Duke University and the University of Adelaide in Australia– lots. Continue reading »
Dad injected his son with heroin 10 times.
New Mexico Dad Jose Velasquez “faces felony counts of child abuse and contributing to the delinquency of a minor. If charged, he could face more than four years in prison,” KOAT reports. Why? Because according to court documents, he injected his 9-year-old son with heroin 10 times. Yet Velasquez’s cousin refuses to believe it, because “he and his ex-girlfriend have had many, many issues through the years” and so “there is some bad blood there.” Therefore, she says, “These are probably just accusations.”
Mmm-hmm. Tell that to the positive drug test, lady. Continue reading »
Lickety Split served up softies and pills at the same time.
It’s a beautiful spring-like day here in New York City, the kind where you open your windows and the kids play outside. It’s also the kind of day where you might hear an ice cream truck pull up playing that distinct music and you take the kids to grab a SpongeBob icy or a Popsicle. Most people would never think that the person behind the window might be a drug dealer, but that is exactly what happened in Staten Island, New York. The Lickety Split ice cream truck was doubling as a million dollar drug business and selling Oxycodone pills for $20 a pop.
Apparently the drug addicts in the servicing neighborhoods of Pleasant Plains and Charleston knew the truck dished out drugs alongside the ice cream. Adult addicts would sit in their cars waiting for local kids to finish buying their ice cream. Once the kids left, they would line up for painkillers. The drug of choice was the generic version highly addictive Oxycontin narcotic pain reliever, Oxycodone.
Henry Granju, six months before his death at age 18.
StrollerDerby’s Katie Granju is no stranger to social media. The veteran blogger has made a career out of it, quite literally. She’s also no stranger to parenting, having made a career out of it, too, both with her AP manual Attachment Parenting: Instinctive Care for Your Baby and Young Child as well as with her blogging. Katie is also no stranger to heartbreak.
She united all three of these things in 2010 when she chronicled the five weeks that would forever change her family’s life after her son, Henry, suffered a drug overdose coupled with a brutal assault. People all over the world waited with bated breath for her every post, and a virtual community cried tears that were all too real when she blogged of Henry’s passing on Memorial Day.
Addiction to prescription drugs, and particularly to the highly addictive opiate-class of pain medications like Oxycontin, Lortab, Hydrocodone and Percocet, has grown into a recognized epidemic in the United States. Tens of thousands of people are dying of prescription drug overdoses every year; in some states, the number of overdose deaths now tops the number of deaths related to car accidents. And pregnant women aren’t immune from becoming hooked on these powerfully addictive pills. It can happen to anyone.
Women who start or continue abusing these meds while pregnant are at risk of delivering a newborn who is also addicted, just as if the woman were abusing heroin. Even if they want help, many pregnant women avoid telling anyone, including their own doctor, that they are struggling with addiction because these women are fearful of being charged with a crime or of having their baby taken away at birth. However, a groundbreaking new study from researchers at Vanderbilt University offers hope to pregnant women who want help getting clean, and provides powerful evidence in favor of offering effective medical treatment to pregnant addicts, rather than threats or shame.
To Write Love on Her Arms Saves Lives
Like 19 million other Americans, I suffer from depression. I am lucky enough to have gotten the treatment I need to live a happy, healthy life. But sadly, I’m in the minority. Two out of three people who suffer from depression never seek help.
“To Write Love on Her Arms” is trying to change that. The non-profit organization is “dedicated to presenting hope and and finding help for people with struggling with depression, addiction, self-injury and suicide. TWLOHA exists to encourage, inform, inspire and also to invest directly into treatment and recovery,” according to its web site. Continue reading »
Henry Louis Granju 1991-2010
Henry Louis Granju was checked into a Knoxville, TN hospital on April 27th, 2010 due to complications stemming from a drug overdose coupled with a physical assault. He was the oldest son of two loving parents. He was the stepson of two adoring stepparents. He was an idolized big brother to three children. He was the soon-to-be idolized big brother of yet another child — this one still in his mama’s womb. He was a beloved grandson. He was an incredible cousin. He was a friend to countless. He was a gifted musician. He was a wonderful writer. He was a bright, charming, sensitive, irreverent, kind, gentle, clever, imaginative and funny kid. He was also a drug addict.
And now, he’s dead.
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