EVO Health and Wellness

Big changes are coming at 340 Sunset Ave. Evo is now just one member of a brand new collective of artists and healers committed to fostering meaningful human connection. Come join us on February 29th from 4-8 P.M. for an open house and a Leap Party featuring some fresh, locally-sourced food from Open Table, music by DJ Drez, and insightful conversations about new, progressive modes of healing.... For more info, visit evohw.com/leap-party.

"[C]ompanies offer products that will produce a burst release of dopamine in a way that conditions and ultimately changes the brain and develops certain addictive behaviors, which is to say behaviors that are harmful. Now, people have always peddled products that are potentially addictive. But what’s happened in the last 100 years or so is that more of these commercial strategies come from highly organized corporations that do very sophisticated research and find more ways to market these addictive goods and services."

"Caught between a past marred by a prison sentence for selling ecstasy and an unsteady future studying the drug that put him away, Medina-Kirchner was convinced that Hart, a researcher whose work shows that drug policies are often far more dangerous than drugs themselves, was the only person who might help an ex-felon break into scientific research."

"We’re meeting people where they are, without any judgment about medication, Gilmore said. And this is a community that really needs this service."

"Why don’t we know much about addiction treatment facilities and their outcomes? How can addiction treatment remain so expensive and so ineffective for many? Why don’t we use the evidence we do have for treatment? Why don’t insurers adequately cover addiction treatment? There is one common answer: Stigma leads to a skewed perception of addiction, or apathy about it, so the public, policymakers, and other actors don’t do enough to change the status quo."

"Mental health services and addiction services have historically been thought of and treated very differently from general health services by health care systems, insurance companies, everybody, Glied told me. There are clinical and stigma-related reasons for that, but there are also strong economic reasons for it. Some of the causes are straightforward: It costs insurers more money to pay for mental health and addiction treatment. But given the inconsistent quality in addiction treatment as my own reporting has extensively documented, many addiction treatment centers reject evidence-based approaches in favor of ineffective treatments it’s also simply harder for insurers to gauge what treatment is worth paying for and what’s not."

"Despite their effectiveness, the available medications are often stigmatized with a common trope that they replace one drug with another. On its face, this is literally true: The medications do substitute, say, heroin or alcohol. But the context matters. The issue with addiction is not just drug use. Most people use some kind of drug caffeine, alcohol, or medications. Some people are even dependent on these drugs, whether someone needs coffee to get going in the morning or insulin to survive. What makes addiction a medical disorder is not just drug use or even dependence, but continued, compulsive use despite negative consequences. So someone would be unable to stop using heroin even when it poses serious risks to his health, career, or family. It’s only then that drug use becomes a drug use disorder."

"Millions of people try to stop smoking cigarettes, he continued. They watch loved ones die on a regular basis from cigarettes, so it’s not easy to stop. And this technology emerged which made it very easy and eliminated the burning of tobacco. As for current official messaging around vaping, he concluded, They’re just putting out a scare campaign. And he pointed out that people that have been dying have all been vaping bootleg THC cartridgesa distinction that has been lost in the current panic.""

"The hallmarks of addiction, the literal definition of addiction is continued drug use despite negative consequences. So if you’re using an opioid like methadone and you’re going to work and you have friends and you’re just living your life, you don’t meet any criteria of addiction anymore, but you’re dependent on this drug. And to be dependent in this country on anything is an indictment of your character. It’s a weakness."

"Convincing us that addiction is inevitable and inescapablein the face of ubiquitous evidence that it is culturally and cognitively inculcated and very escapableis a self-fulfilling prophecy."

"As a scientist who believes in evidence, I know that shaming and judgment only makes any problem worse. I just love that shaming and judgment are not accepted within HAMS [Harm Reduction, Abstinence and Moderation Support]. We are already judging ourselves enough!"

"Shame and isolation killed Cleve as much as the Fentanyl. If the VA and the Trump administration want to help veterans, it will be just as important to address the stigma surrounding addiction and invest in more policies and programs that not only help them with pain but secure their futures even if they do have addictions or are in recovery. Only then will struggling service members feel really welcomed home."

"American drug education has been characterized by a catastrophic failure to acknowledge that young people who use drugs might not be irrevocably broken and marredor that abstinence-only education completely excludes kids who are going to use anyway, and in many cases already do."

"In some ways, of course, food is more insidious than drugs, because there’s no such thing as abstinence, no such thing as never starting in the first place, no such thing as being able to say, Food? Never touch the stuff. You eat because you’ll die if you don’t, so you spend your life in a sort of nutritional two-stepa little but not too much; go overboard today, cut back tomorrow; eat the good stuff but never the junk. Sometimes you succeed at all of that, and other times you fail terribly; we all do. The more we learn about how the brain and palate and metabolism process food, the more we’re realizing that a lot of this is not our fault."