When life gives you lemons
When dozens of teenagers suffered mysterious seizures
From the New York Times: “Before the media vans took over Main Street, before the environmental testers came to dig at the soil, before the doctor came to take blood, Katie Krautwurst, a high-school cheerleader from Le Roy, N.Y., woke up from a nap. Instantly, she knew something was wrong. Her chin was jutting forward uncontrollably and her face was contracting into spasms. She was still twitching a few weeks later when her best friend, Thera Sanchez, captain of one of the school’s cheerleading squads, awoke from a nap stuttering and then later started twitching, her arms flailing and head jerking. Two weeks after that, Lydia Parker, also a senior, erupted in tics and arm swings and hums. Then word got around that Chelsey Dumars, another cheerleader, who recently moved to town, was making the same strange noises, the same strange movements, leaving school early on the days she could make it to class at all.”
A psychiatrist who specializes in addiction says 12-step programs like AA don’t work
From NPR: “Since its founding in the 1930s, Alcoholics Anonymous has become part of the fabric of American society. AA and the many 12-step groups it inspired have become the country’s go-to solution for addiction in all of its forms. These recovery programs are mandated by drug courts, prescribed by doctors and widely praised by reformed addicts. Dr. Lance Dodes sees a big problem with that. The psychiatrist has spent more than 20 years studying and treating addiction. Dodes tells NPR’s Arun Rath that 12-step recovery simply doesn’t work, despite anecdotes about success. There is a large body of evidence now looking at the AA success rate, and the success rate of AA is between 5 and 10 percent. Not only, it’s harmful to the 90 percent who don’t do well. AA is never wrong (according to AA) so if you fail at Alcoholics Anonymous, then it’s you that’s failed.”
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