How AI Can Help Keep Ocean Fisheries Sustainable, Fast Company
Overfishing is a huge threat to global ecosystems, but experts are taking a cue from Silicon Valley to find a solution. By mounting cameras on fishing boats and using the same facial recognition tech that Facebook uses to identify people in photos, scientists can classify different fish species and help root out illegal harvests.
A Sober Utopia, Pacific Standard
A new program in Colorado takes a radical approach to helping homeless addicts — giving them the freedom to rebuild their lives on their own terms. Housed in Fort Lyon (ironically, a former prison), the program is a mix of rehab, university and startup, with many residents pursuing creative interests and building businesses as they become sober.
Inside LAX’s New Anti-Terrorism Intelligence Unit, The Atlantic
With 75 million travelers passing through its terminals every year, LAX is one of the most vulnerable terrorist targets in the U.S. But the airport behemoth has built an intelligence team from the ground up with analytic capabilities that “rival the agencies of a small nation-state.” The team’s innovative approach to fighting terrorism could signal a larger shift in the way global infrastructure sites protect themselves — building their own intelligence units when “the FBI, CIA, and Homeland Security [are] simply not good enough.”
Continue reading “Using AI as a Weapon Against Overfishing, A New Approach to Helping Homeless Addicts and More”
Tag: addiction support
Punk and Buddhism Discover the Means to Recovery
When it comes to punk, you probably think that the anti-establishment cultural movement contributes to drug usage, not prevents it.
But one former addict has found that those interested in the punk lifestyle don’t have to be drug users.
Dharma Punx — the rehab program that’s now spreading across the world — can be traced to tattooed Noah Levine. Levine suffered through his own bout with drug addiction and is now helping others overcome through his program, which combines punk and Buddhist teachings.
Raised as a Buddhist, Levine battled depression as a child and eventually turned to drugs and other criminal activity. After being arrested multiple times, paying fines and doing community service, Levine returned to Buddhist teachings and turned his life around. In 2004, his memoir Dharma Punx hit the bookstands and became the name of the new recovery program.
Levine’s program, Refugee Recovery, doesn’t follow the typical 12-step program. Instead, Levine lowered it to Buddhism’s Four Noble Truths on suffering: (1) reality of suffering, (2) the origin of suffering, (3) the cessation of suffering, and (4) the true path to cessation found in the Eight-Fold Path, which is one of the main teachings of Buddhism. Although Levine tweaked the Eight-Fold Path slightly to include an essential component in the recovery process: Community.
Not only did Levine create a framework for meeting, but there’s also one for training meeting facilitators, too. The meeting starts with the leader reading this introduction: “My role is not authoritative. I am not an empowered Buddhist mentor teacher; I’m here to facilitate the group and lead our discussion.” From there, the group descends into a 25 to 30 minute meditation followed by another reading. Then, a topic is brought to the group by the facilitator and the floor is opened to members. Afterwards, there is another reading, a closing, and the request for a suggested donation of $5.
Refugee Recovery is an unconventional rehabilitation with an even more unconventional leader, but it is rapidly gaining popularity. With groups meeting in San Francisco, Santa Monica, Berkeley, Hollywood, Santa Cruz, Nashville and Oklahoma City, Dharma Punx may be the new rising star of rehabilitation.
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Drug-Addicted Veterans Find Compassion in a Surprising Place
It goes without saying that prescription drug abuse is a growing problem in this country. A whopping 52 million Americans over the age of 12 have used prescription drugs non-medically, according to the National Survey on Drug Use and Health. In some cases, former service members among those addicted. They return home from war injured and are prescribed powerful painkillers; some struggle to wean themselves off the drugs and end up in trouble with the law.
Judge Robert T. Russell Jr. of the City Court in Buffalo, New York thinks vets in this situation deserve special consideration. Which is why, back in 2008, he established a special veterans’ treatment court and joined the nonprofit Veterans Healing Initiative.
There are now 131 courts for veterans suffering from drug addiction across the country like the one Judge Russell started. “It’s a vicious irony, as the soldier who served his country honorably is hooked on drugs by a military doctor and then the system tosses them aside,” Judge Craig Trebilcock, a colonel in the Army reserves who serves at the York County court, told Michael Smerconish of the Olean Times Herald.
One soldier the court helped is 29-year-old Justin Slesser. Nine years ago, he served in Iraq and was twice-injured due to falls from vehicles during his time overseas. After returning home, the Percocet he was prescribed for his pain wasn’t helping, so the Veterans Affairs doctors supplemented it with OxyContin. Like many others, Slesser became addicted to the drugs and when the doctors cut off his supplies, he started using heroin.
Slesser committed various crimes and wound up in the court of Judge Trebilcock, who sentenced him to a veterans treatment program. With its assistance, Slesser consolidated and addressed his legal troubles, got clean, and received treatment for his PTSD. “Without the veterans court, I’d probably be dead,” Slesser, who graduated from the treatment program two months ago, told Smerconish. He now works for a distribution company, which knows about his past and is cooperating with his treatment needs.
Judge Trebilcock said that Slesser “is highly intelligent, eloquent, was an outstanding sergeant in Iraq, and became an incredible addict who was essentially using his organizational skills learned in the Army to coordinate stealing, using drugs in a four- to five-county area with a number of other people. It took over a year, but we got him off the heroin, and he is once again highly successful.”
According to Justice for Vets, one in six soldiers who served in Iraq or Afghanistan suffers from substance abuse, but with savvy members of the judiciary like Judge Trebilcock, more of them can make a clean start.
MORE: This Florida Jail is Giving Veterans a Second Chance