Recent Articles:
Below are past articles previously published in Drugs & Addiction Magazine. These are filled with current and relevant information and statistics and can be used as great conversation starters with youth.
It’s Bell Let’s Talk Day!
January 30, 2019Former Insys CEO pleads guilty to opioid kickback scheme
January 17, 2019Resolve to Detox Your Social Circle
January 16, 2019Easing test anxiety boosts low-income students’ biology grades
January 15, 2019Craving insight into addiction
January 14, 2019People with low self-esteem tend to seek support in ways that backfire, study finds
January 10, 2019Ban on cigarette sales in NYC pharmacies starts Jan. 1
January 9, 2019Too many problems? Maybe coping isn’t the answer
January 8, 2019Half of all mental illness begins by the age of 14
January 3, 2019Sexting Teens
December 19, 2018Screen Addiction: Today’s Biggest Threat to Schooling?
December 19, 2018Texting Etiquette & Safety: 5 Rules for Keeping Your Kids & Teens Secure & Drama-Free
December 17, 2018Amnesty International: Indigenous Peoples’ rights
December 17, 2018New Canadians sworn in as Winnipeg museum celebrates International Human Rights Day
December 13, 2018Statement by the Prime Minister on Human Rights Day
December 12, 2018Fentanyl is the deadliest drug in America, CDC confirms
December 12, 2018The Illustrated Version of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
December 11, 2018Homeless man with terminal cancer donates to holiday toy drive
December 10, 2018Boy gets Colorado town to overturn snowball fight ban
December 6, 2018Fortnite addiction is forcing kids into video game rehab
December 5, 2018Clarity on Cannabis
December 4, 2018Mental health education recommended for RCMP members following inquest
November 30, 2018Social Media – 16 Days of Activism Against Gender Based Violence
November 28, 2018Strategy to Prevent and Address Gender-Based Violence
November 27, 2018#GIVINGTUESDAY TODAY ONLY YOUR GIFT CAN BE MATCHED
November 27, 2018The 16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence
November 26, 2018#ENDViolence in schools
November 23, 2018Statement by Minister MacLeod on National Child Day
November 22, 2018November 20th marks National Children’s Day across Canada
November 21, 2018National Child Day
November 20, 2018Facts & Figures
November 16, 2018The Push For Change®
November 15, 2018Winter Giving 101
November 14, 2018First came the stroke, then the inspiration…
November 13, 2018Canadian Youth Speakers Bureau: Scott Hammell
November 9, 2018John Connors’ brilliant IFTA Award speech
November 9, 2018Crisis Text Line powered by Kids Help Phone
November 8, 2018This teen pizzeria employee traveled 3 hours to deliver pizza to a man with terminal cancer
November 6, 2018Video captures joyful law student’s reaction to passing her bar exam
November 5, 2018MADD Canada launches annual red ribbon campaign in Halifax
November 2, 2018Nova Scotia’s Health Department says talks underway for province’s first overdose prevention site
October 31, 2018Crystal meth eclipsing opioids on the Prairies: ‘There’s no lack of meth on the street’
October 29, 2018Opioids Don’t Discriminate: An Interactive Experience.
October 26, 2018Guelph police warn drug users of spike in purple fentanyl
October 25, 2018What exactly are you inhaling when you vape?
October 23, 2018Study ADHD Medication Overdoses
June 14, 2018A Cry for Guidance
January 18, 2018Your Friend’s Substance Abuse
September 15, 2017Depression
September 15, 2017Methamphetamines
September 15, 2017Alcohol
September 15, 201725 Healthy Ways to Feel Better
September 15, 2017Too many problems? Maybe coping isn’t the answer
January 8, 2019Oliver Burkeman, The Guardian
Every now and then, in the course of this disquieting year, a book landed on my desk bearing a classic self-help title – something about kicking a**, winning at life, getting everything you’d ever dreamed of – and I felt a twinge of pity for the author, for being so out of step with the times. This doesn’t feel like an era of ass-kicking or dream-realising. Instead, it’s an era typified by the genre I’ve come to think of as Coping.
Mindfulness, in its popular form, is Coping. So, too, are hygge, lagom, and whatever other Scandinavian word someone just decided is the secret to happiness: they’re about turning toward the domestic and appreciating what you’ve got.
Psychology books with “f***” in the title – on which I’d politely request a moratorium – are a different way of Coping: dealing with life’s problems by telling them to get screwed. So is “self-care”, which involves reading tips on the internet about how not to go crazy spending all day on the internet. We seem to have given up trying to win at life; these days, we will settle for getting by.
This gets criticised on political grounds: if the reasons we’re so overwhelmed and anxious are social and economic, people shouldn’t be encouraged to retreat from the world, or find ways to live with a bad system; they should fight it. “The parlance of reassurance is a flourishing industry,” wrote Miya Tokumitsu in The Baffler. “An array of Virgils to suit various tastes stands ready to talk us through the many circles of neoliberal capitalism.” Even sneakier than regular self-help – which stands accused of blinding people to structural injustice – the Coping genre lets you acknowledge the awfulness of the world and still not do anything about it.
While true so far as it goes, this overlooks the fact that people have always been Coping. The Roman philosopher Boethius wrote The Consolation Of Philosophy while in jail, awaiting execution. He had lots to cope with, but swathes of philosophy and literature share the same consolatory goal. Of course they do. When you are human – with a finite life and abilities, but a mind capable of infinite wants and plans, plus an awareness of your own mortality – life can only ever be a matter of Coping.
Yet much misery arises from the fantasy that things might be otherwise. Half the anxiety of having “too much to do” stems from not seeing that there will always be too much to do – so you can stop struggling to get on top of it all. And as the writer Sam Harris notes, we make various everyday problems worse with our implicit indignation that we must deal with them at all – as if we imagined we might one day get to live a problem-free life. Christian Bobin, a French poet, describes an epiphany: “I was peeling a red apple from the garden when I suddenly understood that life would only ever give me a series of wonderfully insoluble problems. With that thought, an ocean of profound peace entered my heart.” There’s much that people shouldn’t have to cope with, and that we should fight. But Coping per se? That’s just life. Problems are all there is. I hope this Christmas brings you some lovely ones.