We're often asked to give our opinion on Medical Marijuana, since there are so many dispensaries in Colorado. This month we've posted The Facts from the USDEA (below). You decide.

Exposing the Myth of Smoked Medical Marijuana

MARIJUANA: THE FACTS

Q: Does marijuana pose health risks to users?

• Marijuana is an addictive drug with significant health consequences to its users and others. Many harmful short-term and long-term problems have been documented with its use:
• The short term effects of marijuana use include: memory loss, distorted perception, trouble with thinking and problem solving, loss of motor skills, decrease in muscle strength,
  increased heart rate, and anxiety.
  

Q. Does marijuana have any medical value?
Q. Does marijuana harm anyone besides the individual who smokes it?

Q. Is marijuana a gateway drug?

~Read more about Exposing the Myth of Smoked Medical Marijuana

At Changing Lives we find that most of our clients are women who seem to deal with common challenges. In our next few newsletters we will be posting helpful tools for all who face these situations. Hope this one is helpful.

1. We accept ourselves fully, even while wanting to change parts of ourselves. There is a basic self-love and self-regard, which we carefully nurture and purposely expand.

2. We accept others as they are, without trying to change them to meet our needs.

~read more about women who love too much

Welcome to "First Steps to Al-Anon Recovery" from Al-Anon Family Groups. This is a series of podcasts to discuss some common concerns for people who have been affected by someone else's drinking.

Today we have Crystal with us. Crystal is an Al-Anon member whose holidays have included several awkward family situations.  She is willing to share some of the ways she handles a loved one's drinking.

 Surviving Meth: Local dads win back their lives, their kids

Justin Misner, 48, left, and Todd Meyer, 38, met in a Salvation Army program for meth addicts about three years ago and now are best friends and neighbors.

On a recent day in the late afternoon, Todd Meyer is deep in conversation with a visitor, and his two young children are hungry. Because he wants to finish the train of thought, he turns to a third adult in the room - his next-door neighbor Justin Misner - for help.

"Justin, will you make 'em a quesadilla?" Meyer asks.

Without a word, Misner gets up, herds 7-year-old Brooklynn and 4-year-old Lain into the kitchen and starts making dinner. Misner doesn't have to ask where anything is or try to persuade the kids to stay with him and leave Dad alone.

Misner is like family; Meyer and his two kids see Misner and his three young children almost daily, and they move easily between one apartment and the other for quick visits. It's the kind of close bond that can form when next-door neighbors have a lot in common, and Meyer, 38, and Misner, 48, have more in common than most.

~read more about surviving meth

 From the Colorado Springs Gazette, March 7, 2010
Barbara Cotter
Photo by Kevin Kreck