Personal Stories - Addiction & Mental Health Resources

April 23, 2025

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Understanding Joy: The Devastation of a Gambling Addiction

Understanding Joy takes a deep look into the life of Joy, a 57-year-old woman whose gambling addiction led her to embezzle $700,000 from two employers. Now facing sentencing, Joy wrestles with the weight of her actions and tries to help her children — and herself — understand the grip of her gambling addiction.

April 23, 2025

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Trapped in a Gambling Addiction That Almost Destroyed His Life

After struggling with gambling addiction, Ike Dweck slowly turned his life around. He has gone on to help others in need. He created the SAFE Foundation, an outpatient treatment program located in Brooklyn, New York. They serve as a reliable haven for those experiencing difficulties with cigarettes, vaping, prescription drug addiction, alcoholism, and compulsive gambling. In this video with That’s an Issue Podcast, he shares his inspiring journey from being a compulsive gambler to saving the lives of others struggling with addiction.

April 23, 2025

Beating the Odds: Overcoming Gambling Addiction

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Overcoming Gambling Addiction: Beating the Odds

Beating the Odds: Overcoming Gambling Addiction tells the powerful story of Michael Mooney, whose first memory of gambling came at just 10 years old — tossing coins against a wall with classmates to win lunch money. What began as harmless fun soon grew into something much more destructive: a gambling addiction that would shadow him for years. By 17, Michael was behind bars for heroin possession. While he served his sentence, his family moved to Las Vegas — a city of bright lights, second chances, and for many, heartbreak. Given a choice between prison time and recovery, Michael chose sobriety. He quit drugs through a 12-step program in 1991 and began to rebuild. But he hadn’t yet confronted his gambling addiction — the hidden struggle still waiting to surface. On his honeymoon, a quick visit to the hotel casino turned into a devastating seven-hour spiral. Michael lost more than $10,000 — every dollar they’d received as wedding gifts — to his gambling addiction. Overcome with shame, he made a life-changing decision the next morning: on May 1, 1995, he quit gambling for good. He hasn’t made a single bet since. Fueled by the pain of his experience and a desire to help others, Michael earned a master’s in psychology and became certified in both substance use and gambling addiction counseling. Today, he leads Choices Counseling Center in Roseville, guiding others through recovery from gambling addiction. Beating the Odds: Overcoming Gambling Addiction is more than a story of addiction — it’s a story of redemption. Michael’s journey shows that even after deep loss, healing is possible, and purpose can grow from the darkest places.

April 23, 2025

Ketamine: Realms and Realities (Hamilton’s Pharmacopeia)

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Ketamine Realms and Realities: Illegal Drug or Therapeutic Treatment?

In this fascinating journey, Hamilton Morris sits down with Timothy Wyllie, an artist, writer, and architect known for his role in creating the controversial Process Church, a religion that challenged traditional beliefs. Wyllie’s lifelong quest to understand his own mind provides unique insights into the complexities of human consciousness. Morris then travels to India, where he explores the production of ketamine, a powerful drug used in both medicine and recreation. He speaks with doctors, therapists, and experts to learn more about the role of ketamine in our society, its medical uses, and how it’s changing the way we think about the mind. Through this exploration, Morris sheds light on ketamine’s impact and its potential to shape our understanding of consciousness, offering a fresh perspective on this powerful substance.

April 23, 2025

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The Ketamine Time Bomb (VICE: High Society)

Ketamine has emerged as a defining drug for a generation of young Brits. A report from November 2020 revealed that 1-in-30 young people had used ketamine in the past year — the highest rate ever recorded and significantly higher than in other European countries. Current data ranks ketamine as the fourth most commonly used drug among young people, following cannabis, ecstasy, and cocaine. There’s a striking contradiction at the core of what's been dubbed "Generation K": ketamine is both dismissed as a bizarre, almost comical horse tranquiliser and feared for its very real, dangerous effects—including the risk of severe bladder damage and addiction. As its popularity has surged, so too have cases of ketamine-related health issues, including users developing conditions that cause them to urinate blood. In this report, Matt Shea dives into the world of Generation K to explore how a party drug can spiral into something far more harmful.

April 23, 2025

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Alcohol: Adrian Chiles – Drinkers Like Me

In this revealingly intimate documentary for BBC2, Adrian Chiles takes a long, hard look at his own love of boozing. He wants to find out why he and many others don’t think they are addicted to alcohol despite finding it almost impossible to enjoy life without it. Adrian, who drinks almost every day, decides to start a drinking diary and soon finds out his intake is way over the recommended limit. He decides to visit his parents to find out what it was that motivated him to start drinking as a teenager and reveals that sneaking into pubs underage was all about friendship and being part of something, and that the allure of the social side of drinking has never really left him since his teens.

April 23, 2025

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Beating Alcohol Addiction Through Evidence-Based Treatment

This documentary follows Mike Pond, a therapist managing his alcohol addiction. He was only ever offered one treatment after losing his practice, his house, his family, and becoming homeless: Alcoholics Anonymous. This abstinence-based treatment approach did not work for him, so he started looking for other ways to heal himself and others. Mike is an advocate for “compassionate, evidence-based treatments” and feels that “harm reduction, or any positive change, offers clients the best chance of beating addictions.”

April 19, 2025

Brought Up by Booze (George Best Documentary)

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Parental Alcoholism: Brought Up by Booze

Calum Best is the son of one of the greatest footballers of all time, George Best. He is also the son of an alcoholic. In this intimate and challenging BBC Children in Need special, Calum confronts the harsh realities of growing up with an alcoholic parent. Meeting some of the 1.3 million children who are growing up with parental alcoholism, and sharing with them intimate tales of his own upbringing, Calum begins to accept that his life continues to be affected even now by his father’s drinking. Brought Up By Booze takes Calum across the UK to meet young people who share stories of chaos and neglect, but also inspirational stories of determination not to end up like their parents. What does George’s addiction mean for Calum’s future and will he ever understand the illness that killed his father? In this raw and often distressing journey of a son still reaching for his dad, we see first hand the devastating effect that drink can have on alcoholics’ children. [Taken from YT description]

April 19, 2025

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His Name Is Ray (Fentanyl Crisis Documentary)

HIS NAME IS RAY puts a face on the growing fentanyl and homeless crises’, not through statistics or sweeping generalizations, but through the eyes of a man whose life has spiralled out of control. Ray once had it all — serving in the Coast Guard, a father, a husband, a man with a purpose. But his addiction took it all away. Now, the former sailor lives on the streets of Toronto with an entire population that has fallen through the cracks. With a remarkably intimate lens, the audience follows Ray on his precarious journey to get off the streets and back on the water, where in the ultimate achievement of the oblivion he craves—he could just sail away from it all. After compelling audiences at TIFF and HOT DOCS, HIS NAME IS RAY has resonated across the globe, winning the Special Jury Prize at the Melbourne Documentary Film Festival. [Taken from YT description]