Wonderland Recovery Blog

On Tuesday, November 20, 2007, Barack Obama spoke out about his past in front of a group of Manchester, N.H. high school students, telling them that there were times when he got into drinking and experimented with drugs …

State Sen. BARACK OBAMA, D-Chicago wrote in 1995 book “Dreams From My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance,”: “Junkie. Pothead. That’s where I’d been headed: the final, fatal role of the young would-be black man,” Obama wrote. “Except the highs hadn’t been about that, me trying to prove what a down brother I was. Not by then, anyway. I got high for just the opposite effect, something that could push questions of who I was out of my mind, something that could flatten out the landscape of my heart, blur the edges of my memory. I had discovered that it didn’t make any difference whether you smoked reefer in the white classmate’s sparkling new van, or in the dorm room of some brother you’d met down at the gym, or on the beach with a couple of Hawaiian kids who had dropped out of school and now spent most of their time looking for an excuse to brawl. … You might just be bored, or alone. Everybody was welcome into the club of disaffection.”

The sentiments of Barack Obama sound incredibly familiar. In adolescents and as young adults, most of us struggle to discover ourselves, take some risks, possibly experiment with cigarettes, drugs or alcohol. The real question is why didn’t Barack Obama end up in rehab, in jail or die? What spared him? Why do so many of our family members and friends end up rehab? Why not Barack Obama?

If Barack Obama had a different brain chemistry, he may be singing the Amy Winehouse hit “They’re tryin to make me go to rehab”…Some people suffer from addictive disorders, some people don’t. Alcoholism has many similarities to Diabetes. A person may develop Diabetes as a child or as an adult. No one can predict it. Some people get Diabetes, other don’t. Maybe Senator Obama was just “lucky”, he doesn’t have the disease of addiction. He could stop!

But what would happen if Barack Obama marries Betty Ford and they have children, will their children be alcoholic? (Sorry, sometimes I try too hard to be funny!)

The point is alcoholism and addiction is hereditary. Children of alcoholics and addicts are 50% more likely to have the disease. According to a study by the research group University of Granada the Beta-endorphins in a person’s brain constitute a useful biological marker to identify specifically those subjects who have a higher risk of developing alcohol abuse, the research claims. Regarding the results of this study, professor Rico states the following: “alcohol-abuse prevention must consist of locating and identifying genetically predisposed subjects.” More campaigns for children and teenagers should be launched before these young people make contact with alcohol. Alcohol awareness is fundamental to prevent addiction, the researcher affirms, because alcohol is a drug with reversible effects up to a point.

According to the statistics - 1 out of 10 people in the United States are addicted to drugs or alcohol. GOP candidate Mitt Romney, who was campaigning in Iowa Tuesday, called Obama comments a “huge error.”It’s just not a good idea for people running for president of the United States, who potentially could be the role model for a lot of people, to talk about their personal failings while they were kids, because it opens the doorway to other kids thinking, ‘Well I can do that too,’”

Mitt Romney may want to check in with professor Rico about education. He should also check out the government reports on addiction in the United States. Alcohol and drug addiction are more costly to the United States than Cancer and Diabetes combined! Alcoholism and addiction cost the United States $340 Billion per year according to National Institute on Drug Addiction. Cancer $170 Billion and Diabetes $130 Billion.

Education is important to help stop the damage alcoholism and addiction is doing to our country. Senator Barack Obama characterized his experimental use of drugs and alcohol as a mistake. We agree. It is a mistake to experiment with drugs and alcohol. It is especially damaging because twice as many people who use drugs and alcohol before the age of 14 will suffer from alcoholism and addiction than those who don’t.

Senator Barack Obama and G.O.P candidate Mitt Romney have an obligation to help solve the horrible problems of alcoholism and addiction. We need more candid discussions and education. We support the courage it takes to speak up and let people know. We are a community of recovering addicts and alcoholics that share the damage and destruction alcohol and drugs did to us in the past. And now we share the happiness we have found in our recovery! We have a lot to be grateful for this Thanksgiving, we hope many more people in the United States experience the freedom of living clean and sober.

Alex Shohet
Founder
Wonderland Center

WSJ - HEAVENLY HELP

The Situation: Angel investor groups are expanding their reach beyond hot tech start-ups. What’s In: Newer groups fund firms, regardless of sector, that serve a certain mission — including minority or women-led businesses and those that help a certain cause. Other groups that focused on high tech are now branching out to other sectors as well.

More Widely Available - What changed?

Angel investment groups — wealthy individuals who band together to invest in companies, often for an equity stake — used to concentrate almost exclusively on hot high-tech start-ups considered able to produce fat investment returns in about seven years or less. But a potentially dramatic shift in the funding landscape is emerging. As more angels with varying backgrounds link up, a growing number of these groups are aligning themselves with a mission and funding all sorts of businesses that support the cause.

Meeting Their Mission

Among the missions newer angel groups are focusing on are spurring economic development in a distressed region, funding women- or minority-led businesses, or helping a social or environmental cause. And mission-based groups are often willing to fund companies in any sector as long as they fit the group’s criteria.

Mission-based groups include 12 Angels Investment Group, started in 2005, which invests in firms that help prevent or treat addictions, such as alcoholism. The Los Angeles group’s first and only investment, so far, was Wonderland Center, drug and alcohol rehabilitation center.

“We already feel like we have a niche, and we don’t want to further narrow it down,” says Erica Duignan Minnihan, executive director of Golden Seeds, a New York-based angel group started in late 2005 that invests only in companies where a woman holds a central role. About one-third of Golden Seeds’ investments are consumer-product companies. The group is close to providing funding to a diaper company. Ms. Duignan Minnihan says while high-tech firms still tend to be the “most scalable,” meaning they can produce the high returns and fast exit angels generally seek, other types of companies can be just as lucrative if they have the right business plan and leaders. Artemis Woman LLC, a Wilton, Conn., firm that sells its beauty-care products through Wal-Mart and other chains, has received about $1 million in funding from Golden Seeds since 2004. Co-founder Ann Buivid says she and her partner were fortunate to find an angel group that understood women and the selling potential of their products. “When I show microdermabrasion products to men, they say ‘I don’t know what that is — will it wax my car?’