The Worlds Fattest Man: 10 Years On will air tonight on ITV at 9pm. It will demonstrate to viewers Paul Masons rollercoaster journey with his weight.

I thought, right, this is the time for me to make sure that my journey is documented and I thought it would help other people.

Looking back at the past few years, Paul recalled the difficulties of being obese, including an experience in the hospital where doctors had never dealt with anyone my size.

He said: They brought me a form to sign that said if I died while I was in hospital at that size, they would have to dispose of my body in an abbatoir.

Part of my journey was that you felt like you are not a human and youre just a name on a piece of paper.

For Paul, to maintain his weight loss he needed and still needs help with his mental health.

Therapy is the main thing for me, he said.

I dont think the NHS put enough resources into the therapy side.

You can have six sessions on the NHS and thats not even going to touch the surface.

Paul received therapy from 2008 up until 2014, when he moved to the US.

He thought he would no longer need help after his surgery, but things unfortunately didnt work out.

Paul spends many days on his own after separating from his partner, Rebecca, and he continues to live with addiction and depression, as well as arthritis.

He said: Now, Ive got severe arthritis so its limiting my mobility and it makes things harder.

The support Rebecca gave me was very good, but she just got to the stage where she couldnt do that anymore.

And I could see that, its very hard I think living with someone with an addiction and depression.

The 60-year-old, who is now 38 stone, hopes his documentary will show the world that investing in your mental health is just as important as physical health as often, and certainly in his case, both go hand-in-hand.

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Worlds Fattest Man sheds 51st and piles 20st back on 'Arthritis is limiting my mobility' - Express

Chelsea Askey, 32, was spending 800 a month on takeaways, but opted for a gastric bypass and shed over eight stone in just under a year after she established a more healthy lifestyle

Image: chelseaastyles_bypassqueenie / MERCURY PRESS)

A woman has shed half her body weight in just a year after getting gastric bypass surgery and ditching her 800-a-month takeaway habit.

Chelsea Askey, 32, opted for fast food whilst working a manic schedule as a hairdresser, causing her to weigh 16st 8lbs at her heaviest.

She used to spend 30 per day on junk food such as McDonald's for her lunch, followed by another takeaway for her dinner.

Chelsea, from East Cowes, Isle of Wight, soon became fed up with her size 20 frame and decided to undergo gastric bypass surgery, where surgical staples are used to create a small pouch at the top of the stomach

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Chelsea said the 5000 surgery was "worth every penny" as she has now changed her diet and weighs a healthy 8st 7lbs.

She said: I have always been the fat friend but my diet really spiralled out of control when I started focussing on my career rather than my health.

As a self-employed hairdresser, there is no such thing as a lunch break so I would grab something quick daily for breakfast and lunch then order a takeaway as I was too tired to cook.

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I would just eat whatever I could such as a large Big Mac meal with extra chicken nuggets to fill me up for the day followed by sweet and sour chicken and chips from the Chinese.

On top of that, I was snacking throughout the day on crisps, chocolate and biscuits as clients always brought in naughty treats.

Eventually, it got to the point where I wasnt enjoying life anymore as my health began to decline.

"I was hospitalised with kidney stones and the doctor said I am at risk of diabetes."

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The health scare encouraged Chelsea to look into gastric bypass surgery abroad as it is cheaper.

She flew to Latvia in October 2020 and has never looked back.

Chelsea adds: I was unhappy in my own skin and always wearing black clothes to try and slim me down.

Being told I was on the diabetes spectrum was very concerning.

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I began slowing down my work and went to see a counsellor to try and understand why I was eating so much.

I was also put on a liquid diet ahead of the surgery which helped shrink my stomach and get used to life without takeaways.

By the time I flew to Latvia, I was determined to lead a healthier life on my return.

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Chelsea describes the surgery as the "best thing" she has ever done.

She is now a size eight and prepares her meals ahead of the week to ensure she doesnt revert back to her old ways.

She adds: I lost two stone in two weeks when I got back from the surgery.

It was hard to adjust to the rapid weight loss at first but now I couldnt be happier.

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My skin, hair and everything was shinier and glossier.

I am really lucky as [I've had] no saggy skin. I feel like I could stand in a room naked and not feel insecure about my body.

"The weight loss has helped ease the symptoms of polycystic ovaries syndrome too."

Breakfast - skip or sausage sandwich Snack - crisps or cakes Lunch - McDonald's - large big mac meal with extra chicken nuggets or foot-long sandwich from Subway Snacks - sweets Dinner - Chinese - Sweet and Sour Hong Kong style with chips or Indian onion Bhaji, korma, keema rice and nan bread

Breakfast - Cereal or protein bar and fruit Lunch - half a sandwich or chicken salad Dinner - salad or pasta Snacks - small protein bar or fruit

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Woman sheds half her body weight after ditching 800-a-month takeaway habit - The Mirror

By Leslie Pappas (November 3, 2021, 5:37 PM EDT) -- GTT Communications Inc. kicked off its bankruptcy at a virtual hearing in Manhattan on Wednesday, embarking on the second phase of a two-part prepackaged restructuring that aims to keep the global internet provider's business operating while it sheds more than $1 billion in debt.

The McLean, Virginia-based company recently wrapped up the first part of its reorganization: a $2.13 billion infrastructure sale to a subsidiary of I Squared Capital Advisors (US) LLC that allowed the company to prepay approximately $1.673 billion of its long-term debt obligations.

The second phase of the plan, a court-supervised reorganization under Chapter 11, would allow the...

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Dog ownership soared by nearly eight per cent last year according to the Kennel Club, as lockdown meant people felt more able to open their home up to a new puppy.

There seems to be no letting up in the popularity of pups, as prices continue to rise as demand outstrips supply.

But with 221 different breeds of pedigree dog to choose from, theres plenty of thinking to do before you select your perfect pooch whether you want a large dog, family-friendly dog, or crossbreed.

Some dogs tend to shed hair constantly, proving problematic for those with allergies and leaving carpets and clothes coated with discarded fur.

If you want to avoid this then there are certain breeds your should score off your list.

Here are the 10 breeds of dog that shed most hair, according to the American Kennel Club.

Many first-time Labrador Retriever owners are amazed by how much hair their new pet sheds. The UK's most popular dog breed may have a neat and short coat that requires very little grooming, but they constantly shed all year round, leaving labrador-shaped piles of hair in favourite sleeping spots.

Photo: Canva/Getty Images

The German Shepherd sheds a small amount all year around, but during changing seasons their hair can come out in large clumps, requiring regular brushing to avoid hair piling up in your home.

Photo: Canva/Getty Images

The silky, fluffy coat that makes the Bernese Mountain Dog such a popular and cuddly family pet can be a challenge for those with light carpets, clothing and furniture - they tend to leave a coating of black hair on everything they touch.

Photo: Canva/Getty Images

Owners of Great Pyrenees don't have to worry so much about their dog's hair on light carpets, but be prepared to constantly remove their snow-white fur from any dark clothing you dare to wear.

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Here are the 10 breeds of hairy dogs that shed most fur - hounds best avoided by allergy sufferers - The Scotsman

According to the study results, the treatment did not reduce the risk of death (24% in both groups). read to know everything about the therapy.

Written by Satata Karmakar | Updated : October 8, 2021 1:12 PM IST

It's been more than a year now the world is in the grip of deadly coronavirus, which was first reported from China's Wuhan city. The infection was so deadly that the World Health Organisation (WHO) declared it a pandemic. Ever since then many studies have surfaced claiming various treatment options to lower down the death rate among patients suffering from COVID-19 infection. One of the very first was 'convalescent plasma therapy', which scientists thought might be one of the best ways to treat the infection. Since earlier days of the pandemic, experts considered convalescent plasma therapy as one of the possible best ways to treat COVID-19. What exactly happens in this therapy? This process involves techniques in which a patient is being given the plasma of people who had recovered (or convalesced) from COVID-19. Now, coming to the idea behind this was that this antibody-rich infusion would help their immune systems fight infection. It's a strategy tried, with various degrees of success, for other infectious diseases, including Ebola.

In medical terms, convalescent plasma is a blood product that contains antibodies against infectious viruses such as the SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. Convalescent plasma is being taken/collected from the patients who have recovered from the infectious disease.

To separate the plasma from the blood of a recovered patient, scientists use a process called apheresis. In this process, the red and white cells, and platelets are generally removed from the blood leaving plasma, which is the house of the antibodies.

Convalescent plasma therapy which is also known as serum therapy originated in the 1890s. This was the time when the diphtheria outbreak was first reported. The outbreak was noted among the infected horses with the bacteria causing diphtheria. Once the horses recovered, Behring collected their antibody-rich blood to treat humans with the disease. This led to him being awarded the first Nobel prize in physiology or medicine, in 1901.

According to the study, a growing number of evidence shows that convalescent plasma does not save the lives of people critically ill with COVID-19. The study concluded the therapy as 'futile' in treating the deadly virus infection.

Ever since the first outbreak of deadly coronavirus was first noted in the world, researchers stated the use of this therapy's significance in treating the highly infectious coronavirus disease. Convalescent plasma os, not a new treatment, it has been used to treat infectious diseases for over a century. Some of them include scarlet fever, pneumonia, tetanus, diphtheria, mumps, chickenpox, MERS (Middle East respiratory syndrome), and Ebola.

Based on several clinical studies and trials, convalescent plasma was being used widely among the patients suffering from COVID-19 in the United States (USA), a decision supported by the Food and Drug Administration. By May this year, more than 100 clinical trials had been conducted with convalescent plasma in people with COVID-19; about one-third of these studies had finished or were stopped early.

Earlier this year, UK conducted a study to investigate convalescent plasma therapy (compared to usual supportive care) which included more than 10,000 people hospitalised with COVID-19. According to the study results, the treatment did not reduce the risk of death (24% in both groups), with no difference in the number of patients who recovered (66% discharged from hospital in both groups) or who got worse (29% needed mechanical ventilation to support breathing in both groups). Therefore, following the study, the researchers concluded that convalescent plasma offers no benefit for people admitted to hospital with COVID-19.

A Cochrane review, which was updated in May this year and evaluated all available trials, confirmed these results. These trials involved more than 40,000 people with moderate-to-severe COVID-19 who received convalescent plasma. The review found the treatment had no effect on the risk of dying from COVID-19, did not reduce the risk of requiring hospitalisation nor the need for a ventilator to assist breathing when compared to placebo or standard care. However, this is not the case with every country, in Australia, the National COVID-19 Clinical Evidence Taskforce does not recommend using convalescent plasma in people with COVID-19 unless it is in a clinical trial.

In the latest study which involved about 2,000 hospitalized patients with moderate-to-severe COVID-19, it has been found that

Although the results and detailed analysis were published this week, the trial was halted in January. This is when the trial committee reviewed the interim results and reported: "convalescent plasma was unlikely to be of benefit for patients with COVID-19 who require organ support in an intensive care unit". So continuing the trial was considered futile.

Convalescent plasma treatment did not reduce the risk of death in the hospital over the month after treatment (37.3% convalescent plasma-treated, 38.4% usual care, not treated with convalescent plasma). The median number of days without the need for organ support (such as a mechanical ventilator or cardiac support) was 14 days in both groups. Serious adverse events were reported in 3.0% of people treated with convalescent plasma and only 1.3% in the usual care group. Taken together, the weight of evidence now clearly demonstrates convalescent plasma is not a treatment option for people with mild, moderate, or even severe COVID-19.

Experts say that the only tool to ward off the complexities of deadly coronavirus is by getting vaccinated. Vaccinations against coronavirus remain the major strategy to prevent the severity of the infection, However, the attention is now turning to some emerging and promising treatments to prevent COVID-19 worsening.

These include emerging antiviral treatments that may be used early in the disease, including monoclonal antibodies such as sotrovimab and AZD7442. Then there are potential oral antiviral medicines, such as molnupiravir and PF-07321332.

(With inputs from Agencies)

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Can Plasma Therapy Help In Treating COVID-19? Study Sheds Light On Why COVID Convalescent Plasma Is No Longer - TheHealthSite

Madonna recently wore her heart on her sleeve and addressed two of her biggest regrets in life.

The singer addressed it all during her interview with Jimmy Fallon on The Tonight Show while promoting her Paramount+ concert special, Madame X.

She started off by detailing her first regret which she understood instantly after seeing Michelle Pfeiffer in a latex suit for Tim Burtons 1992 Batman Returns, as Catwoman.

I saw them both, and I regret that I turned down Catwoman, she admitted to Fallon. Quite simply, the part was fierce.

She also went on to add, I also turned down the role in The Matrix. Can you believe that? I wanted to kill myself.

At that point Fallon chimed in and lamented Poor Madonna. You dont regret anything?

The singer responded to that by adding, A teeny-tiny part of me regrets just that one moment in my life.

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Madonna sheds light on biggest regrets in life: I wanted to die - Geo News

Casey DeSantis Diagnosed with Breast Cancer

With Gov. Ron DeSantis describing her as a "true fighter," Florida First Lady Casey DeSantis has been diagnosed with breast cancer.

BREVARD COUNTY, Fla. - Floridas First Lady Casey DeSantis has been diagnosed with breast cancer.

Support for the 41-year-old mother of three young children is building, starting with her husband.

The governor put out a statement saying, in part: "Casey is the centerpiece of our family and has made an impact on the lives of countless Floridians through her initiatives as first lady As she faces the most difficult test of her life, she will not only have my unwavering support but the support of our entire family."

This month, news outlets are shining a national spotlight on breast cancer awareness and early detection. We spoke with Dr. Terry Mamounas, a surgical oncologist with the Orlando Health Cancer Institute.

"Because of COVID, I think it is an important thing to remember that cancer screenings should resume normally, and if this is something that increases awareness, this would be a good thing for people to take home," Mamounas said.

Mamounas says while there is debate on the best age to get a mammogram, most doctors agree on getting them over 40. But women with higher risks, including family history, should be screened earlier, specifically, 10 years before a relative was diagnosed.

RELATED: Sen. Amy Klobuchar reveals breast cancer diagnosis, says treatment went well

"The good news is we have very meaningful therapies that we have developed over the years that have continuously helped the outcome of patients with breast cancer. It is a very survivable disease with good outcomes," Mamounas said.

Watch FOX 35 Orlando for the latest Central Florida news.

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Casey DeSantis breast cancer diagnosis sheds light on early detection, awareness - FOX 35 Orlando

STOCKHOLM UK-based Tanzanian writer Abdulrazak Gurnah, whose experience of crossing continents and cultures has nurtured his novels about the impact of migration on individuals and societies, won the Nobel Prize for Literature on Thursday.

The Swedish Academy said the award was in recognition of Gurnahs uncompromising and compassionate penetration of the effects of colonialism and the fate of the refugee.

Gurnah, 72, arrived in Britain as an 18-year-old refugee a half-century ago. He said the themes of migration and displacement explored in his novels are even more urgent now, amid mass movements of people displaced from Syria, Afghanistan and beyond, than when he began his writing career.

The scale is different, he said. What makes it different, I think, is what we see in the way that people risk their lives. Of course, people risked their lives from Haiti coming to the United States a couple of decades ago, and that was horrible.

But in more recent years, the vast numbers of asylum seekers perilously crossing the Mediterranean or the Sahara, he said, are a different scale of horror.

He said he hoped fiction could help people in wealthy nations understand the humanity of the migrants they see on their screens.

What fiction can do is it can fill in the gaps, he said. And actually allow people to see that, in fact, they are complicated stories which are being mashed up by the high-sounding lies and distortions that seem to be what popular culture somehow requires to continue to ignore and to dismiss what they dont want to hear.

Born in 1948 on the island of Zanzibar, now part of Tanzania but previously under Omani rule, Gurnah moved to Britain in the late 1960s, fleeing a repressive regime that persecuted the Arab Muslim community to which he belonged.

He has said he stumbled into writing after arriving in England as a way of exploring both the loss and liberation of the emigrant experience.

Gurnah is the author of 10 novels, including Memory of Departure, Pilgrims Way, Paradise, shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1994, By the Sea, Desertion and Afterlives. The settings range from East Africa under German colonialism to modern-day England. Many explore what he has called one of the stories of our times: the profound impact of migration both on uprooted people and the places they make their new homes.

Gurnah, whose native language is Swahili but who writes in English, is only the sixth Africa-born author to be awarded the Nobel for literature, which has been dominated by European and North American writers since it was founded in 1901.

Nigerian writer Wole Soyinka, who won the Nobel Literature prize in 1986, welcomed the latest African Nobel laureate as proof that the Arts, and literature in particular, are well and thriving, a sturdy flag waved above depressing actualities in a continent in permanent travail.

May the tribe increase! Soyinka said.

Anders Olsson, chairman of the Nobel Committee for literature, called Gurnah one of the worlds most prominent post-colonial writers. He said it was significant that Gurnahs roots are in Zanzibar, a polyglot place that was cosmopolitan long before globalisation.

His work gives us a vivid and very precise picture of another Africa not so well known for many readers, a coastal area in and around the Indian Ocean marked by slavery and shifting forms of repression under different regimes and colonial powers: Portuguese, Indian, Arab, German and the British, Olsson said.

He said Gurnahs characters find themselves in the gulf between cultures between the life left behind and the life to come, confronting racism and prejudice, but also compelling themselves to silence the truth or reinventing a biography to avoid conflict with reality.

News of the award was greeted with excitement in Zanzibar, where many remembered Gurnah and his family, though few had actually read his books.

Gurnahs books are not required reading in schools there and are hardly to be found, said the local education minister, Simai Mohammed Said, whose wife is Gurnahs niece. But, he added, a son of Zanzibar has brought so much pride.

The reaction is fantastic The young people are proud that hes Zanzibari, said Farid Himid, who described himself as a local historian whose father had been a teacher of the Quran to the young Gurnah.

Gurnah did not often visit Zanzibar, he said, but he has suddenly become the talk of young people in the semi-autonomous island region.

And many elder people are very, very happy Himid said. Also me, as a Zanzibari. Its a new step to make people read books again, since the internet has taken over.

The prestigious award comes with a gold medal and 10 million Swedish kronor (over $1.14 million). The money comes from a bequest left by the prizes creator, Swedish inventor Alfred Nobel, who died in 1895.

Last years prize went to American poet Louise Glck. Glck was a popular choice after several years of controversy. In 2018, the award was postponed after sex abuse allegations rocked the Swedish Academy, the secretive body that chooses the winners. The awarding of the 2019 prize to Austrian writer Peter Handke caused protests because of his strong support for the Serbs during the 1990s Balkan wars.

On Monday, the Nobel Committee awarded the prize in physiology or medicine to Americans David Julius and Ardem Patapoutian for their discoveries into how the human body perceives temperature and touch.

The Nobel Prize in physics was awarded Tuesday to three scientists whose work found order in seeming disorder, helping to explain and predict complex forces of nature, including expanding our understanding of climate change.

Benjamin List and David W C MacMillan were named as laureates of the Nobel Prize for chemistry Wednesday for finding an easier and environmentally cleaner way to build molecules that can be used to make compounds, including medicines and pesticides.

Still to come are prizes for outstanding work in the fields of peace, on Friday and economics, on Monday.

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Nobel literature prize laureate hopes fiction sheds light on humanity of migrants | | AW - The Arab Weekly

Researchers will create digital twins of communities including Galveston Island. The models are a virtual representation of a physical object, service or process that can be updated with real time data.

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As the specter of increasingly severe storms looms over the Texas Gulf Coast, urban planners, emergency planners, policymakers and citizens seek to protect Galveston and coastal areas infrastructures from catastrophic damage.

To funnel hazard resilience efforts from numerous federal, state and local agencies into a cohesive strategy, Xinyue Ye, Texas A&M University associate professor of urban planning, is heading a multidisciplinary team of scholars who are developing a comprehensive digital model of Galveston Island and portions of other Texas coastal communities in aNational Science Foundation-fundedstudy.

The model is whats known as a digital twin: a virtual representation of a physical object, service or process that can be updated with real time data. Its a burgeoning concept with applications in planning as well as manufacturing, product development and other fields.

A digital twin of Galveston is something that planners and citizens can use to better understand how planning and infrastructure alterations and additions can positively or negatively affect a communitys natural hazard resilience, said Ye, who is performing the study with a two-year, $300K grant from the National Science Foundation.

By digitally modeling and testing resilience scenarios, planners, policymakers and citizens will be able to determine the best science-based measures for hazard resiliency design interventions, he said.

The digital twin integrates a variety of data sources, digital modeling and analytics platforms as the foundation for making optimum decisions, Ye said.

The platform will be able to collect massive volumes of data representing people, vehicles, structures/infrastructure, and many other factors, and create simulations of the effects of hazard events under different policy or hazard response scenarios, he said.

Its a visualized operating procedure that local residents and decision-makers can use to better understand the effects on hazard planning of the relationships among different planning efforts, disaster management, new construction, and infrastructure additions, repair, rehabilitation, retrofitting and maintenance, Ye said.

The potential upside for developing the system is high.

More informed decisions and better inter-agency coordination may lower the costs of the coastal resilience protective system, Ye said. This decision/support framework will also act as a catalyst for further research in data-driven decision making by connecting different datasets and by providing training and collaborative research opportunities for local project participants as well as graduate and undergraduate students.

The projects research team also includes Youngjib Ham, associate professor ofconstruction science, Galen Newman, associate professor oflandscape architecture and urban planning, David Retchless, assistant professor of geography and marine and coastal environmental science, Texas A&M University at Galveston, and Lei Zou, assistant professor of geography at Texas A&M.

Ye, who is among the mostcitedurban planning associate professors in North America, holds the Harold Adams Endowed Professorship in Landscape Architecture and Urban Planning and directs the Urban Data Science Lab. His experience in urban planning, economic geography, geographic information system, and computational science informs his research, which focuses on geospatial artificial intelligence, big data, smart cities and urban computing.

He models the space-time perspective of socioeconomic inequality and human dynamics for applications in various domains, such as economic development, disaster response, transportation and land use, public health and urban crime.

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'Digital Twins' Of Texas Coastal Communities Could Shed Light On Resiliency - Texas A&M University Today

Everyone has a story, but few of them are heard.

The Albuquerque-based nonprofit Bold Futures wants to change that.

For the past two decades, the organization formally known as Young Women United has worked to build reproductive justice in New Mexico by and for women and people of color. More recently, it has expanded its mission to create communities by leading policy change, research, organizing, and culture shift by and for women and people of color in New Mexico.

In 2017, the nonprofit decided to try using film to tell the stories of women who so often are voiceless. All the World Is Sleeping is that film, shedding light on the realities of addiction and the resources desperately needed for families living in cycles of addiction.

Months of work and dozens of stories were told. In the end, a script for All the World Is Sleeping was completed.

We were able to get seven women and talk with them to understand the complexities they faced with their substance use, all while balancing a family, says Charlene Bencomo, Bold Futures executive director. There was a conversation that we wanted to tell the stories through a feature film.

The film is already gaining buzz, picking up best narrative feature at the prestigious New York Latino Film Festival.

It will have its New Mexico premiere at the Santa Fe Independent Film Festival, with screenings on Thursday, Oct. 14, and Friday, Oct. 15.

The films main character, Chama, played by Melissa Barrera, is an imaginative composite of the seven women who helped craft this storyline. Chama encompasses elements of their bravery and struggles while exposing the arduous circumstances they have endured.

Barrera, along with co-star Jackie Cruz, worked with the mothers on and off set to authentically capture and represent their truth. Each genuinely wanted to understand the cyclical, chaotic, yet hopeful side of fighting addiction.

Barrera has since been seen in the film In the Heights and will be Carmen in the movie Carmen. Cruz skyrocketed to fame in the TV series Orange Is the New Black.

At the helm of the production is New Mexico native Ryan Lacen.

The director says he was involved in the project since the beginning, often sitting in on the discussions and writing the script.

I sat for months and created a script that honored their voices, then brought it back to them and got notes, Lacen says. Then I adapted it. The seven women were fixtures in the process the whole time. They were on set and there to work with the actors. We wanted it to come from a place of emotional honesty.

Because the film was being produced by a New Mexico organization and telling New Mexicans stories, it was important for the production to take place in the state.

Bencomo says the production chose Las Cruces to do principal photography.

She says the production was a learning process. Having the community step up and help out made her glow with emotion, she says.

Merging the world of film with nonprofit, there were bumps in the road, she says. When we got to filming, we pulled in extras by word-of-mouth. People wanted to be involved because this is a story of hope and positivity coming from a dark place.

Doralee Urban is one of the women who sat down with Bold Futures to tell her story.

She stepped forward not only to give herself a voice but to give voice to the many women who arent seen.

Im honored to be part of something this important, Urban says. There have been so many women that have been in situations Ive been in before. Its like were invisible a lot of the time, and I wanted to be a part of this to express that we are people. Theres a real issue out there. We are people and should be seen.

Urban is overwhelmed by the response to the film.

She hopes it brings light to the subject and better care for people who are struggling especially those with children.

Substance use is a health issue, she says. Everyone gets the wrong idea. It doesnt mean I love my kids any less. Im lucky because Ive found the help I needed and continue to work on myself.

Lacen says being back in New Mexico was an honor for him. Lacen, who grew up in Albuquerque and graduated from the University of New Mexico, now lives in Los Angeles but tries to get his projects to film in New Mexico.

He wanted the state to be another character in the film.

Ive filmed everywhere in the world, and New Mexico has the best film community, he said. Being an independent film, its nearly impossible to complete. But everyone opened their doors, and the community came together to help tell the vision. We want this film to open that curtain of not only showing the problems with substance abuse but give some ways of getting help.

UpFront is a regular Journal news and opinion column. Comment directly to Journal arts editor Adrian Gomez at agomez@abqjournal.com.

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Independent film made in NM gains notice for shedding light on the realities of addiction - Albuquerque Journal