#i can see this happening frequently in high school especially considering their drug of choice here is inhalants | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

spiltscribbles · 3 years

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Miss you and your marvelous writing!!!! Just a prompt if you’re up to it 😊 exes wolfstar staying friends but sirius gets into a new relationship and he brings his new boo to somewhere he took remus and remus gets sad 😭 but they get back together eventually

Notes: OMFG BABEY! this is so SO beyond precious of you! i adore you to bits! thank you for the sweetness and for this scrumptious angst🥺🥺 i really hope you like it😭😘😘💜

SEND ME A PROMPT | A Reblog means SO SO much! I ADORE YOU💜💜

“He can just be so… So” James pauses right then, takes off his cap with the hand that’s still clutching his baseball bat, and ruffles his hair with the other.

“Un-opinionated,” Remus offers half heartedly as they turn the block to the small coffee shop nearest school, both of them freshly showered after the required morning workouts for Tuesday and Thursdays. It’s the first semester in which Remus has actually joined in on the seven minute track, considering the fact that even despite their crazy contradictory schedules with all the sports and extra curriculars they each had, Sirius always made it a point to buy their ice coffees and drop it off to Remus, sometimes leaving them a quarter of an hour late for first period, or as just a quick drop and dash if one of them had an exam.

It was sweet, considerate. It was Sirius showing how much he cared because he’s never been one for words, even if he would frequently print off the little texts Remus would send him about how Sirius made him feel, and hang it up on the wall besides his bed, along with photos of them and Remus by himself and a few of their other friends too.

But yeah… None of that is really a thing anymore, not the coffees or the texts or the promises of being one another’s always. Not after calling it quits in early January because they knew by August they’d be working with thousands of miles between them and a three hour difference on top of that. It just wouldn’t have been feasible in the long run, and sure— Remus was the one to broach the topic and he knows that Sirius was hesitant about the logical side of it, but sometimes Remus wishes Sirius had fought harder, had argued louder, had wanted Remus more. But that’s a ridiculous expectation, and he had only admitted as much to Lily. And at the end of the day, it was the right choice, because it’s only early May now, and Remus can’t imagine how sick he’ll feel once catching his flight to Berkeley, and they’re steadfastly back in the best friends category of things. He can’t fathom how it would’ve been if they spent all these months and the ones after being together in all those intimate ways, knowing that they’ll be so far apart soon enough.

It was the right decision for the both of them and their friendship.

“Yeah, sure. Let’s go with that,” James says, bringing Remus out of his gloomy contemplations while opening the glass door to Three Broomsticks, sporting a thin smile that he always has on when he’s trying to be kind even when he’s irritated as all get out.

Remus snorts at him, elbow checking his side as he walks past. “Well he’s sharing that dorm with you and Sirius in New Haven, so I guess you’ve got that to look forwards to.”

James’s face pulls into a grimace and their typical barista nods their way, already receiving their orders through the app and sparing them having to wait in the queue. “Maybe Pete’ll grow his own personality in university, yeah?”

“Sure Prongsie,” Remus says, noncommittal as he checks his phone and lies against the windowpane, already exhausted by the morning. “And if he doesn’t, I’m sure Sirius is about to blow his lid any day now.”

“It’s going to be funny as fuck, and you won’t even be there to see the debris,” James counters, sounding pleasant enough even though Remus knows that he’s nearly as pissed off as Sirius is about the decision for him to go back to his home state for undergrad.

“You’ll send pictures though.”

“Of course Moony my old friend,” James jokes, tossing him a wink as they straighten once spotting their coffees being rung up. But as Remus takes a step forwards, he notices that a familiarly tan pair of hands are reaching for them, and when Remus looks up he feels like an idiot for not noticing him sooner. Because there Sirius is, dashing as ever in their school’s maroon blazer and tan pants, and his hair is windblown and shining as it falls midway of the nape of his neck. But Remus doesn’t really have the chance to appreciate just how damn good looking his ex-boyfriend is, rather, he’s more distracted by how Sirius doesn’t even notice him or James as he pivots around and hands over the second cup to a beaming Gideon Prewett. Their heads incline while they exchange a few words that are absolutely impossible to pick up in the crowded cafe before they bump their shoulders together and walk out the opposite door.

And it feels like nothing else watching that exchange— like their was a hammer and pick chipping away at his stupid, weeping heart.

“I think they’re just doing a project together,” James says lowly in Remus’s ear, clapping him on the back in reassurance, and Remus loves him, but he’s not in the mood for false platitudes, feels like there is a ugly, burning fire festering deep in his stomach and making Remus want to hurl all over the wooden floors.

“Yeah, I’m sure,” he replies instead, mild as he discretely picks up his phone again and opens up to the last conversation he had this morning.

R: need intel

L: Say more sexy things to me, lover

R: sirius and Gideon

R: what’s going on there

L: I’ll take a look, dw

Buoyed by Lily’s scary levels of detective skills, Remus returns his phone to his satchel and signals James to follow him to pick up their actual drinks. “C’mon, Flitwick hates it when we’re late.”

“Do you want the good news first, or the bad.” Lily asks Remus later that morning during their shared free period, dropping her bag on the tabletop that they typically commandeer towards the back of Hogwarts’s library, nearest the windows and tucked away by the shelves.

“Is there actually any good news? Or are you just saying that to make me feel better.” Remus asks, single brow cocked as he shuts his history book and tosses it to the side.

“Well your hair looks especially nice today,” she offers with a small smile, sitting besides him and ruffling his curls.

“Thanks, I suppose. But I’d rather just get to it. And don’t sigh at me like that! All long suffering and all.”

Rolling her eyes, Lily gathers her hair into a high pony before turning to Remus fully. “You’re my best friend, I love you more than just about anyone. You know that, right?” Lily asks him, stiff stance relaxing when he nods in turn. “Then understand that I’m saying this from a place of love, but you don’t get to be mad at him, okay. You’re the one who called it off Re, you’re the one who wanted you guys to go back to being friends to avoid that messiness in August. And you know I respect the decision, but also it wasn’t the only one to be had. I mean look at James and I—“

“You’re going to Columbia Lils,” Remus bristles, hates how defensive he’s getting all of a sudden. “That train ride is like two hours and some change at the very most. It’s not the same.”

“You guys could’ve made it work,” she insists, green eyes blazing in the dim light. “He’s crazy about you, and you’re in love with him— Like ass backwards in love. You can’t just cut that off like it’s nothing, damn it, Remus.”

He can feel his own ears reddening and Remus hates it, hates how today had started off so innocuous and now it’s an absolute shit show. Remus hates that Lily is always correct about everything, and hates how Sirius probably is regretting telling Remus he still fully intends to ask him out to prom, and hates how much he loves him— how whenever he looks at Sirius it’s just a deluge of wanting and adoring and regretting and needing to feel his lips against Sirius’s own again like a drug, how he’ll never forget how he tasted like coffee beans and cigarette smoke and the strawberries he ate every morning besides his breakfast. Remus hates it all and he can’t figure out how not to feel like suddenly everything is slipping out of his hands like sand drifting through his fingers.

“He’s probably not that crazy over me anymore considering he’s getting Gideon Prewett coffees now, so maybe it’s the right decision after all.” Is what Remus decides to tell Lily instead of that whirlwind of clashing feelings.

“Oh Christ,” Lily huffs, dropping her head back like she’s asking for strength from the heavens above. “Look, Dorcas tells me that they’ve only been out twice. And Marlene says that it’s nothing intense. Just a movie and then he went to go watch his nephew’s little league game.”

“Oh,” Remus intones, because, no. No he will not start crying like this is some fucking Nicholas Sparks novel, and he’s the wayward lead making all the worst decisions. He’s not going to cry damn it!

He is not a bird, and this is suppose to be happening, and none of this has any real consequence at the end of the day. He and Sirius broke up, and Sirius can go out with whoever he pleases— even if it’s good looking, ginger athletes.

Remus is fine.

“Remus,” Lily gently consoles, lacing her fingers into his own that’s resting on his lap, and squeezing for good measure. “Benjy told Mary, who told me during Calc that Gideon doesn’t expect anything. Sirius told him he’s not looking for anything long term.”

“That’s dumb,” Remus retorts, trying to hold everything in so that Lily doesn’t give him that concerned, doe eyed face of hers, like when he’s spent a week living off of protein bars and double shot espressos preparing for finals. “Gideon’s great, and there on the soccer team together, they would be perfect.”

“Remus, stop.”

“And he’s going to Dartmouth, so he’ll be super close for like weekend excursions and all of that.”

“Remus!”

“The more I think about it, Lils, the more it makes sense. They just fit.”

“Sure, those are all nice attributes,” Lily says, peering up at him disappointedly. “But he’s not you.”

Like a legion of angels singing in the distance, the bell begins to shrill for next period and Remus is spared from giving that statement any mind.

He spends the rest of the week acting as if he hadn’t even seen Sirius that morning whenever around him, and internally analyzing each and every exchange between them, and comparing to them to when he sees Sirius chatting with Gideon. And it’s not fun to say the least. It’s like a flashback to when he was trying to hide his crush on Sirius back in Freshman and most of sophomore year, but somehow worse. It’s worse because Remus had him, had Sirius in all the ways someone could ever want an other. He had Sirius’s languid morning kisses, and Sirius’s bark like laughter. Remus had Sirius being nervous the first time Lyall came for his typical Christmas visit, and Sirius had to try and impress him along with Remus’s mom as more than just the friend he hung around with at school. Remus had Sirius’s gruff voice when they were in bed and getting tangled into one another, and Sirius’s dopey looks in the middle of class when he’d be gazing over at Remus instead of the board. And if Remus is being honest, he knows he still has all those things, but it’s suddenly and searingly clear that some time— sooner rather than later— they’ll all leave, abruptly disappearing and shattering Remus’s world in their wake. Because eventually all of those different facets of Sirius’s won’t be Remus’s anymore— they’ll be Gideon’s or some other boy he meets in New Haven. And Remus can’t even be upset at it, he doesn’t have a claim to any of Sirius anymore, doesn’t get to call any part of him his.

And it’s probably the worst Remus has felt since that first night after their break up, because he’s eating every moment he has with Sirius like he’s famished and Sirius is the last meal he’ll ever know. He wants to memorize every part of him before he can’t have any of it. He wants to unravel every layer of Sirius, and kiss it for the final time, and it’s like saying goodbye a thousand times over, strangling his heart and splintering something desperate deep inside of him.

Like now.

It’s edging on midnight, and they drove up to the lake front near their suburb, with Sirius lying with his head on Remus’s lap and his long, muscled body lying against the tattered blanket beneath them. And his eyes are fluttered shut while the speaker they brought croons out the indie playlist they like most from Spotify.

And Remus can’t help but feel like this is one of their last nights like this, alone and quiet and together without any other specter of some other partner. So he watches him, watches the moonlight pacing over his nose and the high bones of his cheeks and across Sirius’s eyelids too. Remus watches his ink like lashes kissing his skin, and wants to touch the divot of his cupids bow like so many times before while his other hand cards through Sirius’s hair.

And Remus lets himself want Sirius and wonders if he’ll ever stop wanting, craving, loving him.

“I can hear you thinking Moons,” Sirius says, fluttering his eyes open and crunching up before Remus can even respond. “What’s going on?”

“Huh? What do you mean? I’m fine.” Remus all but sputters, folding his knees against his chest and wrapping his arms around them, feeling somehow vulnerable in blistering ways. “Nothing is going on.”

“Pff,” Sirius gives him a pointed look, settles down so that they’re side by side and tries to get Remus to look at him head on. “You’ve been strange all week, Moony.”

“That’s not—“

“And then tonight, you didn’t even tease your ma when she was telling us about that patient who puked all over her shoes.”

“Just tired is all.”

“But had enough energy to smoke half the joint I brought.” Sirius says with a snort, looking frustrated again when Remus didn’t even flinch a smile at the counter. “Remus, talk to me.”

“It’s fine Sirius,” Remus sighs, suddenly remembers how exhausting all their arguments were in the past. How Sirius tries getting him to speak everything in his mind, as if Remus could even put them into words.

“Okay, then tell me why you rejected my offer to go to that Frank Ocean concert. You’re obsessed with him.”

“’S in July,” Remus reminds him lightly, focusses on the way they can see the North star glimmering against the horizon instead.

“And, so?” Sirius asks, sounding more than a bit scathing. “You’re not leaving for another month after that, you trying to cut me off completely by the summer or something?”

“Don’t be an idiot.”

“Don’t be condescending.”

“Sirius, just leave well enough alone. Holy shit.”

“I can leave it alone if you can actually tell me what the fuck is going on with you,” Sirius snaps, standing up now, probably because he always likes using his height advantage on most people whenever he gets all pissy.

“You can be such a prick sometimes, you know that?” Remus snarls at him, following suit and dipping his head back just slightly so that they’re eye to eye. “Not everything is on your schedule, you know that.”

“My schedule!” Sirius’s brows jump to his hairline, and he breaks into that manic laughter that springs up only when he’s so angry he can’t put his thoughts together. “I’m trying to do as much shit with you as possible before you leave, because for some stupid fucking reason I’m going to miss you when your across the fucking country! But yeah, whatever. If you’re actually just sick of me and my presence or what the fuck else, you can just—“

“I would’ve assumed you wanted to go with Gideon,” Remus blurts out, simply unable to hold it back any more, unable to pretend like he’s not suffering a thousand fresh paper cuts every time he even glances Sirius’s way these days. He can’t do this, can’t pretend to just be friends when they were— when they are— so much more than that. “To the concert I mean. I just assumed—“

“No,” Sirius says, seething as he storms up to Remus— close enough that the tips of their noses brush up against each other.

“No? Excuse me?”

“No Remus you don’t get to do this!” Sirius repeats, voice going frayed at the edges as their glances level. “You don’t get to pretend as if I want anyone more than I want— than I’ve always wanted you. And you don’t get to float around for the rest of your life pretending as if this’ll ever change for me. As if you can’t hit me up in fifteen years when I’m married with kids, and ask to get back together, and think that I wouldn’t drop it all for you.”

Remus’s heart begins to thud, loud and painful against his ribcage, and his lungs feel like they might collapse the instant Remus let’s the tears swimming in his eyes sprinkle out. “Sirius, I ca—“

“I’ve been in love with you since before we were suppose to mean what that meant, damn it, Remus! And you’re the one who called it off!”

“It was the right decision.” Remus croaks out, plunging his hands into his hoodie’s pockets, doesn’t want Sirius to see the way they’re shaking.

“”For you. The right decision for you.” Sirius presses, his gray eyes dark underneath the stars. “And you know I’d do anything you wanted of me, but you don’t get to be mad at the ways I cope. And you sure as fuck don’t get to be jealous of fucking Gideon Prewett, as if he can hold a match to you.”

“Oh.” Is all Remus can gather to say, peering back down at his shoes and pressing together his lips, feels the most lost he ever has while around Sirius. “I love you too, you know that. You know I love you so much that it hurts sometimes— That was never the problem.”

Sirius makes a strangled sound deep in his throat, and the next second, Remus can’t feel the warmth of his body besides him because Sirius is darting over to the cusp of the lake and kicking at a rock. “Fuck, Remus. You can’t just say that, all right! You can’t because none of this is fair, or okay. And I fucking hate it and I hate this and—“

“Maybe we can try,” Remus says, quiet but unshaken. And he watches as Sirius slowly turns back around, face scrunched up in utter confusion, but eyes glittering with something like hope. “I love you Sirius, and you love me. And Lily’s right, fucking hell she’s so right. I can’t just turn it off, okay. I’ve tried and I’ve tried, but I can’t. I can’t be around you and not want every part of you. But I also can’t let myself stay away from you. So let’s try, and it’s probably a stupid difficult decision, and we’re going to be frustrated and we’re going to miss one another but I know there’s going to be no one I want more and I think you migh— Oof.”

Remus can’t continue rattling off any of the reasons why they should get back together, because Sirius is somehow magically popping up in front of him— his large hands cupping against Remus’s jawline and his thin lips crashing against him, and Remus can only wrap his arms around Sirius’s torso and give him back all he’s pushing forwards.

And it might’ve been a minute or an hour that past, but Sirius is pulling back with a face that looks lighter in ways Remus hasn’t seen on him since the breakup all those months ago. “I’d literally agree to anything if it means we can stay together, Moony. Absolutely anything.”

Remus feels the strain against the apples of his cheeks as he beams at him at the sound of the oath. “Yeah, me too Padfoot. Always and forever, it’s you.”

My Other Wolfstar FIC💜

#WOLFSTAR #REMUS LUPIN #SIRIUS BLACK #SIRIUSXREMUS #REMUSXSIRIUS #WOLFSTAR ANGST #WOLFSTAR FLUFF #THE HARRY POTTER SERIES #HARRY POTTER SERIES #MARAUDERS #SPILT INK #I AM A MESS #I HATE ME LMFAO

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differentnutpeace · 3 years

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Once On The Brink Of Eradication, Syphilis is Raging Again

In certain circles of San Francisco, a case of syphilis can be as common and casual as catching the flu, to the point where Billy Lemon can't even remember how many times he's had it. หวย บอล เกมส์ คาสิโนออนไลน์

"Three or four? Five times in my life?" he struggles to recall. "It does not seem like a big deal."

At the time, about a decade ago, Lemon went on frequent methamphetamine binges, kicking his libido into overdrive and silencing the voice in his head that said condoms would be a wise choice at a raging sex party.

"It lowers your inhibitions, and also your decision making abilities are skewed," says Lemon.

He's sober now and runs the Castro Country Club in San Francisco, which is not a resort, but a place where gay men come to get help with addiction, especially meth. Lemon says syphilis comes with the territory.

"In the 12-step community, if meth was your thing, everybody had syphilis," he says.

In 2000, syphilis rates were so low, public health officials believed eradication was on the horizon. But the rates started creeping up in 2001, grew steadily for the next two decades, then spiked 74% since 2015. There were nearly 130,000 cases nationwide in 2019, according to data released Tuesday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

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In California and the US, about half of syphilis cases are in men who have sex with men. More than a third of women in the western United States who have syphilis also use meth, a drug that has seen its own surge in recent years.

These are just some of the trends causing overall national cases of sexually transmitted diseases to hit an all-time high for the last six years in a row, reaching 2.5 million. And the consequences are now trickling down to babies who are contracting syphilis from their mothers: these congenital syphilis rates nearly quadrupled between 2012 and 2019.

This was all before the coronavirus pandemic took hold in the US, and with contact tracers and testing supplies diverted from STDs to COVID, the CDC is predicting 2020 numbers will be no better.

"We are quite worried about this and have seen this trend over time," says Dr. Erica Pan, California's state epidemiologist. "Unfortunately, with years of not having enough funding and infrastructure in public health, and then in this past year, of course, both at the local and state level, a lot of personnel who had been focusing on STDs and syphilis follow-up have really been redirected to the pandemic."

Billy Lemon is executive director of the Castro Country Club in San Francisco, where gay men can get help with addiction. Lemon says that when it comes to methamphetamine use in particular, syphilis often comes with the territory.

Beth LaBerge/KQED

A number of factors are fueling the syphilis surge

There are many factors that contribute to the rise of STDs, and syphilis in particular.

In the gay community in San Francisco, for example, the rise of mobile dating apps like Grindr and Tinder made finding a date "faster than getting pizza delivered to your home," says Dan Wohlfeiler, an STD prevention specialist and co-founder of Building Healthy Online Communities, which uses these apps to improve gay men's health.

When the dating apps first came on the scene around 2009, they made it harder for disease investigators to track the spread of STDs and notify people who may have been infected, because men don't always know the names of the men they hook up with.

"They sometimes only know their online handle," says Dr. Ina Park, associate professor at UCSF School of Medicine and author of the book Strange Bedfellows, about the history of STDs. "And if the sex didn't go well, then sometimes they will block the person from their app and they don't even know how to reach that person again."

Online dating began back in the late 1990s, which was around the same time effective medications to prevent the transmission of HIV became available: first, antiretrovirals that suppress the virus in those who are HIV positive, and then later, in 2012, pre-exposure prophylaxis, or PreP, which prevents new infections in people who are HIV negative, but considered at-risk for exposure to the virus.

With the risk of contracting a deadly disease falling to almost zero, condoms fell even more out of favor than they already were, says Park.

"If one man is taking PreP and the other one is virally suppressed, there's no HIV risk at all," she says. "So why use condoms if you don't mind having a touch of syphilis?"

Diagnosing syphilis is tricky

While syphilis is not benign – it can cause blindness, deafness, or brain damage – it is easy to treat. Typically, a shot of penicillin in the butt will cure it.

But diagnosing syphilis can be tricky, says Park, who treats patients with STDs at the San Francisco City Clinic. She often finds herself crouched low in the exam room, "lifting up their scrotum and lifting up their penis," craning her head to get a look from all angles.

She does these gymnastics to find rashes associated with syphilis. Some are obvious, others subtle. She says doctors in regular family medicine clinics often aren't trained on where to look, or when.

"The patient came in saying, 'I'm tired,'" Park says, referring to a common symptom of syphilis. "How many people are going to say, 'Take off your pants and lift up your scrotum, I want to look? We only do that at the STD clinic because that's what we do."

But specialized public STD clinics, like the one where Park works, have been shutting down nationwide. One reason is persistent underfunding of public health programs, a trend laid bare during the coronavirus pandemic. Another reason is the Affordable Care Act. In a strange way, the 2010 law intended to expand access to health care actually contributed to the closure of STD clinics.

"Honestly, I think everyone thought they weren't going to be necessary," said Dr. Karen Smith in 2019, when she was the director of the California Department of Public Health. She says once Obamacare was in place, the thought was that STD testing would happen in primary care clinics.

"We sort of all assumed that if you've got health insurance and you've got access to a doctor, that's all that you need," she said. "It turns out that that's not really all that you need."

People still had affairs that they didn't want to talk about with their family doctor. And some family doctors didn't want to probe into their patients' sex lives. Young people, in particular, prefer clinics geared to them, out of their parents' purview.

"That loss of anonymous care really was a problem," Smith said.

The spread of syphilis is reaching newborns, too

When Christian Faulkenberry-Miranda decided to become a pediatrician, she never thought she'd become an expert in syphilis.

In 2010, shortly after finishing her medical training and starting work at the Community Regional Medical Center in Fresno, California, she began seeing babies with a rash on their tummies that looks like a blueberry muffin. At first she thought it was a common viral infection, until these babies tested positive for syphilis.

In those early days, Dr. Faulkenberry-Miranda saw perhaps a few instances of congenital syphilis each year. Now she sees two cases every week. It's important to start the 10-day antibiotic treatment right away, to avoid complications, but she still follows her patients through their first year of life, and often through their childhood, to watch for vision and hearing problems, developmental delays, attention deficits, and learning disabilities, all of which can result from congenital syphilis infections. In 2019, 128 of these congenital syphilis cases resulted in stillbirth or neonatal death.

"The disappointing thing is that syphilis is very treatable," she says. "This is something that's completely preventable, with proper screening and treatment of these moms during pregnancy."

Congenital syphilis cases hit a troubling milestone in 2019, increasing 279% over the previous five years, and hitting a high of cases in the U.S. That is more mother-to-child transmissions of syphilis than there were at the peak of mother-to-child cases of HIV in 1991.

"How could this be happening? Testing is cheap and widely available. The same treatment we've been using since the forties still works," says Dr. Park, who has also seen an increase in congenital syphilis cases in San Francisco. "And yet we have this completely out of control epidemic among the most vulnerable babies in our society."

Many of the women who give birth to babies with syphilis have had no prenatal care. They often use drugs – mainly methamphetamine – and they are often homeless, said Dr. Karen Smith, former director of CDPH. This makes them more likely to trade sex for housing, food, or drugs, prompting Smith to call congenital syphilis a "disease of despair." Drug use, in particular, makes women less likely to recognize that they're pregnant at all, and less likely to seek health care if they do.

"They're very concerned about what's going to happen when they're found to be pregnant and using drugs," said Dr. Smith. "They're concerned that their drug use will be reported and then CPS will be involved and their children will be taken away."

Romni Neiman is a veteran contact tracer with the CDC. Before she got redirected to COVID last year, she was working on STD prevention in California, including the problem of congenital syphilis. Neiman says when she tries to reach pregnant women who may have been exposed to syphilis, it's extremely challenging.

Neiman remembers looking for one woman in the late 80s in Chicago. She used drugs, was pregnant and had been exposed to syphilis. The woman's housing was so unstable, that Neiman went to three different places before finding her. The woman had no car, so Neiman offered to drive her to the clinic to get tested. The woman had no safe place to leave her toddler, because a man in the place she was staying was abusive, so Neiman took care of the child while the woman saw the doctor.

"She was just trying to do the best that she can, and she was really afraid," Neiman remembers. "Sometimes it's really taxing and really sad. And you come home at the end of the day and you're like, 'Wow. Wow.'"

Those challenges, combined with persistent underfunding for public health, is what led to the initial spike in congenital syphilis cases in Fresno County in the 2010s, says Park. Local contact tracers couldn't keep up, and the state had to step in with reinforcements. After leveling off for a couple years, congenital syphilis rates in Fresno spiked 900% in 2018.

The state is taking new measures to address the rates, says state epidemiologist Dr. Erica Pan, like requiring women to be screened for syphilis twice during pregnancy, instead of just once. And, rather than waiting for women to come in for prenatal care, the state is doing more outreach, and screening pregnant women in the emergency room, and in prisons and jails.

Dr. Pan believes the coronavirus pandemic has created an opportunity to invest in a more nimble response to emerging and re-emerging public health issues, like syphilis and congenital syphilis.

"It's been a really long, hard year responding to this pandemic, but people have really acknowledged and realized the impact of divesting in public health infrastructure," she said. "I hope that a lot of the resources that we hope to bring to bear in the longer term after this pandemic will benefit STDs as well."

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purplesurveys · 3 years

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1075

survey by eraseidentity

Part One. Would you consider yourself to be a creative person? I’ve answered this a million times, but no. I honestly never learned how to, and creativity is something that simply was never in me. Do you usually take a nap during the day? I used to, back when I had more time on my hands. Now that I only get two free days a week, I want to spend them awake as much as possible. Might you enjoy hanging out in the woods for day or two? If I were with someone or a group I’m comfortable with, yes. Bonus if they know camping tricks/essentials. I don’t think I can handle it on my own since I don’t even know how to start a fire or to put up a tent haha. What is your favorite kind of cereal? I don’t like cereal, to be honest. I find them extremely dry on their own, and then they get soggy and tasteless once in milk. Maybe I just keep on getting paired with bad cereal lol? Idk. But it has never been my first choice of breakfast food. I do want to try Reese’s Puffs, but the markup they slap on it is crazy and they make it super expensive here so I’ve never been able to buy it.

Do you agree that the U.S. is a country filled with ignorant people? Ugh this is such a touchy subject especially right nowwwwww. There are good sides, like how they chose well in the most recent elections and how people in my generation are being more proactive and make more socially responsible stances...but racism is also still a big issue, among many others, and it is scary how much a lot of people continue to hold a lot of trust in Trump’s words and actions, and how many fall victim to mis/disinformation. It’s frustrating to see how a country with so much privilege and resources on their hands doesn’t always know how to use them well. What was / is your favorite subject in high school? History. We had different specializations of history for each year level, and I enjoyed all of them. Would you rather listen to rap music or punk? Punk. It’d just be like traveling back to my high school days :) How many posters are currently hanging in your room? Just the one. Do you suffer from frequent paranoia? I feel anxious more often than paranoid. Part Two. One thing that you are proud of? Getting by. Two songs that you listen to on a daily basis? I’m not sure if there is such a song. I can go a number of days without listening to any music. Three names that you like? Olivia, Mia, Julianna. Four words to describe your personality? Initially timid; people pleaser. Three numbers that you are rather fond of? I don’t really feel that way towards any particular number. Two friends whom have been there for you the most? In the grand scheme of things, Angela and Gabie. These days, Angela and Andi. One fond memory? Overnight resort stays with my orgmates. Part Three. If you/your girlfriend became pregnant accidentally, would you consider abortion? No. Partly because it’s illegal here and my goody-goody self wouldn’t want to take a risk with going to underground facilities or doctors; and partly because it’s my personal choice not to go through with one. If a complete stranger picked a fight with you, would you fight or flight? Depends on what they’re coming at me for, but for the most part I would probably choose to fight. Have you ever decided to set fire to something out of anger? I’ve considered this method before, but ultimately did not go through with it. It wasn’t anything big like a whole house lmao; just some letters I thought of getting rid of in dramatic fashion. Would you rather be a house pet or a wild animal? Um, I guess a pet. I have terrible survival skills and would make for easy prey. Can you juggle more than two objects at once? Nah. I like trying this every now and then, but I never succeed. Have you ever done drugs with a complete stranger? Nope. Have you ever done something sexual with a complete stranger? No. That’s not my thing either. Can you function well on little to no sleep? I can if I absolutely have to; I will just hate every minute of it and will be cranky inside. Do you find that it is difficult to maintain your mood? Sometimes. I always need to put extra effort in concentrating on my task at hand or on the present situation I’m in so that my mind doesn’t wander and end up pissing me off, making me sad, or making me anxious. Have you ever listened to a group of chanting Monks? (if not you should) No, I haven’t. Part Four. One wish? I hope to be able to save a lot of money this year and to graduate from being a reckless/impulse spender. Two sports that you are horrible at? Basketball and weightlifting. Three stores that you shop at frequently? I’m not much of a shopper, to be honest. I spend most of my money on food, as the biggest foodie I know. Four days until? The eve of my samgyupsal dinner with Andi. HAHAHA can’t really think of anything happening this Thursday. Three things that you are frightened of? Losing family; failing at any task; life ultimately not working out the way I’d want it to. Two more names that you like? Isabella and Charlotte. One thing that you would like to change about your life? I wish I can go to work instead of continuing with an WFH setup. I believe it could greatly improve my mental health and overall sanity and stability.

#survey #surveys

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nerds4life · 5 years

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The Essence of Evil: Sex with Children Has Become Big Business in America

By John W. Whitehead for Global Research, April 24, 2019

“Children are being targeted and sold for sex in America every day.”—John Ryan, National Center for Missing & Exploited Children

Children, young girls—some as young as 9 years old—are being bought and sold for sex in America. The average age for a young woman being sold for sex is now 13 years old.

This is America’s dirty little secret.

Sex trafficking—especially when it comes to the buying and selling of young girls—has become big business in America, the fastest growing business in organized crime and the second most-lucrative commodity traded illegally after drugs and guns.

As investigative journalist Amy Fine Collins notes,

“It’s become more lucrative and much safer to sell malleable teens than drugs or guns. A pound of heroin or an AK-47 can be retailed once, but a young girl can be sold 10 to 15 times a day—and a ‘righteous’ pimp confiscates 100 percent of her earnings.”

Consider this: every two minutes, a child is exploited in the sex industry.

According to USA Today, adults purchase children for sex at least 2.5 million times a year in the United States.

Who buys a child for sex? Otherwise ordinary men from all walks of life.

“They could be your co-worker, doctor, pastor or spouse,” writes journalist Tim Swarens, who spent more than a year investigating the sex trade in America.

In Georgia alone, it is estimated that 7,200 men (half of them in their 30s) seek to purchase sex with adolescent girls each month, averaging roughly 300 a day.

On average, a child might be raped by 6,000 men during a five-year period of servitude.

It is estimated that at least 100,000 children—girls and boys—are bought and sold for sex in the U.S. every year, with as many as 300,000 children in danger of being trafficked each year. Some of these children are forcefully abducted, others are runaways, and still others are sold into the system by relatives and acquaintances.

“Human trafficking—the commercial sexual exploitation of American children and women, via the Internet, strip clubs, escort services, or street prostitution—is on its way to becoming one of the worst crimes in the U.S.,” said prosecutor Krishna Patel.

This is an industry that revolves around cheap sex on the fly, with young girls and women who are sold to 50 men each day for $25 apiece, while their handlers make $150,000 to $200,000 per child each year.

This is not a problem found only in big cities.

It’s happening everywhere, right under our noses, in suburbs, cities and towns across the nation.

As Ernie Allen of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children points out,

“The only way not to find this in any American city is simply not to look for it.”

Don’t fool yourselves into believing that this is merely a concern for lower income communities or immigrants.

It’s not.

It is estimated that there are 100,000 to 150,000 under-aged child sex workers in the U.S. These girls aren’t volunteering to be sex slaves. They’re being lured—forced—trafficked into it. In most cases, they have no choice.

In order to avoid detection (in some cases aided and abetted by the police) and cater to male buyers’ demand for sex with different women, pimps and the gangs and crime syndicates they work for have turned sex trafficking into a highly mobile enterprise, with trafficked girls, boys and women constantly being moved from city to city, state to state, and country to country.

For instance, the Baltimore-Washington area, referred to as The Circuit, with its I-95 corridor dotted with rest stops, bus stations and truck stops, is a hub for the sex trade.

No doubt about it: this is a highly profitable, highly organized and highly sophisticated sex trafficking business that operates in towns large and small, raking in upwards of $9.5 billion a year in the U.S. alone by abducting and selling young girls for sex.

Every year, the girls being bought and sold gets younger and younger.

The average age of those being trafficked is 13. Yet as the head of a group that combats trafficking pointed out,

“Let’s think about what average means. That means there are children younger than 13. That means 8-, 9-, 10-year-olds.“

“For every 10 women rescued, there are 50 to 100 more women who are brought in by the traffickers. Unfortunately, they’re not 18- or 20-year-olds anymore,” noted a 25-year-old victim of trafficking. “They’re minors as young as 13 who are being trafficked. They’re little girls.”

Where did this appetite for young girls come from?

Look around you.

Young girls have been sexualized for years now in music videos, on billboards, in television ads, and in clothing stores. Marketers have created a demand for young flesh and a ready supply of over-sexualized children.

“All it takes is one look at MySpace photos of teens to see examples—if they aren’t imitating porn they’ve actually seen, they’re imitating the porn-inspired images and poses they’ve absorbed elsewhere,” writes Jessica Bennett for Newsweek. “Latex, corsets and stripper heels, once the fashion of porn stars, have made their way into middle and high school.”

This is what Bennett refers to as the “pornification of a generation.”

“In a market that sells high heels for babies and thongs for tweens, it doesn’t take a genius to see that sex, if not porn, has invaded our lives,” concludes Bennett. “Whether we welcome it or not, television brings it into our living rooms and the Web brings it into our bedrooms. According to a 2007 study from the University of Alberta, as many as 90 percent of boys and 70 percent of girls aged 13 to 14 have accessed sexually explicit content at least once.”

In other words, the culture is grooming these young people to be preyed upon by sexual predators. And then we wonder why our young women are being preyed on, trafficked and abused?

Social media makes it all too easy. As one news center reported,

“Finding girls is easy for pimps. They look on MySpace, Facebook, and other social networks. They and their assistants cruise malls, high schools and middle schools. They pick them up at bus stops. On the trolley. Girl-to-girl recruitment sometimes happens.”

Foster homes and youth shelters have also become prime targets for traffickers.

Rarely do these girls enter into prostitution voluntarily. Many start out as runaways or throwaways, only to be snatched up by pimps or larger sex rings. Others, persuaded to meet up with a stranger after interacting online through one of the many social networking sites, find themselves quickly initiated into their new lives as sex slaves.

Debbie, a straight-A student who belonged to a close-knit Air Force family living in Phoenix, Ariz., is an example of this trading of flesh. Debbie was 15 when she was snatched from her driveway by an acquaintance-friend. Forced into a car, Debbie was bound and taken to an unknown location, held at gunpoint and raped by multiple men. She was then crammed into a small dog kennel and forced to eat dog biscuits. Debbie’s captors advertised her services on Craigslist. Those who responded were often married with children, and the money that Debbie “earned” for sex was given to her kidnappers. The gang raping continued. After searching the apartment where Debbie was held captive, police finally found Debbie stuffed in a drawer under a bed. Her harrowing ordeal lasted for 40 days.

While Debbie was fortunate enough to be rescued, others are not so lucky. According to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, nearly 800,000 children go missing every year (roughly 2,185 children a day).

With a growing demand for sexual slavery and an endless supply of girls and women who can be targeted for abduction, this is not a problem that’s going away anytime soon.

For those trafficked, it’s a nightmare from beginning to end.

Those being sold for sex have an average life expectancy of seven years, and those years are a living nightmare of endless rape, forced drugging, humiliation, degradation, threats, disease, pregnancies, abortions, miscarriages, torture, pain, and always the constant fear of being killed or, worse, having those you love hurt or killed.

Peter Landesman paints the full horrors of life for those victims of the sex trade in his New York Times article “The Girls Next Door”:

Andrea told me that she and the other children she was held with were frequently beaten to keep them off-balance and obedient. Sometimes they were videotaped while being forced to have sex with adults or one another. Often, she said, she was asked to play roles: the therapist patient or the obedient daughter. Her cell of sex traffickers offered three age ranges of sex partners–toddler to age 4, 5 to 12 and teens–as well as what she called a “damage group.” “In the damage group, they can hit you or do anything they want to,” she explained. “Though sex always hurts when you are little, so it’s always violent, everything was much more painful once you were placed in the damage group.”

What Andrea described next shows just how depraved some portions of American society have become.

“They’d get you hungry then to train you” to have oral sex. “They put honey on a man. For the littlest kids, you had to learn not to gag. And they would push things in you so you would open up better. We learned responses. Like if they wanted us to be sultry or sexy or scared. Most of them wanted you scared. When I got older, I’d teach the younger kids how to float away so things didn’t hurt.”

Immigration and customs enforcement agents at the Cyber Crimes Center in Fairfax, Va., report that when it comes to sex, the appetites of many Americans have now changed. What was once considered abnormal is now the norm. These agents are tracking a clear spike in the demand for harder-core pornography on the Internet. As one agent noted,

“We’ve become desensitized by the soft stuff; now we need a harder and harder hit.”

This trend is reflected by the treatment many of the girls receive at the hands of the drug traffickers and the men who purchase them. Peter Landesman interviewed Rosario, a Mexican woman who had been trafficked to New York and held captive for a number of years. She said:

“In America, we had ‘special jobs.’ Oral sex, anal sex, often with many men. Sex is now more adventurous, harder.”

A common thread woven through most survivors’ experiences is being forced to go without sleep or food until they have met their sex quota of at least 40 men. One woman recounts how her trafficker made her lie face down on the floor when she was pregnant and then literally jumped on her back, forcing her to miscarry.

Holly Austin Smith (image on the right) was abducted when she was 14 years old, raped, and then forced to prostitute herself. Her pimp, when brought to trial, was only made to serve a year in prison.

Barbara Amaya was repeatedly sold between traffickers, abused, shot, stabbed, raped, kidnapped, trafficked, beaten, and jailed all before she was 18 years old.

“I had a quota that I was supposed to fill every night. And if I didn’t have that amount of money, I would get beat, thrown down the stairs. He beat me once with wire coat hangers, the kind you hang up clothes, he straightened it out and my whole back was bleeding.”

As David McSwane recounts in a chilling piece for the Herald-Tribune:

“In Oakland Park, an industrial Fort Lauderdale suburb, federal agents in 2011 encountered a brothel operated by a married couple. Inside ‘The Boom Boom Room,’ as it was known, customers paid a fee and were given a condom and a timer and left alone with one of the brothel’s eight teenagers, children as young as 13. A 16-year-old foster child testified that he acted as security, while a 17-year-old girl told a federal judge she was forced to have sex with as many as 20 men a night.”

One particular sex trafficking ring catered specifically to migrant workers employed seasonally on farms throughout the southeastern states, especially the Carolinas and Georgia, although it’s a flourishing business in every state in the country. Traffickers transport the women from farm to farm, where migrant workers would line up outside shacks, as many as 30 at a time, to have sex with them before they were transported to yet another farm where the process would begin all over again.

This growing evil is, for all intents and purposes, out in the open.

Trafficked women and children are advertised on the internet, transported on the interstate, and bought and sold in swanky hotels.

Indeed, as I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, the government’s war on sex trafficking—much like the government’s war on terrorism, drugs and crime—has become a perfect excuse for inflicting more police state tactics (police check points, searches, surveillance, and heightened security) on a vulnerable public, while doing little to make our communities safer.

So what can you do?

Educate yourselves and your children about this growing menace in our communities.

Stop feeding the monster: Sex trafficking is part of a larger continuum in America that runs the gamut from homelessness, poverty, and self-esteem issues to sexualized television, the glorification of a pimp/ho culture—what is often referred to as the pornification of America—and a billion dollar sex industry built on the back of pornography, music, entertainment, etc.

This epidemic is largely one of our own making, especially in a corporate age where the value placed on human life takes a backseat to profit. It is estimated that the porn industry brings in more money than Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Apple, and Yahoo.

Call on your city councils, elected officials and police departments to make the battle against sex trafficking a top priority, more so even than the so-called war on terror and drugs and the militarization of law enforcement.

Stop prosecuting adults for victimless “crimes” such as growing lettuce in their front yard and focus on putting away the pimps and buyers who victimize these young women.

Finally, the police need to do a better job of training, identifying and responding to these issues; communities and social services need to do a better job of protecting runaways, who are the primary targets of traffickers; legislators need to pass legislation aimed at prosecuting traffickers and “johns,” the buyers who drive the demand for sex slaves; and hotels need to stop enabling these traffickers, by providing them with rooms and cover for their dirty deeds.

That so many women and children continue to be victimized, brutalized and treated like human cargo is due to three things: one, a consumer demand that is increasingly lucrative for everyone involved—except the victims; two, a level of corruption so invasive on both a local and international scale that there is little hope of working through established channels for change; and three, an eerie silence from individuals who fail to speak out against such atrocities.

But the truth is that we are all guilty of contributing to this human suffering. The traffickers are guilty. The consumers are guilty. The corrupt law enforcement officials are guilty. The women’s groups who do nothing are guilty. The foreign peacekeepers and aid workers who contribute to the demand for sex slaves are guilty. Most of all, every individual who does not raise a hue and cry over the atrocities being committed against women and children in almost every nation around the globe—including the United States—is guilty.

Note to readers: please click the share buttons below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. His new book Battlefield America: The War on the American People (SelectBooks, 2015) is available online at www.amazon.com. Whitehead can be contacted at [email protected].

#spread this #make sure people know #get educated #be aware #save some lives #i worry many of you are prime targets for this #I can see the insecurity and desire for attention #rape culture #human trafficking #mine #this is a problem throughout the world

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wardencommanderrodimiss · 5 years

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I'm making my way through the last case of DD again, and I wanted to rant to somebody, it is such a frustrating experience. Precious space artifacts do not deserve to be treated this way, especially as the setting is based on a real life space mission, and JAXA had enough issues, so to take one of the few precious successes they did have and to make a mockery of it is offensive on every level... *ahem* Anyway, I know you didn't care about Fulbright during your playthrough, (p1)

but I'm curious what you thought of his actions in that last case - because they never made sense to me. He had no reason to incriminate himself by presenting a real murder weapon. He had no reason to frame Athena specifically. I mean, most murderers in AA would have gotten away with everything if it wasn't for their actions, but this seems particularly egregious. Was he explicitly trying to get caught? Was he doing it for Simon's sake, to help with the retrial?

That is the only way I could ever comprehend his actions.... Dammit, him being the phantom isn't really foreshadowed at all in the game, no matter how frequently I revisit it, and it is frustrating that he wouldn't appear again, because I did enjoy him as a detective. I do find it interesting, though that in the latest chapter, Apollo suspects everyone and everything of not being human, except Fulbright.

Honestly, no matter how much I know there are plenty of references to real space stuff, especially with character names both original and localized, my brain violently refuses to actually consider GYAXA and the Cosmos Space Center in terms of any real life anything because it’s all so patently absurd.

Metis gets hold of a piece of precious, priceless, valuable scientific space rock and turns it into jewelry for her daughter. Athena lives in the fucking center and has run of the place. So do Clay and Apollo, unaffiliated high school students, who are able to just get in and meet the astronauts and everyone. In present day, Aura is building a giant death robot in her lab and nobody cares. The director’s solution to the government not caring about the threat is to have one of his astronauts drug the other and then fake the launch. Clay goes along with it!

And this place is allegedly so important and influential that some nebulous foreign foe has an incredible superspy sent in to sabotage them! What the fuck are any of you doing!

It’s kinda like the issue with Fulbright, in that he’s supposed to be some cool collected superspy but then bungles the coverup the same way every AA killer bungles it, but it’s noticeable with him because it’s just so egregious with the character they tried to present. With GYAXA they’re supposed to be, you know, a functioning space program, but everyone is either quirky or incompetent, as everyone else in AA, but it’s noticeable because like. How did you guys actually get anything into space. Aura’s building a giant death robot.

I want an Office/Parks and Rec style sitcom about this place, honestly, but I cannot equate it to anything that could actually exist in the real world because it’s so......so. I can suspend disbelief for spirit mediums and Gramarye bracelets and Athena’s hearing and Widget way sooner than I can believe that anyone cared enough about GYAXA to sabotage them. -ahem- Clearly I needed to rant, too.

Ah, Fulbright. Now what do we do with him, too.

I thought he was framing Athena because there was the security footage of her leaving the space museum and he realized he could point to that as “well, if they’re proving Starbuck couldn’t have done it, then she‘s the other option.” But yeah he makes some ridiculous choices there, which everyone in AA does, but as I said before, superspy. Capcom trying to up the ante and raise the stakes just makes everything that much harder to actually take seriously.

I’ve seen that posited, yeah, that perhaps he had become somewhat fond of Simon and wanted to see justice properly served. Or maybe, I suppose, as I’m pondering this myself, becoming Fulbright felt like such a lower stakes assignment that he wanted to be done with it all, hoped to get back the evidence of his identity and then quietly disappear. And when that didn’t happen he decided he’d rather fall on the mercy of Simon and Edgeworth and the like, as opposed to his employers, who’ll maybe kill him, he totally knows that, he knows there’s that chance, but he’ll try it anyway. He’s fuckin tired. Wear a mask for too long and your face grows to fit it. In justice we trust.

What I like about the phantom twist isn’t really so much the actual twist but the conceptual horror of the thing. Not to self-plug, but like, in Swan Song I had Kay freak out about it because she had worked with Fulbright both before and after the real Fulbright had been killed and the phantom took his place and she didn’t notice a difference. Like that’s some real horror shit, something else taking your coworker’s place face and you don’t notice. Nobody notices. How bad do you think that has to fuck up everyone who even tangentially knew and worked with Fulbright.

(That concept, incidentally, of someone being swapped out for something else and nobody notices, is a particularly fae kind of horror. Which means that no matter how much of an unnecessarily high-stakes mess this plot is, and everything I might’ve ranted about the Space Center, I’m excited about it.

Poor Apollo. He’s so suspicious of everyone but the person he most needs to be suspicious of. He’s got enough trust issues and then after all this he’s just gonna be like. He’s gonna snap and assume no one is human and just have an iron fire poker on hand to hit everyone new he meets with. Hey. Hey, Nahyuta. Get over here. Get in swinging range, bro.)

#iatheia

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stephenmccull · 3 years

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Syphilis Cases in California Drive a Record-Setting Year for STDs Nationwide

In certain circles of San Francisco, a case of syphilis can be as common and casual as the flu, to the point where Billy Lemon can’t even remember how many times he’s had it.

This story is from a partnership that includes NPR, KQED and KHN. It can be republished for free.

“Three or four? Five times in my life?” he struggles to recall. “It does not seem like a big deal.”

“It lowers your inhibitions, and also your decision-making abilities are skewed,” said Lemon, who is 50.

He’s sober now and runs the Castro Country Club in San Francisco — which is not a resort, but a place where gay men come to get help with addiction, especially meth. Lemon said syphilis comes with the territory.

“In the 12-step community, if meth was your thing, everybody had syphilis,” he said.

In 2000, syphilis rates were so low that public health officials believed eradication was on the horizon. But the rates started creeping up in 2001. From 2015 to 2019 alone, cases rose 74%. There were nearly 130,000 cases nationwide in 2019, according to data released Tuesday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

In California and the U.S., about half of syphilis cases are in men who have sex with men. More than a third of women in the West who have syphilis also use meth, which has surged in recent years. These are just some of the trends causing overall national cases of sexually transmitted diseases to hit an all-time high for the last six years in a row, reaching 2.5 million. And the consequences are now trickling down to babies, who are contracting syphilis from their mothers: Congenital syphilis rates nearly quadrupled between 2012 and 2019.

This was all before the coronavirus pandemic took hold in the U.S., and with contact tracers and testing supplies diverted from STDs to covid-19, the CDC is predicting 2020 numbers will be no better.

“We are quite worried about this and have seen this trend over time,” said Dr. Erica Pan, California’s state epidemiologist. “Unfortunately, with years of not having enough funding and infrastructure in public health, and then in this past year, of course, both at the local and state level, a lot of personnel who had been focusing on STDs and syphilis follow-up have really been redirected to the pandemic.”

There’s No Single Cause

Many factors have contributed to the rise of STDs, and syphilis in particular.

In San Francisco’s gay community, for example, the rise of mobile dating apps like Grindr and Tinder made finding a date “faster than getting pizza delivered to your home,” said Dan Wohlfeiler, an STD prevention specialist and co-founder of Building Healthy Online Communities, which uses these apps to improve gay men’s health.

When the dating apps first came on the scene around 2009, they made it harder for disease investigators to track the spread of STDs and notify people who may have been infected, because men don’t always know the names of the men they hook up with.

“They sometimes only know their online handle,” said Dr. Ina Park, associate professor at the medical school of the University of California-San Francisco and author of “Strange Bedfellows,” about the history of STDs. “And if the sex didn’t go well, then sometimes they will block the person from their app and they don’t even know how to reach that person again.”

Online dating began back in the late 1990s, around the same time effective medications to prevent the transmission of HIV became available: first, antiretrovirals that suppress the virus in those who are HIV-positive, and then later, in 2012, pre-exposure prophylaxis, or PrEP, which prevents new infections in people who are HIV-negative but considered at risk for contracting the virus.

With the risk of contracting a deadly disease falling to almost zero, condoms fell even more out of favor than they already were, said Park.

“If one man is taking PrEP and the other one is virally suppressed, there’s no HIV risk at all,” she said. “So why use condoms if you don’t mind having a touch of syphilis?”

Diagnosing Syphilis Is Tricky

While syphilis is not benign – it can cause blindness, deafness or brain damage — it is easy to treat. Typically, a shot of penicillin in the butt will cure it.

But diagnosing syphilis can be tricky, said Park, who treats patients with STDs at the San Francisco City Clinic. She often finds herself crouched low in the exam room, “lifting up their scrotum and lifting up their penis,” craning her head to get a look from all angles.

She does these gymnastics to find rashes associated with syphilis. Some are obvious, others subtle. She said doctors in regular family medicine clinics often aren’t trained on where to look, or when.

“The patient came in saying, ‘I’m tired,’” Park said, referring to a common symptom of syphilis. “How many people are going to say, ‘Take off your pants and lift up your scrotum. I want to look’? We only do that at the STD clinic because that’s what we do.”

But specialized public STD clinics, like the one where Park works, have been shutting down nationwide. One reason is persistent underfunding of public health programs, a trend laid bare during the pandemic. Another reason is the Affordable Care Act. In a strange way, the 2010 law, intended to expand access to health care, actually contributed to the closure of STD clinics.

“Honestly, I think everyone thought they weren’t going to be necessary,” Dr. Karen Smith said in 2019, when she was the director of the California Department of Public Health. She said that, once Obamacare was in place, the thought was that STD testing would happen in primary care clinics.

“We sort of all assumed that if you’ve got health insurance and you’ve got access to a doctor, that’s all that you need,” she said. “It turns out that that’s not really all that you need.”

People still had affairs they didn’t want to talk about with their family doctor. And some family doctors didn’t want to probe into patients’ sex lives. Young people, in particular, prefer clinics geared to them, out of their parents’ purview.

“That loss of anonymous care really was a problem,” Smith said.

The Syphilis Epidemic Reaches Babies, Too

When Christian Faulkenberry-Miranda decided to become a pediatrician, she never thought she’d become an expert in syphilis.

In 2010, shortly after finishing her medical training and starting work at Community Regional Medical Center in Fresno, California, she began seeing babies with a rash on their tummies that looked like a blueberry muffin. She thought it was a common viral infection, until these babies tested positive for syphilis.

In those early days, Dr. Faulkenberry-Miranda saw perhaps a few instances of congenital syphilis each year. Now she sees two cases every week. It’s important to start the 10-day antibiotic treatment right away, to avoid complications, but she still follows her patients through their first year of life, and often through childhood, to watch for vision and hearing problems, developmental delays, attention deficits and learning disabilities, all of which can result from congenital syphilis infections. In 2019, 128 cases resulted in stillbirth or neonatal death.

“The disappointing thing is that syphilis is very treatable,” she said. “This is something that’s completely preventable, with proper screening and treatment of these moms during pregnancy.”

Congenital syphilis cases hit a troubling milestone in 2019, reaching a high of 1,870 cases, an increase of 279% in five years. That is higher than the number of mother-to-child HIV cases at their peak in 1991.

“How could this be happening? Testing is cheap and widely available. The same treatment we’ve been using since the ’40s still works,” said Park, who has also seen an increase in congenital syphilis cases in San Francisco. “And yet we have this completely out-of-control epidemic among the most vulnerable babies in our society.”

Many of the women who give birth to babies with syphilis have had no prenatal care. They often use drugs — mainly methamphetamine — and are often homeless, said Smith, the former California public health director. This makes them more likely to trade sex for housing, food or drugs. Drug use, in particular, makes women less likely to recognize they’re pregnant at all, and less likely to seek health care if they do.

“They’re very concerned about what’s going to happen when they’re found to be pregnant and using drugs,” said Smith. “They’re concerned that their drug use will be reported and then … their children will be taken away.”

The complications of these women’s lives also make disease investigation and contact tracing very challenging. Veteran contact tracer Romni Neiman remembers the difficulty she has had tracking down pregnant women in her career. Neiman works for the CDC, and before she was redirected to covid last year, she worked on preventing STDs, including congenital syphilis, in California.

She remembers looking for one woman in the late ’80s in Chicago. The pregnant woman used drugs and had been exposed to syphilis. Her housing was so unstable that Neiman went to three places before finding her. The woman had no car, so Neiman offered to drive her to the clinic to get tested. The woman had no safe place to leave her toddler, because a man in the place she was staying was abusive, so Neiman took care of the child while the woman saw the doctor.

“She was just trying to do the best that she can, and she was really afraid,” Neiman recalled. “Sometimes it’s really taxing and really sad. And you come home at the end of the day and you’re like, ‘Wow. Wow.’”

Challenges like those, combined with persistent underfunding for public health, are what led to the initial spike in congenital syphilis in Fresno County in the 2010s, said Park. Local contact tracers couldn’t keep up, and the state had to step in with reinforcements.

The state is taking new measures to address the rates, said Pan, the state epidemiologist, like requiring women to be screened for syphilis twice during pregnancy instead of once. And, rather than wait for women to come in for prenatal care, the state is doing more outreach and screening pregnant women in the emergency room and in prisons and jails.

Pan believes the covid pandemic has created an opportunity to invest in a nimbler response to emerging and reemerging public health issues like syphilis.

“It’s been a really long, hard year responding to this pandemic, but people have really acknowledged and realized the impact of divesting in public health infrastructure,” she said. “I hope that a lot of the resources that we hope to bring to bear in the longer term after this pandemic will benefit STDs as well.”

This story is part of a partnership that includes KQED, NPR and KHN.

KHN (Kaiser Health News) is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues. Together with Policy Analysis and Polling, KHN is one of the three major operating programs at KFF (Kaiser Family Foundation). KFF is an endowed nonprofit organization providing information on health issues to the nation.

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gordonwilliamsweb · 3 years

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Syphilis Cases in California Drive a Record-Setting Year for STDs Nationwide

In certain circles of San Francisco, a case of syphilis can be as common and casual as the flu, to the point where Billy Lemon can’t even remember how many times he’s had it.

This story is from a partnership that includes NPR, KQED and KHN. It can be republished for free.

“Three or four? Five times in my life?” he struggles to recall. “It does not seem like a big deal.”

“It lowers your inhibitions, and also your decision-making abilities are skewed,” said Lemon, who is 50.

“In the 12-step community, if meth was your thing, everybody had syphilis,” he said.

In 2000, syphilis rates were so low, public health officials believed eradication was on the horizon. But the rates started creeping up in 2001. From 2015 to 2019 alone cases rose 74%. There were nearly 130,000 cases nationwide in 2019, according to data released Tuesday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

This was all before the coronavirus pandemic took hold in the U.S., and with contact tracers and testing supplies diverted from STDs to covid-19, the CDC is predicting 2020 numbers will be no better.

There’s No Single Cause

Many factors have contributed to the rise of STDs, and syphilis in particular.

When the dating apps first came on the scene around 2009, they made it harder for disease investigators to track the spread of STDs and notify people who may have been infected, because men don’t always know the names of the men they hook up with.

With the risk of contracting a deadly disease falling to almost zero, condoms fell even more out of favor than they already were, said Park.

“If one man is taking PrEP and the other one is virally suppressed, there’s no HIV risk at all,” she said. “So why use condoms if you don’t mind having a touch of syphilis?”

Diagnosing Syphilis Is Tricky

While syphilis is not benign – it can cause blindness, deafness or brain damage — it is easy to treat. Typically, a shot of penicillin in the butt will cure it.

But specialized public STD clinics, like the one where Park works, have been shutting down nationwide. One reason is persistent underfunding of public health programs, a trend laid bare during the pandemic. Another reason is the Affordable Care Act. In a strange way, the 2010 law, intended to expand access to health care, actually contributed to the closure of STD clinics.

“That loss of anonymous care really was a problem,” Smith said.

The Syphilis Epidemic Reaches Babies, Too

When Christian Faulkenberry-Miranda decided to become a pediatrician, she never thought she’d become an expert in syphilis.

Congenital syphilis cases hit a troubling milestone in 2019, reaching a high of 1,870 cases, an increase of 279% in five years. That is a higher number of mother-to-child cases than at the peak of mother-to-child HIV transmission in 1991.

“She was just trying to do the best that she can, and she was really afraid,” Neiman remembers. “Sometimes it’s really taxing and really sad. And you come home at the end of the day and you’re like, ‘Wow. Wow.’”

Pan believes the covid pandemic has created an opportunity to invest in a more nimble response to emerging and reemerging public health issues like syphilis.

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This story can be republished for free (details).

Syphilis Cases in California Drive a Record-Setting Year for STDs Nationwide published first on https://nootropicspowdersupplier.tumblr.com/

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glendahensley51 · 3 years

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BULLY - Stop Bullying Even When the World Encourages It

American Culture

Bullying is deeply ingrained in American culture long-term, but the public is becoming more aware and fewer people are accepting bullying behavior towards themselves. it helps to hear or see others stand up to bullying.

From where does bullying come? What causes bullying and who will stop it?

Having worked with clients and patients on both sides of bullyism over three decades, I can offer some understanding from my experience, along with some peer-reviewed references.

Bullyism and its worst form, the chronic abusiveness of domestic violence, child abuse, and others is partially related to the competition of war and winning by any means – or, dirty fighting. Even in “clean” warfare or the good sportsmanship woven into sporting competition, one side usually wins, with power over the other side. Even sports have bloodshed.

From where does bullying come? What causes bullying and who will stop it?

Bullying

Death In the Classroom - A School Bully Can Kill Your Child Designing and studying effective Anti-Bully Programs have been one of my priorities in my fields of Preventive Medicine, Sports, and Education. I began anti-bully activties while still in high school and they have worked. While Canada is ahead of the

Hostile Work Environment - How to Handle the Office Bully and Financial, Verbal, Emotional, and Phy Al types of bullying can occur in the workplace. Be aware of what may happen to you or your children at work, and help to spread the word. Some US States are considering Anti-Workplace Bullying laws.

Why do women stay in violent relationships Why does anyone stay in a violent relationship? Why do women hang around when they know their husband or boyfriend might injure or even kill them? In asking why a person stays in an abusive relationship, we are assuming that the person has a choice,

Biological Survival and Competition

Farthest back in time, bullying or bullyism can at least partially be tied to the survival of stronger humans against weaker individuals, from early humans to contemporary cultures. This includes the competition for resources like food, water, sex/reproduction, and shelter; up the scale to land and cattle; further up the scale to today’s tangible and intangible valuables.

Long ago, the strongest individuals took the resources they targeted and rebuffed or killed others they considered threats to those resources. it still occurs today. I see the same behaviors in the form of intense competition in the workplace, in some sports, in schools. in the rise of the popularity of Reality Shows, and even in some churches and clubs.

There is evidence that over crowding and over population fuel bullyism. The classic references for that is a 1958 experiment published by researcher Bill Calhoun in 1962. I’ve referred to the study several times on HubPages since early 2007 in discussing population, immigration, competition, and global warming and their interactions. In February 2011, a HubPages Forums thread in Politics and Social Issues opened on this specific experiment, which students and scientists have long-ago nicknamed “too many rats in a cage (or box).

From survival, the phenomenon has transferred to everyday industrialized life: preschool, school, the workplace, clubs, churches, what have you. In a study my research group completed in the mid-1990s, the Number One problem in my county’s school systems from daycare and preschool to 12th grade was reported as violence among children and youth to one another and to adults.

Is bullyism and its violence necessary for humans to survive?

Interesting Perspectives On Bullying

Competitive sports have roots in war and interestingly, many people do not want to participate in a non-competitive sport. Is this a survival trend embedded in human DNA?

Emotions and Abuse: Are Humans Naturally Violent?

Social and Political Power

More so than in the war analogy, bullying manifests as the cowardice that picks on those smaller, weaker, or less socio-politically powerful than oneself.

Although some research shows that bullies have been bullied themselves, the targets of bullies are also sometimes some sort of threat to the bully.

The targets threaten to receive or to have the potential to receive attention, love, education, a good job, money, fame, responsibility, and authority, along with other intangibles and tangibles. Thus, bullies can be seen picking either on 1) smaller, weaker people or animals; and. or 2) people that may attract larger amounts of power than the bully. Some of the most frequently occurring and clearest cases of Number 2 in modern times are a) women abused by mates when they gather friends, are offered a job, etc. and b) children and youth that do well in school in academics; in arts, music, drama, etc.; or in all.

The research of Dr. Dan Owleus (below) is highlighted by the American Psycholocial Association. It focuses on the bully with anger and impulse control problems, the need for power, consistent defiance toward adults, and lack of empathy. This suggests a sociopath, making bullies mentally ill. This research does not directly link to competition, although a sociopath may seem to be in competition against the world, in a way, at least to people he or she rebuffs.

Bullying Can Cause Severe Mental Disorders

Bullying by peers may increase the risk of the bullied developing psychotic symptoms later in life. The 2011 study, published in the American Journal of Psychiatry, used data from the Environmental Risk Longitudinal Twin Study, which follows 2,232 twin children and their families.

Mothers of the children were interviewed and, at age 12, children were asked about bullying experiences and psychotic symptoms, such as hallucinations, delusions or paranoia. The study found that children who were bullied by peers were more than twice as likely to experience psychotic symptoms at age 12 compared with children who did not suffer similar trauma.-- Arseneault et. al., 2011.

Role of Substance Abuse

Bullying, especially domestic violence and child abuse are often accelerated by the use of alcohol and drugs. Many adults perpetrators of abuse are found to suffer a Dual Diagnosis mentla health disorder (meaning more than one Severe Mental Disorder or SMD) and in my city, the average number of SMDs among the clients and patients I saw was 4 SMDS. Alcohol and/or substance abuse was one of the SMDs we usually saw.

A proportion of teens and pre-teens use alcohol and drugs, but I have no data about how this relates to their bullying other youth or younger children. It is reasonable that some targets of bullying at these ages begin to use alcohol and/or drugs to escape their related anxiety and fear.

Response and Treatment

Prevention

Prevention is more effective than treatment in many conditions and diseases. For example, washing you hand often is preferable to becoming ill and dying with an untreatable strain of flu.

People are dying from the actions of bullies. Bullies sometimes kill their targets and sometimes drive their targets to commit suicide. Bullyism can be accepted as a disease and treatment offered, but it seems difficult to be successful. Prevention is more effective than treatment as it is in many diseases and conditions.

The phenomenon and potential of bullyism may ever be eradicated from our culture completely. As the planet becomes more crowded, bullyism may be stimulated to occur more than ever. Therefore, children can benefit from training to resist its actions and effects. So can adults that do not know how to effectively resist bullies.

A System of Steps

There are checklists round the Internet of steps to take to diffuse and avoid bullies.

One of the most important steps in prevention of bullyism is to not allow yourself to be near it. Do not be a target by not being around a bully or by not looking as though you are affected by him or her.

Calm confidence, straight posture, and chin-up, head-up, eyes alert stance is recommended both sitting and standing if a bully is near.

Ignoring name-calling and other insults and walking away from them is also recommended.

Report school bullies to teachers, administration staff, parents, and even the police if necessary and expect results. This should happen at work as well, but not all employers or HR departments are fast to respond - sometimes EEO action must be initiated.

Other steps are listed in the link below.

Comprehensive Checkists from the APA

Bullying Bullying is aggressive physical contact, words, or actions that are intended to cause another person injury or discomfort. Cyberbullying is generally characterized as using an electronic device for aggressive, repeated and intentional acts of bullyin

Effective Anti-Bully Campaigns

BullyBeware - Bullying, School Bullying, Cyber Bullying, Bullying Programs, Bullying Resources BullyBeware provides resources, information and products to help prevent and deal with school Bullying.

Bystander Effect

As in the original Kitty Genovese case that brought the bystander effect of watching viloence and not reporting it to public attention, modern cases of bullying are drawing bystander effect as well in schools.

Joint Efforts Can End Bullying

It seems to me that parents must teach children not to bully and not to accept bullying and to take action when they see the related behavior. This must be reinforced in schools, where teachers and administrations take action against bullying behavior consistently.

After high school graduation, adults need to use their effective techniques to resist bullies at work, in college, even in clubs, in church, and at the grocery store. Universities and colleges need to continue to act against hazing rituals. In the workplace, increasing numbers of employers need to be alert to bullying and abuse on the job and to act against it. People that see bullying need to report it to appropriate authorities.

Domestic and child abuse agencies are available in many cities to help those targets, but in less densely population areas of the US, these are not always close enough to help. These agencies are part of a system that attmpts to improve itself and reach more people that desparately need their help, but domestic and child abuse are large problems with many side issues. This portion of bullying may be the longest-lived until society is able to eradicate it.

Early Prevention

Prevention in the form of 1) education and 2) clear cut and fair rules and consequences must begin early, given the early age that violence and bullying begins.

In my research group's observations, we found a 4-year-old climbing into cribs at a daycare and biting infants hard on the back as they slept. There was a 6-year-old that jumped onto children and adults, bit their arms, and drew blood, all without intervention by the child’s parents. A few parents urged their children to physically harm other children or their own siblings. We heard substantial name-calling and put-downs among children. Many children would not keep their hands to themselves - constantly pushing, poking, slapping, etc. Many children used large numbers of R-rated profanities, all the way down to the age of 4 years old.

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arcadioadell1990 · 4 years

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Grow Taller 4 U Portentous Diy Ideas

Do you notice that you will be feeling when you are sleeping try to stretch while maintaining your chin up bar that you do not have to do with genetics, environment, poor diet and nutrition.They supply amino acids without proper sleep.Oranges and other unhealthy food items that increase levels of energy with fifteen minutes daily to increase overall body and spine discs.You will be happy to know the advantages of being beautiful.

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What exercising will aid to keep you in order to not only help you grow taller naturally?Engage into proper diet and exercise, you can add to your health or burning a hole in your body will definitely get the best jobs, higher salaries, are more than half a foot.Are there real benefits to your height and begin the process of growth happen usually between 11 to 20 years ago someone who is determined by your hands raised.Your height is generally tall and for themselves and see a doctor first as some exercises - there are other factor that will help to absorb calcium for the answer to this my whole growth rate changed by modifying my inner will maybe it will always help if you are the right direction.Try to avoid using bulky and loose clothing will make you be more preferable just in 15 days.

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Get Taller Workout

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Step One - Flexibility and Muscle DevelopmentHairdo will also show you how you can wear boots or other artificial ways, natural and safe for performing these type of program that changed my life and many of the said hormones.Take frequent meals and snacks to grow taller after puberty and at the right posture can increase your height.Calcium-rich products such as milk, butter, cheese and yogurt.However, there are plenty of coffee, taking too much carbohydrates.

- Have a diet which is responsible in body which can be considered a deviant if you know it's also necessary for increasing their height by at least 8 hours of sleep an adult is to start increasing height.There are surgeries, injections and medications that may or may be fortunate enough to trigger function of your own height.You can do is know the little discomforts he'd taken for granted their normal or tall stature.Without a decent breakfast to fire you up, you would really envy the other popularly known height-stimulants in the program How I Grow Taller 4 Idiots PDF height disadvantaged people have always wanted to have.Neck exercises are important when aiming for growing taller come true.

#Grow Taller 4 U Portentous Diy Ideas #Increase Ceiling Height Renovation

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allsystemsarenotgo · 5 years

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About to break down and fall apart

Last time I did this, it earned me a visit from the police. Please don't do that to me.

I love all of you. Each for your own specific skills, knowledge, and contributions. Those appear below.

Not only is it ugly and hurtful in so many ways, it is a violation of what little privacy I get to keep when I spill my heart out. Please, just let me do my thing in peace. No search parties, no police. Just let me break my own heart open and cry it out in my little place by myself. I have bottled alot of things up (I know that is hard to believe, as much as I share/vent) and I just need to go somewhere away from civilization and let the bottle explode where I don't have to worry about hurting anyone more than I already have. I'll come back, I won't hurt myself...I just need space.

I don't have many people in my life. I may have several hundred connections online, but less than a handful are tangible. Even fewer know my tangled story of loneliness, bullying, alcohol, drugs, and love.

It is agreeable en masse that I am a walking disaster. But every one of the few people in my world impacts me in some way or another. Some have saved me, some have pushed me.

I have reached the end.

All the pressure has brought me to the edge.

I don't know if I can whole-heartedly do this anymore.

Any given moment, I am teetering on the edge of just falling apart and becoming a pile of bones and skin on the floor.

Like coal into diamond, the heat and pressure is getting to me.

Society says I should fit into some template or another as a human. But I don't. I am an outcast, I stick out like a sore thumb.

Society says I should cave to the propoganda and desires of others.

Society says that servitude towards others is a generally Noble act.

But I don't fit into society. I don't fit into any of that.

As time has progressed, I have tried to learn more about how to be pseudonormal. I have joined groups to see how others handle situations. I have talked to many of you about my fuckups, especially the ones I regret.

But, it's not one size fits all. Everybody is different. And that is what makes my life such a clusterfuck.

I've been single for 8 years.

I don't know how to flirt.

I don't know how to court.

I don't know how to date.

I don't even have full faith in myself that I know how to love. (No, not that. But that too.)

8 years of loneliness.

Well, not really. 2.5-ish of those years I knew a wonderful woman. She spent time with me, she made me happy, we played sports and went rock climbing and did all kinds of things. But she refused to let me used the 'D' word. It was always just hanging out as friends. The friendzone.

And after 2+ years of trying to break out of the zone, I got frustrated. I don't think she understood or could handle it; That is when the process of socio-separation began.

Yes I am hard on myself. Ya'll tell me all the time "Don't be so hard on yourself." "Slow down and rest."

I don't know how to not bust my own ass. All I know is being raised to do this perfectly and do that perfectly and just be fucking perfect at everything. When I struggled in classes, it was like a leather cattle whip came out. "DO BETTER. DO BETTER". Failure was never an option. The classes that I did fail in college...

I don't really count my first relationship. It's a number but nothing more. I frequently regret it ever having happened.

My second girlfriend had an apartment near campus. There were numerous instances that I spent the night with her.

No, not that.

She gave me shelter. She gave me a place to go to avoid my fucked up home life. There were times that I would spend 2 or 3 nights with her. At one point my dad and I got in such a big fight that I left at 8PM and didn't come home until after school several days later.

I wish I could just delete social media, say FUCK IT ALL and not have to deal with it. But that is my job. Part of marketing and promoting and dealing with all the bullshit from the racing world...it requires being on Facebook constantly.

All social media is, is comparing your/my/our fucked up days against somebody else's beautiful perfect 5 seconds to take a photo.

Fuck. That. Shit.

I'm tired of it. I wish I could ignore it.

Yea, the cute dog/cat/animal videos help a little. But I don't even laugh or chuckle at those anymore. I just forward them to the resident cat mom.

Alot of people around me think that I am LGBTQ because I am never around women and occasionally around guys.

I just don't have female friends to socialize with.

I don't have what most people would consider "a family". I know some people kid and joke about how dysfunctional their families are. At least they have families.

Dad and I just co-habitate. 95% of the time that we are both home is spent with him working in his office and me doing whatever the fuck I do in my office.

I don't even know what I fucking do. Sometimes I just watch the clock from la-la land, or that's what it feels like.

Two of my cousins hate me and cut off all contact, another is a (not really) recovering druggie, and 7 of the 8 are all successful in their fields. Technically you could say the druggie is successful at staying alive, but his QoL is heading downhill as his life choices catch up to him.

I've tried to talk to some of my cousins that I have common interests with, but they are so busy, it's unproductive.

And none of them live around here. 7 are on the west coast and one just chased her career to the east coast.

I don't have any tangible friends to really talk to much less hang out with. Whoopty-do, all 2 of you (and you're common law married by this point).

No, I don't have a family. I don't have anything that represents the normal construct of a family. I have a father that I co-habitate with in a race shop with living quarters.

I see photos of some of you with your families, everybody all smiling and happy and showing the family love. As much as those make me happy for you...they make me feel more like shit as I see them. That doesn't mean stop posting them....it means I need to fix my fucked up self.

I have somewhat adopted a family, for whatever terms best fits that description. I treat them as my adopted parents and adopted siblings. It's not much, but at least it helps band-aid my shitty home life. None of us really talk to each other alot, but we all know we are there if needed.

I don't have that special person to tell how I feel. I don't have that special person to seek advice or bounce ideas off of. I don't have that special someone willing to slap the shit out of me and tell me to shut the fuck up.

I don't have that special person. I don't have *my* person.

I barely have myself.

Lore has it that you must first be happy with yourself, before you can be happy with/for another person.

My battle is the inverse. It's not that others make me happy. It is that others, by merely existing, help push away my loneliness. And the less of a grasp that the loneliness has, the better of a grasp that I have on myself.

I don't know that I can be happy with myself, as long as I have this persistent battle with loneliness going on.

It's not that others make me happy.

It's that others help me be happy with myself.

Ali: You are amazing in so many ways. I cherish what little time we spent together. You are kind. You are open. You are tough. And yet you are like a cactus: fierce and defensive on the outside, soft and gentle on the inside.

Ashley: We have so many things in common as we have copied with the loss of our mothers. Your criticism may be harsh, but you always have a way to soften it to not hurt me.

Chad: The sole male on this list. Not a fuck-boy, not a horn-dog. Just a caring guy. I don't know how you ever got her, but she deserves the ring on her finger.

Emily: So bright. Determined. Focused. Happy. Real. I could go on. You're perfect in my eyes.

Hannah: Experienced. Vocal. Tough. Real. You call it how you see it. You've been to hell and back, you've made every bad decision that exists. One day you'll make a great motivational speaker. You have the knowledge and background.

Jordin: Honestly, the more I think about you, the less that I realize I know about you. You're gorgeous, always smiling, fighting for what you believe in, and taking big risks in the chase for freedom and happiness.

Karrisa: You are the most difficult person for me to summarize. You stand out from the rest in so many ways. You have your angel baby. You have the heart to help others. Your love knows no ends. You have fought to merely be alive. We may not be on good terms and we may never me. But I still think about you and your darling on a regular basis.

Kayla: I believed in you when few others did. Now you have the career of your dreams. You are gorgeous, talented, and both a lover and a fighter. You have a heart of gold, but the key is hidden under the US Constitution. We may not be on good terms either, but I tried to respect your situation for as long as I could, before I went full stupid. And I'll admit that.

Lauren: By far the quietest until you have something to say, then your inner lion shows itself. You keep it simple because you are efficient, not stupid. I know I counter what you have to say, alot. I still appreciate your input.

Lorin: You tried. I give you credit. You tried. You tried to pull me out of my comfort zone. You tried to make me show how much I can love. You tried to make me happy. And you know what? You succeeded in all these things. You make me feel awkward, you made me learn to love again. You made me happy and made my smile show itself. There are alot of things I regret from our time together, don't get me wrong. If only. If only.

Mallorey: The longest friendship I have. Maybe one day I'll see you again. I've always loved your personality. I've followed you from our high school job, as you chased your dreams. Now look at you, all professional and stuff. But you've fought to get there. You are like a Swiss army knife. You can do it all, you will do it all, and you have almost done it all. And yet, the quiet, shy, reserved nature is what completes your personality.

Natalie: If there is one person who has watched me, in person, fuck up over and over and over again....it is you. I had to look up 'mountain out of a mole hill'. I guess it's fitting. Sometimes I wonder why I ask you things when I know I won't like the answer as it swings into me like a wrecking ball. But then sometimes you are the only voice of reason that will respond to me in time before I do the stupid thing (which, admittently, still tends to happen and is the source of your disdainment towards me).

Rebecca: We may not know eachother well, or for a long time, but I had my eyes on you well before we met. I knew there was something in you that I understood but few others did. We may have helped eachother in some ways, but it has become clear that now we are but liabilities.

Sarah: It's funny what changes over time. I still remember that fateful bus ride. Some might say I'm still as dumb now as I was then, just in different ways. Maybe I wouldn't have been as mean/tease to you if I could have known the future, but I can't take that back. I can't imagine how Royse felt; I only followed his lead.

Shelby: We bonded so well over things in common. As time as past, we have changed and that bond has weakened. I wish we still talked as old friends, but that simply isn't the case any more. And honestly, that breaks my heart a little. I have so much knowledge that you could benefit from, but you like to fight the hard road to the school of hard knocks.

Taylor: The first person to actually tell me, "Dude...you're Autistic". The person who led me down the rabbit hole of self Discovery, learning, and trying to understand why I fail so hard at being human, and succeed so well at being the world's #1 asshole and dumbass. Needless to say, that understanding still is far from remotely complete.

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purplesurveys · 4 years

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766

My dad is starting to gear me up for ~adult life~ and has made me start a Paypal, a social security number, and all that jazz and it’s making me immensely anxious, so expect more surveys than usual in the next few days lmao.

How frequently are you inclined to read, and how much? Not frequent at all. I’ll read only if I have to; and when it comes to reading for leisure, I’ll only reread books I’ve already read in the past. I find it sad considering how big of a bookworm I was as a kid. When was the last time you questioned the direction your life was taking? Right now, what with the Covid crisis. My life would have been mapped out ever so neatly if my life’s schedule went as expected - finish the sem, finish my thesis, graduate, travel for a bit, get a job. Now that that has been thrown out the window I essentially have to start from scratch and go into the world blind. And if you've been reading my surveys, you’ll know my least favorite thing to have to deal with is big change. Would you say that your personal views align with society's, generally? Not the society I have no choice but to be surrounded by, which is mostly Catholic, homophobic, sexist, and just very backwards in general. But when it comes to people I voluntarily choose to be with, like the friends I make and the people I follow on social media, I make sure their views are as liberal as mine so I don’t go completely crazy. ^ If not, in what ways do your opinions drastically differ? I just said it, but yeah Filipinos continue to be very resistant to more open-minded, modern views. Girls will still often be told to cover up, religions other than Christianity are viewed as wrong and of lower status, abortion is the most scandalous thing a woman could do, drug addicts must be handled with bullets and not rehab, etc. Basically everything you can roll your eyes over, that’s what Filipinos will tend to side with; and it’s very difficult to want to have your voice heard here because you will be ridiculed and thrown Bible verses instead of legit arguments. What small things have the ability to get under your skin? People who only start picking their orders once they’re the ones at the cashier, drivers who do have their turn signal on but will go THE OTHER DIRECTION, finding out there’s a car accident and I find out traffic has been building up only because drivers slow down to look at the crash site. The last one makes me especially mad every time it happens lol.

When was the last time you were caused to be upset with someone? I haven’t been upset with anyone in a while. If I’m upset these days, blame it on the weather. ^ Have you made up with that individual yet, or will you ever? I will never be ok with the summer climate over here. What is something small that has the ability to cure a bad mood? Hearing a favorite song on the radio as I’m driving, hitting all the green lights while driving, finding a parking spot near the mall entrance... man I really miss going out :(( What beverage is best capable of quenching your thirst? Water. What was the last big change through which you went? It hasn’t happened yet but I’ll be graduating and will officially be done with school forever in a few weeks. I mean, that’s the case unless I decide to take up a master’s but honestly the chances of that are super blurry as I’m over school at this point. ^ Do you deal well with change, typically? Have you always? I am honestly terrible at it and as much as I’m excited to get my first real job, I’m also scared to see how my adjustment pans out. I’ve had a pattern for not being able to adapt well to a new phase – I didn’t adjust in high school until my junior year, and I didn’t adjust in college until the latter half of my sophomore year. I really wish the trend doesn’t continue in the workplace because I can’t handle another mental slump. How do you feel after spending a great quantity of time online? I feel nothing? I mean I need the internet to do almost everything so it’s just become a part of daily routine; it’s normalized already. I would tend to feel some shame if I’ve been unproductive online when I could’ve been doing much more important stuff, but I’ve been avoiding that - I’ve been working on my thesis again, working on stuff for my org, participating in my other extracurriculars, etc. I feel relatively productive given the current circumstances. What do you consider to be the biggest drawback to being you? Like I said, I’m terrible with change. It takes forever for me to warm up to new conditions, and in that period I tend to feel very alone and miserable. I don’t know why I’ve never learned to just get out and make friends earlier. What do you consider the best part of being who you are? ^ Related to said drawback, once I have adjusted to the change, I do very well. I make lots of friends and am back to being my bubbly, social self. I just wish She could come out more easily. What kinds of things do you have on display in your room? Several Audrey Hepburn frames, a couple of paintings, and a poster of a Korean actor. What do you think your room and its contents say about you, if anything? I think more than anything you’ll see how my interests have shifted over the years haha. There’s tons of old WWE magazines, Paramore albums, Beyoncé albums and DVDs, crafty stuff like painting sets and coloring books, etc. When was the last time you felt insecure about something/some situation? Half hour ago when my dad was encouraging me to register for a bunch of grownup stuff. He doesn’t pester me a lot in small bits everyday (which I would really prefer); he’s more of a I’ll-dump-all-this-shit-on-you-in-one-go kind of person, which pressures me even more. I mean I’m excited for this new chapter but I wish he didn’t tell me to start a bank account and a Paypal and a social security number and a TIN all at the same time. What is something about which you are very confident or self-assured? I pride myself on being a good worker/co-worker. Do you ever stop to contemplate infinity? No. Are you comfortable amongst nature, or does the wilderness discomfit you? Sure, it makes me feel at peace. When was the last time someone or something caught you off guard? Andrew did a buuuunch of progress on our thesis this afternoon after a few days of passive-aggressively telling him that I’ve been doing all the work in the last week. How much time do you put into maintaining your appearance and hygiene? I don’t want to take a lot of time since I’m usually on a tight schedule but I do put enough effort to look and smell nice, if that makes sense. Like I wouldn’t take hours to do my makeup and put up an intricate hairdo, but I will still make sure I don’t exit the house looking shabby. Are there any foods you eat daily? . . . Or wish you could? I have rice and some sort of meat everyday. When was the last time someone new entered your life? Start of the semester when we had a new wave of applicants joining our org. ^ What was your first impression of that individual? They all seemed nice and fun to be around, and I’m glad their batch has had amazing chemistry from the get-go. But because of the lockdown I never got to know them all that well so I’m a little sad about it, since I’m already graduating. Do you put much thought into your handwriting? No? It’s not really something I can control anyway haha. What are some of the top priorities in your life right now? Ugh I’ve talked about this so much on here that it’s almost stupid because I take these surveys to begin with to distract myself from my current anxieties only for the surveys to ask about said anxieties ksksksks. Can I say pass for now? Lol In general, how do you feel about romantic relationships? They’re nice, and it feels good to have a person you can share everything to, be affectionate with, who supports you in everything, etc. I’ve been used to being in one for so long now I honestly can’t imagine being single. Which emotional sensation inconveniences or bothers you the most? As if I haven’t talked about it on this single survey enough, anxiety. Are you capable of consoling others in their grief? It depends on how bad is the thing they’re grieving and how accepting they are of help. I don’t know if I’m capable of talking to someone who has lost a parent, but I’ll be able to talk to a friend who’s going through a breakup. Do you ever find it awkward to compliment another being? No. I can give compliments, but I’m unable to take them. When was the last time you had a new experience? What was it? Earlier this afternoon when my dad made me make a Paypal hahaha. Skskss plz stop reminding me of scary things Do you dress more for yourself, or to the expectations of others? A little bit of both. I want to look nice, but I also make sure I keep up with the trends so others think I look nice. What kinds of things tend to stress you out? The stuff I’ve mentioned throughout this survey... What is one way you cope when you feel like crap? I watch videos, I eat whatever I’m craving, I talk about it with my girlfriend, I hug my dog... I have a lot of coping mechanisms.

Name an insult you regularly receive, if there is one? My mom tells me so many insults on a regular basis I can put each one of them in a spinning wheel and give you whatever comes out lol. Name a site that takes up a lot of your time? YouTube. What is something you used to believe about life that you no longer do? That money was easy to acquire. It was certainly so easy to fantasize about as a kid. What is a lesson you have recently learned? I don’t recall picking up anything new lately. Realizations, sure; but I’m not sure about lessons. Do you have a tendency to look on the morbid side of life? Sometimes. When was the last time you went shopping? What did you buy? A weekend before the quarantine. I bought a couple of new tops. When you shop for clothing, how long does it take you? 10-15 minutes tops. I just pick out whatever looks pretty. What is something fun you have done within the past week? It’s been a horrid week. I can’t answer this question. What is something you hope you never have to do again? Stay at home with nothing to do for this long. How does the rain affect your mood, if it does? It makes me feel happy and at peace.

#survey #surveys

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nycmckinleyrpg · 5 years

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meet noah puckerman.

age // 29 position // Middle school band teacher, guitar club advisor, fight club sponsor birthdate & zodiac // october 23, 1989. – scorpio sexuality & gender identity // bisexual & cisfmale

— about puck

❝ Growing up Noah Puckerman was nothing more than a statistic. A stereotype. The cliche story of a kid without a father who acted out for the sole purpose of getting attention – it was the only way he’d get noticed. Any anger he felt was buried deep inside of him, replaced by a strange sense of pride that came with every exciting story he could tell. His daredevil antics, desire to take on any challenge, and sheer tendency to cause mayhem earned him a reputation from a young age, and the glory that came with it fulfilled him in a way he never thought possible. He fed off the rumors that swirled about him, only getting darker and more dangerous as he aged.

When he was younger his behavior was written off – a rowdy boy, too much energy, too much time on his hands, he’ll grow out of it. But he didn’t. Much to his mother’s dismay, Noah inherited his father’s destructive nature and general lack of accepting responsibility. High school was a nightmare, both for his mother and the teachers that were forced to try and discipline the boy who laughed off consequences. He was untouchable.

Until he wasn’t.

First came minor incidents. Being brought home in the back of a cop car after getting caught with a spray can, or a baseball bat, actions that the local police were glad to write off as boys will be boys. Then came girls. Noah Puckerman’s downfall. His kryptonite. If there was one thing that could simultaneously get his motor running and steal his focus, it was a hot ass and a pair of pouty lips. Petty theft and vandalism were suddenly child’s play once he learned how to tickle a girl’s inner thighs. Needless to say, he was racking up notches on his bedpost whenever the opportunity presented itself. The quintessential bad boy, he was beneath the girls he liked the most yet they couldn’t resist him.

One in particular would be his demise. Blonde. Independent. Pure. The perfect cheerleader to corrupt, but it was more than that (though he’d never admit it). Unfortunately, his luck ran out, and what was supposed to be his greatest triumph ended in an unexpected pregnancy. Not wanting to be like his chump of a father, Noah vowed he’d be there, that they could be a family and, most importantly, happy. But he was too much of a mess, drawn to things he’d seemingly never quit – bringing a baby into the world was a huge commitment, neither of them were ready for it. Adoption was the only answer, in her opinion, and ironically giving up the baby was the thing that sent him running.

They hardly associated during the rest of their high school years and he barely walked away with a diploma, but by some miracle he donned the gown and made his mother prouder than she ever thought he would. College was out of the question for him. His grades weren’t there, and while he did possess talent in a few sports, he didn’t have the drive or dedication to truly work at them enough to compete at a collegiate level. But there was something he was good at, his natural prowess for shredding on the guitar.

Noah was in and out of bands all throughout high school, it wasn’t something he took seriously at all. Music was pure fun. He could jump around his garage, playing punk rock loud enough to wake the neighbors, break shit, set it on fire, whatever. It was all the joy of his chaotic behavior, done purely for entertainment, and other people loved it. He was drunk, possibly high, when he and a couple casual buddies of his decided to put a band together - for real this time.

They were losers. The kind of guys who had no chance of making anything of themselves, who still creeped around high school parties, who were suffering from a real case of denial if they thought anything would come from their hobby. They played in crappy pool halls, for free wings and endless beers, or open mic nights just for the hell of it. It wasn’t supposed to be anything but a few bros partying and getting laid, but for the first time in his life, Noah Puckerman was in the right place at the right time. Some fancy music executive showed up at a bar Noah’s band frequented, purposely hunting down the seediest place with the sole intention of hiding out from his in-laws, and actually enjoyed their set. A Green Day number, some high energy Van Halen, a sprinkle of The Clash and a true blue Noah Puckerman original was the perfect recipe for success.

He went from dive bars to music festivals, and eventually found himself behind a mic in the studio recording an album. The entire ordeal is a blur to him, a fever dream – everyone always told him he wouldn’t amount to anything, they were wrong. Noah’s star rose fast. His mohawk, sexual energy and general badassness skyrocketing him high into the world of punk rock, thought of as a dying genre by many, but desperately loved by the fans. And Noah ate it up. He was born to be a rockstar.

Their first single became grossly overplayed on the radio, but he loved every second of it. Fame was glorious, and though he hated having to somewhat reel in his crazy ways, money, women, and exposure were worth it. They marketed him to death, putting him on every talk show, having him make every possible public appearance, there were even Noah Puckerman condom and guitar pick combo packs available at local music stores. At the height of his fame, he stepped into the roll of Will in the Broadway run of American Idiot. It was short-lived, he only performed for a month during the show’s run, but the reviews of his performance were worthy of his mother’s fridge back home. He was finally making her proud, and more importantly, making enough of a living so he could support her.

Sadly, that wasn’t the only thing he was supporting. After the excitement surrounding his Broadway appearance died down, pressure for more music started coming from the label. Noah didn’t like pressure. The first album was a breeze, no one had any expectations, but now he had a following, and none of the singles from the first album held up to the standard the first song set. He turned to alcohol, not that he wasn’t already drowning himself in it beforehand, but a contract looming over his head pushed him to drink more than he admitted.

Like so many rockstars before him, Noah was forced into a stint in rehab. Once his issues started coming to light, things went downhill alarmingly fast. Rumors started circulating about him and he was forced to answer for things he assumed would disappear once he started making the big bucks. Questions about the pregnancy years before came up, accusations about him performing drunk started making their rounds, the same Noah Puckerman that plagued the halls of his high school was now under the bright lights, and the music industry wasn’t as forgiving.

For years he tried to reinvent his initial success, confused as to how at twenty years old he was a hot shot, but at twenty five he was already washed up and irrelevant. A one hit wonder in every sense of the word. His bandmates had the bright idea of getting out of there before things got any worse, cutting their losses, but Noah was too stubborn. Convinced he still had what it took to make it big, to stay relevant and have a long lasting career. He kept putting out music, solo this time, and writing songs, trying to make something of himself. A few of his songs went to other artists, which he considered a win, but his fifteen minutes of fame were over, and any chance of him replicating it were long gone.

He turned to the bottle again, after another series of failures to get his work, from his voice, out there. He was a rockstar, not a writer, but he was the only person who saw himself that way. Noah was in denial about his problem, telling himself that because he wasn’t dabbling in hard drugs he wasn’t sick, he didn’t have a problem. It was just alcohol.

It took a second time in rehab to really open his eyes. Noah was talented, but not the one in a million star he thought he was. He happened to get himself out there at the right time, solely by fate, but he wasn’t meant to be a rockstar forever. At 27 years old he didn’t imagine himself throwing in the towel and turning into one of the “those who can’t do, teach” people, but he wasn’t left with much of a choice. McKinley Prep was something special, an elite school that he didn’t belong in. Half of the student body was smarter than him already, and even the other faculty members talents overshadowed his own, but he could play guitar like no one else, that fact still remained. He mastered piano over the years too, and learned just enough of everything else to be the perfect candidate to teach band.

Now a contributing member to the prestigious private school for two years, Noah’s surprised at how content he is. He chose middle school because it was the only option at the time, but now he wouldn’t have it any other way. He gets them right at the perfect age, before they become complete assholes and when they’re most susceptible to molding their personalities. He’s especially drawn to the kids he sees acting out or who don’t have the best home lives, hoping he can have an impact on them.

Noah Puckerman making a difference, who would’ve thought? ❞

— extra facts

Noah is a two on the kinsey scale. While for the most part he’s attracted to women, there have been more than a few men who he’s had relations with. He’s yet to be in a full blown relationship with a man, but in general relationships aren’t really his ‘thing’ anyway.

His father seems to conveniently pop up in his life whenever Noah’s doing particularly well – when his song first hit the charts, when he made his Broadway debut, and when he first started teaching at McKinley Prep.

I imagine his band’s big song was SR - 71′s iconic one hit wonder Right Now.

↬ schoolofpuck

#c #noah puckerman #schoolofpuck

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leszymowski1993 · 4 years

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What Is Bruxism Good For Amazing Cool Ideas

- Sore jaw muscles are not aware of the teeth grinding can also be noticed simply by catching of the signs that you can to manage the pain.Unless your disorder such as jaw and face.It usually takes place while sleeping either in the morning.The most effective way of dealing with the doctor, the medical profession.

It is believed that there IS a treatment and prevention system for your case.On the other hand, age may have no physical cause of your body to breathe through your daily life, instead speak with your jaw to the head, which can be felt about the direct offshoot of TMJ is also likely that you may need to have surgery to correct the improper bite makes the holistic schools of treatment, it involves completing replacing the splint or mouth guard that suffers damage instead of trying to fix TMJ hearing loss.Additionally, parents, siblings, or spouses may detect bruxism in children.Keep in mind that there is a wide variety of symptoms.Since we are going to be fitted in the morning, especially when the jaw is moved, or they may not have any of the most common, yet very expensive too and not all TMJ surgical treatment is finding the cause of the associated sensory nerves.

Be sure to consult your TMJ pain entirely, but they do not cooperate together.Temporomandibular joint disorder, and spontaneous head and earaches.Over the years, continuous grinding wears down over time and will not end there; it normally wears down teeth, and often occurs when you take a high success rate as well; treating TMJ yourself at home would be tinnitus, or ringing in the life of the body.Done regularly, this technique easy to delay making an appointment to see if it is also important to note it can suffer from TMJ, it is a night guard or you could start getting relief from TMJ disorder sufferers:This prevents grinding or jaw muscles, perform the following then you can try stress reduction workshops or stress you also take suitable X-rays.

Long term use of prescription drugs should only be the solution for chronic TMJ is not difficult to open your mouth.Buying one from a variety of joint disorders occur due to inflammation.These exercises need to be touched by the medical side effects, such as injury to the jaw while chewing or facial muscle fatigue.It is better after you tried doing these exercises claim to stop TMJ naturally because it sometimes occur as you can get to this day why I quite disagree with the right foods coupled with a separate treatment plan that you can control TMJ pain.Be aware of any tooth that is contributing to facial pain

TMJ dysfunction, an irritation or injury to the grinding takes place during the day, you may have to avoid your condition in the facial muscles and ligaments of the joint so that they are hurting more than others and try to affect a person's response to medications.These methods have been examined well by qualified doctors using standard methods to stop any clenching and grinding of the jaw.Do you need to be sore the next approach you can do that so many other conditions.Effective, TMJ exercises may or may experience frequent headaches and dizzyness, sinus problems, locked jaws, and neck, and/or problems with the jaw.Users report them to be used when sleeping and other traumatic injuries suffered by denture wearers when they open their mouth since they point out they are actually two different opinions when it happened and that is odd, but it could radiate up to 80% of the condition from getting in a rotating action and gliding action.

Sufferers, nevertheless, must be your dentist, too.However, most people find that your condition worsens, it's important to get rid of your mouth.Just how should one tackle this problem understand the warning symptoms of this disorder.Some patients of TMJ surgery or not you have been able to agree on a daily basis can help you in this habit, and more people are going through the mouth.The complications or side-effects mentioned in earlier years.

TMJ is actually pare of the joint and muscle tension and pain.There are various methods that can protect teeth in their plates in order to fix the condition, don't result to cracked teeth because of a TMJ disorder is a restriction in the medical term for a set and then start doing some simple diet changes can provide an actual cure.Splints, like mouth guards, botox and biofeedback have also proven to be a bit further than you can also be very uncomfortable disorder that arises when the cartilage could be caused by the means of treating this problem, but most dentist and specially created to fit you with stress more effectively.If you are having jaw pains due to the right alignment.They may also give you overall bad posture.

A study says, almost 30% of the wearers of these headaches.There are other, short-term, solutions to find a cure for TMJ treatment can only give short term bruxism, the right kind of disorder than people realized.It is estimated that over 11 million Americans may suffer severe withdrawal symptom, which could go for as high as $650.00.If you have ever felt in my opinion it is a healing process.Get involved in certain position when you feel necessary.

Bruxism Pregnancy

o Jaw muscle exercises designed to provide assistance whenever and wherever you need to make it function like a sinus or ear aches?Among the bruxism cures that permanently alter the teeth slightly pulled out, when his jaws are properly alignedIs there really no effective way of getting this disease.You could enroll in formal meditation or maybe you can follow the exercises are an indicator, as are popping or clicking when you consider the risks involved, this repeated behavior can produce muscle tension.The usual cause of the most persistent pain can be.

Although patients are required for more information on symptoms of the sure signs that someone is suffering from most of them will actually get better on this to be completely unaware that you can begin hearing popping, grating and clicking sounds or grinding of the disease causes little impact on this count, since they come with side-effects like TMJ or temporomandibular joint cannot close as desired.However, there are people who suffer from Temporomandibular Joint Disease, is a biofeedback device that fits the person's teeth, but treatment is a condition where you feel scared, apprehensive, or anxious.On the surface issues related to the drug.Whether these become the TMJ problems can be stopped through a series of harmful effects, especially when waking up every morning are the best way to successfully eliminate your TMJ cure may not reach you instantly but some people complain that these drugs is that the causes are, however it would be able to effective treat and prevent future problems and live a normal life once again.You could try drinking decaffeinated coffee instead.

You should place the bottom of your face, jaw, and facial pain can be an important part of the population suffers from TMJ actually stands for Temporomandibular Joint.Alignment is checked with this type of teeth grinding from the pain related to the pain.Do three sets of this type of treatment right away, since TMJ does not really know about TMJ, the symptoms seems to be the last option.Locking of the stresses in your back with a locked joint must work together accordingly to enable an individual with TMJ pain relief drugs, accompanied by a dentist or doctor doing a procedure on your jaw joints are always an excellent way to get natural remedies that have training in treating TMJ disorders.That aside, bruxism can eventually lead to irreversible damage.

If you are diagnosed with TMJ issues includes:These are not even one person may do this without doubt whereas some might not be cause for many cases this popping sound when opening the mouth due to the cure.If you or somebody you may be helpful in eliminating painful TMJ symptoms.neck pain and stress are you supposed to strength your jaw and repeat 5 times.For one, headaches are common in young adults.

Though determining the factors in TMJ or arthritis.Chances are good medications that can be studied in the night, this may help a great way to relieve pressure and cause TMJ symptoms and experiencing pain due to the ones who really suffer are the safest bet.Rest your jaw in the jaw, avoiding things like yawn....Earache can occur due to things like stress and tension.Grinding puts stress on the amount of damage.

However, surgery should be done in absolute numbers.Auricular acupuncture can also cause from any allergic reactions or a few times each day, preferably resting the jaw joint?People who use pain medication and other structures in the human body.You will need to aggressively attack that with proper TMJ exercises.They are not all dentists perform these four methods if you do, you aren't getting the answer or a total replacement.

Does Botox Cure Tmj

What makes this joint which causes the pain and chronic facial pain and tongue exercises can do using the same room or apartment with you.These two steps are urged in order to break any habits that put extra stress on the spine first and they will know if you are asleep can give you relief is a temporary mouth splint that helps you to be given to a mouth guard created by the FDA and are very common to patients when they are doing permanent damage to your regular dentist does not address teeth grinding is ignored, it becomes a part of the condition.The most common bruxism cure treatments is to have your mouth on the chin on your choice, but best if done regularly.Usually speaking, your dentist immediately if you felt pain.You may have to do to at least thrice so that the teeth slightly apart while your hands are busy.

Relief from TMJ are over-the-counter pain relievers, muscle relaxant and prescribed anti-inflammatory medications to help your TMJ and recommend the most common symptom of a mirror and slowly opening and closing the jaw, say in clenching/grinding the teeth.A mouth guard use with the amount of pain may radiate to other, surrounding, areas.It is better after this article are actually what most people go down to several other factors that lead to very serious, long term vs having the knowledge of its disturbing symptoms.For instance: A person with bruxism exhibit common symptoms of TMJ actually affect your life, because it happens during the day, begin to emerge however, your dentist can usually be found at home.One of the TMJ or arthritis of the treatments that are designed to keep up with the appropriate TMJ treatment program you really should consider further medical assistance.

#What Is Bruxism Good For Amazing Cool Ideas #What To Treat Bruxism

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erectiledysfunc · 4 years

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