Addiction and Recovery

Dallas Cowboy Orlando Scandrick Suspended Four Games for Taking Crappy Ecstasy

News reports this morning indicate that one of the Cowboys' few defensive bright spots from last season, cornerback Orlando Scandrick, has been suspended for the first four games of the 2014 regular season for violating the NFL's performance-enhancing substance abuse policy. Scandrick has already lo ... More >>

Christina and Trevor Tutt Collected Troubled Kids Until the State Said Enough was Enough

More Or Less Everyone Agrees That Rick Perry Is a Moron for Comparing Homosexuality to Alcoholism

If nothing else, Rick Perry deserves points for hubris. In California to stump up business for Texas -- including a proposed factory to build batteries for Teslas -- the governor responded to questions about the Texas GOP platform's endorsement of dangerous reparative therapy for LGBTQ individuals ... More >>

Probably High Waxahachie Man Was Prepping for Doomsday Until Police Found Guns and Explosives in His Car

Out of the entire universe full of objects of potential interest to human beings, there's only one thing Clayton Earthman enjoys enough to like on Facebook. It's Doomsday Preppers, the National Geographic reality show about otherwise sane Americans steeling themselves for the post-apocalyptic nightm ... More >>

Judge: No More Delays in Trial of University Park Woman Accused of Distributing Child Porn

Almost a year ago, Erika Perdue, a 41-year-old "socialite" from a tony University Park neighborhood, was arrested and indicted on charges of distributing lots and lots of child pornography. As we reported that July, she was released to a rehab center in Argyle two days after her arrest, but was boot ... More >>

Rick Perry and State Senator Jane Nelson Want Texas to Drug Test Welfare Recipients

It's the most wonderful time of the year: There's still some very stale, deeply discounted Halloween candy kicking around the aisles at CVS, Christmas music has suddenly overtaken your dentist's office, and Texas legislators have begun pre-filing bills for the upcoming legislative session. The ses ... More >>

Why Does John Wiley Price Keep Calling Guys Who Hire Prostitutes "Sponsors"?

In 2007, Dallas County began a prostitution diversion plan in which people caught selling sex are often funneled into treatment programs rather than simply locked up. The idea -- a fairly progressive one -- is that prostitutes are most often victims who become trapped in a vicious circle rather than ... More >>

Paddle Fiends, You Got Your Fest

Betty Ford Clinic to Open Temporary Dallas Center. For 7-Year-Olds.

If former first lady Betty Ford didn't make it cool to go to rehab, she certainly helped erase some of the stigma associated with admitting to drug and alcohol abuse. She struggled publicly with alcoholism and painkiller addiction and, as a result, established the Betty Ford Center in California. T ... More >>

Grant Jones Breaks Down Saints, Sinners & Liars

It's been a couple of years since Dallas' Grant Jones & the Pistol Grip Lassos released their last album, a self-titled disc of supremely straight-forward country. For the new album, however, Jones chose to follow an inspired vision he's harbored for the last few years. Saints, Sinners & Liars wi ... More >>

Pot Addiction Study Tracks the Brains of People Who Really Enjoy Weed, Maybe Too Much

If you're high right now, you may want to tune in. Try not to giggle. A University Texas at Dallas professor was awarded nearly $2 million dollars to study marijuana addiction for the next five years. We're talking pot, the addiction suffered in silence -- or in inappropriate laughter at anything th ... More >>

In Suburban Dallas, Loosening "Cheese" Heroin's Deadly Grip

Another round of deaths have another round of North Texas parents trying to wipe out a deadly combination of heroin and cold medicine.

In Dallas Veterans Court, Desert Storm Soldier Gets His Promised Second Chance Today

Photo by Mark GrahamJudge Mike Snipes​Back in October, Sam wrote for the paper version of Unfair Park a lengthy piece about Dallas County's relatively new veterans court, which gives second chances to soldiers who come home from war -- some damaged in some way, many broke, most alone -- and turn t ... More >>

Thirty-Six Sue Private Operator of Dallas County Judicial Treatment Center For Privacy Invasion

The Dallas County Judicial Treatment Center in Wimer​Cornell Companies, the private operator of correctional facilities 'cross the country, has a motto: "People Changing People." A lawsuit filed this week in Dallas County District Court proposes an alteration: "People Filming People." At least, so ... More >>

A hallucinogen called ibogaine has helped addicts kick heroin, meth and everything in between. Is it the trip that does the trick?

Shoegaze and Western

No Get Out of Jail Free Card, Dallas County's Veterans Court Heard Its First Two Cases Today

Judge Mike Snipes​A Vietnam veteran accused of forcing a 6-year-old girl into his car to ride on his lap became the first to sign on for Dallas County's new veterans court program on Tuesday, with a chance to avoid having a conviction on his record if he completes a six-month treatment program. Ch ... More >>

An Innovative Court Offers New Tricks to Turn Ex-Prostitutes into Real Working Girls

Friday's Unverified Fact About Philadelphia

​The 'Boys venture into this series of dismal, dimly lit exits along I-95 on Sunday night. To help us all to know the King of Prussia mall city a little better...A recent government study cited Philadelphia as the city with America's highest rate of alcoholism. In a footnote, this same study point ... More >>

Food For Thought 4.22.09

"This is the movie that puts a happy face on alcoholism...and seems to imply that not only can a man make the right choices about life-altering matters when blind drunk but that sometimes it actually helps." (Playboy magazine on the 1981 Dudley Moore film Arthur. About the most succinct and accurate ... More >>

Pacman Jones: Yay or Nay?

If you missed Pacman Jones on CBS' NFL pre-game Saturday afternoon, here are the highlights lowlights: *His hair was in a sorta mohawk, stolen from Wesley Snipes' Blade, and he was wearing a cheesy, white sports jacket, a la Don Johnson in Miami frigging' Vice. *He used "man" as some of pu ... More >>

Fighting Fire With Fire

Does an unproven treatment that combats drug addiction with drugs promise more than it can deliver?

Sooner or Later You Knew I’d Get Around to Pro Rasslin’

Now, and only now, I've earned the right to call this joint The Sportatorium. Just got my grubby little hands on Gentleman’s Choice, a new documentary by Dallas film producer Mickey Grant. Better late than never, those of you who stumbled onto this site looking for professional wrestling vign ... More >>

National Public Radio's Still Slicing Into Dallas' Cheese Problem

Most kids we know like this kind of cheese -- the string cheese. Turns out, there are still some 9-year-olds in Dallas who prefer theirs cut with heroin and Tylenol PM. This morning National Public Radio ran a story on Dallas’ cheese heroin problem -- you remember that, right? The good news: No ov ... More >>

Don't Piss Off a Drunken Chihuahua

Alcohol and Logic Repel Each Other Like 'Border' and 'Enforcement'

Cleaning Up the Truck Stops, One Abused Woman At a Time

Office Terry Peters, better known as the Dallas Police Department's "whore cop," has gotten to know, and tried to help, prostitutes populating local truck stops such as this one. This morning I got a call from my favorite cop regarding my favorite crackhead, a former truck driver named Country who I ... More >>

The Gut-bucket Gospel

Dallas' Street Church will meet you where you are, even if it's in a crack house

Fudge Factor

Jesus in the Jailhouse

Old-time religion confronts 21st-century Texas prisons: Does it work, and is it constitutional?

Needle Point

This morning down in Austin, the Senate Committee on Health & Human Services is set to hear public testimony on Senate Bill 308 -- which, for those not keeping score at home, is the legislation proposed by Sen. Bob Deuell (R-Greenville) that would legalize needle-exchange programs in Texas. (Deuell, ... More >>

The Forbes 35 (Drunkest)

Now that Dallas-Fort Worth temperatures are plummeting, sleet and ice are thickening and the need for nips is extremely urgent, its time to revisit this story we missed last August in Forbes ranking the nation's 35 drunkest cities. Yeah, Dallas-Fort Worth squeezed its way in. But we pull in a highly ... More >>

The 10 Percent Doctrine

A preacher uses tithing to build a Latino megachurch

Test Patterns

Little strapped for cash? Got knee pain? Migranes? Or maybe vaginal atrophy? Or a spastic colon? Meth addiction? Hypoactive sex drive? Well, do I have the solution for you! It's called Research Across America, a clinical-study biz with offices in Dallas (and El Paso, Manhattan and Reading, Penn.), a ... More >>

Toke This

If news happens, but no one is there to issue a press release, is it still news? There's a koan for all you tree-hugging hippie stoner types to mull over while we offer up some rather old news to the less easily distracted: The League of Women Voters of Texas has come out in favor of decriminalizing ... More >>

Cowboy Junkies, Milton Mapes

Saturday, February 18, at Granada Theater

Book 'Em

Rock memoirs take us behind the music

Cowboy Junkies

Sunday, August 8

Hoosegow HMO

A contained experiment in Medicaid

Out of Mind, Out of Sight

For a growing number of Texas kids with mental illnesses, the only place to get help is behind bars.

Letters

Don't Be a Wimp, Silly Boot Camps, Us and Them

Behind the curve

Courts that aim to treat, not punish, addicts gain a slow toehold in Texas

Quick Fix

After years of financial neglect, the state is hoping a shot of privatization will cure Dallas County's addicted and mentally ill population

Bad trip

As anguished Plano watched heroin pick off its children one by one, a cry went up for police to do anything to stop the deadly plague. Months later, some parents say they went too far.

Help for the tacky

Armed and dangerous

Judge John Creuzot will do just about anything to get addicts off drugs--including poking their ears with needles

Liars' court

Judge John Creuzot shepherds wayward addicts through recovery

The Comeback of Harvey Martin

Eighteen months ago, the former Cowboys hero was drinking and drugging his way to disaster. Now he's clean, sober, and planning to stay that way.

McKinney doctor suspended

Acquitted of attempted murder charges, he still loses medical license

Angel's wings

Cowboy Junkies drone and moan toward brilliance