Pastors urge diligence, awareness as drug overdose deaths hit record

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“Through a 12-month period ending in April, the CDC said, nearly 98,000 drug overdose deaths had been reported…Two primary factors drive that increase: a rise in the availability of fentanyl and isolation brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic.” - BPNews

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What's the Cost of Digital Addictions?

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“Dopamine is the brain’s natural feel-good chemical. It rewards us when we do enjoyable things: connect with friends, laugh at a joke, eat a taco. Today, that powerful reward cycle is being hijacked by digital technology.” - Breakpoint

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What the Church Can Do About the Alcohol-Related Death Epidemic

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“While the church has more to offer an addict, even many Christians turn to 12-step programs (like Alcoholics Anonymous). Why? According to Dunnington, one reason is that churches aren’t calling people to confess their sins or admit they are sinners” - TGC

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Virtue and Vice in an Age of Addiction

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“ ‘Accessibility, affordability, advertising, anonymity, and anomie, the five cylinders of the engine of mass addiction,’ writes David T. Courtwright in his new, one might say compulsively readable book about bad habits becoming big business, The Age of Addiction.” - The American Conservative

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The Good Addiction

One of the things that always amuses me about being a pastor’s wife is that people think they have to be careful around me. As if I have a delicate condition that can’t handle the realities of the world. In order to protect me, they shuffle, they fumble, they apologize and then use euphemisms to describe situations that I could paint in living color. What they don’t understand is that, behind this genteel exterior, I’ve seen it all.

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