Janice Dickinson to Launch New Sober Model House
The now-sober former supermodel, a veteran of Celebrity Rehab and America's Top Model, is set to star in a new reality show called Sober Model House, where she'll dispense advice on runways and recovery to a band of tee-totaling models.
Adam Lambert Chalks Up Drunken Brawl to “Blackout”
The American Idol star his Finnish boyfriend Sauli Koskinen made international headlines after they were arrested for brawling in the street outside a Helsinki gay bar. Shortly after his release, :Lambert broke down the nature of the conflict in a short post on Twitter: “Jetlag + Vodka = blackout.”
Brigitte Nielsen Hit by Drunk Drivggg
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There’s a story making its way around the Internet today about how antidepressants work no better than placebos. But before anyone starts tossing their Prozac in the toilet, they ought to consider the non-headline parts of the story. First, the details, which were published in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry: researchers divided 156 depression sufferers into three separate groups and either gave them Zoloft every day for four months or had them undergo psychotherapy or gave them placebo pills; they found that there were “no overall differences” in how those three groups responded.
But 156 people hardly makes for a thorough study. Besides, only one antidepressant and one form of therapy (called “supportive-expressive therapy”) were used. Also, those in the placebo group were regularly interviewed by researchers about how they were doing—in other words, indulging in a bit of therapy.
What’s actually ds or the placebo while white men did the best on the placebo and African American women showed no difference at all no matter their group. Only white women responded as researchers expected: by improving with either the antidepressant or the talk therapy but not with the placebo. How much of this is the result of the fact that African-Americans, based on a variety of cultural reasons, have long shown a lower response rate to antidepressants than whites while women, studies show, are twice as likely to experience depression than men and as well as more likely to seek help for it? Since four months isn’t a particularly long time to get over lifelong behavioral patterns, perhaps the white women were simply going into the study without any preconceived notions about how responding to a medication for depression would reveal that they were weak?
Medical professionals have expressed some doubts about this study as well. “Those findings are interesting, but need to be interpreted with a grain of salt,” said Dr. David Mischoulon, an associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. “It would be wrong to conclude that psychotherapy doesn’t work, and antidepressants don’t work.”
American Idol star Adam Lambert and his Finnish boyfriend, Sauli Koskinen, also a reality star from Big Brother, landed in the clink last night after getting into a drunken bar brawl at a Helsinki night spot. The power duo had reportedly been drinking heavily when a couple’s squabble escalated into a full-blown Roadhouse-style brawl. The fight eventually spilled outside into the frigid Scandinavian streets where Lambert started swinging at onlookers who tried to break up the fight. Police arrived at the scene and arrested Lambert and Koskinen. Both men spent the night in jail.
Newt Gingrich, who's pledged to keep his candidacy “positive”, slammed Ron Paul during a radio interview, claiming that Paul’s supporters consisted only of “people who want to legalize drugs”—a surprising angle for Gingrich, himself a former pot smoker who proclaimed two weeks ago that the main text of Alcoholics Anonymous, the Big Book, "saved his life." During the interview with conservative commentator John McCaslin, Gingrich suggested that Paul’s base was comprised of pot smoking hippies and degenerates, and then portrayed Paul as a “naïve” statesmen who would allow Iran to bomb Israel and coddle Al-Qaeda. "This is a guy who basically says, if the United States were only nice, it wouldn't have had 9/11," Gingrich said. "He doesn't want to blame the bad guys... And as I said, I think the key to his volunteer base is people who want to legalize drugs."
A Ugandan grandmother was sentenced to the death penalty in Malaysia on Tuesday after trying to smuggle methamphetamine into the country. Malaysian custom officials at Penang International Airport discovered the 5.3 lbs stash in Nabweteme Hadija’s suitcase last September during a routine inspection, and Hadija was charged with drug trafficking, a capital offense in Malaysia, a country that enforces some of the worlds strictest drug laws (just seven ounces of marijuana can land a death penalty verdict). While Hadija maintains she was unaware of the drugs concealed in a false compartment at the bottom of her suitcase, the judicial commissioner Mohd Amin Firdaus was unconvinced. “She was going on a long journey and had packed her own clothes," Firdaus wrote. "How did she not suspect something wrong with the luggage?”