A tragic tale reminds us that drug runners come in all shapes and sizes, and the war to keep these substances from the addicted is far from won.

Parents can be a pain when it comes to lecturing about drugs, drinking or hanging out with the proverbial “wrong crowd.” But in the end, mom really does usually know best. In this case, not following that maternal advice may have led to a Colombian beauty queen’s downfall — and a prison sentence for drug trafficking.

It was a meteoric rise for Angie Sanclemente Valencia. From her humble beginnings in Barranquilla, Colombia, she became a beauty queen at 21, crowned Colombia’s “Queen of Coffee,” CNN reports. That title led to international modeling work and other opportunities.

Unfortunately, Sanclemente was dethroned when it was discovered she had been married. Reports tied her in matrimony to a Mexican drug trafficker, but she’s always denied that. In an interview shortly after the claims cost her the crown, Sanclemente lamented the consequences of not listening to the woman who raised her as single mother. “I’m very capricious and a lot of [bad] things have happened to me for not listening to my mother.”

If only she could have seen into the future, she might have made different choices. In May 2010, Sanclemente was arrested after five months on the run in Argentina and charged with drug trafficking. Interpol had issued an arrest warrant against her in December 2009 after she was connected to a 21-year-old woman who was arrested just before she was to board a flight to Cancun, Mexico, from Buenos Aires carrying a whopping 120 pounds of cocaine. The fallen beauty was on the run for five months, hiding in Argentina.

Sanclemente has continued to insist she is innocent and has maintained contact with CNN. Despite her protests, her 2010 arrest made headlines around the world, with the press rechristening the pageant winner “The Queen of Cocaine.” Four men and two other women were also arrested in connection with the case, including Sanclemente’s Argentinian boyfriend and his uncle.

Now 32 and sentenced to six years and eight months behind bars, Sanclemente is looking back with regret. She says moving to Argentina from Mexico was a big mistake. “I regret having taken the flight to Argentina, to be honest with you,” she told CNN.

It’s a stark reminder to those of us in the US that drug traffickers come in all shapes and sizes and the battle to keep dangerous substances out of the hands of individuals too addicted to stop taking them is far from over.

Drug Addiction Help at The Canyon

If you or someone you love needs help with drug addiction, call The Canyon at the toll-free number on our homepage. Someone is there to take your call 24 hours a day and answer any questions you have about drug treatment, financing or insurance.

A mom is arrested after feeding her preschooler beer and her infant daughter tests positive for beer and cocaine.

Parents are supposed to warn their kids about the dangers of drinking and drugs, not provide them! Unfortunately, a Connecticut mom didn’t get that memo, because she recently pleaded guilty to charges she forced her four-year-old son to drink beer and gave her 10-month-old daughter beer and cocaine.

The mother, Juliette Dunn, 29, pleaded guilty to the risk of injury to a child, acknowledging that she doesn’t agree to the facts but agrees the state has enough evidence to win a conviction, according to The Connecticut Post. A companion of Dunn’s pleaded guilty to the same charges.

The crime was discovered when police officers were waved down by a neighbor who complained that a woman was feeding children beer at a playground. Authorities took the children to the hospital where the son tested positive for alcohol and the daughter for alcohol and cocaine, local station WVIT reported.

According to the warrant, Dunn admitted to giving her son a bottle of beer every day, and when questioned by a social worker, the preschooler was able to list off brands he liked and ones he didn’t.

The children were turned over to the Department of Children and Families and their mother could face up to two years in prison when she is sentenced in December. It isn’t clear what the mother’s reasoning was or if she struggled with an alcohol addiction or a cocaine addiction.

Addiction Rehab

If you or someone you love is in need of alcohol rehab or treatment for other substance abuse issues, call The Canyon at our toll-free number. Someone is there to take your call 24 hours a day and answer any questions you have about treatment, financing or insurance.

New findings show that the brain can be trained to value delayed gratification, helpful in treating those who seek instant stimulation from addictive substances.

Most of us have a reasonable ability to look into the future and see rewards and punishments that our behavior may bring. This prevents some from experimenting with drugs, drinking and driving, or even having that extra helping of dessert.

In adults addicted to stimulants, a phenomena known as “delay discounting” greatly decreases their ability to see those future consequences. But now a new study shows that neurocognitive training that targets working memory can significantly reduce “delay discounting” in adults addicted to stimulants like cocaine.

In a randomized trial, participants who received the training through use of memory exercises decreased their rates of future reward discounting by an average of 50 percent, while the rates were not significantly changed for those who received control training.

“This is the first study to demonstrate that memory training decreases delay discounting. The ability of the people in our experimental group to value the future improved,” said lead study author Warren K. Bickel, PhD, professor and director of the Center for Substance Abuse at the Virginia Tech Carilion Research Institute in Roanoke.

This is extremely exciting because it suggests that some of the neurocognitive deficits related to addiction maybe reversible. Researchers have found that addicts’ minds are “filled with the imagination of the pleasure to follow” and not of the possibility of legal or medical damages when they choose whether or not to take a drug. This study provides evidence that this myopic view of immediate pleasure and delayed punishments is not a fixed feature of addictions.

While much more research will need to be conducted, this could lead to cognitive training becoming an important tool in ending the hijacking of imagination by drugs of abuse.

“We know that virtually every form of addiction demonstrates an inability to value the future, which affects numerous behaviors and can also predict how well people do in treatment,” said Dr. Bickel.

Cocaine Rehab

If you or someone you love is in need of cocaine rehab or other addiction treatment, call The Canyon at our toll-free number. Someone is there to take your call 24 hours a day and answer any questions you have about treatment, financing or insurance.

Cocaine addiction reached the height of popularity during the 1970s and 1980s. As new drugs came onto the scene – especially cheaper stimulant drugs like crystal meth –  its popularity dropped off and many stopped viewing the drug as much of a threat. As a result, educational focus on the dangers of cocaine addiction fell off in schools and the numbers of those living with an active cocaine addiction has slowly started to creep up in some areas of the country.

So how do we handle the threat of cocaine addiction? Do we increase education and prevention efforts in the schools? Do we up legal enforcement of the ban on cocaine trafficking? Do we increase availability of cocaine rehab programs for those who need it? What’s the best way to handle a problem that is stealthily growing every day?

Increasing Cocaine Addiction Prevention and Education

Most adults seeking treatment for drug and alcohol addiction report that they first began abusing drugs and alcohol during their teen years. Because prescription drug addiction, marijuana addiction, and alcohol abuse are the top three drugs of choice for teenagers between the ages of 12 and 18, most drug prevention and education is focused on the effects and dangers of these drugs specifically. Perhaps a little bit more attention paid to the effects of cocaine on its users as well as the families that are destroyed and the lives lost during its processing and distribution path may well help to open up the eyes of young users to the risks they are taking when they “experiment.”

Increasing Cocaine Drug Trafficking Laws and Enforcement

There’s been no change to the status of cocaine as an illegal substance despite the decrease in popularity. The US Coast Guard regularly stops boats carrying shipments of hundreds of thousands of pounds of cocaine and confiscating the substance before it can hit the streets. When police find cocaine in large amounts or small among a person’s possessions, charges are pressed. It certainly isn’t taken lightly to even be under the influence of the substance and law enforcement officials are already doing what they can to curb the sales and distribution of the drug.

Increasing Access to Cocaine Rehab

One of the best ways to fight cocaine addiction is to make sure that all who are struggling with dependence have access to the medical and psychological care that they need to effectively heal. Cocaine detox and addiction treatment programs like the ones provided at The Canyon are a great way to begin a new life in recovery. Contact us today to learn more.

Sex, drugs, and rock and roll: the saying is that they go together. Unfortunately, both sex and drugs have taken down some of the biggest bands in rock and roll history. Here we take a look at some of the bands that have lost their front men to drug addiction – and continued to rock.

Iron Maiden Lost Paul Di’Anno to Bad Behavior Under the Influence

British heavy metal band Iron Maiden let go of Paul Di’Anno, their first singer, when his wild behavior under the influence of drugs became too much for his band mates to handle. That’s saying a lot – Di’Anno’s band mates were hardly clean and sober and they were an up and coming heavy metal band, not a religious choir. The fact that he got kicked out says quite a lot about the rate of his drug abuse and the depth of his addiction. But Iron Maiden went on to hire Bruce Dickinson and made one of the best known metal albums around: The Number of the Beast.

Pink Floyd Booted Syd Barrett for Psychedelic Addiction

To be more specific, Pink Floyd let Barrett go when his abuse of psychedelic drugs affected his mind so deeply that the band couldn’t take it anymore. Given the tone and theme of Pink Floyd’s music in their two bestselling later albums, Dark Side of the Moon and The Wall, Barrett must have been pretty far gone to be shunned by these guys.

In the hole left by Barrett, Pink Floyd put no one. Instead bassist Roger Waters and guitarist David Gilmour split the duties of lead singer and became one of the most successful and unique rock bands in the world.

The Temptations Fired David Ruffin Due to Cocaine Addiction

A classic, early rock band, The Temptations, lost their lead singer, David Ruffin, when Ruffin’s cocaine addiction got too out of control for the band to handle. Already topping the charts with hits like “Ain’t Too Proud to Beg” and “My Girl,” the band risked plummeting into obscurity by getting rid of their popular front man. They took the chance. Replacing Ruffin with Dennis Edwards turned out to be a smart move, though, and the band went on to even more success with hits like “Just My Imagination (Running Away With Me)” and “I Can’t Get Next to You.”

What happened to Ruffin? He went on to a sporadic, yet occasionally successful solo career, but ultimately died of an overdose in 1991.

Dennis Quaid, 57, has been hitting the media stage recently, reminiscing about the past and discussing serious issues like his previous cocaine addiction.

According to some reports, Quaid even says that cocaine was such a large part of Hollywood life during the 1970s that its costs were often included in movie budgets. In other situations, producers would make sure that there was a supply of the drug available to actors in their movies and then write off the cost as a petty cash expense.

For Quaid, the issue of cocaine addiction was a serious one. He says that he couldn’t start his day without the drug: “I’d wake up, snort a line and swear that I wasn’t going to do it again that day. But then 4 o’clock rolled around, and I’d be right back down the same road like a little squirrel on one of those treadmills. Meanwhile, my life was falling apart.”

Quaid’s ongoing addiction hurt his career and his health – the actor was sure that he would be dead in five years if he continued without treatment.

How did it start? Casually, says Quaid. It was always available at Hollywood parties and Quaid began using it whenever it was around. Quaid wrote in Newsweek that, “That’s what people were doing… Instead of having a cocktail, you’d have a line.”

The pressure of stardom kept his cocaine addiction going, according to Quaid. He wrote in Newsweek that: “Coming from where I came from – lower-middle-class life, from Houston into Hollywood – and all of a sudden this success starts happening to you, I just didn’t know how to handle that. Doing blow just contributed to me not being able to handle the fame, which, at the time, I guess I felt I didn’t deserve.”

By the 1980s, it became clear that he wouldn’t be able to hold things together for much longer without serious cocaine addiction help. His band, the Eclectics, broke up and his acting started to falter as a result of getting a single hour of sleep most nights. Says Quaid: “I had one of those white-light experiences that night where I kind of realized I was going to be dead in five years if I didn’t change my ways. The next day I was in rehab.”

Quaid spent two years breaking free from cocaine addiction and starting a new life in sobriety. He says the experience “gave me the resolve and resilience to persevere in life. If I hadn’t gone through that period, I don’t know if I’d still be acting. In the end, it taught me humility. I really learned to appreciate what I have in this life.”

Charles “Tyke” Peacock was expected to bring home the gold medal in 1984. What he did instead was fake an injury so that he could avoid the Olympic trials and keep his drug addiction under wraps. Now it’s 27 years later and the cat is most definitely out of the bag. Peacock has been arrested for burglary. Will he get six years in prison for his crime or will he get 12 months in a drug rehabilitation facility?  It’s up the judge.

Says Peacock: “I need rehabilitation, not incarceration.”

Early Athletic Achievement and Early Drug Abuse

It was in high school that Peacock first began to impress people with his athletic ability, but it’s also where he began to abuse drugs and alcohol. Peacock says, “I used recreational drugs in high school, you know, pot smoking, a few beers, never knowing where that was going to lead me.”

It’s a huge warning for teens and parents who believe that casual or occasional drug and alcohol abuse during the teen years is nothing to worry about.

Peacock managed to hold it together well enough to remain functional athletically through his early 20s. He graduated from high school and went to Modesto Junior College in California where he was on the track team from 1980 to 1981. He took a full-ride basketball scholarship at the University of Kansas for the 1982-83 season, but transferred the following season to Fresno State University in California. It was in Kansas that Peacock said his occasional drug and alcohol abuse developed into an addiction that he couldn’t control.

Athletic Prowess Overshadowed by Drug Addiction

He had a reputation as one of the best high jumpers in the world. He won the high jump in 1981 at the World Cup in Rome and a silver medal in the event at the 1983 World Championships in Helsinki, Finland. Then it was time to try out for the 1984 Olympics.

Says Peacock: “I was blessed with this just my drive to win, so to speak, was really off the charts. The talent itself was really a blessing. It was a God-given talent. Leading up to the Olympic year (1984), I was ranked the No. 1 high jumper in the world. But no one knew that I was using drugs, I mean, no one outside my little circle of friends.”

It wasn’t just his Olympic dreams that were dashed as a result of his drug addiction – Peacock had a shot at the NBA as well. In 1983, he met the coach of the Houston Rockets and was promised a tryout in 1984. Peacock says: “My addiction had took off. It was full blown by then. Needless to say, I never made it back that year to try out with the team.”

A History of Crime to Support Drug Addiction

When Peacock was making more and more money due to his athletic success, it only fueled his drug addiction. When that income went away, Peacock had to get the money for drugs somewhere; he turned to crime. Over the years, he’s had a long list of arrests and spent time in prison twice.

He says: “Any time I’ve ever been in trouble, it was for taking something that didn’t belong to me to support my drug habit. I stole things to support my habit.”

Get Help for Drug Addiction

Before you end up in front of a judge for crimes done for no other reason than the support of drug addiction,  get the help you need to recover. Contact us at The Canyon today for more information about our program. We can help.