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Horses Help Addicts at Serenity Rehab in Chiang Rai

Horses are a new partner in the treatment of drug and alcohol addiction. Serenity Rehab in Chiang Rai is the first place in Thailand to offer this complementary evidence-based therapy.

North of the Chiang Rai Airport, just before the town of Mae Chan, there are two very different, very special places. One is a sprawling horse ranch with a renowned expert in Equine-Assisted Therapy. The other, a few kilometers away, is a private inpatient substance addiction treatment center. Over the past few months, something special has emerged from their collaboration.

Serenity Rehab Thailand, an addictions rehab treating substance dependence, now includes Equine-assisted Therapy as a part of the research-based treatment therapies it offers clients. Equine-assisted Therapy, aka Horse Therapy is an emerging field with promising research results, and is more visible and better known in North America and Europe.

Equine-Assisted Therapy and Equicoaching

There are different kinds of Equine-Assisted Therapies, including therapeutic horseback riding. The most common therapy with horses is Equine-Assisted Learning, which does not include riding, but interacting with horses in a paddock. The main term used in Europe for this kind of learning experience is Equicoaching.

Apart from complementary psychotherapeutic uses, many organizations have used Equicoaching as a effective part of leadership training and team-building.

In A Systematic Review of Effectiveness of Complementary and Adjunct Therapies and Interventions Involving Equines published in Health Psychology in 2013 (Vol. 32, No. 4, 418-432), the authors found that while there are a limited number of studies, those which are well-designed have significance. This means that from a research and fact-based approach to treatment, Equine-Assisted Therapy is a promising adjunct therapy.

There are increasing numbers of substance addiction programs incorporating Equine-Assisted Therapy, especially in North America. For Thailand, this is the first.

Appaloosa Stables is a sprawling horse ranch on 250 rai with 28 horses, horse riding, lessons, and other activities. Training and Equicoaching is led by Eric Van Poucke, originally from Belgium. Eric has been working professionally with horses and equine-assisted learning for decades, and has published four books on Equicoaching.

Serenity Rehab Thailand is the a Drug and Alcohol addiction treatment center, with a core abstinence program that follows the Minnesota Model, as do nearly all rehabs within Thailand and a majority abroad. Founded by Theo de Vries on the island of Koh Samui, Serenity relocated to Chiang Rai several years ago, in order to have a more secluded and conducive location for addiction treatment.

Clients Find Equicoaching Helpful

Working with large mammals is not for everyone. Equicoaching is included in the treatment program, but is an optional component and is not required if clients do not want to participate. For those who do participate and want to participate more frequently, additional Equicoaching sessions can be scheduled on the weekend (with an additional fee paid to Appaloosa Stables).

 

Clients have very little preconception of what Equicoaching is. In brief, the idea is to get the horse to do things, like follow you into parts of the paddock, or hop over a bough on the ground. Horses are very intuitive and can sense the mood of humans, and reflect that affect. The horse is best understood as a prey animal, with a highly developed fight-or-flight response. They are deeply attuned to their environment, and highly communicative and responsive to others in the herd.

With humans, the horses are able to pick up on mood and emotion, and on the positive and negative characteristics of thoughts.

I was surprised that the horse feels what I feel. When I was confident, the horses walked up to me, but when I was feeling less confident, then the horses stopped. They really can feel what you feel. — Serenity Client

The horse acts as a mirror, and for each client the experience is individual.

The horse therapy is very individual. We come as a group, but each one of us gets something unique and individual out of it. It helps with self-reflection, as the horse reflects your moods, your thoughts, your emotions and feelings. And as the horse reflects these things it helps for us to self-reflect, to reflect on our selves, individually and spiritually. — Serenity Client

Clients learn in a direct, experiential way how their thoughts, feelings, and emotions have an impact in the world.

I get a lot from counseling and I can speak about my feelings, but the horses show me how I feel, and what impression that makes on those around me. — Serenity Client

A majority of clients who do participate feel that it is valuable, and that it provides a form of experiential learning that complements the main 12-step program that is the focus of the Minnesota Model.

This goes very well with the 12-step program, which works with our heart, with our whole being, changing behavior, changing our way of thinking. — Serenity Client

Working with the horses is like working the steps, you can’t force it. It is a process that you are in, and you have to trust it, and that is what I saw with the horses. — Serenity Client

Learning to trust the process of substance addiction recovery, and learning to trust themselves, Serenity Rehab clients have found an unlikely ally in a stable of horses, and an expert in Equicoaching, just down the road. Some days it seems Chiang Rai has an extra dose of Serendipity waiting around the bend.

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Google’s Search Dominance Is Unwinding, But Still Accounting 48% Search Revenue

Google

Google is so closely associated with its key product that its name is a verb that signifies “search.” However, Google’s dominance in that sector is dwindling.

According to eMarketer, Google will lose control of the US search industry for the first time in decades next year.

Google will remain the dominant search player, accounting for 48% of American search advertising revenue. And, remarkably, Google is still increasing its sales in the field, despite being the dominating player in search since the early days of the George W. Bush administration. However, Amazon is growing at a quicker rate.

google

Google’s Search Dominance Is Unwinding

Amazon will hold over a quarter of US search ad dollars next year, rising to 27% by 2026, while Google will fall even more, according to eMarketer.

The Wall Street Journal was first to report on the forecast.

Lest you think you’ll have to switch to Bing or Yahoo, this isn’t the end of Google or anything really near.

Google is the fourth-most valued public firm in the world. Its market worth is $2.1 trillion, trailing just Apple, Microsoft, and the AI chip darling Nvidia. It also maintains its dominance in other industries, such as display advertisements, where it dominates alongside Facebook’s parent firm Meta, and video ads on YouTube.

To put those “other” firms in context, each is worth more than Delta Air Lines’ total market value. So, yeah, Google is not going anywhere.

Nonetheless, Google faces numerous dangers to its operations, particularly from antitrust regulators.

On Monday, a federal judge in San Francisco ruled that Google must open up its Google Play Store to competitors, dealing a significant blow to the firm in its long-running battle with Fortnite creator Epic Games. Google announced that it would appeal the verdict.

In August, a federal judge ruled that Google has an illegal monopoly on search. That verdict could lead to the dissolution of the company’s search operation. Another antitrust lawsuit filed last month accuses Google of abusing its dominance in the online advertising business.

Meanwhile, European regulators have compelled Google to follow tough new standards, which have resulted in multiple $1 billion-plus fines.

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Pixa Bay

Google’s Search Dominance Is Unwinding

On top of that, the marketplace is becoming more difficult on its own.

TikTok, the fastest-growing social network, is expanding into the search market. And Amazon has accomplished something few other digital titans have done to date: it has established a habit.

When you want to buy anything, you usually go to Amazon, not Google. Amazon then buys adverts to push companies’ products to the top of your search results, increasing sales and earning Amazon a greater portion of the revenue. According to eMarketer, it is expected to generate $27.8 billion in search revenue in the United States next year, trailing only Google’s $62.9 billion total.

And then there’s AI, the technology that (supposedly) will change everything.

Why search in stilted language for “kendall jenner why bad bunny breakup” or “police moving violation driver rights no stop sign” when you can just ask OpenAI’s ChatGPT, “What’s going on with Kendall Jenner and Bad Bunny?” in “I need help fighting a moving violation involving a stop sign that wasn’t visible.” Google is working on exactly this technology with its Gemini product, but its success is far from guaranteed, especially with Apple collaborating with OpenAI and other businesses rapidly joining the market.

A Google spokeswoman referred to a blog post from last week in which the company unveiled ads in its AI overviews (the AI-generated text that appears at the top of search results). It’s Google’s way of expressing its ability to profit on a changing marketplace while retaining its business, even as its consumers steadily transition to ask-and-answer AI and away from search.

google

Google has long used a single catchphrase to defend itself against opponents who claim it is a monopoly abusing its power: competition is only a click away. Until recently, that seemed comically obtuse. Really? We are going to switch to Bing? Or Duck Duck Go? Give me a break.

But today, it feels more like reality.

Google is in no danger of disappearing. However, every highly dominating company faces some type of reckoning over time. GE, a Dow mainstay for more than a century, was broken up last year and is now a shell of its previous dominance. Sears declared bankruptcy in 2022 and is virtually out of business. US Steel, long the foundation of American manufacturing, is attempting to sell itself to a Japanese corporation.

Could we remember Google in the same way that we remember Yahoo or Ask Jeeves in decades? These next few years could be significant.

SOURCE | CNN

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The Supreme Court Turns Down Biden’s Government Appeal in a Texas Emergency Abortion Matter.

Supreme Court

(VOR News) – A ruling that prohibits emergency abortions that contravene the Supreme Court law in the state of Texas, which has one of the most stringent abortion restrictions in the country, has been upheld by the Supreme Court of the United States. The United States Supreme Court upheld this decision.

The justices did not provide any specifics regarding the underlying reasons for their decision to uphold an order from a lower court that declared hospitals cannot be legally obligated to administer abortions if doing so would violate the law in the state of Texas.

Institutions are not required to perform abortions, as stipulated in the decree. The common populace did not investigate any opposing viewpoints. The decision was made just weeks before a presidential election that brought abortion to the forefront of the political agenda.

This decision follows the 2022 Supreme Court ruling that ended abortion nationwide.

In response to a request from the administration of Vice President Joe Biden to overturn the lower court’s decision, the justices expressed their disapproval.

The government contends that hospitals are obligated to perform abortions in compliance with federal legislation when the health or life of an expectant patient is in an exceedingly precarious condition.

This is the case in regions where the procedure is prohibited. The difficulty hospitals in Texas and other states are experiencing in determining whether or not routine care could be in violation of stringent state laws that prohibit abortion has resulted in an increase in the number of complaints concerning pregnant women who are experiencing medical distress being turned away from emergency rooms.

The administration cited the Supreme Court’s ruling in a case that bore a striking resemblance to the one that was presented to it in Idaho at the beginning of the year. The justices took a limited decision in that case to allow the continuation of emergency abortions without interruption while a lawsuit was still being heard.

In contrast, Texas has been a vocal proponent of the injunction’s continued enforcement. Texas has argued that its circumstances are distinct from those of Idaho, as the state does have an exemption for situations that pose a significant hazard to the health of an expectant patient.

According to the state, the discrepancy is the result of this exemption. The state of Idaho had a provision that safeguarded a woman’s life when the issue was first broached; however, it did not include protection for her health.

Certified medical practitioners are not obligated to wait until a woman’s life is in imminent peril before they are legally permitted to perform an abortion, as determined by the state supreme court.

The state of Texas highlighted this to the Supreme Court.

Nevertheless, medical professionals have criticized the Texas statute as being perilously ambiguous, and a medical board has declined to provide a list of all the disorders that are eligible for an exception. Furthermore, the statute has been criticized for its hazardous ambiguity.

For an extended period, termination of pregnancies has been a standard procedure in medical treatment for individuals who have been experiencing significant issues. It is implemented in this manner to prevent catastrophic outcomes, such as sepsis, organ failure, and other severe scenarios.

Nevertheless, medical professionals and hospitals in Texas and other states with strict abortion laws have noted that it is uncertain whether or not these terminations could be in violation of abortion prohibitions that include the possibility of a prison sentence. This is the case in regions where abortion prohibitions are exceedingly restrictive.

Following the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, which resulted in restrictions on the rights of women to have abortions in several Republican-ruled states, the Texas case was revisited in 2022.

As per the orders that were disclosed by the administration of Vice President Joe Biden, hospitals are still required to provide abortions in cases that are classified as dire emergency.

As stipulated in a piece of health care legislation, the majority of hospitals are obligated to provide medical assistance to patients who are experiencing medical distress. This is in accordance with the law.

The state of Texas maintained that hospitals should not be obligated to provide abortions throughout the litigation, as doing so would violate the state’s constitutional prohibition on abortions. In its January judgment, the 5th United States Circuit Court of Appeals concurred with the state and acknowledged that the administration had exceeded its authority.

SOURCE: AP

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Scientists Awarded MicroRNA The Nobel Prize in Medicine.

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Supreme Court Rejects Appeal From ‘Pharma Bro’ Martin Shkreli, To repay $6.4 Million

shkreli

Washington — The Supreme Court rejected Martin Shkreli’s appeal on Monday, after he was branded “Pharma Bro” for raising the price of a lifesaving prescription.

Martin appealed a decision to repay $64.6 million in profits he and his former company earned after monopolizing the pharmaceutical market and dramatically raising its price. His lawyers claimed the money went to his company rather than him personally.

The justices did not explain their reasoning, as is customary, and there were no notable dissents.

Prosecutors, conversely, claimed that the firm had promised to pay $40 million in a settlement and that because Martin orchestrated the plan, he should be held accountable for returning profits.

shkreli

Supreme Court Rejects Appeal From ‘Pharma Bro’ Martin Shkreli

Martin was also forced to forfeit the Wu-Tang Clan’s unreleased album “Once Upon a Time in Shaolin,” which has been dubbed the world’s rarest musical album. The multiplatinum hip-hop group auctioned off a single copy of the record in 2015, stipulating that it not be used commercially.

Shkreli was convicted of lying to investors and defrauding them of millions of dollars in two unsuccessful hedge funds he managed. Shkreli was the CEO of Turing Pharmaceuticals (later Vyera), which hiked the price of Daraprim from $13.50 to $750 per pill after acquiring exclusive rights to the decades-old medicine in 2015. It cures a rare parasite condition that affects pregnant women, cancer patients, and HIV patients.

shkreli

He defended the choice as an example of capitalism in action, claiming that insurance and other programs ensured that those in need of Daraprim would eventually receive it. However, the move prompted criticism, from the medical community to Congress.

shkreli

Supreme Court Rejects Appeal From ‘Pharma Bro’ Martin Shkreli

Attorney Thomas Huff said the Supreme Court’s Monday ruling was upsetting, but the high court could still overturn a lower court judgment that allowed the $64 million penalty order even though Shkreli had not personally received the money.

“If and when the Supreme Court does so, Mr. Shkreli will have a strong argument for modifying the order accordingly,” he told reporters.

Shkreli was freed from prison in 2022 after serving most of his seven-year sentence.

SOURCE | AP

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