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Break the cycle of addiction

Dear Annie: I’m a mother to five beautiful children. I do not have custody of any of them. I’m an addict, and I refuse to raise my kids the way my parents raised me. I want them to have and see a better life than I did. Growing up wasn’t great for me. We were homeless. Sleeping in backyards in tents wasn’t cool. My siblings and I had to transfer schools all the time. I didn’t graduate from high school, although I did sure get a degree from the School of Hard Knocks. I had my first kid at 18 and gave him and my parental rights up to my brother. As an adult, I started smoking ...

Do Trump’s hawks speak for Trump?

For a president who won his office by denouncing the Middle East wars into which George W. Bush and Barack Obama plunged the nation, Donald Trump has assembled the most unabashedly hawkish conclave of foreign policy advisers in memory. And he himself seems to concede the point. If foreign policy were decided by my security adviser John Bolton, the president confided recently, “We’d be in four wars by now.” It was Bolton who ordered the Abraham Lincoln carrier group and B-52s to the Gulf and told the Pentagon to draw up plans to send 120,000 U.S. troops. It is Bolton who is ...

Divorce is tough on adult children

Dear Annie: I lived in a bad marriage for more than 25 years. There was mental, emotional and some physical abuse. I stayed for the sake of my children and planned to leave when they were out of the house. Now, my children are in their early 20s. I could not take it anymore, so I left their dad. My husband sought treatment for his anger, but I still am through with the marriage. My son is completely on my husband’s side and doesn’t understand why I don’t go back into the marriage. Granted, there were a lot of good times; if it had been 100 percent horrible, I would have never ...

Life lessons on the road

Dear Annie: I want to take a cross-country road trip — just me, myself and the highway. My plan is to drive through the Southern half of the United States. Anything I should make sure not to miss? Also, I’m having trouble sorting out the logistics. This trip would take about three to four weeks, depending on how I split up the driving. I don’t want to do more than about two to three hours per day. Should I rent an RV, rent a car or use my own? Will it be safe to do this trip by myself? (I’m a woman.) I’ve traveled by myself before and felt confident and self-assured, but those ...

Disruption, fear and opportunity in health care

There was a time when health care technology meant expensive new machines that only hospitals could afford. The costs were so enormous that only insurance companies could pay for their use and insurance bureaucrats only grudgingly allowed people to get needed tests and treatment. Today, however, tech is putting health care tools in the hands of individual Americans at amazingly reasonable costs. The transformation brought about by the new technology will fundamentally disrupt every aspect of the health care industry. One simple example is the monitor I use to check my blood sugar on ...

Spreading cancer awareness

Dear Readers: Though I do my best to keep my personal life out of this column, I’m writing today about something that has deeply impacted me. A person very close to me was recently diagnosed with stage IV esophageal cancer. Unfortunately, that’s the stage at which this relatively rare type of cancer is typically caught, due to its lack of obvious symptoms in earlier stages. I’d like to use this platform to share some information about the risk factors and symptoms of esophageal cancer, in the hope that it might help even one person. The American Cancer Society estimates that ...