AHS Views

Would fewer people become addicted to prescription painkillers like OxyContin or Vicodin if Massachusetts Rep. Steve Walsh’s bill passes?  Rep. Walsh wants doctors to be required to 10 hours of training on pain medications and pain management in order to get or renew their license. I think Rep. Walsh has the right idea. It would give doctors the knowledge they need to help stop the prescription drug epidemic and reduce the number of people needing addiction help for drugs they got from their doctor.

Massachusetts has a serious prescription drug problem - doctors should be made to study what happens when people become addicted to those drugs and what they have to go through to get the addiction help necessary to get off them.  They should also be made aware of and study the addictive nature of Valium and Xanax, which are often even harder to withdraw from than painkillers like methadone and OxyContin. In fact, they can be even worse than heroin.

If doctors understood more about the drugs they prescribe, they could ensure they prescribe the right dose for the right length of time.

One of the problems with prescription drug addiction and dependency is that it also increases the number of people using heroin. If a patient becomes addicted to or dependent on a prescription painkiller, they often turn to heroin when their prescription runs out. Heroin will continue to be a growing problem in Massachusetts as long as people are becoming addicted to OxyContin or other painkillers. Training the doctors, whether they’re applying for their license or renewing is a great idea. It will cut down on the need for addiction help services and it should be required in every state by every doctor.

If you want to know how crazy drugs can make you, dig this: a former patient of a methadone clinic stole methadone from the clinic. Why would he do that? He can just go in there and get it. I would say it’s pretty obvious that whatever treatment he got while he was a patient in the clinic didn’t work. Which is not surprising - addiction help that works requires a lot more than giving the person another drug.

The problem with methadone clinics, and other treatment that simply substitutes one drug for another, is that it does not address the reason the person was taking drugs in the first place. You can mask the physical cravings with another drug, but the problems the person has that drove them to drug addiction will continue.

It’s like taking painkillers to reduce the pain of a broken leg without setting the bones and doing all the follow up care that enables the bones to heal - the leg will remain broken.

If you really want to help someone get off drugs, make sure the addiction help services he gets doesn’t simply trade one problem for another. Get down to the bottom of things - it will get the person off drugs, and it will fix whatever was broken in the first place so he can live his life. 

What prescription drugs are being used by kids? According to former DEA agent and renowned drug expert, Robert Stutman, OxyContin, Ritalin and Adderall are most common. In 1969 the average age of first drug use was 16 ½; in 2006 the age was 12. One in four of those 12-year-olds will need addiction help according to the Center for Substance Abuse Research, and they have be dependent on drugs for their entire lifetime.

Because kids are taking prescription drugs so early in life, we’ll probably be looking at a might higher percentage of the population needing addiction help in the future – by 2015, when some of these kids grow up, they’ll be addicted to or dependent on a drug.

One of the biggest problems is that people don’t realize how dangerous these drugs are. But they’re killing people. In 1969 it would be extremely rare to pick up a newspaper and see an article about a kid dying from a drug overdose. In 2008 you can find an article every single day if you look at local papers across the country.

Robert Stutman addressed the drug problem earlier this week, speaking to about 100 parents in Polk County, Florida. Another interesting piece of information – Stutman said that half the 300 students in George Jenkins High School said they drank alcohol weekly. That’s also a bad sign – and there’s also a good chance they’ll also need addiction help.

Prescription drugs and alcohol generally come from people’s homes. If you don’t want your kids to get into trouble and needing addiction help services in the future, keep your alcohol and prescription drugs locked up.

According to a 2006 survey from the Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services, 71% of all treatment admissions were related to alcohol. It’s not surprising that alcohol is the leading reason why people seek addiction help in Nebraska.
The Midwest has had lots of alcohol problems. Even high school students commonly binge drink.

Addiction to methamphetamines was also on the list at 13% of admissions, as is cocaine and marijuana. What’s missing is addiction to prescription drugs like OxyContin, Vicodin, Ritalin or Adderall. It would be almost impossible that no one entered treatment for any prescription drugs. The survey is from 2006 but addiction to prescription drugs was already on its way to being an epidemic.

Nebraska and the rest of the Midwest needs to do something about underage drinking, that’s for sure. But it seems impossible that not many people went to treatment for prescription drug addiction, heroin or methadone. Find the addiction help services you or your family needs.

Denmark is going to try prescription heroin for their worse heroin addicts. This is not a new idea: other countries have tried it, or are considering it. Denmark is going to try methadone as well. I am wondering where the drugs will come from. Is there a pharmaceutical company poised to get into the heroin trade? Will there be generic drug companies in the U.S. and elsewhere getting involved as well? Did the poppy growers in Afghanistan see this coming, is that why heroin production is at or near an all time high? Do the heroin farmers know they will have a place for their crops with Big Pharma, or will the local dealers be selling it to the Danish government at a big profit? What ever happened to getting an addict the addiction help he needs so he can actually get off drugs?

Trying to get someone off drugs is the right choice here at Addiction Help Services. Denmark knows they have 500 addicts that are really having a difficult time. Is sending them to a drug detox and addiction treatment out of the question?

It looks like the University of Iowa’s Hawkeyes are going to have to make some serious changes. In the last year, 11 team members have been in trouble with the law: one for theft and unauthorized use of a credit card, several are involved in a sexual assault charge, several more for drunk driving and now two Hawkeyes have been arrested on drug charges. It looks like this team really needs addiction help.

One of the players, James Lee Cleveland, was found with 21 OxyContin pills and 24 doses of a muscle relaxant called caprisoprodol. Although muscle relaxants aren’t normally thought of as addictive, caprisoprodol works by blocking pain sensations from being sent to the brain and can cause both addiction and dependency.

Is Cleveland taking these drugs to be able to keep playing despite an injury? If so, that wouldn’t be uncommon. Now it appears he’s off the team. If he was injured, it would have been better to stop playing until the injury was healed - he probably would have been able to use the drugs for a shorter period of time and not risk getting addicted to or dependent on them. Now he probably needs addiction help. Who knows if he’ll get it?

Of course the guys who’ve been charged with drunk driving should have gotten addiction help long ago as well.

Drugs and alcohol can bring a team down pretty fast - other players have already been suspended or kicked out altogether. It’s a shame to see a good athlete’s promising future shot down with alcohol and drugs.

If more team managers and coaches took players using drugs and alcohol more seriously and made sure they got the addiction help services they need, these guys would have a much brighter future.  

The idea of women living in suburban neighborhoods becoming addicted to prescription drugs seems almost impossible. If you are well educated and smart, how do you become a drug addict? In Jaime’s case, it started with a series of illnesses, injuries and painkillers. Then she couldn’t get off them. Years later she was still an addict and desperately in need of addiction help.

If you, like Jaime, don’t get the help as soon as you recognize there’s a problem, you wind up needing more and more to of the drug to achieve the same high. Jaime was taking 30 to 50 pills a day if she could get them. A friend tried to help her but she had all the normal excuses we hear at Addiction Help Services - the dog, the kids, the parents -  she just didn’t have time. Then she got lucky: she got busted and went to jail. She’s now out of prison, has gotten the addiction help she needed through drug rehab, and is now studying to be a drug counselor for teenagers.

Jaime wants to help kids before there is a problem. With all the prescription drugs available to kids these days, Jaime will be able to prevent many kids from taking drugs, and provide those who already have a problem with the addiction help services they need.

R. J. Field was born addicted to heroin. Meth, alcohol and cocaine were also in his system. His eyesight is so bad he has trouble reading, one hand doesn’t work well, and he has trouble walking. But there’s nothing wrong with his mind - at 16 years old he’s on his way to Sacramento to introduce a bill that will help prevent his situation from happening to others.  If passed into law, welfare recipients will be drug tested, if they test positive they will be offered addiction help and, if they refuse, their benefits will be withdrawn.

I would think that would be enough incentive to actually make some changes.

R. J. is from Riverside, Calfornia. He’s not the only Californian taking a strong stand against drugs. Alan Autry, mayor of Fresno, held a summit yesterday to get support for his mission for a drug free Fresno. He is concerned about prescription drugs as well as the street drugs that hurt R. J.

There’s plenty of addiction help services around. With people like R. J. and Autry taking a stand, we may see some change.

As if Ecstasy and methamphetamine weren’t bad enough by themselves, high school kids are now mixing the two. Meth is cheaper than Ecstasy, but the combination is dangerous. You mix the rise in body temperature and potential liver, kidney and heart damage of Ecstasy with the irregular heartbeat, increased blood pressure and brain damage caused by meth and you’ve got a recipe for addiction help – if you make it that far.

Meth isn’t the only drug being mixed with Ecstasy – with the prescription drug abuse epidemic going on, it’s almost a certainty Ecstasy is being cut with OxyContin, methadone, and some of the other prescription drugs that kids are in rehab for right now trying to get the addiction help they need.

Methamphetamine is highly addictive – and it was in more than half the meth seized by law enforcement last year. A 10% increase from the previous years.

Since 2003 the amount of Ecstasy seized at the Canadian U.S. border has increased by 10 ties. In 2006 almost 5.5 million pills were confiscated.
 
The scary thing is the use of ecstasy by high school and college students. If they are also using it with prescription drugs the combination could be lethal.

Your kids, and your town, are not immune. If they’re involved in drugs at all, get them addiction help services now. Don’t wait for the worst to happen.

A girl who wrote to since you asked … on Salon.com just found out her boyfriend is a crackhead. She’s been going out with him for a year, thought a few things were odd along the way, and finally found out what the problem is. Now that she knows, she says she’s sticking by him and going to see him through whatever addiction help services he needs.  But she’s in a dilemma - she knows there’s a possibility that he’ll never stop taking drugs and, although they love each other, this was not the future she had in mind.

I have a few words of advice - don’t do a drug rehab program that doesn’t get to the bottom of why he’s taking drugs and resolve those issues. Don’t get involved in addiction help that makes God or any other entity responsible for keeping him clean.  And don’t get involved in a program that forwards the idea that ‘once an addict, always an addict.”

Thousands of people, perhaps hundreds of thousands, have been truly rehabilitated - by which I mean no longer takes drugs, no longer wants drugs, no longer needs drugs, is no longer tempted by drugs no matter what the situation, no longer even considers drugs to be solution.

If you settle for anything less - you’ll either wind up with someone who relapses over and over again, someone who believes they cannot stay off drugs unless they attend endless meetings for the rest of their life or, worst of all, believes the only hope they have is holding their addiction at bay - in other words, they cannot really change. They cannot really get better. They can only act better.

While it’s true that many people have gotten addiction help through programs like the above - some of them would no doubt be dead without it - it is the absolute bare minimum help you can get. There’s really no rehabilitation, there is simply control. And it lasts a lifetime, and requires endless support.

Real addiction help means you are no longer an addict. Period. And that’s what I would advise she ensure her boyfriend receives.