AHS Views

Parents, watch this video.  It’s part of a campaign created by five women whose kids died from prescription drug addiction. We don’t know the full story. We don’t know if they had already tried to get addiction help services. We just know they’re dead.

Look at the parents in these videos. Yes, it’s probably true they’re wearing makeup and had their hair done because they’re making a commercial, but don’t they look just like us? They obviously aren’t living in some area of town with boarded up windows - they’re every day people whose husbands are probably professionals. But, it happened to their kids.

Don’t let it happen to yours. Get them the addiction help services they need.

So many college kids are drinking and using drugs that parents have to be careful when they send their kids off to any institute of higher learning. Highedcenter.org published a list of questions parents should ask school officials about their drug and alcohol policies.  Parents who want their kids to get the most out of their education and avoid having to look for addiction help for them later would be wise to ask these questions and check out the school thoroughly.

Most kids will have a preference for a certain college and they may resist going to a different one. But if they’re really educated on the dangers of drugs and alcohol - including just being around others who drink or take drugs, even if your kid doesn’t do it themselves, which could lead to the need for addiction help - you may get more cooperation.

For example: Over 60% of kids who are around other kids who drink or take drugs have had their sleep or study interrupred; nearly 54% have had to take care of a drunken student; nearly 14% suffer damage to their property; and one in ten have been pushed, hit or assaulted.

The statistics on that site state that 1.3% will be raped, but other sources say the incidence of rape is much higher: According to abacus.bates.edu, for example, one out of four women will be sexually assaulted on a college campus, and one in 8 will be raped. Most of the rapes involve drugs or alcohol.

Extensive drug and alcohol abuse that requires addiction help services is common in college, but that’s not the only consequence. Perhaps if your kids understand this, they, too, will choose a different school.

Heroin is more common than you think. That is, if you’re a parent. The kids definitely know about it. In fact, along with OxyContin and Vicodin - which are basically the same as heroin - it is becoming a widely used drug of choice. Where we used to think of heroin users as a the strung out, wasted guy in the alley, we’re now dealing with “honor-roll students, drama-club students, kids playing school sports,” says Pierrette Farber, a drug expert in Hudson Valley, NY who sees kids who need drug addiction help every day.

The scariest thing about it is the kids’ attitude - they don’t think trying heroin is that bad. And one user said that a popular anti-drug site is just government propaganda. Wouldn’t you like to find out who told him that?

One user featured in the article has now been free of heroin for 75 days. He started in his teens - crushing and snorting things like OxyContin and now, years later, he’s trying to get straight. He has tried many times and finally asked a friend for help. With his friend’s help, he got into drug detox. His description of detox is a pretty clear statement of why most people who try to get off heroin can’t do it: “Every single of part of your body aches for weeks,” he says. “It’s like the flu times 100.”

In fact, it doesn’t have to be that bad if you go to a medical drug detox center. A good one can actually help you detox in relative comfort and in a short period of time. After that you need to get addiction help through drug rehab to get to the bottom of why you became addicted so it won’t happen again.

Parents - you’ve really got to check out your kids. Don’t make the mistake of thinking your kid would never do anything like that. I can guarantee you that most of the parents who’s kids are now in need of addiction help services thought the same thing. Check them out very thoroughly, and get them sorted out fast.

What’s Aerosmith lead singer Steve Tyler doing in rehab? He’s been very down on drugs for a couple of decades, even does benefit concerts to raise money to help musicians who are drug addicts, but he’s now apparently in need of addiction help himself.

Even more strange, his publicist apparently doesn’t even know about it.

Tyler, even though he’s 60 years old, is still a rock idol. With several celebrities glamorizing drugs these days - especially the young ladies making good use of the revolving door of drug rehab -I’m glad Tyler is stepping forward. Perhaps he’ll popularize actually getting drug free.

Tyler’s famous quote “Sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll… take out the drugs and you’ve got more time for the other two,” may not be the mantra parents want their kids to adopt, but it’s better than drug addiction. Let’s hope Tyler inspires people taking drugs to get the addiction help services they need.

A recent news article says that students may need to be drug tested during exams -  they’re talking about the drugs recently hailed by surveyed scientists as enhancing focus. One scientist even justified it by saying that, as a scientist, his job is to serve humanity and he’ll do anything he has to to make sure he does that job as well as possible. Yeah, right. Influence a bunch of kids to take drugs - that’s really serving humanity. I’d be inclined to get this guy some addiction help.

Taking drugs in school to enhance focus and concentration is just one more off-shoot of the prescription drug epidemic that is sweeping America.

There used to be a sense of pride in being able to excel on your own steam. Or even be able to handle life on your own steam - not head for the bottle or the medicine cabinet when things got a little rough. Are those days over? 

Just like the athlete who refuses to take drugs and is proud that his accomplishments are not aided by a force other than his own, academics should also use their own brain power - not that of a drug. Why is it not okay for an athlete to take performance-enhancing drugs when it seems to be perfectly okay for a scientist?

In any case, one thing is certain, more drugs equals more need for addiction help services. Whatever the benefits of these drugs, they are also addictive.

An article on SouthCoastToday.com, originating in Massachusetts, discussed the $5 million being invested in two drug treatment facilities that will offer addiction help services for those addicted to heroin, OxyContin and other opiates who are headed for jail.

According to the article, the number of non-fatal opiate overdoses climbed from 8,000 in 1996 to 18,000 in 2005.  The treatment facilities in MA deal primarily with alcoholism. Officials are trying to do something about the opiate problem - which they call an epidemic.

The shocking thing is that the facilities will only be able to offer treatment to 120 people. And it’s long term treatment, so the turnover’s going to be slow. With 18,000 people overdosing in a year’s time, the number of people using the drugs has got to be at least 10 or 20 times higher. So, we’re going to have an additional 120 beds available for people seeking addiction help. That’s just not going to cut it.

Are we headed for a nation of zombies? Once again, it’s hard to make anyone other than drug companies responsible for this. If a company that made guns wanted to spend billions on advertising to popularize the idea that guns, and using them, would create a safer environment, it would never be allowed. And yet drug companies’ money is eagerly accepted despite the fact that these drugs are also klling people and ruining lives left, right and center. Everyone from parents to local governments, and even the federal government, is trying to come up with the means to get people the addiction help services they need - while the drug companies popularizing drugs as a way to change your personal environment are raking in the dough.

Shameful situation. They’re also employing hundreds of thousands of people, are part of the stock portfolios of probably at least as many Americans, and are significant contributors to political campaigns. Hard to shake them.

Yet, shake them we must. Many people see this for what it is but, obviously, it’s not enough people, and not enough of the right people. Until that situation is remedied - and even afterwards - each of us has to take whatever steps we have to to get people the addiction help services they need.

Do you remember Skittles? I don’t know if they still make them - little candies that look a bit like M & Ms, no chococate, just fruit flavored chewy candies. Well, if you hear your kid talking about skittles, they’re probably not talking about candy - they’re talking about prescription drugs. And there’s a good chance that, in the future, they’ll be talking about getting addiction help.

Read the story about two Kentucky teenagers, 16 and 17 years old, who started using drugs when they were just turned 13.  They began with alcohol, moved to over-the-counter drugs, and then to the prescription drugs they found in their own medicine cabinet. They eventually settled on OxyContin as their drug of choice and both are currently getting the prescription drug addiction help they need through drug rehab.

Most of the kids who do this think the drugs are safe - they’re in their own family medicine cabinet. Either their parents or other family members are taking them, or have them left over from when they had an operation or illness.

The partnership for a drug free America nationwide says one in five teenagers say they abuse prescription pills to get high.

In Kentucky, one in ten teens say they pop pills to get high.

Indiana is the 5th highest state for people 12 and older abusing prescription drugs.

“Open your medicine cabinet and look inside and there’s probably something somebody can use… especially combined with alcohol or some other kind of substance that they can use to get high,” says Van Ingram, KY Office of Drug Policy Control.

Do your kids a favor - get rid of the drugs before you need to help them find addiction help services.

Heroin is on the rise in Northwestern Virigina. One of the areas hit hardest by the scandalous promotion of OxyContin as less addictive than other prescription painkillers, Virginia residents are now turing to heroin to satisfy their OxyContin addiction. Drug addiction help services previously dealing with OxyContin addiction will now be battling heroin addiction instead.

People turn to heroin because it’s more easily accessible and less expensive than OxyContin. Once you can no longer get a prescription from a doctor - whether obtained legitimately or by lying about symptoms - OxyContin has to be gotten on the streets. And it’s expensive - it can be as much as $50 a pill. Those who don’t recognize that they need addiction help and do something about it could wind up choosing heroin as a substitute or turning to a life of crime to get the drugs.

OxyContin addiction has a certain amount of respectability since it is prescribed by doctors and therefore more acceptable. Heroin addiction is another story. However, both drugs are equally dangerous, and both require addiction help services to stop taking.

If you know someone using OxyContin for anything other than a very short time, make sure you get them the addiction help services they need. Being an addict is bad enough, being addicted to street drugs like heroin and living outside the law is even worse. 

While the side effects of GlaxoSmithKline’s weight loss drug, Alli, might not include anything that leads to the need for addiction help, it does cause some problems that might make you never want to leave home again. Check out the company’s wordage of the side effects of Alli, and Jeff Kay’s interpretation.

When GlaxoSmithKline released it Alli, it became very popular, very fast. The major reason, if course, is that the U.S. has more obese people than anywhere else in the world. The second reason is that weight loss drugs have a really bad history. Basically, they’ve been amphetamines - with serious side effects, including addiction and the need for addiction help, and death.

High on the success of Alli and anxious to maintain their competitive edge, GlaxcoSmithKline recently petitioned the FDA to require that all products claiming an ability to help the user lose weight be considered a drug. Which means that any other company trying to put a drug product out there that could be competition for Alli could take years to get onto the market. So, what about natural weight loss products? They will probably also be taken off the market until they get FDA approval if GlaxoSmithKline’s petition is approved.

According to lawyersandsettlements.com, as of 2006 “Glaxo currently faces thousands of lawsuits over Paxil side effects related to addiction, dependence, and a severe withdrawal syndrome. Previously sealed documents and internal company memos suppressed with protective orders, prove that Glaxo knew about the problems with Paxil before it received FDA approval, but continued to sell the drug for over a decade without warning consumers.”

So, is there something the company is hiding about Alli? Should we be expecting to hear that it is also going to require addiction help services? And should we really trust such a company with what will basically amount to at least a short term monopoly on anything? Can we even trust the information Glaxo included in its petition to the FDA? Time will tell.

In a period of just three months, 16 people died from drug overdoses in Barrow County, Georgia. 13 of them died from an overdose of prescription drugs and the majority of those were related to OxyContin. Many of those lives could have been saved if they’d received the addiction help they needed.

A prescription drug addiction counsellor commented that prescription painkiller abuse is rampant in Barrow and in other areas of metro Atlanta.

A child advocate from a Barrow County agency said that more and more of the parents of kids she’s trying to help have parents who are addicted to prescription drugs. “The parents are usually sleeping or high or out getting the drugs,” she said.

Prescription drugs kind of creep up on you. People think they’re safe because they come from a doctor. But they’re just as dangerous and addictive as street drugs. Unfortunately, many people don’t find that out until they’re already hooked.

Make sure anyone you know who is taking prescription painkillers gets the addiction help services they need before their problem becomes serious.