AHS Views

China’s getting some pretty bad press these days. A few days ago I found out that kids are dying from chocolate - including Halloween candies - made with a milk powder containing an industrial chemical called melamine. And in today’s news, about this quarter’s increase in prescription drug deaths and injuries (4,825 deaths and 21,000 injuries in the last three months), I see that 779 injuries and 102 deaths were from a contaminated Chinese batch of heparin, the blood thinner.  China’s trying to make it into the big time, but they’re going to have to clean up their act to pull it off. Of course, the manufacturer is probably paying a lot less for the China drugs - all the better to line the pockets of Big Pharma.

Another 50 deaths and 1,001 injuries were caused by varenicline (Chantix), the anti-smoking drug. In total, there have been 3,325 serious injuries and 112 deaths from Chantix since it came on the market in 2006. That’s nasty.

The problems with Chantix include suicides, people trying to injure themselves, blackouts, seizures, and heart disturbances.  Pfizer, who sells Chantix in the U.S., put out a release saying that the large number of reports may be due to all the bad press the drug is getting. They also said some could be due to nicotine withdrawal. Huh?? Geez, mayb it’s because the drug sucks. Check out the Chantix side effects. It even carries the risk of physical dependency, which means you might also need to go into a detox center or get addiction help to get off them. I’d take cigarettes any day of the week. No contest.

Also among the top 10 drugs that caused the serious injuries and deaths were oxycodone, fentanyl, morphine, methadone and hydrocodone - all opiate painkillers, which definitely are highly dangerous, highly addictive and for which you definitely need addiction help services to quit.

Bear in mind that less than 10% of these types of incidents are reported to the FDA, which is where this data comes from, so the situation is a lot worse than it appears.

Long and short of it - living drug free is the best way to go.

I don’t know how many of you watched last week’s documentary Mum, Heroin and Me last week, but it’s the story of a young girl’s (Hannah) deterioration as a heroin addict and her mother’s (Kate) three-year battle to get help. She battled with government (British) agencies, being given the run around, to get her daughter the addiction help she needs.

Kate tells of dinner parties and social engagements where she would meet people who asked about her family. She told them straight up that her daughter was a  heroin addict. Their reaction was not the amazement, distaste or sympathy you might expect. Instead, they confided that their son or daughter has a drug problem, too.

All at an affluent level of society one wouldn’t normally associate with drugs - especially heroin addiction.

Kate’s lobbying for legalizing heroin. The wrong solution. Yes, it keeps addicts from stealing, dealing and the other activities necessary to get drugs that affect the lives of others. But without getting addiction help, the addict will still lead the same, horrible, unproductive life, and it will be much shorter than it would have been.

The making of the documentary was a wake-up call for Hannah and, before the show was aired, she flew to South Africa for the addiction help services she needs. Hopefully, her mother will see the change in her daughter once she’s back and decide to stop the push for legalizing heroin and, instead, refocus her efforts on getting the government to provide addiction help services. Maybe the documentary will help as well.

Addiction help will soon be available to even more non-violent offenders in California, thanks to Prop 5, the Non-Violent Offenders Rehabilitation Act, aka NORA . It’s currently costing California $46,000 a year to house an inmate. With recidivism rates being what they are, chances are most of those inmates are going back to a life of drugs, and crime, and back to prison at some time in the future. However, if that same money, and chances are it would cost less per person, is spent on getting them off drugs, there’s a good chance the state won’t have to spend any more money on them until they turn 65.

Sounds like a smart move to me. And, after all, drugs are usually what got them in trouble in the first place. Why not address the source of the problem rather than the symptom?

I hope other states follow California’s lead. The U.S. currently has about one out of every hundred of its citizens in jail. And much of it is for non-violent drug offenders. It’s costing taxpayers a bundle.

I think it would also be a good idea for the treatment costs to actually be a loan - to be paid back after treatment, even if it has to be in very small payments. That way, the addiction help services will have more value to the indivdual who got the help. 

When you think of Yale, unless you’ve already gone to Yale or are there right now, you might imagine that the atmosphere would be somewhat different than that of other colleges and universities. But Yale has many of the same problems. The one that concerns me is alcohol addiction and abuse. Here’s a little taste of alcohol abuse at Yale, and the addiction help the school is offering to the students.

I think the problem may have an entirely different resolution. Kids going to college are often living away from home for the first time and some of them basically just go wild - doing all the things they know they’d never get away with at home. Alcohol is a big part of that, which is why so many schools now offer addiction help services. 

Going off to Europe to travel around, even if it was hitchhiking with a duffel bag, used to be fairly common practice prior to entering college. I think something like that - getting some experience in life, having to be fully responsible for yourself, and broadening your scope and understanding of life should be mandatory - i.e. a prerequisite to college admission. 

Someone who has learned a little something about life on their own, who has had to take more responsibility than you usually do when you’re living at home with your parents is bound to be more able to resist the temptation of falling into the trap of acting like a caged animal that’s had the gate left open. Parents might want to consider that. Tell your kids they need to go out into the world, learn something, be responsible for something, and then they can go to college.

Not only would their kid get much more out of college, they’d also be far less likely to be one of those in line looking for addiction help. At the very least, if your kid is a drinker, get them the addiction help services they need before you send them off. A good drug or alcohol rehab center can help a person discover who they are - and, really, it might not take much more than that to keep them out of trouble.

Some time ago I had an allergic reaction to something I ate and my face got so badly swollen you could barely see my eyes. After a couple of days my doctor put me on steroids to get the swelling down before my face exploded. They worked, but they also had other rather intense effects in that they made my body feel and act like a finely-tuned, very powerful machine. It was great!! Fortunately, I knew about the dangers of these drugs so didn’t even consider taking them after the initial problem was handled - although I would have liked to. I think much of the prescription drug addiction epidemic that is sending people for addiction help in droves is rooted in a similar situation - the difference being that I really understood the dangers of the drugs and most people don’t.

Stimulants are a major drug of choice right now both in the U.S. and elsewhere. They’re being called ‘cognitive enhancers’ to legitimize them. Ritalin, Provigil, and so on. They’re speed, basically. With a little cocaine thrown in. And they’re being used by millions of people - everyone from college students who want get an edge to shift workers trying to stay awake and people who just want to get high. Of course, Ritalin has been used on young school kids for decades - it is one of the major drugs that opened the door to our current prescription drug addiction epidemic.

What people don’t understand is the underlying effects of these drugs. Needing addiction help is probably not the worst of it - they also cause serious physical deterioration from which some may never recover.  The side effects of Ritalin, for example, include everything from sleeplessness, loss of appetite, nervousness and tics to heart palpitations, cardiac arrythmia, hair loss, anemia, anorexia and psychosis. And, because they’re also addictive and cause severe, and dangerous, withdrawal symptoms, it’s hard to even stop taking them without professional addiction help services.

Unfortunately, many academics are sanctioning the use of these drugs, just as athletes and coaches sanctioned the use of steroids before they were outlawed in sports. Hopefully, stimulants used for something other than true medical situations will also be outlawed.

In the meantime, watch out for your friends and family. The price they pay for feeling more awake or more alert may be disaster. At the very least, if they keep taking them, the drugs will take their toll.  And it won’t be pretty. Better they should get addiction help services now than wait until disaster strikes.

A new study shows that alcohol shrinks the brain. Millions of people need drug and alcohol addiction help, and we’re spending millions finding out this useless information.

Why do we need it? We already know that just one drink can impair abstract thinking for a month, we already know it causes a gradual deterioration of the body and people die before their time, we already know it’s involved in most domestic violence incidents, we already know it’s ruins families, lives, careers. Shouldn’t we be spending our money making sure people get the addiction help services they need?

Here at Addiction Help Services, we’ve decided to start giving you some sports news. You’ve probably been wondering about the results of the Homecoming football game between Colorado University and the Texas Longhorns. Here they are:

• 57 people ejected, mostly for alcohol-related violations
• seven citations for underage drinking
• 11 students referred to CU’s Office of Judicial Affairs
• 12 sent to a detox center
• 3 people arrested 

Just another night at the ball game.  Was one of them your kid? Get them some addiction help. They’ll be able to spend more time studying.

According to a recent survey conducted in England, only 8% of kids would tell their parents if they were taking drugs. That’s pretty scary when you consider that their parents are probably the only people who can and will help them get addiction help if they need it.

Advice about preventing drug addiction and abuse with kids includes participating in their lives, having open communication - which means listening, understanding, discussing, not just telling them to do this or not do that - having a strong family life that includes eating dinners together, and talking to your kids, educating them, not lecturing, on the dangers of drugs and alcohol. In fact, kids whose parents talk to them about drugs are 50% less likely to take them.

Unfortunately, there aren’t enough families like that around - which probably has a big impact on the number of kids who take drugs. It’s also one of the major reasons parents don’t find out their kids are taking drugs until the situation is serious enough for them to need addiction help.

Talk to your kids - if you find out they’re taking drugs, get them the addiction help services they need. They don’t have to be hard-core addicts to need addiction help. If they tried drugs long ago and didn’t continue, they probably don’t need help (assuming they told you the truth.) But if they’re taking them currently, and have done so even for a little while, they need addiction help services asap. That’s how you keep them safe.

Another journalist jumps on the prescription drug addiction bandwagon - this time it’s the Orion, from Cal State University. Every time I see something like this my hope is renewed; if we want people taking prescription drugs to realize they have a problem and get some addiction help, we need more and more articles about the problem in media that’s read by ‘everyday’ people - not just scientists and healthcare professionals who read specialist and medical journals. (Although I would guess that if more healthcare professionals read even those we wouldn’t have such a big problem.)

The writer of the editorial in the Orion discusses the prescription drug culture. “We have been taught that feeling pain - or anything for that matter - can be avoided,” he (or she) said.

And it’s not just physical pain we don’t have to feel; we also don’t have to feel unhappy, anxious, frightened, too tired, too awake, too stupid, uninterested, bored, frustrated, too fat, too thin - the list goes on and on.

No longer do we have to put up with those pesky physical, mental and emotional phenomena that tell us something is wrong with our body or our life so we can fix it.

In all fairness, there are many people who tried to resolve their problems before resorting to masking the symptoms with drugs - but how are those drugs working for you?  Do they still seem to be preferable to making the changes you had to make in your life?

Check out addiction help services. If you find the services that are right for you,  like a long-term residential drug rehab program that will help you address the prescription drug addiction or dependency problem and the reasons you felt you needed the drugs, you can turn your life around.

A new study from Indiana University indicates that pregnant women may not be getting the advice they need from their doctors and midwives about the dangers of consuming drugs and alcohol while pregnant. When you consider the detrimental effects of drugs and alcohol on children and adults, you can imagine how hard all that poison in the system can be on a growing baby. Some even require addiction help as soon as their born.

I think a woman should stop drinking and taking drugs even if she’s just trying to get pregnant. Or not using contraceptives. That would, at least, limit the problem to those who truly had no reason to suspect they would get pregnant.

Although some women who’ve gone through drug rehab or some other addiction help services during pregnancy, it’s possible that withdrawal might be too hard on the baby. To find out, you would need to get the advice of an addiction help services expert in liaison with a doctor who is also familiar wth alcohol or drug addiction and withdrawal.   We can help you find both at Addiction Help Services.