AHS Views

Performance-enhancing drugs are in the news again - this time it’s with sports, check out Why Isn’t There Nearly As Big A Fuss About Amphetamines In Baseball As There Is About Steroids? Some people have even suggested prescription painkillers should also be disallowed as, without them, some athletes couldn’t perform, hence, they’re performance-enhancing drugs.

Amphetamines are used as performance-enhancing drugs all over the place - not just in sports. Ritalin given to kids who are acting up in class instead focusing on their studies, college students taking Ritalin and Adderall to improve their concentration (and enable them to stay awake) while cramming for exams - it’s all performance-enhancing.

And while their performance is being ‘enhanced’, their brain is getting addled (is that why they call it Adderall?), and the individual’s potential to perform without drugs is at risk.

Some people, lots of them, get addicted to drugs like Ritalin and Adderall. And when their prescription runs out, they sometimes turn to the drugs’ illegal counterparts - methamphetamine, crystal meth, and so on - to get the effect they crave.

And some kids even drop out of college when they can no longer get their performance-enhancing study drugs. They just can’t do the work without it. What kind of employee are they going to be when they can’t even study a subject without taking drugs? Very bad scene.

Lots of people seeking addiction help started drugs when prescribed amphetamines by their doctor. When they get into treatment they may still be taking the same prescription, or they could be getting the same drugs through illegal means, or they may have moved on to street drugs.

Amphetamines have become common place. Parents of college age kids really should check and see if their kids are taking them. Once they’re of age, they can go to a doctor and get their own prescription without your permission or knowledge. You’re only going to find out if you ask.

And if they are taking them, get them the addiction help services they need. They’re like lots of other drugs - they’ll create a temporary positive effect, damage the body and mind in the process, and will make your kid dependent on them or addicted to them.

I feel sorry for these kids. They think they’re doing something wise, but that’s no way to get through college. If they need drugs there, they’ll probably need to continue them in the workplace.

Although methamphetamine is in widespread use across the country, there are some areas where use is heavier than others. Some communities have formed groups to fight drug addiction and abuse in their area. One such group, the District Court’s Monitoring Assessment Program (MAP) in the Canon City area of Colorado, says that 80% of those involved in the program are meth users. They have a comprehensive program that includes treatment, education, and so on. And they say they’ve had an 82% success rate since they started 18 months ago. The program is really giving people the addiction help they need, and the meth use has been slashed.

One recent case they handled is featured in a news article in the Canon City Daily Record. This man’s story is typical of what happens with meth users, including getting arrested and hauled off to jail in front of his young daughter. Read the story to get an idea of why it’s so important to fight meth abuse.

It also illustrates a couple of other points. The man was a roofer. He had been using meth for 20 years in a somewhat controlled fashion - he said he was ’self-medicating’ to handle his back pain.  No one knew about it.

Then a contractor he did some work for didn’t pay him. That put him in serious financial trouble and he started selling meth to survive.

Someone who wasn’t already addicted to a drug probably would have found another solution - like others do. But because he was already using drugs, that incident was enough to put him over the edge and turn him into a drug dealer.

The point is - it doesn’t take much to move from using drugs recreationally or as a pain medication, which was his situation, to a life of crime. And once someone’s addicted to drugs, it can happen easily. Their back is up against a wall - they need drugs now.

That’s one more reason to make sure anyone you care about who takes drug gets addiction help services as soon as possible. They may not even think they’re addicted, but when they no longer can get the drug, they find out pretty quickly. And you never really know what will happen that could push them over that edge.

I recently watched a documentary on the living conditions in the Appalachian mountains - West Virginia and eastern Kentucky. The film crew followed the lives of a few different people in the area for about two years. One girl was the daughter of a drug addict (mother), another was a high school senior who was a football star but because of the living conditions at home he slept in his truck. Or wherever he could. He was determined not to be yet another generation of extreme poverty, little education, drugs, alcohol, fighting, etc.

The poverty was truly saddening. There are two million people in the area and 1/2 of them don’t have jobs. Many of those who do work are in the mines and, although they were reluctant to speak about it on camera, with their supervisor watching them, it was clear that many of them suffered from black lung and other physical problems.

Purdue Pharma pumped OxyContin into that area like it was going out of style. Talk about hitting them when they’re down. There are so many people in need of addiction help, but I doubt any signficant amount of money, if any, from their $634 million fine went to help those people.

I don’t know if there are class action lawsuits going on in the area, but there should be.  And those from Purdue who pled guilty, plus a lot of others, should be made to go to the area and see the damage they’ve done.

Money, it’s all about money.  

A new program in Cheyenne, Wyoming, is attempting to educate people on the dangers of substance abuse before it becomes a problem. One of their methods is to survey people who come into hospital emergency rooms for heart palpitations and other conditions that are symptoms of drug abuse. They’re focus is to let people know about the dangers of drugs, and offer them addiction help if they ask for it.

I guess there’s a possibility that they’ll nip a few potential addictions in the bud. Someome who’s been taking drugs for a while might not bother going to a hospital for something like heart palpitations because they would already have experienced it in the past, know that it comes with the territory, and think the palpitations will pass.

Unfortunately for some, those heart palpitations won’t pass at all - the person could even wind up dead.

On the other hand, those who are new to drugs may not expect anything like that, get scared, and go to the hospital.  If they’re told that they can expect heart palpitations, and many, many other side effects, including drug addiction, which would undoubtedly lead to many other, even more serious problems, maybe they’ll think twice about doing it again.

Not too many parents actually educate their kids about drugs - although they might tell them not to take them - so a lot of people enter adulthood without understanding their consequences.

If you have a young adult family member who has not yet been told about heart palpitations, ER visits, and all the other disasters that can happen on drugs, make sure you educate them now. It would be a shame to have their first real education take place in an emergency room.

If there’s already a problem, get help through Addiction Help Services.

OxyContin, hydrocodone, Percocet, Vicodin, Percodan and all the other addictive painkillers get so much attention these days that we never even hear Darvon mentioned. But 20 million prescriptions are written for it every year, despite the horror stories about addiction (and suicides!) and the drug’s apparent lack of effectiveness. The drug now includes acetaminophin  (the equivalent of aspirin) - marketed as Darvocet - and most studies show that it contributes little or no pain relief beyond that of the aspirin component.

In other words, if you’re taking Darvon or Darvocet, you might as well be taking aspirin - and it would be a lot safer since aspirin isn’t addictive and doesn’t cause people to commit suicide.

Consequently, an FDA advisory board has suggested that Darvon be banned.

Nevertheless, I must say that I’m suspicious about who’s behind this sudden attention on Darvon. With manufacturers of OxyContin and similar painkillers getting such a bad reputation - not to mention hundreds of $ millions, it’s in the billions now, in fines - I would imagine that some big pharma companies are looking for more customers.

If Darvon is out of the picture, that’s another 20 million potential prescriptions for other painkillers - and a lot of money.

My advice to those who may no longer have access to Darvon? 1. Get some addiction help services to get off the drugs. 2.  Make sure you check out all the drug-free alternatives available so you don’t have to go onto OxyContin or some other painkiller that’s even more dangerous than Darvon and 3. if you have to take anything, stick with the over-the-counter stuff that doesn’t contain narcotics. After all, the experts say that’s really all the pain relief you’ve been getting with Darvon anyway.

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A recent news story about Erin Brokovich’s daughter tells us that while Erin was out defending Californian’s rights to safe water, her daughter was getting into a little hot water herself. She started taking drugs. Mom didn’t know about it for quite a while but, when she found out, made sure she got addiction help immediately.  Her daughter is now in recovery, taking it one day at a time.

Brokovich has a history of getting things done. She sinks her teeth into something and doesn’t let go. I’m hoping this incident with her daughter will get her to look into the drug scene and do something fantastic.

For example, maybe she’d take on direct to consumer drug advertising if she knew how many people were being given prescriptions for addictive drugs that they really don’t need and probably wouldn’t be taking if they hadn’t seen it on TV.

There are already thousands of people suing big pharma for unethical practices of one sort or another: Not fully disclosing info about drugs, selling doctors on prescribing them for something other than which they were tested, bribing doctors, medical students and God knows who else to use their products,  funding research and researchers that come up with results that make their drugs look good, turning doctors and scientists into spokespeople with cold, hard cash - the list goes on and on.

When you consider all the crimes under this industy’s belt and the damage it’s created, it’s amazing there aren’t more restrictions, more policing, and more oversight.

It’s also amazing that no one has yet made any big pharma company pay for the addiction help services needed by their duped public. Even when they’re fined hundreds of millions of dollars, a lot of that money goes into government coffers, like the Purdue Pharma $634 million did, not to the people who were harmed.

And no one ever goes to jail!!!

Something smells really bad here. Erin - take it on.

A recent letter to the editor of the Empire Tribune is, once again, advocating legalization of drugs. He says prohibition of drugs, not the drugs themselves, are responsible for our drug problem. He references Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, so may be involved in law enforcement himself.

I can well imagine the frustration of law enforcement in handling the drug problem - but I think giving up and deciding to make something legal when it ruins so many lives is a real cop out. No pun intended.

He also said that before prohibition people didn’t overdose. There may be some statistics on that, I don’t know, but they wouldn’t have much credibility from my viewpoint since it’s hard to know how good the records were back in those days. And I don’t know that whatever statistics are available were properly analyzed either. Regardless, people don’t overdose because it’s illegal to take drugs - that implies that they did it on purpose. “Geez, if this were legal I wouldn’t accidentally take enough of it to kill myself.”

Legal or illegal doesn’t really matter. All you have to do is look at the rise in prescription drug addiction to know that. These drugs are completely legal - you go to your doctor to get them. But there are more people showing up in drug rehab centers for prescription drug addiction help than for street drugs these days.

Some of them have also moved onto other drugs. People who became addicted to OxyContin after getting a prescription from their doctor, for example, sometimes turn to heroin when they can no longer get OxyContin legally. Heroin costs a fraction of the price charged for OxyContin when you get it on the street.

Did prohibition of drugs cause their OxyContin addiction? Hardly. It has nothing to do with it. They got addicted because the drugs are addictive. Period.

Maybe it’s true that some people wouldn’t take drugs if they were legal - but I would bet those people are few and far between. The majority would still experiment - just like kids who take medicine out of their parents’ medicine cabinets and dump them in a bowl at a party with a bunch of friends who also brought their parents’ drugs. Do they think they’re doing something illegal? Probably not. They think the drugs are safe because they came from a doctor and probably have no concept that what they’re doing is illegal.

And some of them will get hooked. Will they get hooked because drugs are illegal? No, they’ll get hooked because the drugs are addictive and because they like the way the drugs make them feel.

The writer of the letter to the editor said people should be allowed to do what they want when it comes to drugs. That it’s their life and no one, including the government, has a right to interfere with it.

Unfortunately, in this regard, we do not live alone. Everything we do affects others. The police, of all people, should know that. Is legalizing drugs going to make the mother whose neglected children are being taken away by social services any less stoned?

If the fault lies anywhere in the legal system it’s with the lack of rehabilitation. Insisting on addiction help services for drug-related crime, especially of a non-violent nature, could actually change things. It would also help if there was some form of real rehabilitation of prisoners in general.

What do you think about this issue of legalizing drugs?

If anyone’s wondering how the great America could have possibly gotten itself into the current mess, you might have a look at the amount of pharmaceutical drugs being taken. How can a country expect to be otherwise healthy when a huge percentage of the population is taking antidepressants, sedatives, tranquilizers, sleeping pills, ’study drugs’, painkillers, and on and on and on?

How are people supposed to make sane choices about their lives, their families, their money, who to vote for, etc., when they’re not even in a condition to drive or operate machinery? How alert can they be? How can they think? Half of them probably need addiction help.

And things don’t look much better for the future - Americans give their kids 300%  more drugs than Europeans. We start our kids off teaching them that life is better with drugs - how are they supposed to think any differently as adults?

And we wonder why our kids are raiding our medicine cabinets and popping pills. It’s a no brainer.

Perhaps things will change when big pharma is no longer allowed direct to consumer advertising as if drugs were breakfast cereal.

I don’t know what it’s going to take for that to happen but, in the meantime, Americans are going to have to change their own personal attitude about living with chemicals.