AHS Views

What happens to kids whose parents and siblings do drugs? What happens to kids whose mother used crack while she was pregnant? What happens to kids whose parents wind up in prison because of drugs? Through My Eyes, an essay contest sponsored by the Cowlitz Substance Abuse Coalition with additional support from the Washington State Community Mobilization and the Office of National Drug Control Policy, tells the real life stories of living in households with people who need addiction help.

These essays are a must read - the little girl whose father was in prison, whose two brothers were always high on something, and whose mother, a crack head during each of her pregnancies, was rarely home. Or the 13-year-old athlete who started his battle with drug addiction when he was prescribed morphine for an illness.

Addiction Help Services is there to help you. If someone in your family has a drug problem. give us a call. 

Some parents think they can’t do anything about drugs in schools - and the dangers they pose for their own kids. But taking action can help. Here’s the story of a woman who made a phone call about drug use to a local school. Her suspicions were followed up on, a search was done, and 10 kids were busted with stashes of prescription drugs and illegal substances. It was the school’s drug ring.

That one phone call is going to prevent prescription drug addiction (and other drug problems but, really, prescription drug addiction is the most prevalent), drug-related crime, and probably a few overdoses, deaths, injuries and illnesses.

I would hope the kids who were busted will get addiction help as well. The bust might also save their lives.

We recently had a rash of vandalism on our property. We knew who it was - a gang of kids that went to the school down the street. They stole a kids bike and threw it at our car - making a horrible mess - they knocked over our mailbox and punched dents in it, the broke our sprinkler heads. And a few other things. We knew when they passed by and waited on the street and confronted them. A few of our neighbors, whose property had also been vandalized, joined us. They stood in front of their property. We also went to the school and spoke with security - they knew who the kids were. They already had a reputation. And we called the police, who actually came and parked across from our house when the kids were due. The vandalism stopped. But, that’s what it took.

Taking action works. 

If you want to protect your kids, take action. And if they already have a problem, get them the addiction help services they need. 

Suboxone is all over the news these days. It’s possible that many people looking for help with drug addiction - specifically opiates like OxyContin and heroin - will be advised to take suboxone for several months. Dr. George Woody of the University of Pennsylvania did a study that found that if kids (the study was on 15 to 21 year olds) are taking suboxone, their opiate use is ”much less.” Dr. Nora Valkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, says we should be encouraged by this.

Yeah, right, it’s good to know that your kid isn’t doing ‘as much’ heroin or OxyContin as they were before. So, what does that mean? That if they’re only doing 50% as much heroin as before they’re 50% less likely to overdose? Yeah, that’s really encouraging.  You only have to worry about your kids half as much.

Get real. What kind of addiction help is that? The fact that they’re taking any drug at all is a sign of failure. If they’re taking drugs, the program is a failure. It’s really that black and white.

There is a use for suboxone in drug detox. But a good medical drug detox facility doesn’t give it to you for months! You need it for days, maybe a week, maybe a touch longer. It’s only needed to help the person get through what can be a very painful withdrawal. Then they should be getting drug rehab in a residential facility.

The suboxone program they’re talking about in this news article offers counseling once a week. The chances of someone getting off drugs with a program like that are slim. And you can virtually guarantee failure if they’re a heavy drug user.

Don’t settle for that. If you want your kids to get off drugs, get addiction help services that actually work.

There’s a great new drug detection machine being tested in Scotland. It’s called the Itemiser and can test for just about any kind of illegal drug. Scotland police used it on about 750 people as they went into bars and clubs. They wound up searching 13 people and reporting two.

I’d like to see the same thing in the U.S. - and it would be great for random drug testing in schools and colleges and in the workplace. It also might overcome one of the major problems with getting frequent drug testing done - the expense. And it could result in many people getting addiction help whose problem wouldn’t otherwise be known.

It could also help prevent overdose - especially when you’re using it outside bars and clubs. Many people who overdose combine drugs with alcohol. If they’re tested for drugs before they start drinking, it could save their lives or at least a trip to the emergency room.

And it will cut down on crime and violence - which was actually the primary goal of the Scotland police. As in the U.S., the majority of the violence and crime we experience is drug or alcohol-related.

The police seemed to be somewhat surprised that everyone who was tested was cooperative. That speaks well of society in general. They know that drugs equal problems, and they don’t want them either.

Some people may see this as a violation of privacy. Well, all I can say about that is maybe it’s time you considered getting some addiction help services yourself.

The Arizona police department received an unusual donation last week - a meth scanner. Concerned about the meth problem, a subsidiary of BHP Hilton, the world’s largest mining company, gave the police a scanner that can detect trace amounts of meth on any surface. Hopefully, this will enable the police to find and get addiction help for more people - as well as locating the dealers who are creating the problem.

Addiction to methamphetamine is a very ugly thing. It cause physical deterioration faster than just about any other drug, not to mention extreme personality changes. Check out the Faces of Meth for very graphic before and after images.

Some of the images show progressions - what someone looks like after 6 months, a year, two years, etc. The changes are so obvious, and so common, that it’s a good gauge to use to determine if someone you care about could be taking meth.

If so, get them into addiction help services asap. As you can imagine from the photos, their lifespan is usually cut pretty short. And life is hell in the meantime.

Soon we’ll have a new president - Obama. No matter who you voted for, the future looks good for those who need addiction help. Many people in the U.S. don’t have health insurance - it appears Obama will address that issue. Personally, I didn’t see McCain’s health care plan as viable. Rates wouldn’t be any lower, and the $5,000 credit we would get would go straight to insurance companies, and we’d be taxed on the money. And, to my knowledge, that was just for a year.

Obama’s plan, on the other hand, is a whole revamp of the health care/insurance system. Which is what we need.

There are millions of Americans without health care and, although not all health care plans cover addiction help services, there’s a much better chance they will be available to you if you have insurance coverage.

Let’s see what he does. 

One of the biggest barriers to overcoming alcohol and drug addiction and abuse is that most people don’t realize, or admit, they have a problem and, therefore, don’t try to get addiction help. In fact, the most recent research by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) showed that that’s the case with over 90% of Americans. 

Early in my life I grew up with hard drinkers. They hit the bars every night after work and, already drunk, brought their friends home with them to continue drinking around 8 or 9 o’clock. On the weekends they started drinking by about noon, and kept it up all weekend - with a break on Sunday morning to go to church.

A few years later we moved to an upper middle class neighborhood. People came right home from work, but mixed martinis. They’d have a couple before dinner, another type of drink with dinner, and a few afterwards. When the weekend came, they really piled it on - especially if friends were over, which was often the case - but they did it around their swimming pools. More genteel, more educated, and more sophisticated, they rarely seemed drunk - not like the first group.

Both groups were alcoholics, they all needed addiction help, but none of them would admit it. Although it was very clear to an outsider - someone who didn’t drink, or drank very little.

Both groups died earlier than they should have, developed heart and liver problems, diabetes, and so on. All of their kids were messed up one way or another - the parents thought what they did was fine so there was no problem with their kids doing the same. If they were underage, they drank at home. And it was totally acceptable. When the kids passed out, the parents thought it was funny.

If you are close to someone you think has a drinking or drug problem, and are believing what they tell you - i.e. that the problem is you, not them - check out the tests in Do You Have An Alcohol or Drug Problem? That will answer your questions. And if you find that person does have a problem, get them the addiction help services they need. If they won’t admit it, try using an interventionist. Unlike the TV shows, about 70% of the people an interventionist deals with doesn’t admit they have a problem. Check it out.

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.