AHS Views

Jockey Patrick Valenzuela has had a conditional license for the past several years due to substance abuse problems. On Friday he had his conditional license revoked by the California Horse Racing Board after being stopped and arrested for a DUI in Upland, California. It’s time for him to get the addiction help he needs.

During his stellar career - 3968 wins, including the 1989 Kentucky Derby aboard Sunday Silence - Mr. Valenzuela has had 10 interruptions due to drug or alcohol problems. He’s only 45 years old, and he has not been able to get his drug or alcohol abuse under control. He does need to finally make a change and get himself into a successful drug rehab program.
 
Mr. Valenzuela is not alone when it comes to substance abuse problems - nearly 20% of Americans over the age of 26 binge drink at least monthly, and millions of Americans use prescription drugs for reasons other than a medical condition.

It is also not a surprise that Mr. Valenzuela has not received the addiction help he needs to over come his dependence on drugs or alcohol. The same can be said of the majority of those who need treatment.

Tom Knust, Mr. Valenzuela’s agent said he was shocked by the news. He also said he wouldn’t represent him any longer.

The help Mr. Valenzuela  needs is available to him. I hope he gets it so he can end his drug and alcohol addiction issues.

Addiction Help Services can find you, a family member or a friend the treatment that you need.

“We know alcohol and drug abuse is high nationwide, Utah’s numbers are high and Granite District matches both of those numbers” says Martin Bates, interim assistant superintendent of Granite School District’s program services. Granite just received a $1.2 million grant to educate athletes about drug abuse, and to test them. Those who test positive for drugs will be disciplined, but those who are open about their problem will get the addiction help services they need.

The need to succeed in sports is driven by a variety of factors; one of the roads to apparent success is the use of prescription drugs. The prescription drugs used to enhance performance may include painkillers, stimulants and, of course, steroids.

Prescription painkillers and stimulants are used recreationally by students and athletes as well. These same people may be binge drinking for fun or using a variety of other drugs such as meth or MDMA.

No matter what drug is being used, including alcohol, it’s about time for parents to demand drug free sports so their children aren’t faced with addiction treatment issues as they grow older.

Coaches and athletic directors should be responsible for their programs and if the programs aren’t drug and alcohol free, perhaps they should get fired for not adhering to strict drug free disciplines.

The noise from the major league baseball investigation should be a wake up call to the high school coaches in Utah and the rest of America; Winning at any cost is not acceptable.

Drug free programs should be demanded by parents or more addiction help will be needed.

If student athletes are playing through pain with the use of painkillers or gaining any advantage with the use of prescription stimulants, with or without a prescription, aren’t you really putting their lives at risk? Shouldn’t team members be taught that winning under these conditions is unacceptable?

Addiction Help Services can help you with any dependency problems that you or a family member may have. Demand drug free sports in America, and take away the trophies of those who try to gain an edge or turn a blind eye to alcohol or drug abuse.

The problem with addiction and sports is like spy versus spy in Mad Magazine: nobody is getting ahead. The first step in dealing with drugs and young people is education, but I can’t figure where the player’s union is on the issue of prescription drugs or whether or not players are going to get addiction help.

If you go to MLB.com and read through Mr. Mitchell’s Report to the Commissioner of Baseball of An Independent Investigation into the Illegal Use of Steroids and Other Performance Enhancing Substances, it is pretty obvious that the players’ union wants little to do with a drug free environment. Mr. Fehr, head of the union, granted one interview, and offered no immediate help or a solution. Perhaps Mr. Fehr doesn’t want a drug free environment and doesn’t want the players to get addiction help – not an attitude I can root for.

The amount of addiction help that has been needed and will be needed in this country can’t be blamed on baseball, yet the players union is certainly contributing to the idea that prescription drugs are safe.

While past performance is no guarantee of future performance you can bet that whatever Commissioner Selig proposes, Donald Fehr will be there to stop it.

Prescription drug addiction and abuse is a plague, and it needs to be dealt with. Mr. Fehr should wake up. Commissioner Selig wants to put a stop on drug abuse in baseball and I hope he is successful. The players union should get behind the effort. If not Mr. Fehr, perhaps the players themselves should step up.

I am sure I don’t have all of the information Mr. Fehr has, but granting only one interview is pathetic. Maybe Mr. Fehr doesn’t read his local newspaper, or perhaps he hasn’t been apprised of the problems prescription drugs are creating with the youth of America. If not, one of his “advisors” should let him in on the secret. There is a problem with steroid abuse among young hopeful athletes.

Concerning the players that did take drugs for performance, if they have a World Series ring, take it away. And remove their names from the rosters of the champions. And you could take away the trophy from the club house. Tell the owners they will be treated like any other athlete who cheats in the Olympics, they lose their medals.

Players should realize they can help the situation and stand up to demand a drug free work place.

Mr. Fehr should be pushing to ensure that athletes get the addiction help they need, and should be doing everything he can to give them a drug free work place. Commissioner Selig should continue to push his plan forward. Oh, yes, and where will the owners be in all this? Let’s wait and find out.

Drug abuse and the need for addiction help services in professional sports is nothing new, maybe this report will be a step towards correcting that issue and making athletes perform “au natural”. Less addiction treatment will be needed when baseball players and other athletes are setting an example that young people can look up to and emulate.

The O.S.U. student body needs some drug education and possibly drug addiction help.

Nearly 10% of the students or 2000 of them showed up at O.S.U.’s Alcohol and Substance Abuse Center for assessments during the past year.

Linda Meyers the centers coordinator said one in five admitted to taking Addrell, and that number is more then likely low. There are other surveys that state one third of college students are abusing prescription stimulants (Ritalin or Adderral).

Linda Meyers said she noticed the use of Adderall and other prescription drugs rising to “dangerous levels” at the school.

If 10% of the student body went to the abuse center for help, what percentage of the student body needs help but didn’t seek it? The issue also becomes something that parents should be made aware of. You could highlight something about drug problems in the school in an informational pack for all new or old students and you could have kids sign a consent form that allows the school to call their parents if a problem with drug or alcohol arises.

The binge drinking, prescription pain killers and marijuana use combined with the abuse of speed is something that needs to be addressed in campuses all over the country not just Stillwater, Oklahoma.

Adderall and Ritalin are two drugs that are just like cocaine, 50% of the student body thinks they are safe because the drugs are made by a pharmaceutical company. The issue of safety or drug abuse never comes up when you are getting them from a friend.
As a student you may not know which of your friends has a problem with drugs or alcohol but if you do, getting them into a drug rehab or some form of addiction help could change how they spend the rest of their lives.

Image Provided By Mike Adams

Another heated debate about whether or not drugs should be legalized: this one between a retired police captain and a district attorney. The police captain says drug laws are causing crime and violence that we wouldn’t have if we made drugs legal. Sounds to me like he’s just given up. Can’t blame him really – with about 10 million people in America needing drug rehab to straighten out, it must seem pretty hopeless.

However, I don’t think legalization would handle the problem. While it’s true that the crimes of possession and trafficking wouldn’t exist, we’d still have a country overrun with people trying to get drugs. Drug habits are expensive – how will addicts support their habits? Not by holding down a 9 to 5 job.

And what happens when we want to curb the crime and violence connected to just getting the drugs, legal or not? Will we then raise our health insurance rates even higher so addicts can go to the doctor and get a prescription for heroin, methamphetamine, cocaine, or marijuana?

And what happens to drug cartels and local dealers who want to control the turf and make more money? That’s not going to go away with legalization. The only difference is that the police won’t have to do anything about it because they won’t be doing anything illegal. Until they kill each other, or an innocent bystander, because someone stepped on someone else’s toes.

And what about the violence created by the drugs themselves. Do parents on drugs abuse their kids because drugs are illegal? No, it’s because that’s the effect drugs have on them.

Making drugs legal is suicide. God knows drugs have already caused enough damage – continue the crack-down, and continue getting more people into a drug rehab program.

For the umpteenth time, I’ve just read another article about people protesting a drug rehab facility being opened in their area. I do understand that parents are trying to keep their kids from being exposed to drugs but, really, is this the way to do it? Your kids are going to be exposed to drugs whether you like it or not. There’s probably not one school that doesn’t have kids using drugs, and who don’t offer them to others. Wouldn’t your kids get a better education on the dangers of alcohol and drug abuse being close to a drug rehab program and people who don’t think taking drugs is a good idea?

Some of the most successful drug abuse and addiction preventions programs are school education programs that tell the real story – addicts in doorways, people living under bridges, deformed and retarded babies going through withdrawal, people dying of Hep C and AIDS, parents at the graves of their children, and children at the graves of their parents.

If you think you’re going to keep your kid off drugs by showing them the world through rose-colored glasses, think again.

It’s unfortunate that it’s come to this. If there was one Norman Rockwell town left in the U.S., it wouldn’t stay that way for long because everyone and their brother would want to move there. Let kids see that drugs are bad. Let them see recovery – the before and after. Kids whose parents really educate them on drugs are 50 percent less likely to become drug addicts. Let a successful drug rehab program be part of their education. It may save your kid’s life.

When a person is abusing a drug while in treatment, you know that things are really out of control. I just read an article about a man who was on his way home from a meeting for drug rehab, when he was arrested for possession of methamphetamine and suspicion of dealing the drug.

The man was served with a warrant to have his home searched after just completing his meeting for drug treatment. The police found almost 30 grams of meth, a scale and packing materials and a pipe. The man was also using his drug rehab ID card to weigh and scrape the drug.

This incident happened in Napa, California where methamphetamine is a major drug of choice. In fact, government statistics indicate that meth is the biggest threat to California currently: in 2005 almost 500 people were arrested and sent to jail for offenses related to methamphetamine.

If the man who was recently arrested is lucky, he may be given another opportunity for drug treatment through the California drug courts. If he can manage to get into a long-term residential successful drug rehab program, there may be hope.

For seven years I was addicted to drugs and today I can honestly say I no longer struggle with addiction. But when I speak with clients and family members about the subject, they often find it hard to believe that anyone can really overcome drug addiction. I assure them that there is such a thing as a successful drug rehab program, but there’s a lot of information out there saying drug addiction is a chronic, incurable disease.
 
It’s unfortunate that a number of studies have been done to try to reaffirm this information. The most recent was done by the University of Melbourne. The researchers explain that after someone has been on drugs for two years, parts of their brain are dysfunctional. And, consequently, getting off drugs is difficult and relapse may be uncontrollable.

I know several hundred former addicts, including myself, that will tell you that stopping drugs is a matter of choice and that with successful drug rehab you can get and stay off drugs permanently. If I believed that I suffered from a disease that I could never recover from, I never would have gotten off drugs in the first place.

The more this information is forwarded, the more addicts are negatively affected and reluctant to go to drug rehab. Why go through that when you ‘know’ it’s impossible? Believe me, it’s not. I am living testimony, and I’m not alone.

A surgeon in Charleston, West Virginia, surrendered his license and agreed to go to rehab, according to a recent news article. With four malpractice suits behind him – he won the first and settled the other three – the Board of Medicine finally launched an investigation that resulted in discussions with the doc, and he’s now going to drug rehab.

Although details are slim, it appears this doc’s problem is a lot more than drug abuse. The Board decided he could not practice medicine or perform surgery due to “abuse of drugs, unprofessional conduct, failure to maintain records, prescribing drugs other than in good faith and failure to practice acceptably.”

It’s clear that he’s not just taking drugs, he’s dealing them. That’s a whole different story.

Selling drugs doesn’t go hand in hand with taking them. Sometimes addicts get into desperate situations and start dealing to support their own habits. I’m not condoning that, but at least it’s something you can understand.
 
But what’s in it for this doc? He’s writing bogus prescriptions. Unless he’s getting paid for it – substantially – and needs that money to support his habit, I don’t see any justification for simply letting him off with rehab.

Yes, he should get his drug problem handled. But what about the others who may be addicted to or abusing drugs because of his prescriptions? Who’s going to get them through a drug rehab program?

Do you know a dad who needs alcohol or drug rehab? Help him, and help the kids.

I just read a study on the impact of fathers on their children. It’s not about drugs or drug addicts; it’s just about dads and their kids. For years we’ve been hearing that stepfathers aren’t as good as biological fathers, that fathers in the home are better than fathers out of the home, that single parent families can ruin kids, and so on and so on. But the truth of the matter is that none of that really matters: what’s important is the closeness of the relationship. Since I spend a fair amount of my time focused on drug addiction, it’s hard not to think about how many of those fathers are alcohol or drug abusers and what a huge difference it would make in a kid’s life to have his father complete a successful drug rehab program.

How does the relationship with dad affect the child? It affects their school performance and academic achievement, whether or not they become juvenile delinquents, their general behavior, and even their health. Just being there is not enough. A father has to be involved in his children’s lives, and the closer they are, the better the child will do. If a father has all his attention on where the next hit’s coming from, you can be pretty sure he’s not also forming a close relationship with his kids. If you know one of those dads, get them into drug rehab. It will help him, and could be a major factor in the health, happiness, well-being and future of his children.