AHS Views

A blog I read recently talked about how parents feel helpless when it comes to their kids drinking or taking drugs. They feel they can’t control it at all. The author’s solution was to start having dinner together. And, believe it or not, actual studies have shown that kids in families who have dinner together are significantly less likely to abuse alcohol, take drugs, and wind up needing addiction help.

Why is having dinner together so effective? Because you are doing something as a family – hopefully, it’s something you all enjoy – and you can have fun, laugh, talk about your day, and so on.

Doing that opens the door to deeper conversations about the important things in life, and to real parenting. Unfortunately our hectic lives leave little time for parenting. Sure, there’s lots of talk and interaction in good homes, but it’s mostly rushed – on the way to one thing or another, trying to get your kids to get ready faster, dropping them off at school or social and extra-curricular activities, , and so on.

But there’s generally not much actual communication: Not much in the way of sit-down discussions where parents and kids are talking about things that matter. Where parents are finding out how their kids feel about certain things, what’s really going on in their lives, who they’re hanging out with, who and what they like and dislike and why, what their goals and aspirations are.

These talks should include discussions about things that can get kids into trouble – including alcohol and drugs – and what will help them succeed in life.

Talks about drugs should include their exposure to drugs – do they know kids who take drugs or drink, have they been offered drugs or alcohol, and so on – and how they feel about them and what they know about them.

Parents are responsible for learning about drugs and educating their kids – not lecturing them, but educating with facts. Facts about the perils of drugs and alcohol are easy to come by, and are dramatic enough to be pretty convincing and have an effect. Gradually teach them more and more, and occasionally, when you see news stories about something bad happening from alcohol or drugs – especially to someone the kids might admire like a sports figure or musician – let them know about it.

When do you start having these discussions? Really, it’s never too early. Kids are exposed to drugs and alcohol by the time they’re 9 or 10 years old. There are 13-year-old addicts. And don’t wait until there is trouble. Statistics show that kids are involved in drugs for about two years before parents find out about it.

The other important thing to remember is that the earlier kids get involved in drugs or alcohol, the greater the chances are that they’ll become addicts and eventually need a drug rehab program. So, as I said, it’s never really too soon to educate them. And the more they know, the more able they’ll be to make an informed decision about drugs when they’re exposed to them. And they will be – no matter what kind of home, school or environment they grow up in.

So, start with dinner. If you’re not already having dinner together, make it a household rule. And take it from there.

New designer drugs are scary – and there aren’t too many more frightening than Crocodile, a designer drug taking Russia by storm. If Crocodile doesn’t kill you, you may be seriously impaired for the rest of your life. Will Crocodile make it to the U.S. and other countries? If it does, or if you or someone you know already has a drug problem and may be tempted to try Crocodile, it’s time to get addiction help – FAST.

People who take Crocodile regularly don’t usually live more than two or three years. Even those who manage to live through it and then get off the drug can suffer serious damage.

In the case of Pavlova, who recently entered a drug rehab program in a small village in Russia, the damage was something you would never expect. According to Andrei Yatsenko, the house manager of the drug program, Pavlova had “developed a speech impediment, and her pale blue eyes have something of a lobotomy patient’s vacant gaze, her motor skills are shot from the brain damage. She’ll try to walk forward and instead jolts back into something.”

The drug is nicknamed Crocodile because the skin turns greenish and scaly at the injection sites – anywhere from the feet to the forehead. The blood vessels burst and surrounding tissue dies. Bone tissue is destroyed by the drug’s acidity. This combination often results in gangrene or amputation. Pavlova went into rehab when, after a two-week binge, she started to develop gangrene in her groin, where she was injecting, and had blood poisoning. She was rushed to the emergency room where, fortunately, a representative of the drug rehab invited her to get addiction help.

Medical experts consider it somewhat of a miracle that she is still alive.

Pavlova is 27 years old; she started using drugs many years ago. First with a tar-like substance cooked from poppy seeds, a form of opium, then with heroin. But Crocodile costs 1/3 the price of heroin and is easy to make.

Crocodile is considered the ‘dirty cousin’ of morphine, but the active ingredient is codeine. The real problem is what it’s mixed with – things like gasoline, paint thinner, hydrochloric acid, iodine and red phosphorous which, believe it or not, is scraped from the striking pads on matchboxes. Can you imagine that concoction being injected into your veins?

As of last year, estimates say that up to a million people in Russia may be doing just that.

One of the worst problems with drugs is that someone who is high, or already addicted to something – as Pavlova was to heroin – or even just feeling like they want to experiment, will take just about anything. And they are usually not told what’s in it, or what it could do.

That is one very important reason to get anyone who is already taking drugs – even if they’re not addicted – through a good drug rehab program as soon as possible. And those who want to experiment should be educated so they know what they could be getting into.

I am amazed at the reaction to proposed legislation to have welfare recipients tested for drugs. It was proposed by Assemblyman Clifford Crouch. Those who failed the drug test would have to enter drug rehab and, while in rehab, would receive welfare. Amazingly enough, some people are actually against this!

Assemblyman Bill Magnarelli referred to it as “picking on one class of individuals” and said the costs would outweigh the benefits.

Getting people the addiction help they need to they can function in life and NOT have to receive welfare would be a huge boost to society. Right now supporting welfare recipients is costing the American taxpayer about $700 billion!

Not all welfare recipients are into drug or alcohol abuse, but it is true of many. It is also true that many welfare recipients actually need help – although getting supported by the government for the rest of their lives and never becoming independent probably isn’t the best help for most.

There’s a lot of controversy on this issue. While most people are sick of working hard and having their taxes pay for those who don’t work at all, especially if they’re on drugs, there are those who think getting welfare recipients drug tested will just lead to further trouble, one way or another.

Here are some of the comments on forums:

“I don’t see how adding additional misery to their lives solves ANYTHING.”

“Nothing is saved on this plan and more trouble is created. Where is the money to come from to help these people get the help they need? More government workers? Great, now the supposed dredges of society are still draining public funds. Great solution.”

“question is what would u rather have. some one that has a job driving up and down the road every day working and being under the influence of drugs with a high chance of killing some one while behind the wheel or on the job wich that some one could be u that they killed. or let these people take the hand out do thare drugs in thare home being lazy and get even more out of shape and die in thare own home with out having a chance of some innocent people getting harm.”

How do you feel about this issue?

Wow, something really hit me in the news this week. Here at Addiction Help Services, we help people find the right addiction help for their situation. And we know that a really good drug rehab program actually stops addiction – i.e., the graduate is no longer an addict. The news item that hit me this week was about drugs and alcohol in baseball – it is pushing the idea that once an addict, always an addict, it never really ends.

Here’s an excerpt:

“Ultimately, no person can help another person get sober, and remain sober, unless the person with the issue recognizes their problem and is willing to address it. The reason Josh Hamilton is sober and playing at the highest level of the big leagues now is because of the support he had around him, and still has around him. He recognized he had an addiction, got the proper treatment to turn his life around, and even today, needs to surround himself with the right people looking out for his best interests. Addiction does not disappear once rehab is over, nor does it ever go away, so it is imperative that the MLB develops a policy and opportunity to help players recovering from addiction, from when the problem becomes known, until the player retires and beyond.”

Well, first of all, re “even today, needs to surround himself with the right people looking out for his best interests’ – is that because he used to be an addict? No, that’s how life should be! Our lives should always be full of people looking out for our best interests. True, surrounding yourself with individuals who are out to get you does lead to drug addiction and alcohol abuse – but not only if you’re a former alcoholic or addict. Being in an environment like that gets to everyone.

They also say addiction never goes away – so baseball players have to be taken care of throughout their careers and, basically, until they die. I can see that if a person suffers a debilitating injury on a job due to the employers neglect of safety regulations or some such thing, then that employer has to take responsibility for the damage done. But a baseball player didn’t become an addict or alcoholic simply by virtue of becoming a baseball player or through some neglect of MLB.

But, that’s another story. The point is – addiction isn’t a disease the person is born with that doesn’t manifest until they take their first drink or get high for the first time and, then, never goes away. There is a reason, or reasons, for the addiction, and once those reasons have been dealt with in a good drug rehab program, the addiction is gone.

If it is not, then the reasons for the addiction have not been dealt with. That’s it in a nutshell.

I hate to think of people living with the idea that they can’t change, that they can never really get better.

Don’t buy it.

If drug rehab doesn’t work on someone, they didn’t do the right program.

There was a local news item last week about a woman who was using meth while breast-feeding her baby. The baby died due to methamphetamine toxicity. She had another child as well – a 19-month old baby. After authorities tested the baby for meth and found the baby tested positive, the child was taken from the mother. This is a classic example of why someone who is pregnant, or even could become pregnant, should get addiction help asap.

Methamphetamine isn’t the only thing that is passed onto a baby from mom’s body. In fact, studies have been done on umbilical cord blood – these were newborns, the baby hasn’t even had a chance to get any mother’s milk – and found nearly 300 chemicals in the cord blood.

All of those chemicals were absorbed from mom’s body. And some of them are very dangerous. They can cause all kinds of problems – everything from neurological disorders to early puberty (some girls are growing breasts and pubic hair by the time they’re 9 years old), boys growing smaller sexual organs, and so on.

Some chemicals can also cause autism and so-called learning disorders.

Of course, when it comes to drugs you are also risking having an infant with full-blown drug addiction. Getting off drugs is hard for anyone: imagine what it’s like for a baby who has no understanding of what’s going on. Horrible.

A mother’s body is a baby’s first home. If you want a healthy baby, and a healthy child as they grow up, mom’s body has to be as clean as possible. Free of chemicals and free of drugs.

If this mother is convicted, she will spend nine years in prison. I would think that knowing you killed your baby, and poisoned your other child and had that child also taken from you, would be very hard to live with. Especially when she finally gets off drugs and is in a position where she can see what she’s done with a clear head.

This week, a woman who was flying into Ohio from California got nabbed for drug trafficking. This type of arrest is fairly common these days, you can read all over the news, stories about people involved in traffic stops or other means of travel, winding up with drug charges.

What caught my eye in this story was the fact that the woman, and an entourage of 3 other individuals, had flown into an Ohio airport on a charter plane with 13 suitcases. Some of which were too heavy for one man to carry alone. Hello?… Could she possibly be any more obvious?  Did she actually think she wouldn’t get caught?

She was caught and it turns out she was trafficking bricks of pot, cocaine, drug paraphernalia and suspected drug ledgers that showed drug transactions equaling about $300,000. So, this was no small operation.

The woman is now in jail and facing up to forty years in prison, as well as up to $2 million in fines. Considering the fact that she said she was paid $60,000 by a friend to transport the suitcases, I’m sure she’s now thinking it wasn’t really that good of a deal for her.

Drug trafficking is and has been a very serious problem all over the world for decades. It’s what feeds drug addiction, which is at epidemic levels everywhere you turn.  In Russia alone, eighty people die every day due to drug abuse, just to mention one statistic.

I think it would be wise to give the drug trafficking woman a pretty hefty jail sentence, and anyone else who gets caught, for that matter. In other countries, drug trafficking is punishable by death. Forty years in prison seems pretty reasonable when you think about it from that perspective. It’s not a small crime and it contributes to so many deaths everywhere.

An amazing new study out of England showed that 1 in 5 people have either had a drug addiction problem themselves, within their family, or their circle of friends. That’s in the UK – not including Ireland – which has a population of about 70 million. So, 14 million people in the UK have had direct experience with drug addiction.

It would be nice to see a similar study done in the U.S. I’m sure we would come up with similar results.

Further breakdown showed that 1 in 50 people have been addicted to drugs, and 1 in 20 have had drug addiction in their direct family.  That boils down to about 3.5 million families who have had to cope everything drug addiction causes – break-ups, continuous upsets and frustration, worry about whether or not the addicted person is even going to be alive the next day, jobs lost, financial ruin, kids taken away by social services, and on and on and on.

It’s no wonder why more and more people are taking antidepressants and tranquilizers – and the drugs people take to cope with the stress are also going to cause addictions.

It’s a mess.

Does someone in your family have a drug problem? Do you need to find a drug rehab program that will work? Call us - we can help.

A doctor in West Virginia recently had her license suspended for treating too many drug addicts with Suboxone. She was limited to 100 patients by law, and she was treating 200. They warned her, but she didn’t get rid of those patients quickly enough and, when we was next investigated, was still treating 170, so her license was suspended.

What was she supposed to do? Tell 100 of the addicts she was treating that she could no longer help them and they’d have to go back on heroin or OxyContin? She was probably the only addiction help they were getting.

Ridiculous situation. West Virginia has one of the biggest opiate problems in the U.S. thanks to Purdue Pharma who targeted that area more than many others to get OxyContin out there.

The area has a high percentage of people living in poverty, and also has a lot of miners who are in pain from on-the-job injuries and illnesses like black lung that go with the mining territory.

It stands to reason that people in that condition are going to have a higher potential for drug addiction than others.

And not many of them are getting addiction help – there’s nowhere near enough help available to service them.

The doctor who was suspended, Lagrimas Sadorra, was, I am sure, the only hope most of those patients had.

Suboxone doesn’t make you high – people who are taking it, even though it may not be in ideal conditions, really want to clean up. And they’re being denied help.

It’s amazing that nothing would have happened to that doctor had she been giving 200 patients OxyContin – but she prescribed a drug that can truly help people, and she’s in trouble.

Do the drug companies control everything?

If you’re looking for addiction help services, give us a call.

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?

Matt Stevens, a British soccer player who was due to play in the 2011 World Cup games in New Zealand, was suspended for taking drugs. He’ll get the addicton help he needs, but since his suspension could be for as long as two years, there’s not much hope he’ll be able to play by that time.

The coach believes it’s due to becoming a celebrity. It’s true that being a celebrity opens doors that may otherwise have been closed, and there may be more temptations – more invitations to take drugs, spending more time in drug-oriented environments – you don’t have to be lined up to play in the World Cup to be offered drugs or to be a celebrity.

Playing football in college, for example, opens you up to the same temptations, and the same celebrity, even though it’s on a smaller scale. If you’re on a popular team, you’re going to be adored by fans and they’ll try to get hooked up with you one way or another – sometimes it’s with an offer of drugs.

In either case - and parents whose kids are going off to (or are in) college and will be (or are) ‘on the team’ should pay special attention to this – the person has to be prepared.

If your son, or daughter, is already taking drugs prior to going to college they should get prepated by getting addiction help services before they go. They already have problems that are driving them to drugs and those problems are likely to get worse in college where the environment is even more challenging.

Treatment for drug addiction or abuse gets down to the bottom of why the person is taking drugs in the first place and addresses those issues so they are no longer a problem. So, when they are offered drugs in college, they’re more likely to be able to say no.

Parents hope that going to college will straighten their kids out. But exactly the opposite is often true. Any problems they have now will be magnified. Get addiction help before they go – don’t wait until the problem is worse.