AHS Views

In Portland, Oregon, prescription drugs and heroin are the drugs of choice. At Reed College in Portland, one student died from a heroin overdose and two others came close to it in the last few months. If Reed is like any other school, 7% of the students are addicted to alcohol and 20% need some type of addiction help for drugs, alcohol, or both.

Teachers and students alike will also be using prescription stimulants (Ritalin and Adderall) like they are coffee - except those drugs are more similar to cocaine than coffee. In a recent survey it was found that 20% of scientists use Ritalin and other stimulants, and 30% of college students use Ritalin or Adderall.

In Portland, heroin is and has been a drug problem for a long time. Not cracking down on this problem in the city may be the reason Reed is now having a problem.

In most areas of the country at least 89% of students know heroin is dangerous, and 11% think it is safe once or twice a week. That doesn’t mean 11% will try it, but enough of them will, and you will definitely end up with heroin addicts and some deaths.

School administrators have their work cut out for them. Obviously martial law won’t work.  In a school like Reed, where students have a mind of their own, drug education may help.  Students from a college like this can also do more to protect their classmates with intervention and safety measures. If your friends or fellow students are taking drugs or drinking, get them the drug addiction help they need.

According to a study conducted by Dr. Denise Herd of the University of California at Berkeley, rappers - whose music used to warn against drugs - are now contributing to drug addiction and the need for more drug addiction help.

As role models for many of America’s youth, shouldn’t rappers try to improve society and not glorify the use of drugs?

Dr. Herd studied 341 of the most popular rap songs from 1979 to 1997. She found that after 1993, 69% of rap songs contained positive references to drug use. Compare that to only 11% between 1979 and 1984.

I would have to say that is remarkable and disgusting. Do inner city and urban parents want their kids listening to someone who promotes drugs to them?

Sixty percent of prison populations are minorities and 70% of those in prison have an addiction problem. 12% of black males in their twenties are in prison and a large percentage also have drug problems.

I wonder why rappers as a group would want to make positive references to drug use and make an at-risk group even more at risk. Are there any famous rappers out there who would start a non profit or a coalition to warn young people about abusing drugs instead of making it the thing to do in a rap song? Getting drug addiction help services is not always easy - staying drug free is your best bet.

If you started taking OxyContin and ended up needing drug addiction help for any reason, here is what the FDA has to say: “The fact that the sponsor misrepresented OxyContin’s addictive potential does not negate the findings of safety and effectiveness of the drug when used properly.” That’s from Susan Cruzan, FDA spokeswoman.

In case you didn’t know, Purdue Pharma pled guilty in May 2007 to falsely advertising OxyContin as having a low potential for addiction. I’m not sure if the FDA has figured out that OxyContin is highly addictive and is harder to get off of than heroin.  OxyContin was originally approved for terminal cancer patients in extreme pain. Perhaps Purdue Pharma decided that it had little addictive potential because people who used it “properly” would die anyway.

While that may be harsh, one ongoing problem we have in this country because of misuse is a “national wave of pharmacy robberies.” Another problem is people who have become dependent on the drug. The FDA seems to hide behind the word addiction and, since people who are dependent are not addicted by their definition, no other action by the FDA is necessary.

The problems and costs of OxyContin addiction or dependency are ongoing for everyone except Purdue. Robberies won’t matter to Purdue because the drugs stolen from pharmacies are paid for, as are the drugs purchased to replace them – in other words, whether the drugs are legally or illegally obtained, Purdue Pharma cashes in. Of course legal costs, investigative costs, and prison costs are all paid for by us taxpayers. And we also foot the bill for the hundreds of publicly-funded drug detox and drug rehab centers. Drug addiction help for OxyContin keeps us busy here at Addiction Help Services.

In a Miami Herald article about a psychologist being investigated for drug abuse, Eulinda Jackson, a spokesperson for the Department of Health said “everything about this case is confidential”, including the psychologist’s name and whether or not he’s still practicing. Dr. Sidney Wolfe of the Washington-based consumer group Public Citizen commented that ‘doctors like to protect doctors,” and Raymond Pomm, head of the group that handles the impaired physicians’ program said ”If we don’t protect them, they won’t come knocking on the door.” A fine state of affairs - the medical professionals we depend on to take care of our health not only have drug problems themselves, their level of ethics is so low that if there’s a chance anyone will find out they have a problem, they won’t even get the addiction help services they need. What about their responsbility to their patients?

I realize that we’re not talking about all doctors by a long shot and I also realize that doctors are human like everyone else and have the same problems as anyone has who is driven to drugs or alcohol. But, they also hold a position of public trust that should not be violated or compromised. How can a doctor who’s stoned possibly guarantee that he will do no harm to his patients?

There are plenty of options out there for doctors.  A private, confidential Florida drug detox centers would be their first step.

The drug problem the psychologist written about in the article had is now being addressed - but only because his ex-wife saw drugs and drug paraphernalia at his house and wrote a letter to the authorities about it. If you know a doctor with a drug or alcohol problem, do them a favor and do the same thing. Write that letter. He will not only get the drug addiction help he needs, you could save his career, his life, and the lives of some of his patients.

Amy Winehouse is apparently going back into rehab. She was admitted to a facility in January where she stayed for only two weeks, and she now admits that she may need more help. She’s right - and this move was predictable. The number of people who could be helped with a drug or alcohol problem in two weeks could probably be counted on one hand - especially in the kind of severe situation Amy was in. It’s simply not enough time to get the drug addiction help you need. Staying off drugs for two weeks may help the person dry out, but the chances of them staying that way are virtually nil.

When a person stops drinking or taking drugs for a couple of weeks it’s a big change for them, they might feel invincible or like that’s all they need. But that’s not the case. They’re going to leave the facility and go right back into the problems that caused their alcohol or drug abuse in the first place.

With everything that’s known about drug rehab and what it really takes to get addiction help these days, it surprises me that anyone - doctor, rehab counselor, or drug addict - could possibly think two weeks is going to be enough.

If you know someone with an alcohol or drug addiction problem, do them, and yourself, a favor: don’t even bother with short-term rehab like that. Get them the alcohol or addiction help services they really need in the first place.  

St. Joseph’s Hospital’s recent shocking ER visit by nine girls aged 14 years old or younger after having downed a dangerous painkiller should be a wake up call for parents in St. Joseph, Missouri. Some people might see this as just another 10 (including the boy who gave it to them) kids taking drugs. It might not seem important in the overall scheme things, but this is not just an isolated incident – it’s a trend. More and more kids that age have access to those drugs – and they’re giving them to their friends, and some of those friends are ending up in need of addiction help services, or in the ER, or in the morgue..

The drug the kids took was methadone – very similar to heroin, just as addictive, and just as hard to stop. In fact, one in four people who try heroin end up addicted  That means that, crying in the hospital or not, two of those girls may have liked the drug enough to try it again.

The boy who was passing it out may like the drug, or maybe he was hoping to get one or more of the girls stoned enough to have either a pleasant experience together or possibly something more, like sex.

The girls are young so, hopefully, sex was not his primary goal. Perhaps he thought it would be funny to see these girls stumbling around. Maybe he didn’t know he was passing out methadone. Who knows? There are a lot of unanswered questions about this story.

Nevertheless, six percent of 12 and 13-year-olds have misused drugs. These drugs are far more dangerous than they used to be, and easier to get. If you or someone in your family need addiction help, it’s never too soon to get it.

Thanks for your comments on the recent blogs on methadone. One thing I want to clarify is that it is not our intention to suggest that someone who’s been through drug rehab 17 times, has had migraines most of their life, or has degenerative physical problems or injuries that make it impossible to live a normal life should not take methadone. That’s not the point. Those are extreme circumstances and, as such, they call for extreme measures.

We’re concerned about the people who don’t have extreme situations and still wind up on methadone, or other potentially dangerous drugs and with the irresponsible prescribing of methadone and keeping people parked on it for years without ever really putting in the effort to get them through a drug rehab, without ever attempting to get them properly detox’d so they can get through withdrawal safely and without excruciating pain, without ever attempting to get their bodies back to, or maybe for the first time, functioning properly, without ever attempting to get to the bottom of why they started taking drugs in the first place and helping them resolve those issues.

This is a labor of love. We don’t see people on drugs as contemptible – although people who keep others on drugs unnecessarily or lead them to think that they can’t do otherwise are a different story. But we do see that, at times, drugs are necessary.

I would really appreciate the names of those 17 drug treatment or other programs that people have been to that did not work for them. We help people find addiction help services that have a comparatively good success rate and are suited to their situation. We would really like to know which ones you went to so we can be sure not to recommend them to others.

I would also appreciate knowing more about why you started taking drugs in the first place. Thanks again for responding.

If you want to know how crazy drugs can make you, dig this: a former patient of a methadone clinic stole methadone from the clinic. Why would he do that? He can just go in there and get it. I would say it’s pretty obvious that whatever treatment he got while he was a patient in the clinic didn’t work. Which is not surprising - addiction help that works requires a lot more than giving the person another drug.

The problem with methadone clinics, and other treatment that simply substitutes one drug for another, is that it does not address the reason the person was taking drugs in the first place. You can mask the physical cravings with another drug, but the problems the person has that drove them to drug addiction will continue.

It’s like taking painkillers to reduce the pain of a broken leg without setting the bones and doing all the follow up care that enables the bones to heal - the leg will remain broken.

If you really want to help someone get off drugs, make sure the addiction help services he gets doesn’t simply trade one problem for another. Get down to the bottom of things - it will get the person off drugs, and it will fix whatever was broken in the first place so he can live his life. 

According to a 2006 survey from the Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services, 71% of all treatment admissions were related to alcohol. It’s not surprising that alcohol is the leading reason why people seek addiction help in Nebraska.
The Midwest has had lots of alcohol problems. Even high school students commonly binge drink.

Addiction to methamphetamines was also on the list at 13% of admissions, as is cocaine and marijuana. What’s missing is addiction to prescription drugs like OxyContin, Vicodin, Ritalin or Adderall. It would be almost impossible that no one entered treatment for any prescription drugs. The survey is from 2006 but addiction to prescription drugs was already on its way to being an epidemic.

Nebraska and the rest of the Midwest needs to do something about underage drinking, that’s for sure. But it seems impossible that not many people went to treatment for prescription drug addiction, heroin or methadone. Find the addiction help services you or your family needs.

People need to be aware of who needs addiction help and the magnitude of the prescription drug addiction problem.

Eric F. Landeros and Florencio Reyes Jr. died on Sunday from an apparent overdose of oxycodone. Senseless deaths caused by prescription drug abuse is something we will be reading about for years. One of the primary problems is that so many people think painkillers, depressants and sleeping pills are safe. They are made by drug companies and prescribed by doctors. People feel safe when taking them even when they aren’t prescribed.  As many as 25% of people between the ages of 18 to 26 take prescription drugs. In some parts of the country 20% of high school age kids are also taking prescription drugs without a prescription from a doctor. In Southern, Michigan 37% of kids are taking prescription drugs with and without prescriptions. With those kinds of numbers being put on the boards a lot of addiction help services will be needed