AHS Views

Have you ever heard of “non-addictive” drugs? Sounds a bit like an oxymoron to me, but there are many drugs in existence today, both legal and illegal, which claim to be just that – non-habit forming.
Pharmaceutical companies have come out with “non-narcotic” forms of pain and insomnia relief like Ambien and Ultram that are “safe when used as directed and non-addictive” yet the amount of people getting hooked on these prescription drugs continues to rise. Even though they say “non-narcotic”, if you read the fine print, it actually says there is “some” risk for dependency. And, even worse, allergic reactions, in rare instances, can be fatal!

There’s actually nothing new about pharmaceutical companies coming out with new non-addictive drugs. In the 1850’s, when opium addiction first reared its ugly head in the United States, morphine was used as a non-addictive alternative until it was banned in the 1920’s because of its addictive properties.

Then, there’s marijuana. There have been statements that this illegal drug is a “non-addictive” and “non-harmful” one, yet it’s one of the most abused drugs in the country.

How about LSD? Another drug said to be “non-addictive”, which is in fact one of the most harmful drugs out there. It can cause long-term damage to users as well as flashbacks (where a portion of their LSD experience reoccurs). People who abuse frequently can build a tolerance and require more and more of the drug to achieve the desired effect. It can also cause long-lasting psychoses. After using LSD and experiencing their first high, many people take it over and over again, in spite of the negative effects that are associated with the drug.

My point is that drugs alter the senses and perceptions. They create a high in the user and continue the cycle of the user wanting to take the drugs to achieve the desired effect. In many cases, it takes more and more of the drug to reach that high so the tolerance level also rises. This is true of all drugs – from LSD to marijuana to legal prescription drugs and replacement drug therapies that are so heavily promoted routinely.

Calling these drugs “non-addictive” is not only downright false, but is easily proven untrue. Not only with illegal drugs like marijuana and LSD but also with legally approved drugs like anti-depressants, prescription pain killers and replacement drug therapies.

If these drugs were non-addictive, as claimed, why does the number of people becoming addicted to them continue to increase? And why are alternative drugs being produced to “help” ease addiction symptoms? Take a hard look at the facts; you’ll realize that “non-addictive” drugs simply do not exist.

I know people who are haunted by how they treated their kids. This is especially true for alcoholics and drug addicts. Their guilt is despairingly deep - it all comes out when they finally get some addiction help.

The ironic thing about it is that their guilt over drinking or taking drugs is one of the reasons they keep doing it. The harm they do while they’re high, and the guilt they feel because of that harm, becomes one more thing they use alcohol to escape. It’s added to the list of whatever their reasons are for addiction in the first place.

You would think that guilt over the pain they’ve caused to others - like their kids - would be enough to make them stop. But, it’s not. It may increase their desire to stop, but it doesn’t make them actually able to do it. It’s an amazing phenomena that most people will actually do more of what they feel guilty about in order to pacify their guilt for doing it in the first place.

Fortunately, kids are pretty resiliant. Most are willing to forgive just about anything.  But that doesn’t necessarily reverse the damage done. Statistics show, for example, that kids who’s parent drink are four times more likely than the kids of sober parents to drink themselves.

Check out the review of The Sky Isn’t Visible from Here: Scenes from a Life - the gruesome memoir of Felicia C. Sullivan, the daughter of an addict.  It’s an extreme case, but even less extreme situations create a similar effect.

Felicia finally cut all ties with her mother - she couldn’t take it any more. But she turned into an addict despite everything she’d seen. Her first blackout from alcohol happened at 17, years later the same happened with cocaine.

There are millions of stories like hers out there. Kids with horrible childhoods, their vows to ‘never be like my parents’, but turning into mirror images nevertheless.

Addiction help services can change all that. Check it out.

Most people probably don’t think of drug addicts as loving, responsible fathers. But being an addict isn’t something that only happens to free-wheeling singles who spend their nights on the town. Check out this story about Benjamin Rodriguez. A father who died recently after a 20 year battle with drugs - who is sorely missed by his wife and kids. I have no idea what kind of addiction help Benjamin got, if any, but if he’d had good treatment there’s a very good chance he’d be alive today. And happy and healthy.

Addiction is devastating for a family. Whether the problem is drugs or alcohol, the wife or husband and children suffer immeasurably. They often lose everything they have - homes, cars, savings. Families often break up over it leaving single moms trying to raise three kids on their own or the kids living with relatives or in the care of social services. Fathers in prison, or homeless. It’s a mess.

If someone in your family needs addiction help, you’ll save a lot of lives from a lot of misery if you make sure they get that help. Prescription drug addiction is making the situation even worse - people from all walks of life are becoming drug addicts. And more and more lives are being ruined by it. Competent addiction help services can turn it all around. Don’t wait another day.

Illinois has come up with some innovative ways to fund drug courts. They’re adding $5 onto each traffic ticket and $10 onto each felony conviction. Especially since so many traffic accidents are caused by people who are drinking or taking drugs while driving and so many felony convictions now involved drug-related crime. But drug court isn’t the right place to get addiction help. By that time, that person you care about has already crossed the line into some kind of criminal activity. They have already hurt someone, and sometimes it’s a member of their own family, may even have killed someone, or they’ve stolen or damaged someone else’s property.

Addiction help really isn’t hard to come by. One of the reasons it gets to the point of criminality is because no one takes the bull by the horns to do something about it.

It’s amazing to consider that in one short block of just about any city or town there are several households dealing with alcohol or drug addiction every day, who don’t try to get addiction help and, more than nine times out of ten don’t even admit they have a problem.

If you are living in one of those households, do something to get the person the addiction help services they need. The earlier alcohol and drug addiction and abuse problems are caught, the higher the chances of successful rehab and recovery. But, it’s never too late. Make the decision to do something about it, and then do it. Finding the addiction help services you or a loved one needs will change your life, and it may save theirs.

September is National Alcohol and Drug Addiction Recovery month but according to a recent survey from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, less than 2% of Americans who need addiction help are even attempting to get it.

While it’s true we need to help those who do get addiction help to recover, there has to be an all out effort to educate people on what alcohol and drug addiction or abuse actually are if we want to put anymore than a tiny dent in the problem.

Many people think they don’t have a problem. Who’s going to tell them they do? Their family members have probably been telling them, they’ve probably even realized it themselves - although they won’t admit it and continually deny it to others. Nevertheless, until they get addiction help, nothing’s going to change.

If you have someone in your life who needs addiction help services - whether the problem is drugs, alcohol, or even prescription drugs - make September the month you’re going to do something about it.

Oklahoma has it bad. Drug and alcohol addiction in Oklahoma contributes to 85 percent of homicides, 80 percent of prison incarcerations and 75 percent of divorce, and costs the state about $5.8 billion a year - which is enough to get about 10% of the entire population of Oklahoma through a long-term residential drug rehab program that will give them the addiction help they need.

Spending that money on addiction help would seem to be the best approach. You’d get 300,000 people off alcohol or drugs - that’s 10% of the entire state population. Instead, they spend about $1.4 billion dollars in direct costs - defined as trying to prevent addiction, locking up people who commit crimes because of addiction, and treating addicts. How much is spent getting addicts addiction help wasn’t specified but it’s obviously not anywhere enough.

The other $4.4 billion is “indirect” costs such as “financial losses from premature deaths, imprisonment and school dropouts.”

If the money was spent getting addiction help serivces for those who need it, very few of those other expenses would be necessary. And you pretty much would have handled at least those with serious addiction problems with one year’s budget. Then money can go into prevention so Oklahoma doesn’t get into that much trouble again.

Is spending money on effective addiction help services just too simple or something? What am I missing?

Some people wonder why they don’t get the reaction they expect when they try to get someone they care about to stop taking drugs. Well, it’s just not that easy. Take this  recent news story about a drug problem in Long Island, for example. These parents did everything they could to get their 18-year-old daughter the drug addiction help she needed - but, now, she’s dead.

In the news story, Barbara Keller, the executive director of the Suffolk Coalition to Prevent Alcohol and Drug Dependencies, said that parents hesitate to seek professional help for themselves and their families. “If you know your loved one; you know when something is not right,” she said. “Trust your instincts.”

A drug addict will do everything they can to convince you there’s no problem. They’ll hide it from you, deny it, lie to you, convince you they can stop whenever they want - they’ll even take your money, or sell your TV. Really, they’ll say or do anything. They’re in the grip of something much more powerful than someone who has not been in their position can understand. And they need addiction help.

If you think there’s a problem, there probably is. Follow Ms. Keller’s advice. Trust your instincts, and call Addiction Help Services if you don’t know where to go from there.

I realized something today - people don’t understand addiction well enough to know when someone they know is addicted to drugs or alcohol. Here’s an interesting article about recognizing drug addiction that might shed some light on it. The article defines drug addiction as “the compulsive and continued use of a drug, or the loss of control over its use, despite adverse consequences produced by the drug.” So, when you see that, you know it’s time to get the person some addiction help.

Usually, the person will tell you that their drug use is under their control. That they can stop anytime they want.  You can tell them that it’s upsetting you a lot and it makes you unhappy. Under those circumstances, if the person is a family member, spouse, or someone with whom you have some interdependency - in other words, someone who considers they have some responsbility for your happiness - then they will stop.

If they don’t stop, they’re addicted. Really, it’s as simple as that. And it doesn’t matter if the problem is with street drugs, alcohol, or even prescription drug addiction - if they see it’s having negative consequences and they don’t stop, it’s because they can’t.

You need to talk to them about getting some kind of drug addiction help - a drug detox, drug rehab, whatever. If they refuse, if they insist they don’t have a problem, get some help. Call an interventionist. Addiction Help Services offers intervention services and can also help find a good drug detox, drug rehab and any other help you need.

Ronnell Brandon, a student athlete at Harrisonburg High School, was recently accused of selling drugs to his teammates. Brandon supposedly sold drugs “to take away the pain of hits.”  Since it happened in Virginia and the pills were to take away pain, I’ll make a wild guess and say he was selling OxyContin.  It is alleged that 10 of his teammates used the drugs. If the law of averages holds true, at least two or three of the ten will need drug addiction help.

Authorities have confirmed that coaches had knowledge of the transactions. “It is also apparent that this information and knowledge was known by not only the players themselves but also several coaches of the Harrisonburg High School football (team),” said Harrison Police Sgt. Chris Rush of the Charge Gang Task Force in his affidavit.

The head coach, Tim Sarver, was tipped off on at least two occasions and apparently asked the player about it. Coach Sarver says he hears rumors every year. He also said he checked it out and the player denied it. Another coach, David Long, talked to Brandon and he again denied it. Let me think … hmmmm, a potential drug dealer lying to an authority figure about drug dealing. Shocking. Hopefully, the coaching staff wasn’t more concerned about winning than finding out if student athletes were on drugs. How many kids on that team actually need addiction help and their problem is being ignored to win games?

If you think this is an isolated incident of painkiller abuse in high school sports, well please wake up. Not only are many high school athletes taking drugs – in this school, the 10 players probably represent 20% of the team - a good percentage of them probably even need addiction help.

What does this mean for college and professional sports?  I promise it isn’t going to be a pretty picture. Parents of student athletes should be alert to the possibility of drug use, especially if your son or daughter is injured. This holds true for cheerleaders as well. You don’t want to be looking for addiction help services for your teenager.

Activists Marianne Skolek and Barbara Van Rooyan have targeted Purdue Pharma executives for their role in causing an epidemic of drug addiction in this country by promoting OxyContin as safe. Both women lost a child to OxyContin. They are also accusing the FDA of not acting fast enough or at all to put an end to the problems caused by this dangerous drug. Connecticut Attorney General, Richard Blumenthal, has sued the FDA over their lack of action and irresponsibility. The amount of addiction help needed in several states could cost more than the total fine Purdue paid - $635 million. When you add the cost of investigations, prescription monitoring systems and prison time for OxyContin-related crime to OxyContin addiction, the numbers are just to high to calculate.

The fact that Purdue executives were allowed to get off without any jail time is just the clever work of high-priced lawyer Rudy Giuliani.

Look at it this way: In the last 15 days there have been about 50 crimes related to OxyContin reported by local newspapers across the country. In Sacramento, California, Special Agent In Charge, Gordon Taylor, says “we have seen a certain up tick in OxyContin investigations in pretty much the whole region. We typically go out with a whole squad, 10 investigators, more in some cases.” In Tazewell County, Virginia, the DEA estimates that 80 to 95% of the crime is OxyContin related.

But the crime is not isolated to those areas, it has to be happening all over the country all the time. The cost to local police, the FBI and the DEA has to be in the hundreds of millions a year. Yet Purdue pays nothing and receives money for every pill obtained legally or stolen. Why is congress spending time investigating steroid use by a hundred baseball players when the real problem is right under their nose? Drug addiction help services alone will cost the U.S. hundreds of millions of dollars, should Purdue be fined again and made to clean up their mess?