AHS Views

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.

Methadone is commonly given to heroin addicts (as well as morphine and other opioid users) to “treat” their dependence and withdrawal symptoms. It is prescribed to addicts every day, all over the US. It’s considered a way of helping people to get past their addiction and dependence to illegal street drugs.

The unfortunate thing about methadone is that it’s just as addicting, if not more so, than the heroin that they were shooting up, snorting or smoking. Once patients are given methadone, they just keep getting prescribed. This can go on for years and years – it’s called methadone maintenance.

What’s really fascinating to me is that it takes about a week to get through heroin detox. And, it can be done with other means, like vitamins, healthy diet, other alternative drugs that are less addicting and much easier to wean off of (in some cases), and the patient can fully rid their body of the powerful drug.

My question is, why on earth would you want to move to a different addictive drug, to become a slave to and dependent on, instead of a week of heroin detox? It has also been proven that methadone detox can be worse for patients than that of heroin. Would you really want to go stand in line for your methadone every day for years and years?

If I really take a look at this problem, it would appear that most people make the switch from the illegal drugs to methadone because it’s offered as “help” to addicts from the government. And, while I believe that the intentions are not horrible, the solution that has been put in place certainly is.

What if, and this is a big what if, the government used the resources that pay for methadone, to actually provide detox and addiction help facilities for addicts instead of drugging them? If you want to stop taking heroin, you go to treatment and properly go through the steps of drug detox and then drug rehab. What a concept, right? To actually get people fully off of drugs…

If you’ve ever found yourself looking for detox or rehab services, especially state funded programs, I’m sure you’ve experienced trouble locating an open bed. I personally hear the heartbreaking stories of families who don’t have enough money for private pay rehab, who have no options, on a daily basis. What’s available to the opioid addicts? Currently the answer is more drugs.

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.