AHS Views

You would think that medical personnel would be aware of the dangers of prescription drugs. But, on second thought, they epitomize the medical paradigm and it’s logical that the first place they’d look to solve their problems is in the medicine cabinet - which is probably why so many are in need of addiction help.

In three South Carolina counties, 1 in 100 nurses are abusing prescription drugs and many as already in treatment for prescription drug addiction. As are many M.D.s, dentists, and so on.

According to a recent article, the major drugs nurses are taking are prescription painkillers such as OxyContin. Nurses have to lift patients and are on their feet for long shifts and, consequently, are often in pain. So, they take the drugs. It may start with a prescription but eventually they start basically stealing the drugs from the hospital where they work.

Addiction help services can help nurses with their problems and if you know nurses who are constantly in pain, or were but don’t seem to be anymore despite the fact that they didn’t receive any treatment, you should suspect the possibility of prescription drug abuse or addiction.

Also, you might want to encourage them to seek help from physical therapists or alternative practitioners such as chiropractors and acupunturists. Since they are part of the medical establishment, which is often against such alternatives, they may not ‘believe’ in them or feel it’s appropriate to go to them.

However, when the alternative is prescription drug addiction and the possibility of having their license taken away or being in so much pain they can no longer practice their chosen career, it might be something they’ll consider.

If not, the only other option might be drugs - and that might well lead to the need for addiction help services. We need nurses. If you know one who might be in trouble, help them out.

In a period of just three months, 16 people died from drug overdoses in Barrow County, Georgia. 13 of them died from an overdose of prescription drugs and the majority of those were related to OxyContin. Many of those lives could have been saved if they’d received the addiction help they needed.

A prescription drug addiction counsellor commented that prescription painkiller abuse is rampant in Barrow and in other areas of metro Atlanta.

A child advocate from a Barrow County agency said that more and more of the parents of kids she’s trying to help have parents who are addicted to prescription drugs. “The parents are usually sleeping or high or out getting the drugs,” she said.

Prescription drugs kind of creep up on you. People think they’re safe because they come from a doctor. But they’re just as dangerous and addictive as street drugs. Unfortunately, many people don’t find that out until they’re already hooked.

Make sure anyone you know who is taking prescription painkillers gets the addiction help services they need before their problem becomes serious.

Kay Sanford of the North Carolina Depatment of Health said “methadone may be the most underrated problem in drug abuse in the country today.” And the need for addiction help services for methadone abuse is more prevalent then ever.

OxyContin is so dangerous that many doctors have started prescribing methadone as an alternative painkiller. But kids are getting it from their parents’ medicine cabinets, and its finding it’s way to the street.

Methadone used to be given to heroin addicts who couldn’t stop using heroin. Now it’s being given to people who can’t stop OxyContin. It’s unfortunate that these people aren’t getting the addiction help they need to get off drugs instead of being given methadone as a substitute.

Like all prescriptions drugs, Methadone is dangerous. If not taken correctly, it can kill you. Caleb Bevil from Raleigh, North Carolina, died from a methadone overdose last Saturday at only 12 years old. My heart goes out to his family. It’s a real tragedy for both them and the community.

In Cleveland County, North Carolina, Lt. Joel Shores lists methadone, along with Xanax and hydrocodone, as one of the many prescription drugs he’s seeing on the streets.

In New Hampshire, methadone abuse is being described as a “troubling trend”.

Deaths attributed to methadone and other prescription drugs have quadrupled since 2002. If you need addiction help for methadone, or any prescription drug, please find out how to get it.

Every day there are news stories about OxyContin addiction. Jennifer is 16 years old. She’s finally getting the addiction help she needs, but she had already been taking drugs for three years by the time she got treatment.

She started with marijuana at 13, moved onto alcohol but didn’t like it, then tried Vicodin and Percocet. Before long she was crushing and snorting OxyContin before school, during school, after school, in the evening and at night.

Where did she get the drugs? Occasionally she had to pay for them - that’s expensive, up to $50 a pill - but usually she was given them by her boyfriend or other friends in school. They probably got them from their parents’ medicine cabinets. God knows how many of those kids need addiction help. And there’s a good chance some of the parents need help, too.

Jennifer parents and teachers knew nothing about it. Her teachers thought she was tired or just not paying attention. She finally confessed to her father who got her addiction help, and she’s now clean.

Don’t be too quick to buy ‘I’m just tired’ or any other excuse or explanation your kids might give you for behavior that doesn’t seem quite right. Check it out very thoroughly - if a 16-year-old is constantly tired, there’s something wrong. They might be sick - take them to a doctor and find out - or they might be taking drugs.

Jennifer is one of the lucky ones. Her next day could have been her last - it’s happened to many other kids. Don’t take it lightly, don’t brush it off, don’t buy excuses. Find out what’s going on, and get your kids the addiction help services they need.

In Glenn Falls, New York, heroin abuse is on the rise. According to Police Chief, Joe Bethal, the problem may be caused by people switching from OxyContin and other prescription painkillers to heroin when what they really need is addiction help.

“One of the reasons may be because of prescription drug abuse. The pharmaceutical companies have manufactured quite a large amount of prescription opiate-based painkillers and we know they’re out there in the homes and the medicine cabinets,” said Chief Bethal.

He hit the nail right on the head. Pharmaceutical companies (Purdue Pharma, when it comes to OxyContin) are producing endless amounts of pain killers, and they will sell as many as they can.

If you can sell OxyContin to 34 internet pharmacies - enough OxyContin to fill 100 million prescriptions - you know there isn’t any discrimination. Anyone can become addicted to prescription pain killers. Warren County Undersheriff Robert Swan said, “It’s not just seen in one area, one group or a specific gender. It covers everyone”. Switching from prescription painkillers to heroin is a bad choice. As the Chief says, getting addiction help services is not a crime.

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.

The onslaught of Oxycontin addiction and dependency is going to be the cause of more need for drug addiction help for heroin addicts. In 2007 a huge crop of opium from Afghanistan drove down the price of heroin. At Addiction Help Services we are starting to see or hear of people switching from OxyContin to heroin because of the cost and an inability to get prescriptions filled.

In 2008 you can expect to see more of the same because Afghanistan’s output is expected to be ’shockingly’ high  - although perhaps not quite as large as 2007 if government crackdowns are successful. Neverthless, the price of heroin should continue to stay low, and may come down even further. You can buy heroin for as little as $3 dollars a bag in Ohio and other places.

With prescription painkillers becoming the drug of choice among high school students from Kentucky to Ottawa you can expect heroin addiction will follow suit as those abusing painkillers discover that heroin is cheaper.

As long as prescription painkillers and other prescription drugs remain easy to get, their use will boost the demand for heroin and other street drugs, and addiction help will be needed by many more people.

A lot of people get the alcohol or drug treatment they need through drug court. Here’s the story of one young Kentucky woman, a mother, who started taking drugs and drinking casually while she was a senior in high school. It seems she wasn’t really interested in drugs, but because the people she hung around with took them and they were conveniently available, she went along with it. It took five long years before she got the addiction help she needed, and that was only after an overdose.

Her story demonstrates how easy it is to fall into the trap of drugs. And to get addicted. As a high school senior she started going out with an older guy who took drugs, drank, smoked, and so on. Things she had never done, and she didn’t know anyone else who did. She tried drugs out of curiosity, really. She continued the relationship, and the association with people who took drugs. Truthfully, had she stopped seeing this guy early enough she probably would have gone back to her old drug-free friends and her life would have turned out just fine.

Instead she wound up a 22-year-old addict shooting cocaine, morphine and OxyContin - which was very easy to get in her Kentucky hometown. She was also living a life of crime to support her habit. Within a short time, she lost everything she had.

This was a girl who, while still going to school, worked, bought a car and rented a place to live - that’s quite an exceptional teenager. But drugs ruined it all.

When she overdosed there was some kind of crime involved because she ended up in the justice system. She begged for drug court - which offers drug rehab instead of jail so the offender can get the addiction help they need.

Fortunately, she made it. But for every story like this, there are thousands of drug addicts who never get the addiction help they need and never have a chance to get their life under control.

If you’re in trouble with drugs or alcohol and are looking for drug rehab in Kentucky, give us a call. We can help you find the addiction help services you need to get out of the trap and get your life back.

When will Purdue Pharmacy and the other manufacturers of painkillers step forward to help the thousands of people who became addicted to OxyContin, Percocet or Vicodin? “Nearly a decade after OxyContin slammed into southwestern Virginia and much of Appalachia, the abuse of prescription painkillers in the region is worse the ever, police and public officials say,” (Nick Miroff, Washington Post). Who’s going to pay for the addiction help they need?

One person who could have used addiction help was Jeff Trapp. He went through $60,000 of his retirement savings supporting his habit. Jeff is now on methadone and drives 120 miles a day to a clinic to get his dose. He spends $18 dollars a day at the clinic ($540 a month) and probably $300 dollars a week on gas ($1200 a month).

Would things be different if the addiction help he needed had been available? Maybe not, 37% of the people in coal mining regions have ended up on disability. But I would say none of these people were warned about the dangers of OxyContin or painkiller addiction and that may have helped Jeff and countless others.

OxyContin addiction and dependency has cost people like Jeff far more then the $640 million Purdue Pharmacy has paid. Does anyone know how much Purdue has made selling these drugs to unsuspecting people?

If you or anyone you know needs help with any kind of drug or alcohol addiction, call Addiction Help Services.

I read an article in The Facts about the extent of prescription drug addiction, specifically painkillers, in the U.S. When I worked in a drug rehab facility the biggest problems were heroin, cocaine and methamphetamine. They’re still big problems – it hasn’t gotten any better – but, according to that article, even in 2003 there were 15 million people in the U.S. taking prescription drugs, mostly painkillers, for non-medical reasons. How many of these are going to need drug rehab to get off them?

OxyContin, Percodan, Percocet, Vicoden and Darvocet, the painkillers being referred to, are opioids, similar to heroin. They are highly addictive. I’ve known a few painkiller addicts who went from one doctor to another faking injuries, aches, pains and illnesses to get prescriptions. One told a doctor she had an allergy to the painkillers she was prescribed after surgery and asked for a different, stronger, drug. She got the new prescription she asked for, but also kept the pills from the first one. She wound up taking both of them and wound up addicted. She eventually needed drug rehab.

Is it possible for doctors to write a prescription for a drug rehab program instead of drugs? If not, that might be a solution.