AHS Views

Now that more people in Kentucky are dying from prescription drug abuse and addiction than from car wrecks, lawmakers and a lot of other people are desperate to find ways to get the situation under control. Having more addiction help facilities and treatment programs available is one very good thing, but there’s a lot more to be done.

For example, one of the major problems we have to get a handle on is helping doctors figure out who is getting prescriptions from them just to get high or to sell the drugs to others. It will also tell them about patients who have a legitimate reason for being on a drug, but have been now taking it for far too long. They need to stop either because they’re already addicted, or they will become addicted very soon. A good example of this is people who started taking OxyContin and other painkillers after surgery, an injury, etc. They get hooked on the drug and are still taking it despite the fact that they no longer really need it for that injury. In other words, they are now dealing with OxyContin addiction.

To help in this, a bill was just passed requiring that all doctors use the prescription drug monitoring system – an electronic database hooked up to other doctors, pharmacies, hospitals, out-patient clinics and anywhere else a person could get prescription drugs legally. When the doctors check this database, they can see which patients have been getting which drugs from whom and how often. Along with examining and speaking with the patient, they can use this info to determine whether or not the patient really needs the drug for medical reasons – other than addiction.

Part of the bill also put this database into the hands of the attorney-generals office so they could also use it to monitor doctors who are over-prescribing. Hard to believe, but it’s true, that unethical doctors are one of the big problems leading to prescription drug addiction.

That part of the bill was not passed, however, maybe just the fact that the unethical doctors are in this database and that other doctors, as well as pharmacists, hospital staff, nurses, and so on, are going to be digging into the database as they treat patients, will be enough to make them back off a little.

In any case, at least using the prescription drug monitoring system will help some.

This might not seem like great news for those who are hooked on prescription drugs but, in fact, it is. With people dying from these drugs left, right and center, anything that can help get you off them
is good.

Kids who drink a little or take drugs are much more likely to use them as much or even more when they go to university or college. Alcohol, and some drugs, are so acceptable in colleges that they are encouraged by the culture to step things up. As they do so, they’re even more likely to become heavy drinkers and alcoholics when they get out of school and a significant percentage of them will need professional alcohol or drug addiction help to quit.

Fortunately, many universities and colleges are now offering alcohol and drug education. University of Western Washington is one of the latest to step up to the plate and offer these services for all students, including those who have just arrived.

They will also soon be putting up ‘informative’ posters around their campus and on student doors and will have advisers going to classrooms to talk to the new students.
They’re basing this on a study done about 10 years ago – the actions done included putting door-knockers on dorms and ads in a campus newspaper. It reduced alcoholism by 20 percent over the three years that the campaign ran.

It’s too bad that school resources, which are often short to begin with, have to be spent on this kind of deterrent – parents are paying for their kids to go to college for an education that will set them up to do well in their life careers, not to get them to stop drinking or not get caught up in the drinking culture in their school.

But, really, it’s going to come down to the parents. Parents have to be aware that they have to handle the problem well before university comes around.

The younger kids start to drink, the higher the chances they’ll continue.

If you can keep them from drinking while in their early and mid-teens, the chances of them remaining sober are 50% greater than if they drank or took drugs at that age.

If you can keep them from drinking in high school, there’s less chance they will fall prey to the alcohol culture when they get into college.

And, if they can avoid getting into the alcohol or drug culture in college, they’re less likely to drink when they leave.

But it’s really vital that parents start this at a very young age. Kids are exposed to drinking and drugs at a very young age; they need to be prepared. They need to already understand the dangers of what they would be getting into if they drank or took drugs BEFORE they are offered them.

There are many resources available to help parents educate their kids – just look online for alcohol or drug education and the info will be there.

And if you can’t keep them from drinking or taking drugs, you must get them into a good drug or alcohol rehab program as soon as possible – one that will give them that education, and get down to the bottom of why they’re taking drugs or drinking in the first place, and help them with those issues so they can stop – regardless of their environment.

Of course, one of the best ways to learn is by example. If parents don’t use alcohol or drugs as solutions to problems or to ‘have a good time’, the kids are more likely to follow in their footsteps.

This applies to prescription drugs as well as street drugs. Prescription drug addiction is now just as common as with other drugs.

Bottom line: If you look for non-drug solutions to enhance your own physical and emotional well-being, and teach your kids to do the same, you’re off to a very good start.

Alcohol and drugs ruin lives. They are now so common and available that teaching your kids about them is a vital step in raising them.

Officials in Tennessee are predicting a surge in heroin addiction. Why? Is there a bumper crop of poppies in Afghanistan? Have the Mexican drug cartels pumped up their marketing efforts or lowered their heroin prices? No. It’s because there are so many people suffering from OxyContin addiction and addiction to other painkillers and prescription drugs, and those drugs are SO expensive, that the addicts are switching to heroin.

Why aren’t they just getting addiction help to overcome their problem? Well, that’s the nature of addiction; people don’t just walk into a drug addiction treatment center because they can no longer afford to support their addiction. They find ways to get the money – usually illegal and dangerous – or they find cheaper drugs.

Are we talking about druggies shooting up in alleys? No. We’re talking about the middle class – white collar workers and high school and college students coming from nice homes.

They tend to snort or smoke heroin instead of injecting it – that makes it more socially acceptable AND they have the false idea that if you don’t inject it, it’s less addictive – and dealers will even deliver to their homes, offices and dorm rooms.

It’s a regular gourmet take-out and delivery.

And instead of paying $30 to $80 per pill for OxyContin, hydrocodone or other prescription drugs, they only pay $10.

Prescription drug addiction is more common than you might think. It’s epidemic all over the U.S., and there’s a good chance that someone you are close to has a prescription drug addiction or abuse problem – your kids, some of their friends, your nieces or nephews, even your spouse.

If you need addiction help for prescription drugs – for yourself or anyone else – contact Addiction Help Services. Don’t let your family and friends turn into heroin addicts. Now is the time to help them change their lives.

Everyone who’s ever looked into the drug problem at all has heard about ‘crack babies’ – babies born to mothers who used crack cocaine while they were pregnant. It was, and is, a huge problem. Now, the same thing is happening with prescription drugs. It’s a very good reason for women who could become pregnant to get addiction help as soon as possible. But there is one thing that experts overlook – they say that the problem is with mothers who ‘abuse’ prescription drugs, prescription drug addicts. But does that mean that children of mothers who take their prescription drugs as directed are safe?

Hardly. In fact, many of the people taking prescription drugs – as directed by their doctor – are actually addicts. They’re not ‘abusing’ the drugs, but if they tried to stop taking them they would realize that they are in big trouble.

They would go through the withdrawal symptoms for that drug – feeling depressed or anxious, heart rate up, blood pressure up, they would feel nauseous, achey and flu-like – the list of symptoms is long. And some of them are actually medically dangerous.

Many people don’t realize they’re addicted to a prescription drug until they try to get off them. They also often misread the symptoms – they think that because it makes them feel bad to stop taking the drug, they actually need them. Often, they don’t. It’s just withdrawal.

If you’re taking prescription drugs as directed by your doctor, and those drugs are not medically necessary for a life-threatening condition – e.g. if you’re taking painkillers, sedatives, tranquilizers, and that sort of thing – and if there’s a chance you could become pregnant, it is possible that a doctor would say it is fine to stop taking those drugs. If so, you could look into the possibility of getting some addiction help to ensure your baby is safe and born healthy.

A good drug rehab facility will have you checked out by a doctor to make sure it’s okay to come off the drugs, and then help you through it.

I don’t know if there’s anything more likely to turn the average Joe into a criminal than OxyContin addiction. OxyContin is selling for $80 to $100 a pill. Crooked doctors, pharmacists and drug dealers are making money hand over fist, while turning people into drug addicts and criminals. If there was ever a time addiction help was needed in a big way in the U.S. it is now. The prescription drug addiction problem has turned into something more serious than all the street drugs put together.

The worst thing is the type of person who is taking OxyContin – people who were originally given a prescription by their doctor for an injury, illness or surgery and then couldn’t get off them. Kids who showed up at a party where everyone brought pills from their parents’ medicine cabinets – out for a few kicks, thinking that because the pills came from a doctor, they’re safe.

The next thing you know, you’re dealing with an addict. And what are they going to do when the prescriptions run out? Either the doctor stops renewing it or, in the kid’s case, the pill bottle at home is now empty. They’re going to have to find those drugs, or something similar, elsewhere.

And it’s not going to be free or covered by medical insurance. It’s going to be expensive – $80 – $100 a pill. And taking at least two or three pills a day, Maybe more.

What can the average person do to afford that?

They turn into dealers themselves, or they start stealing things and selling them, etc. – for kids, that will probably be from their parents at first – etc. In other words, they turn to a life of crime. Even seniors are selling OxyContin and other prescription drugs to their addicted friends!!

Drug rehab can get a person back onto the right path. If you know someone with a prescription drug addiction problem, get addiction help now.

An investigation in New Jersey is evaluating what causes young people to move from one drug to another – specifically, the relationship between prescription drugs and heroin. The investigation was motivated in part by a rise in both heroin and prescription drug deaths in the area. They’re hoping their findings will prevent these deaths and also help motivate people to get addiction help before they really get into trouble.

What they found is that young people often get their start getting drugs from their parents – OxyContin, Percoset and Xanax are among the major problems. Parents have them in their medicine cabinets. One in five young people experiment with those drugs, and then they want more.

Most young people are not going to have easy access to those pills in the medicine cabinet forever. Their parents sometimes find out they’re using them, or they’ve been taking so many they’re afraid their parents will find out, or their parents may have been taking OxyContin or Percoset for an injury or after surgery, and don’t need them anymore so they’re no longer filling prescriptions.

For the kid, the source dries up. But he or she still wants them, or, by this time, may even be at the point of needing some form of addiction help services. In either case, they go looking elsewhere for the same effect they got from the drugs in the medicine cabinet.

They may go to a doctor themselves and fake symptoms to get their own prescription. They could go to one of the many so-called ‘pain management clinics’ that are basically unethical pill mills just out to make money Or they may turn to drug dealers on the street. Prescription painkillers like OxyContin are readily available – their abuse is now epidemic and the street pushers are really taking advantage of it.

But those prescription pills, when bought on the street rather than being covered by some medical plan, can also cost as much as $80 each – not particularly affordable for a young person. At this point, they often turn to heroin.

Heroin used to be expensive. It’s not anymore. You can get a hit for $5. They might start off using one hit every few days, then go to one a day, then to two or three a day. The more they take, the more they need to get the same effect as the first time they took it. But, even when things have escalated to two or three hits a day, they’re still only spending about as much in a week for heroin as it would have cost them for one pill if they’d stuck with OxyContin. It’s not a small amount of money, but it’s definitely more attainable than $80 per pill.

Some kids will also turn to drug dealing or other crimes to make the money they need for the drugs. Now they’re not just an addict, they’re also a criminal.

Almost always, they have little education on OxyContin or other prescription drugs, or heroin. They often think OxyContin is safe because doctors prescribe it – if only they knew how many people are suffering from OxyContin addiction, even those who have had it prescribed by their doctor – and chances are they’re not educated on heroin at all.

Even those who are knowledgeable about these drugs get addicted, and some overdose and die.

Obviously, one of the major actions that should be taken by parents to avoid this situation is to either not have any prescription medications in their home or to have them hidden and under lock and key so their kids won’t be tempted to take them.

After all – the pills are making you feel better. Kids want to feel better, too. Young people are not as problem-free as you might think or hope. Their problems are different than ours, but they are real nevertheless.

Remember – the above investigation was motivated by deaths, for both prescription drugs and heroin. If that’s not a chance you want to take, get your pills locked up. And if you think your kids are taking prescription drugs, it’s important to get them into drug rehab fast – before it becomes a disaster. They might not die, but they could definitely ruin their lives, and yours.

Florida has the biggest prescription drug abuse problem in the country. Despite that, it does not have a prescription drug monitoring system that will help isolate those getting prescriptions for the purpose of reselling the drugs to others. The monitoring program could put dealers out of business and, for those who are dealing to support their own habit, it may open the door to them getting some addiction help.

Florida was on the brink of implementing the system when Rick Scott, Florida’s new governor was elected. He got in by the narrowest margin in a Florida election in 24 years, and his approval rating has sank so much in just the few months he’s been in office that there’s no chance at all that he would be elected if voters had to do it over again. One of the reasons is that he vetoed the prescription drug monitoring plan.

He first said it was because of the expense. Then, after it was confirmed that NOT ONE CENT of the money would come out of the state’s coffers, he changed his tune and said he’d vetoed it because monitoring people’s prescription drug habits was an invasion of privacy.

It has since come to light that he’s an investor in a chain of about 40 pill mills, whoops, sorry, that’s ‘pain management clinics’, which are a major source of the problem.

Other politicians, lawmakers and the general public are incensed. I’m sure the thousands of Floridians whose family members and friends have been turned into addicts and, worse, overdosed on prescription painkillers and are now in their graves, would like to see him out of office.

Being an owner of pills mills, Scott can pretty much be designated a drug dealer at this point – add that to his other many stellar qualities. He’s obviously just protecting what is probably a very lucrative source of personal income.

Again, prescription drugs, especially painkillers, are a huge problem. Purdue, makers of OxyContin, said that 95% of their business is done in Florida. The company even offered to pay the $ million it would take to implement the system – read ‘public relations’ – trying to make themselves look like the good guys, after having paid out $642 million in fines for their fraudulent marketing of OxyContin – not a sincere desire to sell fewer pills.

Prescription drug abuse is becoming an even bigger problem than street drugs. In fact, in some areas of the country, it’s much worse.

Push for prescription drug monitoring in any way you can and, most importantly for your personal life, don’t hesitate to get any friends and family you suspect may be addicted to painkillers into a drug rehab program asap. Before they become one of the statistics.

I can’t help feeling angry when our troops – the guys and girls who are willing to give their lives for our country’s ideals – are treated with the worst kind of medicine there is: throwing dangerous prescription drugs at them to control their symptoms instead of finding real solutions to their problems. About 1/3 of the suicides by the troops in 2009 involved medication, and an additional 100 deaths involved prescription drugs. Also, more than 1/3 of our troops are on at least one prescription drug, and many are suffering from drug addiction. Not only are they not getting the best medical treatment available, they’re not even getting addiction help.

What kind of shoddy treatment is that?

“I’m not a doctor, said General Peter W. Chiarelli, vice chief of staff of the Army, who has led efforts on suicide prevention, “but there is something inside that tells me the fewer of these things we prescribe, the better off we’ll be.’’

A New York Times investigation into the 100 drug-related deaths other than the suicides found the following:

“All the men had been deployed multiple times and eventually received diagnoses of post-traumatic stress disorder. All had five or more medications in their systems when they died, including opiate painkillers and mood-altering psychiatric drugs, but not alcohol. All had switched drugs repeatedly, hoping for better results that never arrived. All died in their sleep.”

These are guys who lived through the war, only to get killed by neglect – there’s really no other words for limiting someone’s treatment options to drugs. Dangerous drugs.

When is the military going to wise-up? If they’re not going to give them the medical help they really need, the very least they could do it get these guys into a good drug rehab program.

Really, it’s shameful. What parent is going to want their kids to go to war, to defend the country and our ideals, when they know that if they manage to come home alive, their lives are still likely to be ruined?

Prescription drugs are turning out to be such a problem. People all over the U.S. are addicted to them or abusing them. When compared to street drug problems, more people are dying from prescription drugs, more end up in emergency rooms because of them, more people are showing up at rehab centers for addiction help, and they are motivating more criminal activity than you can shake a stick at.

And now they’re draining the Medicare and Medicaid coffers that the elderly and the poor depend on.

The government is worried that in the near future there won’t be enough money to honor the Medicare agreement with American citizens. This is something we’ve paid into all our lives and now it’s endangered – and the problem is partially the millions or billions of dollars being shelled out for prescription drug abuse.

In New York, 33 Medicaid patients were arrested by the Drug Enforcement Agency who were using the health care system to pay for prescription drugs, mostly painkillers, that they then sold illegally.

Those pills are worth a lot of money on the street. So, not only are we getting ripped off for the drugs, we’re also supporting people with health coverage through Medicaid that they obviously don’t need. They would be making enough money off those drugs to pay for their own visits to get prescriptions!

If you know of someone who has a problem with prescription painkillers like OxyContin, Oxycodone, and so on, make sure they get help. You’ll not only change their lives completely, you could also be helping millions of others safeguard their future.

Janice Dickinson, the star and executive producer of the hit TV show, The Janice Dickinson Modeling Agency, had a panic attack on live TV while she was withdrawing from benzodiazepines.

I’m not sure why Janice chose to make her addiction and withdrawal public – although she tends to discuss just about every intimate detail of her life publicly – but I would hope it does what this type of show should do: discourage people from taking drugs.

Panic attacks are just one of the many symptoms you can experience trying to get off prescription drugs. Withdrawal can be a very uncomfortable experience – so much so that it’s a major reason why people just give up and keep taking the drugs.

In addition to panic attacks, you can also expect to suffer from cold shakes, vomiting, diarrhea, and bone pain, and even seizures.

If you or someone you know is using benzodiazepines and is having trouble getting off them, it’s best to get some professional addiction help. With a good treatment program, you can avoid much of the pain of withdrawal.