AHS Views

Have you ever heard that “relapse is part of recovery”? As much as people believe this to be true, it is not, plain and simple. If someone relapses after they receive their treatment, then a basic element of the recovery process was missed or omitted and the addiction help they received was incomplete.

A good percentage of the time, there will be indications that a person may relapse or be relapsing. Adam Goldstein, a.k.a. DJ AM was sober after getting addiction help for four years. He relapsed and was found dead last August in his New York apartment from an overdose. He died from a combination of cocaine, Oxycodone, Vicodin, Ativan, Klonopin, Xanax, Benadryl and Levamisole (a drug used to cut cocaine).

While an addiction to crack cocaine and/or prescription drugs isn’t easy to overcome, if a drug rehab program is thoroughly done, there is absolutely no reason that relapse has to be a threat. If done right, drug rehab is the solution to a drug free life!

Just a few days ago, we learned that we’ve lost another star who suddenly died at way too young of an age. Brittany Murphy collapsed in her home over the weekend from what the Coroner has ruled to be “natural causes”, but there were many, many prescriptions found near her bed, in her name and those of close family members. This definitely raises some questions because it’s not often that you hear about a 32 year old dying all of a sudden, out of the blue, of a heart attack!

Recently, Michael Jackson fell prey to an accidental overdose of drugs, and not too long before him, so did Anna Nicole Smith. How are these stars getting their hands on so many prescription drugs?

More and more, people in the United are seeking out prescription medications from multiple doctors without letting one know about the other, called “doctor shopping” which is a practice many prescription drug abusers are all too familiar with. It has been proven that the results of the interactions of these drugs, when taken together – even at therapeutic levels, can be deadly.

Did these stars intend to commit suicide or were they simply taking medications as directed? I have a strong feeling that the latter is the answer.

Knowing what we have learned from the losses of these great talents, please consider this to be a warning to those who use any combination of prescription drugs without the physicians who prescribe them being aware of what combinations the patient is taking. If you have fallen prey to prescription drug abuse please get addiction help now.

I receive emails from a group of people who support non-drug solutions for mental and emotional problems. They’ve recently gotten into the subject of drug addiction and have suggested that psychiatry can help this problem. I beg to differ – and I’ll tell you why.

During the years that psychiatry rose to power as the ‘expert’ in the field of mental health, although that reputation is very tarnished at this point, more and more conditions, previously thought of as just part of life, have been classified as mental diseases or disorders.

Some of these alleged disorders include kids not being able to do math as well as their classmates, feeling sad when your spouse of 50 years passes away (yes, we’re actually supposed to believe there’s something strange about that), to smoking cigarettes. (As one blogger pointed out prior to Obama swearing in “Does that mean we have a deranged President Elect who should seek treatment?”).

It’s pretty obvious to me that this practice of turning everything into a mental illness is merely a ploy to get money (and to do anything they can to salvage what’s left of this dying discipline.)

If these conditions are ‘officially’ disorders, insurance companies will pay for treatment. Which opens the door to millions more patients (and many more millions of dollars) who wouldn’t be able to afford it otherwise. In fact, these ‘patients’ probably wouldn’t even have sought treatment because they didn’t think anything was wrong with them until psychiatry ‘made it so’. And they were probably right.

The docs also make money researching and promoting bogus disorders.

This really puts their diagnostic skills, not to mention their integrity, into question.

Do you want your friends or family members in the hands of someone who thinks that being distraught about the loss of someone you’ve raised children with and loved and depended upon for 50 years is mental illness? I know I don’t.

The next point is that much of the treatment they offer is drugs. Why? Number one, they don’t have a great reputation for curing anyone and, two, they can see someone for 10 or 15 minutes to prescribe or renew a prescription for a drug and make more money than if they’d spent 45 minutes actually talking with the person and helping resolve the problems they’re having in life that cause him to feel less than wonderful.

Addiction help is intensive. It takes many, many hours - generally about three months – of working with the individual, getting down to the bottom of why they’re taking drugs, helping them sort those things out so they really can overcome them, teaching them the skills they need in life, finding out who’s influencing them, if anyone, and helping them overcome that influence, and working out a plan they can stick to that will help them stay drug free.

And drugging them is a big mistake. A person can’t even think clearly on drugs - not to mention all the other dangerous side effects, like antidepressants that make you want to kill yourself. How is that person going to figure out their lives and get better if they’re drugged?

If psychiatry was so adept at enabling people to figure out and change their lives, why does so much of their treatment come down to giving the person drugs?

No, your best bet for addiction help services is experienced rehab professionals who really know the ropes and have a good success rate. Call us, we can help you find something that works.

The purpose of this blog is to help people with drug problems, not to denigrate any profession. But to fail to make people aware of what doesn’t work could prevent them from getting real help. Hence, this post.

Officials have determined that Heath Ledger died of an overdose involving a combination of six prescription drugs - painkillers, tranquilizers and sleeping aids. “We have concluded that the manner of death is accident, resulting from the abuse of prescription medications,” the New York City Medical Examiner’s office said in a statement. Could addiction help have prevented Heath’s death or was this yet another incident of doctors prescribing drugs without full investigation into which drugs Heath was already taking?

I, for one, would like to be sure there wasn’t one single doctor prescribing all of these medications. Has that been looked into yet? Shouldn’t a doctor or even multiple doctors who are legitimate and prescribing so many medications be held accountable in some way for a person taking so many drugs?

President Bush has made several statements about prescription drug abuse in the past several years – needing addiction help services for prescription drug abuse isn’t new just because the White House ran an ad during the Super Bowl. It will be interesting to find out where all the drugs came from. I am sorry for the Ledger family’s loss and hope that if a doctor or doctors should be held responsible that they are.

A recent article reported that 11.4 million people in the U.S. are abusing prescription drugs. I read an article the other day that put that number at 22 million. The difference may be accounted for by the definition of ‘abuse’ – if you have a prescription, the use of the drugs is legit, no prescription is ‘abuse.’ However, prescription drugs are so dangerous that you don’t have to be ‘abusing’ them to become dependent or addicted. And that’s probably what we really should be more concerned about – a drugged society that needs addiction help – but it’s all okay because they have a prescription.
 
The article announced a prescription drug abuse forum – Generations RX: Children in the Medicine Cabinet. The focus of the forum is young adults abusing prescription drugs.

Anything that educates the public on the dangers of prescription drugs is a good thing. But we aren’t going to get very far if we focus on the kids taking drugs from medicine cabinets but don’t pay equal attention to the parents who are putting them there.

How are kids supposed to believe that drugs are not a solution to life’s problems when their parents are teaching them otherwise?

If someone you know is using prescription drugs for something other than preventing a life-threatening situation, get them the addiction help services they need. It’s the best thing you can do for them, and their children.

Some people become addicted to prescription drugs after getting them from their doctor for surgery, injury or illness. But, for many, the drug problem starts by ‘borrowing’ a drug from a friend’s or parents’ medicine cabinet – a Xanax to help them sleep or a Vicodin for a headache. As a drug counselor I’ve run into a lot of people who got started that way, and eventually contacted me to help them find a drug rehab program.
 
A recent study from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health found that more than ten percent of 12 to 17-year-olds have taken prescription drugs from their parents, other relatives, or their friends without asking.

80% of parents say they keep their prescription drugs in a place where they’re inaccessible. I find that hard to believe. They may think their kids don’t have access to them, but I wouldn’t count on it.

Seriously, if you’re a parent and taking drugs that could be dangerous, your best bet is to get through a drug rehab program yourself. You’ll kill a few birds with one stone – there won’t be drugs around the house for your kids to get, you’ll be setting a good example, and you’ll be off drugs yourself.

One of the fastest growing drug problems today is the abuse of prescription medications. Opiates in the oxycodone/hydrocodone families and benzodiazepines such as Xanex are especially popular, and are highly addictive. Many people are initially prescribed these medications for legitimate medical conditions and don’t see the warning signs of addiction before it’s too late. The fact that the doctor prescribed the drugs also delays recognizing that there is a problem since it adds legitimacy and justifies taking them. So, the situation goes on and on – and then I get the call from someone looking for a drug rehab program.

When the legitimate reason for taking the drugs has passed, and the initial doctor will no longer write the prescription, users start doctor shopping – looking for a doctor unscrupulous enough to write a medically-unnecessary script. Or sometimes they get the drugs online. Regardless of the source, make no mistake – these drugs are just as addictive as street drugs, and for the user to stop taking them, they need a successful drug rehab program.

I recently worked with a family whose son had been buying Xanex on the Internet. They were totally unaware of his problem but had become curious about the regular packages he’d been receiving in the mail. The parents pressed the issue, and he finally admitted he had a problem. His mother told me they had no idea what to do – not only was it a legal drug, she didn’t even know if there were drug rehab programs designed for his addiction. In fact, they didn’t even realized you could become addicted to prescription drugs.

Benzodiazepine withdrawal can be one of the most difficult, so we had to be sure the program we found for him would be able to really handle his situation instead of just putting him on substitute medications. We located a drug rehab that could address his addiction fully and offer the care he needed. Needless to say, they were very relieved to find a program so quickly and be able to help their son. If you know someone who abuses prescription drugs, find a successful drug rehab program and get them help before it’s too late.