AHS Views

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.

I recently read an article about the prescription drug addiction problem in a certain state. There was a big task force formed by the police, various addiction help facilities and a number of other groups. One of the government officials in the town was quoted as saying that he didn’t think there was a prescription drug addiction problem, that there was no evidence of it. Boy, does this guy have his head in the sand. All you have to do is call a few addiction help facilities and you’ll find that is not the case.

The facts are all over the place – they’re even published by various government agencies. Saying that prescription drug addiction is not a problem is like telling us the Holocaust never happened. Get real.

While it’s true that most people taking prescription drugs – as prescribed by their doctor – use them for the purpose for which their doctor intended them (and even those people can easily get addicted) the National Institute on Drug Abuse estimates that 20 percent of Americans use prescription drugs for non-medical reasons.

Also, a 2009 study found that 16 million Americans ages 12 and older took prescription drugs for non-medical purposes at least once in the prior year, according to the National Survey on Drug Use and Health and Substance Abuse Mental Health Administration.

And if anyone thinks these drugs are not addictive, why have addiction help facilities been inundated with people suffering from OxyContin addiction, Xanax addiction, and addiction to other tranquilizers and sedatives and even speed like Ritalin and Adderall?

The pill mills in Florida – which give away OxyContin and other painkillers like candy and have become huge legal suppliers for prescription drug addicts all up the eastern seaboard – are currently the subject of legislation.

Police reports from all across the country say that prescription drug addiction and abuse is becoming more and more of a problem in their area.

I can’t imagine why anyone would think it’s not an issue. Whatever ………..

The truth is this – prescription drug addiction IS epidemic. Kids are getting them from their parents’ medicine cabinets, pain clinics are handing them out like candy, people are going from one doctor to another faking symptoms to get more pills, thefts from pharmacies and other legit suppliers are becoming increasingly common, and even seniors are dealing them – watch the news.

Don’t let some blind politician make you feel that prescription drugs are safe – and if you have a problem with them, or there’s a problem with someone you care about, get into a drug rehab center.

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.

The only funeral director in Pineville, West Virgina, recently commented on the number of deaths caused by prescription drug overdoses – painkillers like OxyContin being the major problem. “If these people had died of the swine flu, we’d probably be making national headlines,” he said.

Well, it does make national headlines – every day you can find at least one news story about someone dying because of prescription drugs. And sometimes there’s one story in the news for days – like when Purdue Pharma, makers of OxyContin, was sued and paid $634 million as fines for falsely marketing the drug as less addictive and dangerous than other painkillers.

But resolution of the prescription drug addiction, abuse, and overdose problem is going to take far more than a few headlines. We’ve actually got to stop prescribing the drugs unless they’re absolutely necessary.

OxyContin, for example, was initially intended for terminally ill cancer patients – they need relief – and unbearable pain that hasn’t responded to any other remedies. Instead, it’s being given to people who have headaches, had a tooth pulled, had very minor surgery, have back pain – yes, I realize people have to function, but how many people with back pain have ever been through a full reatment program with a chiropractor, physical therapists or acupuncturist – not many you can be sure.

It’s not just up to the FDA – big pharm’s big business and needs big changes. But they’ve got so much money, and so many people dependant on it one way or another – that a big pharma crash is going to effect the economy.

Even worse is the fact big pharma’s got people convinced that drugs are needed – and a certain percentage of them are, no doubt about that. But that percentage is small – and it doesn’t include some of the biggest money makers.

Is the FDA going to address that successsfully? Not likely. We need a real paradigm shift. It’s going to have to come from the top. C’mon Obama, move it. It should be in the health care plan.  

I’m reading an autobiography that takes place largely in Mumbai, known at the time as Bombay, India. It strikes me as similar to recent descriptions of Broward County, Florida, the new painkiller capitol of the U.S., where thousands of pills are handed out to local residents every day and thousands more are sold to people travelling to Florida specifically to get pills they can then take home to other states to sell in their part of the country. So-called pain clinics protected by armed guards openly and legally dealing narcotics like OxyContin have probably already killed thousands of people and ruined the lives of millions. Only the lucky ones make it to a drug rehab program where they can get help.

Fortunately, Florida has finally approved the electronic prescription drug monitoring system to track these prescriptions and one day soon we hope that many of these guys – they’re actually M.D.s – will be out of business.

But it’s going to leave some people in desparate circumstances. There will still be doctors around they can get painkillers from if they legitimately need them, but those who don’t are going to be facing very serious withdrawal symptoms or they’re going to switch to street drugs – like heroin – to continue their addiction.

Thousands of people will need drug addiction help as they can no longer get their drugs. If you know someone in this position, call Addiction Help Services. We can help you find a suitable facility to get them off drugs safely and end their addiction.   

Performance-enhancing drugs are in the news again – this time it’s with sports, check out Why Isn’t There Nearly As Big A Fuss About Amphetamines In Baseball As There Is About Steroids? Some people have even suggested prescription painkillers should also be disallowed as, without them, some athletes couldn’t perform, hence, they’re performance-enhancing drugs.

Amphetamines are used as performance-enhancing drugs all over the place – not just in sports. Ritalin given to kids who are acting up in class instead focusing on their studies, college students taking Ritalin and Adderall to improve their concentration (and enable them to stay awake) while cramming for exams – it’s all performance-enhancing.

And while their performance is being ‘enhanced’, their brain is getting addled (is that why they call it Adderall?), and the individual’s potential to perform without drugs is at risk.

Some people, lots of them, get addicted to drugs like Ritalin and Adderall. And when their prescription runs out, they sometimes turn to the drugs’ illegal counterparts – methamphetamine, crystal meth, and so on – to get the effect they crave.

And some kids even drop out of college when they can no longer get their performance-enhancing study drugs. They just can’t do the work without it. What kind of employee are they going to be when they can’t even study a subject without taking drugs? Very bad scene.

Lots of people seeking addiction help started drugs when prescribed amphetamines by their doctor. When they get into treatment they may still be taking the same prescription, or they could be getting the same drugs through illegal means, or they may have moved on to street drugs.

Amphetamines have become common place. Parents of college age kids really should check and see if their kids are taking them. Once they’re of age, they can go to a doctor and get their own prescription without your permission or knowledge. You’re only going to find out if you ask.

And if they are taking them, get them the addiction help services they need. They’re like lots of other drugs – they’ll create a temporary positive effect, damage the body and mind in the process, and will make your kid dependent on them or addicted to them.

I feel sorry for these kids. They think they’re doing something wise, but that’s no way to get through college. If they need drugs there, they’ll probably need to continue them in the workplace.