AHS Views

When you think of Yale, unless you’ve already gone to Yale or are there right now, you might imagine that the atmosphere would be somewhat different than that of other colleges and universities. But Yale has many of the same problems. The one that concerns me is alcohol addiction and abuse. Here’s a little taste of alcohol abuse at Yale, and the addiction help the school is offering to the students.

I think the problem may have an entirely different resolution. Kids going to college are often living away from home for the first time and some of them basically just go wild - doing all the things they know they’d never get away with at home. Alcohol is a big part of that, which is why so many schools now offer addiction help services. 

Going off to Europe to travel around, even if it was hitchhiking with a duffel bag, used to be fairly common practice prior to entering college. I think something like that - getting some experience in life, having to be fully responsible for yourself, and broadening your scope and understanding of life should be mandatory - i.e. a prerequisite to college admission. 

Someone who has learned a little something about life on their own, who has had to take more responsibility than you usually do when you’re living at home with your parents is bound to be more able to resist the temptation of falling into the trap of acting like a caged animal that’s had the gate left open. Parents might want to consider that. Tell your kids they need to go out into the world, learn something, be responsible for something, and then they can go to college.

Not only would their kid get much more out of college, they’d also be far less likely to be one of those in line looking for addiction help. At the very least, if your kid is a drinker, get them the addiction help services they need before you send them off. A good drug or alcohol rehab center can help a person discover who they are - and, really, it might not take much more than that to keep them out of trouble.

Some time ago I had an allergic reaction to something I ate and my face got so badly swollen you could barely see my eyes. After a couple of days my doctor put me on steroids to get the swelling down before my face exploded. They worked, but they also had other rather intense effects in that they made my body feel and act like a finely-tuned, very powerful machine. It was great!! Fortunately, I knew about the dangers of these drugs so didn’t even consider taking them after the initial problem was handled - although I would have liked to. I think much of the prescription drug addiction epidemic that is sending people for addiction help in droves is rooted in a similar situation - the difference being that I really understood the dangers of the drugs and most people don’t.

Stimulants are a major drug of choice right now both in the U.S. and elsewhere. They’re being called ‘cognitive enhancers’ to legitimize them. Ritalin, Provigil, and so on. They’re speed, basically. With a little cocaine thrown in. And they’re being used by millions of people - everyone from college students who want get an edge to shift workers trying to stay awake and people who just want to get high. Of course, Ritalin has been used on young school kids for decades - it is one of the major drugs that opened the door to our current prescription drug addiction epidemic.

What people don’t understand is the underlying effects of these drugs. Needing addiction help is probably not the worst of it - they also cause serious physical deterioration from which some may never recover.  The side effects of Ritalin, for example, include everything from sleeplessness, loss of appetite, nervousness and tics to heart palpitations, cardiac arrythmia, hair loss, anemia, anorexia and psychosis. And, because they’re also addictive and cause severe, and dangerous, withdrawal symptoms, it’s hard to even stop taking them without professional addiction help services.

Unfortunately, many academics are sanctioning the use of these drugs, just as athletes and coaches sanctioned the use of steroids before they were outlawed in sports. Hopefully, stimulants used for something other than true medical situations will also be outlawed.

In the meantime, watch out for your friends and family. The price they pay for feeling more awake or more alert may be disaster. At the very least, if they keep taking them, the drugs will take their toll.  And it won’t be pretty. Better they should get addiction help services now than wait until disaster strikes.

A new study shows that alcohol shrinks the brain. Millions of people need drug and alcohol addiction help, and we’re spending millions finding out this useless information.

Why do we need it? We already know that just one drink can impair abstract thinking for a month, we already know it causes a gradual deterioration of the body and people die before their time, we already know it’s involved in most domestic violence incidents, we already know it’s ruins families, lives, careers. Shouldn’t we be spending our money making sure people get the addiction help services they need?

Here at Addiction Help Services, we’ve decided to start giving you some sports news. You’ve probably been wondering about the results of the Homecoming football game between Colorado University and the Texas Longhorns. Here they are:

• 57 people ejected, mostly for alcohol-related violations
• seven citations for underage drinking
• 11 students referred to CU’s Office of Judicial Affairs
• 12 sent to a detox center
• 3 people arrested 

Just another night at the ball game.  Was one of them your kid? Get them some addiction help. They’ll be able to spend more time studying.

According to a recent survey conducted in England, only 8% of kids would tell their parents if they were taking drugs. That’s pretty scary when you consider that their parents are probably the only people who can and will help them get addiction help if they need it.

Advice about preventing drug addiction and abuse with kids includes participating in their lives, having open communication - which means listening, understanding, discussing, not just telling them to do this or not do that - having a strong family life that includes eating dinners together, and talking to your kids, educating them, not lecturing, on the dangers of drugs and alcohol. In fact, kids whose parents talk to them about drugs are 50% less likely to take them.

Unfortunately, there aren’t enough families like that around - which probably has a big impact on the number of kids who take drugs. It’s also one of the major reasons parents don’t find out their kids are taking drugs until the situation is serious enough for them to need addiction help.

Talk to your kids - if you find out they’re taking drugs, get them the addiction help services they need. They don’t have to be hard-core addicts to need addiction help. If they tried drugs long ago and didn’t continue, they probably don’t need help (assuming they told you the truth.) But if they’re taking them currently, and have done so even for a little while, they need addiction help services asap. That’s how you keep them safe.

Another journalist jumps on the prescription drug addiction bandwagon - this time it’s the Orion, from Cal State University. Every time I see something like this my hope is renewed; if we want people taking prescription drugs to realize they have a problem and get some addiction help, we need more and more articles about the problem in media that’s read by ‘everyday’ people - not just scientists and healthcare professionals who read specialist and medical journals. (Although I would guess that if more healthcare professionals read even those we wouldn’t have such a big problem.)

The writer of the editorial in the Orion discusses the prescription drug culture. “We have been taught that feeling pain - or anything for that matter - can be avoided,” he (or she) said.

And it’s not just physical pain we don’t have to feel; we also don’t have to feel unhappy, anxious, frightened, too tired, too awake, too stupid, uninterested, bored, frustrated, too fat, too thin - the list goes on and on.

No longer do we have to put up with those pesky physical, mental and emotional phenomena that tell us something is wrong with our body or our life so we can fix it.

In all fairness, there are many people who tried to resolve their problems before resorting to masking the symptoms with drugs - but how are those drugs working for you?  Do they still seem to be preferable to making the changes you had to make in your life?

Check out addiction help services. If you find the services that are right for you,  like a long-term residential drug rehab program that will help you address the prescription drug addiction or dependency problem and the reasons you felt you needed the drugs, you can turn your life around.

A new study from Indiana University indicates that pregnant women may not be getting the advice they need from their doctors and midwives about the dangers of consuming drugs and alcohol while pregnant. When you consider the detrimental effects of drugs and alcohol on children and adults, you can imagine how hard all that poison in the system can be on a growing baby. Some even require addiction help as soon as their born.

I think a woman should stop drinking and taking drugs even if she’s just trying to get pregnant. Or not using contraceptives. That would, at least, limit the problem to those who truly had no reason to suspect they would get pregnant.

Although some women who’ve gone through drug rehab or some other addiction help services during pregnancy, it’s possible that withdrawal might be too hard on the baby. To find out, you would need to get the advice of an addiction help services expert in liaison with a doctor who is also familiar wth alcohol or drug addiction and withdrawal.   We can help you find both at Addiction Help Services.

$79 billion - that’s the latest figure on the profits of Big Pharma - the nation’s biggest drug dealer. And most of the money they’re making now comes from addictive drugs  - as is evidenced by the fact that many facilities offering addiction help are servicing more people for prescription drug addiction, dependency and abuse than for street drugs.

A few startling facts about the prescription drug scene in the U.S.:

• More than 3 million kids aged 12 to 17 abuse prescription drugs
• That figure increases by about 3,300 every day.
• The number of annual prescriptions written for stimulants (like Adderall, Ritalin, and other amphetamines) has gone from 5 million in 1991 to 35 million in 2007.
• Prescriptions for opioid painkillers (like OxyContin, hydrocodone, Vicodin, and Percocet) the increase over that same period was from 40 million to 180 million.
• As of 1997, drug companies were allowed to advertise directly to the consumer. By 2001, you can bet it’s as bad or worse now, 44% of the people who went to their doctor requesting a drug they’d seen advertised got the drug they asked for. That probably represents close to a 44% increase in profit for drug companies.

Pitiful scene. And as a nation, we’re hooked. If you think you or someone you care about might have a problem with prescription drugs, contact Addiction Help Services to find out what your options are. 

Yesterday I wrote a post referencing an article about a 26-year-old guy who killed his girlfriend, and then tried to kill himself, because of paranoia caused by marijuana. I got quite a few comments - all of which basically said it was bull and that marijuana is totally cool and even has medical benefits. One of them even referred to companies that offer addiction help as ‘drug war parasites.’

Excuse me? I think you might want to take another look at that. And at the facts about marijuana. There are plenty of places to look for factual research on the Internet, and lots of anecdotal data. Try looking at some of the sights that aren’t pushing it. Some that present another point of view.

As for addiction help being a parasitic activity - okay, so it’s not the dealers, not the growers, not the guys with the labs, not the guys in school yards offering drugs to kids, not the criminals that rake in billions on getting people high. They’re the good guys, right? And people who try to help others get off drugs are the bad guys.

Boy, you’ve really got your head screwed on backwards. One out of every hundred Americans is in prison right now - much of it is because of drugs. More people’s lives are probably ruined because of drugs and alcohol than any other cause. Relationships are being destroyed, jobs are being lost, kids are being neglected, people are dying of overdoses, others are involved in car accidents, property is being stolen - all because of drugs. And many lives have been saved because people got addiction help.

Don’t think that the harmless little marijuana plant has nothing to do with it. Not only is some marijuana extremely potent, and it IS mixed with other substances, it also leads to taking other drugs.

Also, I’m not listening to ‘rhetorical propaganda” - I can pretty much guarantee you that I’ve had a lot more personal experience with it, and with other drugs, and with people who take them, than you have.

“Marijuana is harmless” - that’s propaganda.  Unfortunately, smoking marijuana reduces awareness, causes a disassociation with reality, and impairs social responsibility. Stop smoking it for a while - if you can - and take a look around. Find out what drugs are actually doing to our culture. Talk to one of the many thousands of people who’ve lost their loved ones or whose lives have otherwise been affected by drugs, and you may change your mind about who’s actually wearing the white hats in the drug game.

For anyone who’d like to get off drugs, find out more about addiction help services.

According to a recent news story, a 26-year-old man on marijuana stabbed his girlfriend to death in a fit of paranoia. His paranoia was attributed to his marijuana use and his failure to get addiction help.

Most people think of marijuana as a laid-back kind of drug. Just smoke and groove. But marijuana actually has pretty serious side effects for a lot of people. Psychosis, hallucinations and delusions are among them.  These are usually the result of continued use - it’s basically a toxic overdose - but I’ve known people who have experienced them the very first time they smoked it. In any case, it certainly points out why someone who’s smoking marijuana and won’t stop needs addiction help.

Another problem with marijuana is that it’s often cut with other drugs. Personally, I’ve had marijuana that made me feel physically poisoned and mentally crazy - in that case, it was because of another drug being in the joint.

Some marijuana is also specially cultivated to be much more potent than others. BC Bud, for example, grown largely in Canada and exported elsewhere. And there are others.

About 11 million people smoked marijuana last month. Is it any wonder why the population of the U.S. appears to be in a drug haze?

If you know someone smoking marijuana, or smoke it yourself, consider getting them (or yourself) to quit. You never know when a drug’s going to turn on you and, when it does, you may also do something you’ll regret for the rest of your life. Addiction help services can help you.