West Virginia and Kentucky are among the states hardest hit by the OxyContin epidemic, and many of the addicts are still there, still taking the drugs, despite the warnings, the overdoses, and the deaths. All over West Virginia addicts and dealers are faking symptoms to get OxyContin and other prescription painkillers by whatever means they can. And doctors are giving them what they want instead of sending them to drug rehab.

According to physicians at St. Mary’s Hospital, some people spend their days simply going from one doctor to another, and to emergency wards, to get 10 or 20 OxyContin pills each time, which they then sell on the street for $10. They’re making thousands every week.  And the pills are often paid for by the government - i.e. U.S. citizens - through medicaid.

The St. Mary’s doctors say these guys know exactly what they’re doing - some of them call 911, get an ambulance to pick them up and take them to the hospital. They know exactly what to say and what symptoms to fake to get the drugs.

“It’s hard to control people coming in with complaints because you are obligated to treat pain, and that’s a major complaint we see in the E.R.,” said one doctor.

Apparently several doctors are so scared they just give out the pills knowing that the patients are faking. “There was a fella I worked with in Ashland who said well these people know where I live. I’m not going to turn them down cause they’ll come and burn my house.”

The war on drugs and the war on terror have converged - and it’s right in our hospitals and doctors’ office, not in another country that most of us will never see.

If the doctors would call the police instead of giving out the pills, it’s possible these guys could wind up in drug court - which would force them to go to drug rehab or to jail.

West Virginia and Kentucky drug rehab programs would be full, but with prescription drugs addiction and abuse spreading like wildfire, that’s exactly the way it should be.

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At Stillwater High School in Minnesota, 99% of the seniors said they haven’t used meth in the past year. A very good number overall, and more than likely none of them will need drug rehab for meth abuse.

On the other hand, 27% of high school students and 41% of college students engage in high risk drinking. It is well known that the Midwest has an alcohol problem and Minnesota is no exception. Half of these students will need drug rehab for alcohol addiction. Far fewer than half will ever actually go to rehab, but they will need it.

In fact only 17 people between the ages of 18 and 25 entered treatment for alcohol abuse in 2007 in the entire Minneapolis area despite the fact that thousands of students are doing high risk drinking in Minnesota on a regular basis. It’s great that meth use is so low, but alcohol abuse figures need to be lowered in Minnesota or the drug rehab programs will be too full to meet the demand.

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In New Hampshire OxyContin addiction and dependency has gotten such a bad rap that doctors have been prescribing methadone for pain. The police chief in Salisbury, New Hampshire, David L’Esperance, knows this as well as anyone: his son Christopher died from an overdose of methadone wafers in May of last year, despite attempts at drug rehab.

“We all have a mission in life,” L’Esperance said this week from his office in Salisbury. “Maybe that’s my particular mission: to be able to help someone else.”

L’Esperance tried desperately to help his son overcome his addiction to methadone. Reading his story and knowing he sent Christopher to rehab and other things to handle his addiction is sad. Mr. L’Esperance did everything he could to help his son.

Now he has taken it upon himself to do more. He wants to help people handle their addiction with a drug rehab program and other treatment. Instead of sitting in his loss, Mr. L’Esperance is going to do something effective.

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As more and more people become dependent on Lortab and other hydrocodone products, the need for drug rehab and drug detox is becoming apparent to Oklahoma officials. 

Hydrocodone is a prescription drug, and you can become addicted to it easier than you might think. Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs Control officials say “Hydrocodone is probably the most abused prescription drug today.”

Hydrocodone use has quadrupled in the last ten years and it is contributing to a new class of addict.  “Often these people never intended to become a drug addict,” bureau spokesman Mark Woodward said.

The person who has become dependent on OxyContin, Lortab or any hydrocodone product can benefit from prescription drug detox and, once the detox is complete, they will have a better than average chance of staying off the drug for good. However, in a lot of cases you will also need drug rehab.

If you need help with a hydrocodone type drug, call a drug rehab program counselor to find the drug detox and, if needed, the Oklahoma drug rehab program that’s right for you.

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The White House recently announced a series of public service TV ads will begin around the time of the Superbowl. The subject is prescription drug abuse and they’re being run in response to a recent report that 2 million teens abuse prescription drugs. I believe these educational ads will help, but people who are already abusing prescription drugs, or dependent on or addicted to them, might also need drug detox and, possibly, drug rehab. In fact, this applies whether you’re using them legally or illegally.

Although the White House is acknowledging prescription drug abuse as serious, I think it’s possible that the real scope of the problem is being underestimated – the problem isn’t just with prescription drug abuse, it also extends to legal use. In Southeast Michigan, for example, 36% of kids from grades 7 through 12 are taking prescription drugs as prescribed by their doctor, according to a recent survey. A large percentage are also sharing their drugs with other kids – some of whom have their own prescriptions, and some who don’t.

The drugs they surveyed for were the most dangerous – opioid painkillers like OxyContin, sleeping pills, sedatives, tranquilizers, stimulants and anti-anxiety drugs. Most of which could require drug detox and, possibly, drug rehab to quit.

There’s no reason to suspect that any other school district, in any other state, is any different. And the situation doesn’t get much better, if any, when those kids get into college.

I think sales numbers from drug companies would help us figure out how big this problem really is, and would help us digest the actual number of people addicted to or dependent on prescription drugs. Whatever the number is, it is a very serious problem and needs very serious action. Again, drug education will help but without adequate drug detox and drug rehab program facilities to help people get off these drugs, we’ll still have untold millions of people taking them.

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If you are one of the people in Southeast Michigan taking drugs like prescripton stimulants, painkillers, antidepressants or anti-anxiety drugs, you may be interested to know that prescription drugs should be stopped only under medical supervision – in other words, in liaison with a doctor and a medical drug detox program counselor. You may also need a drug rehab program as follow up.

A study done by Carol J. Boyd, PhD, et al, came up with some very interesting results that could indicate that far more people are addicted to prescription drugs than we think.

Dr. Boyd did her survey on 1,086 children between the ages of 11 and 18 and found 36% of the kids were currently using prescription drugs. One other interesting statistic is that 10% of those kids also gave their drugs to their parents. These included drugs like OxyContin, Vicodin, Xanax and Valium, which are almost impossible to get off by yourself. Prescription painkillers, antidepressants and sleeping pills should all be withdrawn from in a medical drug detox facility.

In Idaho, a recent survey was done on 3,000 children, young adults and parents about methamphetamine use. The state of Idaho is now using the information for an anti-meth campaign.

With the extremely high numbers of children in Michigan found to be using prescription drugs in Dr. Boyd’s survey, Michigan should consider doing the same thing – use those survey results to start an anti-prescription drug campaign to teach people about the dangers of prescription drug abuse.

If you live in Michigan and are having difficulty with prescription drugs, call Drug Rehab Referral to find a medical drug detox program that can help you.

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The problems with drug addiction have reached down to trap pregnant women and their drug addicted babies in West Virginia where 373 pregnant women were treated for substance abuse and their newborns weaned off opiates with methadone. In some cases, getting the babies off drugs took weeks. 214 of the mothers went to a drug rehab program and some went to methadone clinics.

“It’s a huge problem” said Stefan Maxwell, chief of pediatrics and director of Neonatal Intensive Care Services at CAMC Women and Children’s Hospital in Charleston.
In 2006, 119 babies had to go through withdrawal - more than double the number in 2003.

The state is adding neonatal beds for the babies who need help because of their mother’s addiction.

West Virginia has had a problem with OxyContin dependency and addiction for a long time. And with 37% of its citizens on disability, it’s no surprise that hundreds of women are affected. Fortunately, there is now a new program to help these women get into a West Virginia drug rehab program. Women who admit to using drugs during pregnancy won’t face criminal penalties and can get the treatment they need.

West Virginia is facing a tough time because of Oxycontin addiction and abuse and they desperately need more drug rehab treatment facilities to handle the problem.

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According to a report by The National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University 22.9 percent of college students might need drug rehab. At Arizona State that could be over 10,000 students – that’s a lot of drug rehab. Arizona State is ranked number 3 on the Playboy Party School list.

There is another interesting side to those numbers which is the drug dealers themselves - how many drug dealers would it take to supply 10,000 students for a month?
 
There is not only a danger to the user of drugs, but the drug dealer himself is often in danger from other drug dealers or people who know the dealer. At Arizona State a dealer named Jake was robbed at gunpoint of drugs and cash. “With a gun to his head and duct tape around his feet, mouth and eyes, Jake was told he’d be killed,” said a recent article. According to Jake, “They could have easily just popped it, walked out the door and gotten away with murder.”

Maybe that’s an unusual scene, or maybe not. But the dangers of drug dealing are probably not thought about by the customer.  Jake supplies drugs to some portion of the 10,000 students who take drugs regularly at Arizona State and made $10,000 in December alone.

There must be a lot of dealers hanging around the university marketing drugs to the students. For some it is just a party and for others it is far more serious – either way, there’s a good chance both will need an alcohol or drug rehab program.

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The number of methamphetamine labs in New York is declining – as it is all over the country – largely because of constraints put on the supplies the labs need to make the drugs. But, unfortunately, the reduction reduction in meth labs has not affected the amount of methamphetamines being abused as South American drug trafficking organizations have increased their U.S. distribution and rerouted to New York and other northeastern states to meet the demand. The demand is also being felt in drug rehab program facilities  – the meth addicts keep pouring in.

South America has always had a role in meth trafficking, but that role is now larger than ever. Methamphetamines are being shipped to the east coast and bypassing the Western states and the Midwest.

The number of AIDS cases in 20 to 30 year olds is also on the rise in New York – which is attributed in part to the number of people shooting meth.

Drug rehab for meth addicts is important in New York and across the country. In some areas, meth addiction goes back four generations.

More drug education and prevention can help stop the cycle of addiction in New York, but both New York City and the rest of the state needs to step up and do more to handle the problem.
 
If you have a problem with methamphetamine addiction, or any sort of drug addiction problem, and are looking for a drug rehab in New York with a proven success rate, call or email us now.

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The prescription drug problem of miners in Virginia is getting some attention in the press. And it should be: according to an article in The Breeze, “Individual deaths due to overdoses associated with prescription painkillers have risen 270 percent in the past decade, and in one county the rate of such fatal overdoses is 13 times that of counties in northern Virginia.” The number of deaths is alarming, and so is the number of people who will need drug detox and drug rehab to make sure they’re not the next one to go.

Another article written by Nick Miroff of the Washington Post said disability rates in coal mining towns such as Buchanan County (population 25,000) run as high as 37%

The real problems of prescription drug addiction are found in the increasing usage of methadone in Virginia: Retail sales moved from 30,000 grams in 1999 to 146,000 grams in 2006. Oxycodone sales have also tripled since 1999 and have now reached 747,000 grams - thanks to Purdue Pharma’s false claims that its product, OxyContin, was less addictive than other opiates. Most of the people addicted to OxyContin, and now methadone, will never get off it. But Purdue keeps ringing the cash register.

It is possible to go through a medical drug detox and then, if necessary, a drug rehab program, to get off of these drugs. But it isn’t easy, and it does take a commitment.
 
OxyContin is the gift that keeps on giving for Purdue. Wouldn’t it be great if they helped people (with money) to withdraw comfortably under medical supervision from these drugs and then, when needed, get some of these miners to through a Virginia drug rehab program?

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