Here’s yet another story of someone being prescribed painkillers after an injury, developing a prescription drug addiction, and then moving on to cocaine and heroin. This story focuses on Hunter Clark, from Portland, Oregon. Drug rehab is finally help him turn his life around.

Although prescription drug addiction is spreading like wildfire across the country, Oregon is one of the top ten states under seige and Oregon drug rehab centers have their hands full. One of the major problems is marijuana - the gateway drug. A survey revealed that nearly 20% of kids aged 12 to 17 used marijuana in the year before the survey, and the percentage rose to 35% for young adults aged 18 to 25. And in case you’re one of those people who smoked marijuana years ago, let me tell you it’s not what it used to be. It’s now very strong, and is often laced with other drugs - like heroin.

Neverthless, there’s no doubt in my mind that prescription drug addiction will become Oregon’s biggest problem, just as it will in other states.

The problem with prescription drugs is that they are so incredibly easy to get. You just take them from your parents’ or friends’ medicine cabinets. It’s that easy. And, it’s relatively acceptable. No one bats an eye when someone has OxyContin in their medicine cabinet - hey, doctors give it to patients, what could possibly be wrong with it? - and yet it’s the same as heroin. And getting off it is just as difficult: it still takes drug rehab, and will probably even require drug detox to help an addict through withdrawal.

To many, this may seem like betrayal. We trust our doctors to keep us safe. But Hunter Clark’s doctor prescribed painkillers liberally, and Hunter’s lucky he’s still alive. No thanks to his doctor.

Doctors and their patients have to wise up on the subject of prescription drug addiction. Get help now through a drug rehab program if you need it, and educate your friends and family on the dangers so they don’t fall into the trap.

Popularity: 12% [?]

There’s a new drug high becoming popular in North Texas – inhaling the aerosol sprayers used to remote dust from your computer. Not surprising, the activity is called ‘dusting’. It may seem harmless but, like other inhalants, it’s far from it. There’s a good chance kids who do it will need drug rehab or drug detox when they get older. But that’s not the worst that can happen: Dusting affects the organs and bones, both long and short term, and can cause a heart attack that could kill instantly.

While prescription drugs are getting most of the press in Texas, dusting is also making the news. You can buy an air duster for $5 and get high with it, and teenagers use it – and other inhalants -  when they can’t get their hands on prescription drugs.

There has been a rise in inhalant use among teenagers over the past two years. Inhalant use by 6th graders has risen by 44%, and among eighth graders it’s increased by 18%. I think the reason the younger kids are taking more of it is they have more trouble getting drugs alcohol. But as they get older, well, why bother with inhalants when you can get Ritalin from one of your class mates?

There are 2.6 million kids using inhalants, and even more using prescription drugs and street drugs. When you’re already getting high at 11 or 12 years old, the chances of having a drug problem in the future are pretty high. In fact, statistics show that about 25% of them will eventually need a drug detox or drug rehab program. Watch for the signs with your kids, and get them into Texas drug rehab as soon as you realize there’s a problem.

Popularity: 8% [?]

If you use prescription drugs at age 13 or younger you have a one in four chance of having a lifetime problem. The drugs can be prescription stimulants such as Ritalin and Adderall or painkillers like OxyContin and Vicodin. With drugs like Ambian the chances of lifetime problems are lower, but you still might wind up in drug rehab.
 
There are plenty of kids that age using prescription drugs to get high and one in four will need drug detox and drug rehab. If they don’t get help early, they could be addicted to drugs for a long time. The average age people enter drug rehab is often in their 30’s. If your 14 or 15-year-old is raiding the medicine cabinet, or one of his friends is, then you will have trouble as they get older and they might be in their 30’s before they really get the help they need.

In the report from the Center for Substance Abuse Research there is no mention of these drugs leading to taking other drugs – but there should be: OxyContin can be, and often is, replaced with heroin and Ritalin can be, and is, replaced with cocaine when the OxyContin and Ritalin are are unavailable or too expensive. And if you think kids that young aren’t using prescription drugs to get high, read the news.

People don’t think prescription drugs are dangerous because they came from a doctor. But nothing could be further from the truth. They can lead to a lifetime of dependence, unless it is addressed with a drug detox or drug rehab program.

Popularity: 35% [?]

From Arizona to Massachusetts heroin use is spreading among teenagers. In the Northeast, even in environments like Stoneham, Massachusetts, heroin has been a problem for a long time but now it is becoming an even bigger problem. In Arizona , heroin is making a comeback, according to an article by Bert Sass of azcentral.com. Drug detox and drug rehab are the two best steps to take if you know someone addicted to heroin.

While I have never seen any statistics about how someone gets started with heroin, Stephanie Kreiling from Community Bridges thinks its starts with prescription painkillers such as OxyContin. At Drug Rehab Referral we have spoken to some heroin addicts who had to switch from OxyContin to heroin because of cost.

All sorts of people use heroin and at least 11 percent of young adults don’t think it is dangerous to use a couple of times a week. Heroin is inexpensive it can be bought for as little as $3 a bag. One thing you should know; one in four people who try heroin become addicted. And only 5 percent who try to quit without drug detox or drug rehab manage to do it.

Heroin can be injected, snorted or smoked and, like OxyContin and other opiates, it is highly addictive. Prescription drugs are creating problems like this all over. Soon we may be reading about cocaine or other street drugs coming down in price to compete with stimulants and anti-anxiety drugs.

If you are hooked on prescription painkillers or heroin try drug detox first before going to a drug rehab program . Your chances of actually getting off the drugs are much higher.

Popularity: 9% [?]

Alan Autry, mayor of Fresno, California, is serious about getting Fresno off drugs. At the city’s first drug free summit, held just a few hours ago, Autry, Police Chief Jerry Dyer, law enforcement, churches and drug rehab experts met to discuss how they are going to achieve this lofty goal.

Wouldn’t it be fantastic if there actually was one, just one, drug free city in the U.S.? Just think what it could do for the country if just one city was successful and other cities followed their lead.

According to Autry, the problem is with both illegal and prescription drugs. “Some of them you buy from the illegal dealer on the street corner, others you go into the doctor’s office and get a prescription for, that’s the cold hard facts.”

What will it take? I don’t know, and neither do they. But Autry is determined to find a way. He says he will continue on his drug free Fresno mission even when he leaves office - in just 10 months he steps down as mayor.

I don’t know which drug rehab experts were in the summit, but I really hope they don’t condone methadone or any other treatment that leaves a person dependent on drugs despite the fact that they are legal. To really clean things up, and be sure people will stay that way, they’re going to need a big boost in Fresno drug rehab program facilities - the long-term model that gets the best results. If I were living in Fresno, I would do everything I can to back up this mission.

Popularity: 5% [?]

If you think psychiatrists are latter-day snake-oil salesmen peddling prescriptions for everything that ails us, you’ll love how “Charlie Bartlett” skewers our drug culture

Charlie Bartlett is wearing a t-shirt that says: “People like you are the reason people like me need medication.” Charlie Bartlett is the irrepressible and cleverly manipulative title character of a new Hollywood comedy in which 17-year-old Charlie – just to achieve the popularity he craves – plays therapist to his classmates and hands out enough psych drugs to keep the average drug rehab center busy for a year.

Charlie, played brilliantly by Anton Yelchin (“Alpha Dog”), wants to be popular no matter what it takes. And he achieves his goal after realizing no one is paying any attention to his neuroses-riddled classmates, and that he possesses a unique gift for listening. Charlie sets up a therapy center in his high school men’s room, where he dispenses positive advice that actually helps the grateful kids, along with a veritable pharmacopeia of mood-altering drugs slyly cadged by faking symptoms to his wealthy family’s on-call psychiatrists. These witless shrinks are only too willing to prescribe Ritalin, Xanax, Zoloft and all the rest of their chemical solutions for Charlie’s faux problems.

But Charlie’s preposterous lavatory therapy and pharmaceutical dispensary is not what this film is all about. “Charlie Bartlett” the movie is about making it in life in spite of the shrinks and their wacko psychobabble and buckets of drugs. For those with the eyes to see, the movie satirizes, even skewers, the religion of psychiatry and its holy sacraments – an infinite number of mood-altering psychotropic drugs and endless litany of labels for every little complaint for which a drug is the ultimate salvation.

America’s real drug problem, the movie says, starts with a generalized failure to just shut up and listen to each other – especially to our kids – and ends by drowning in a tsuname of prescription drugs. And it’s right on the money. Casualties of prescription drugs are overflowing drug detox and drug rehab facilities across the country with victims of all ages, having spread like cancer to the drugging of our children. Written by Gustin Nash, a psychiatrist’s son who should know what’s going on, “Charlie Bartlett” doesn’t preach about this deplorable situation. It just shows it to us in spades with surprising eloquence and humor.

But the real surprise to me is how reviewers from some of the biggest publications just missed the point completely. It’s being reviewed like “Rushmore” or “Ferris Bueller” or any other teen comedy. Either the reviewers are just clueless or they’re all a bunch of Prozac-poppers themselves who choose to ignore the horrendous problem we’re creating by shoveling drugs into our kids. If we don’t wake up from this nightmare pretty soon and start listening to our kids, “Charlie Bartlett” suggests, we’re condemning a whole generation of Americans to lives lost in chemical dependence, substance abuse and the endlessly revolving doors of one drug rehab program after another.

Image sources:

Fandago

Eclipse Pictures

Popularity: 66% [?]

Last week the House of Delegates received a presentation about substance abuse treatment. Thank God they’re interested. But, in the end, they felt misled - the presentation turned out to be little more than a commercial for methadone. And with more and more people turning up in morgues and drug rehab centers to get off methadone, I’d say that’s a pretty bad move.

Methadone has been killing more people that heroin for some years - about 4 times as many. Now, as methadone has become popular as a painkiller, the situation is getting even worse. Last year there were 4,000 methadone-related deaths. Some of them even occurred in drug rehab.

If parents talk to their kids about the dangers of drugs - those on the street and the ones you get from your doctor - the kids are 50% less likely to take them.

Drugs are so dangerous these days - it’s not just getting a little high anymore. And you don’t have to be using heroin to turn into a drug addict. Taking prescription painkillers found in the medicine cabinet can be just as dangerouss.

If you don’t want to undergo the horror of your kids getting into drugs talk to them now. No matter how old, or young, they are. They’ll be introduced to them soon enough, and they should be prepared. If you can stop them from saying yes when they’re offered drugs, you’ll save both your kids and yourself years of heartbreak. And you may save their lives.

If they’re already involved, get them into a drug rehab program - don’t wait another day.

Popularity: 6% [?]

Corrections officers in Mississippi want to create a drug rehab program for 300 inmates at the Columbia Training Center. Good idea. Doing a drug rehab program while you’re in jail could prevent ending up on drugs, and in prison, again.

Unfortunately, most prisons do very little rehabilitation. Instead, criminals learn new tricks, make new contacts, and often leave prison only to return to a life of crime. The same goes for drugs. In many cases the crimes are drug-related. In other words, if the person wasn’t involved in drugs, he would not be involved in crime.

A drug rehab program that gets down to the bottom of the drug problem, and down to the bottom of the crime problem, would enable prisoners to go home truly rehabilitated.

This alone would do wonders for society. And we could spend money on something other than keeping the prison revolving door powered up.

Prisons with successful drug rehab programs have been known to see some remarkable changes in recidivism - when the guy gets out of prison, he’s really able to live a productive, crime-free life, have a family, friends and career. And people who’ve gone through an experience like that often get involved in their community to help others do the same.

Let’s hope the plan is carried through in Mississippi. Drug rehab could change the lives of the prisoners, and make the state a much better place to live.

Popularity: 5% [?]

Amy Winehouse is out of rehab, to a triumphant return at the Grammy’s. But she was only in rehab for a few weeks - enough time to dry out and get some food into her. Was it really enough to get to the bottom of her alcohol and drug abuse and make sure she stays clean? I really hope it was, but chances are she’s going to need much more of a drug rehab program to help her find her demons and beat them into submission.

Short term drug rehab programs - or simply going through drug detox, which is more what it sounds like Amy did - are the reason ’relapse is part of recovery’ has become an accepted concept.  Should she go to one of the swanky Malibu-type drug rehab facilities? I don’t think so, she’d be better off in a place that treats her like a real person instead of a celebrity. Amy may have reached celebrity status, but that’s not who she is, it’s something she’s achieved.

It obviously took years for Amy to accumulate enough baggage to get herself into the condition she was in, and it’s virtually impossible to get rid of that baggage in a few short weeks of drug rehab.

Many people have come home from short-term drug rehab - looking and feeling better than they have in years - only to relapse a short time later, sometimes with fatal consequences. Their body can no longer tolerate the same high doses of the drugs they were taking and, not being aware that they can’t handle it, people sometimes take the same dose they used to and overdose.

Overcoming drug addiction is not just a matter of feeling better - that’s part of it, of course, but a drug rehab program that’s ultimately successful really digs in to find out what caused the addiction in the first place, and addresses those issues. I hope Amy continues to work through her ’stuff’ so she can stay clean. 

Popularity: 9% [?]

I read an article today about the tragic life and death of Brad Renfro – a young actor whose alcohol and drug addiction started before he was in his teens and, when he was 25 years old, killed him. The article chronicled Renfro’s life, and discussed the accidental deaths of Heath Ledger and several other actors. Several people ‘in the business’ were quoted, including Drew Pinsky from Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew. “I just think what we see in young Hollywood is reflective in what we see happening in young America — the pandemic of drug addiction,” he said. “Where we’re losing ground is pharmaceuticals.” No doubt about it – if people don’t get wise to the problem of prescription drug addiction and dependency, they may well die before they get the chance to get into drug rehab or drug detox.

What is it going to take for people to wake up? How many others have to die before people who are taking prescription drugs stop messing around with them?

This country needs to put an end to the prescription drug culture. It used to be street drugs that killed us, and we got them from dealers – people who were known and recognized as criminals. Now our biggest criminals wear suits to the office every day to figure out how they can capitalize on others to increase profits.

Do you know someone taking prescription drugs? If so, don’t be complacent about it. Now is the time to act. Contact a drug rehab program counselor who can help you figure out how what you can do.

Popularity: 6% [?]