In Louisville, Kentucky, a community mental health clinic that services 30,000 patients in the area is no longer going to prescribe the sedative Xanax or its generic version, alprazolam. They’re hoping this move will prevent prescription drug addiction, overdoses, deaths, and the need for drug rehab. They are also hoping to reduce the ‘constant stream of patients seeking Xanax” and the drain on resources caused by “pacifying, educating, bumping heads with people over Xanax.”

They started weaning people off the drugs in April, and plan to have all patients weaned off them completely by the end of 2011.

Xanax and alprazolam aren’t the only addictive prescription drugs causing problem in Kentucky. OxyContin addiction has been a major problem, as have other prescription painkillers like hydrocodone and methadone.

In fact, they been so busy trying to address the painkiller addiction problem that benzodiazepines like Xanax have kind of slipped through the cracks. But abuse and addiction to benzos is also widespread.

Alprazolam, for example, was the eighth most prescribed drug in the country in 2010. And there was an increase of 89% in emergency room visits.

The medical examiner in Kentucky said a combination of opiate painkillers, like OxyContin, and benzodiazepines, especially Xanax, is common in fatal overdoses.

Unfortunately, the clinic is going to replace Xanax and alprazolam with other drugs that don’t give you the ‘high’ that keep people clamoring for Xanax and alprazolam. Also, the body builds up a tolerance to Xanax and alprazolam so people have to take more and more of the drugs to get the same effect. This makes them even more prone to overdose.

Who knows where the other drugs will lead?

But, the clinic is also committed to spending more time with patients and actually working with them to relieve the anxiety they’re experiencing in life so they don’t need drugs at all.

Doctors get paid more for seeing a patient for 10 minutes and prescribing a drug than they do for actually sitting down with the patient and helping them work out the problems in their lives that are causing their emotional state. So it’s possible that their new protocol will affect their bottom line.

It’s good to see a clinic willing to take the hit in order to reduce the damage done by these dangerous and highly addictive drugs. Now, if we could just get them to stop prescribing dangerous drugs altogether …

If you or someone you know has a problem with prescription drug addiction, dependency or abuse, contact Drug Rehab Referral for help in sorting out how to get them into a drug rehab program that will enable them to live drug-free.

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University of Wisconsin Madison has such a bad reputation for alcohol I’m surprised parents are still sending their kids there. They are on the top ten party schools list year after year and probably graduate hundreds of budding or full-fledged alcoholics every year. I’m sure many of the students will eventually need alcohol rehab – whether they admit it or not. But administrators at the school are seriously trying to change the school’s image, and that means stricter rules about drinking.

In fact, the problem isn’t only with Wisconsin universities – the entire state is known as a drinking culture. A few years ago Wisconsin was # 1 in the U.S. for binge drinking, percentage of drinkers in the population, and driving under the influence.

Here’s a quote from an article written a few years ago.

“We lag a few states in beer consumption, but we’re near the top. With brandy, it’s no contest. We put away more brandy per person than any other state. We have a strong claim on the vodka title, too. And often we have no clue how drunk we are. Consider, for example, 75 drinkers who took a breath test for the Journal Sentinel. About half underestimated their blood-alcohol level, and when they did, they missed by a lot – falling short of their actual results by an average of 35%. Many who were over the legal limit for driving expressed full confidence in their ability to get behind the wheel. Person for person, we have three times more taverns here than the rest of the country.”

It isn’t surprising that schools would also be a big problem.

At University of Wisconsin Madison, students receive citations for underage drinking, requiring a trip to detox, alcohol-related disorderly conduct, or other alcohol violation. They may be referred to counseling and they may be kicked out of dorms; but the penalties and the way the issue was addressed were inconsistent.

Now, a first offense for underage drinking carries a fine of $263.50 – quite a lot for many students – and they are required to do a course on alcohol abuse. The course costs $78 for two group sessions or $200 for private sessions.

A course on alcohol abuse can be effective, although one study found that students who did a similar course when they first entered university as freshman didn’t drink a lot in the first semester but the resolve didn’t last.

Not surprising – considering the environment.

The best option would be a real alcohol and drug rehab program. Finding out about alcohol abuse is helpful, but it doesn’t necessarily help the student get to the bottom of why he’s drinking in the first place, help curb the urge, or enable him to confidently say no in the future – all of which would happen in a really good alcohol addiction treatment program.

Administrators will be watching over things to monitor the success of their new program. But parents are still primarily responsible for making sure their kids are educated on the subject and, if needed, getting them into an alcohol rehab program to get sorted out.

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If you’re wondering why with all the billions of dollars spent on the war on drugs, seeing how that money is spent might shed a little light on things. The new White House Drug Policy pages give a breakdown, state-by-state, on federal grants to deal with drug problems. If the money were more wisely spent, there’s a good chance the alcohol and drug addiction problem wouldn’t be half of what it is. That money needs to go toward drug rehab and prevention.

Let’s just have a look at the money spent preventing kids from drinking and taking drugs, and let’s take Tennessee as an example.

Tennessee gets $107 million to combat the drug problem. Where does it go?

The Department of Health and Human Services gets $65 million, about $27 million goes to the Department of Justice for law enforcement, prisons, and so on, and about $3.4 million is spent by the Department of Housing and Urban Development on shelters. There are also several other, smaller, activities.

What’s missing? Educating kids. It’s a well known fact that children who drink or take drugs in elementary school, high school and college are more likely to become alcoholics and drug addicts as adults. If you can stop them from drinking and taking drugs while they’re still young, there’s a good chance they won’t turn out to be drinkers or druggies at all.

Kids who drink are four times more likely to become alcoholic adults than those who don’t.

So, how much goes to the Department of Education to educate kids and help prevent them from taking drugs and alcohol? Under $6 million – out of $107 million.

And of that $6 million, only $425,000 goes to Alcohol Abuse Reduction Grants, and $375,000 goes to Grants for Coalitions to Prevent and Reduce Alcohol Abuse at Institutions of Higher Education. That’s about $15,000 for each of Tennessee’s 25 public colleges and universities.

Tennessee is on the list of top ten states for drug addiction overall and is the top state for non-medical use of pain relievers (e.g. OxyContin, methadone, hydrocodone, etc.). It also has a drug-induced death rate 30% higher than the national average.

Someone needs to take a look at what the money is being spent on and start preventing the state’s alcohol and drug problems. And for those young people who are already abusing alcohol or drugs, a good drug rehab program will set them straight so they don’t continue. Helping kids now will make huge changes in everyone’s future.

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Drug rehab in the USA, compared to drug rehab in some other countries, can be a breeze. Here you are often given help to get through withdrawal, are fed well, coached through difficulties, helped with the problems in your life that led to drug addiction or alcohol abuse and given counseling and a program that will help you stay clean when you leave the program.

In Russia, it’s quite a different story. There are not many alcohol or drug addiction treatment facilities in the first place – far more are needed to handle their huge heroin problem – and I doubt there are any centers at all that offer the type of drug rehab program you would find in the U.S. – except perhaps a few to deal with celebrities or officials.

One of the programs they have for the general public, called City Without Drugs, is making the news lately and growing increasingly more popular.

Their primary drug problem is heroin addiction. So, for most of the addicts who come to City Without Drugs, heroin withdrawal is the first step.

The withdrawing heroin addicts are locked in a room with about 30 bunk beds, each one occupied by a person who is going through withdrawal. While on withdrawal, they are fed very little – bread, water and gruel. They say that it sometimes takes a month just to get through the withdrawal process.

After they’ve withdrawn, they don’t get any counseling – instead, you work. The jobs are sometimes menial and sometimes a little more creative. One news report talked about a recovering addict who is refurbishing the art on the walls of a damaged church.

How well you do, how cooperative you are, and so on, determines when you will get out. It could take as much as a year.

Russia has a real problem and the authorities say that other types of drug rehab just don’t work. What they are doing at City Without Drugs – locking people up – is actually illegal, except for the fact that they have the addict’s parents’ permission. Those parents think, not incorrectly, that their son or daughter is going to wind up dead if they don’t do something – they’d rather see them they go through that system, and live.

Not surprisingly, some human rights advocate groups are furious about City Without Drugs. But others actually think the country is doing the right thing considering the extent of the heroin problem. Russia’s heroin addiction situation is desperate – they get it directly from the poppy fields of Afghanistan, it’s ruining their country and their youth. Desperate times call for desperate measures.

There are obviously arguments on both sides. Perhaps eating only bread and water, and a little gruel, is tortuous. On the other hand, considering that the addicts aren’t likely to hold anything down when they’re withdrawing under those circumstances, it might not be the worst thing in the world.

Also, I can’t personally say that working for the next year alongside other recovering addicts and being a contributing member of society – which they have probably not been for quite a while – is the worst idea in the world. Could that not bring about positive change and a willingness and desire to live a normal, productive, drug-free life?

Some advocates have said that City Without Drugs should give their ‘clients’ methadone. Russia doesn’t believe in methadone, they call it an ‘American fad’. It certainly is well past ‘fad’ status, but giving someone methadone in the U.S. and Europe hasn’t led to fewer addicts – they’re just addicted to methadone now instead of heroin. Methadone is very difficult to stop taking. It was also recently announced that more accidental drug-related deaths are caused by methadone than any other drug. In other words, if they gave addicts methadone, they might wind up with an even  more serious problem.

What do you think of the City Without Drugs approach?

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