That’s one in five. That means that if you’re in a room with four other people, there’s a good chance one of you is taking prescription drugs – painkillers, stimulants, or sedatives, all of which are addictive – for no medical reason. And that person needs to get prescription drug rehab.

According to Medline, ‘experts’ don’t understand why so many people take these drugs. They assume that the fact that they’re so available has something to do with it.

But it takes a lot more than ‘being available’ for someone to take drugs. Bridges and tall buildings are available too, but that doesn’t mean people are going to jump off them.

So, why do they take them?

The reasons are actually pretty obvious, despite the fact that people who take them might say they’re just doing it for ‘kicks’ or because they ‘like it.’

The real reasons center around the fact that the individual taking them is unhappy, frustrated, confused, overwhelmed – and all those other conditions that indicate the person has something going on in their lives that they don’t feel they can do anything about.

And when you consider the world we live in right now, feeling that way about life should come as no surprise.

Also, because tens of millions are taking these same drugs as prescribed by their doctor, they think that the drugs are safe and see no reason why they should take them, too.

But they are deadly addictive. It doesn’t take long to get addicted to them, but what it takes to get off them is, guaranteed, far worse than whatever the person was experiencing that made them take the drugs in the first place.

They are likely to become ill with a variety of side effects, and sometimes life-threatening conditions. They are also going to have problems in their family, their job, their finances, their friends and other relationships. And they’re going to have to do a drug rehab program, which can take several months, will cost them a lot of money and their lives will be disrupted even more.

After all that’s done, you would have a hard time finding someone who says it was worth taking the drug. The only way that might be true is that a good drug rehab program will help them figure out solutions to the problems they were having in life that drove them to drugs in the first place.

Isn’t it a lot easier to just do that – face our problems and find solutions – than to take drugs, go through hell, put our families through hell, only to end up having to do the same thing?

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I read an unbelievable news story today about the burn victims of methamphetamine. According to the news story, the associated press conducted a survey of key hospitals in the nation’s most active meth states. The survey showed that up to a third of the patients in some burn units were hurt while making meth. This added up to thousands of people. Thousands of people whose burns – serious enough to send them to hospital burn units – could have been prevented if they’d gone to drug rehab.

The story was actually about the fact that most of these people are insured, which is creating a huge burden on healthcare costs for the rest of us, and is actually causing some burn units to close.

What about people who are burned when being caught in house fires, or even fighting them. Can you imagine living in an area which no longer had a burn unit to help people who were burned while doing something legal?

The burns from methamphetamine are usually caused by explosions while making it. The method is called “shake-and-bake.” The raw ingredients are put into a 2 liter soda bottle and shaken. But the mixture is very unstable and if not done absolutely correctly can explode.

The explosions can cause permanent disfigurement, blindness, and death.

The damage is also reflected in the cost for each burn patient – an average of $130,000 each, 60 percent higher than other burn patients. Burn experts estimate the cost to the taxpayer at 10s to 100s of millions of dollars. They can’t get a closer estimate because someone burned by meth often lies about what happened.

Another problem with this method of making meth is that, unlike big labs, someone making it is hard to find. Big labs required quite a bit of equipment and the chemicals could be smelled all over the neighborhood.

But they are making their presence known in hospitals. From 1999 to 2009, there were 83 meth related injuries in Indiana. Thanks to shake-and-bake ‘labs’, there have been 70 injuries in the last two years. A big change.

One of the doctors in a burn center in Iowa said that many of the meth lab burn patients won’t be able to return to a normal life. They’ll need rehab and occupational therapy to cope with their disfigured body.

There are a lot of people who have a pretty casual attitude towards drugs – especially when it comes to something apparently not too dangerous, like smoking marijuana. But drugs lead to more drugs, and when they lead to something like meth, you’re really taking your life in your hands in a number of ways.

If someone you care about is into drugs of any kind, the only way to really keep them safe is to get them through a good drug rehab program so they will get off drugs, and not want to take them again.

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Years ago I had a friend who grew up in ‘the projects.’ Drugs, guns, crime, gangs – they were everywhere. And there wasn’t much else to do. Until some bright person started dance classes in a school yard. I don’t know how many kids were saved from a life of drugs, guns, crime, gangs, prison and drug rehab, or how many didn’t die when they would have otherwise, but my friend was one of them. In fact, he became a professional dancer and, after that, a very successful businessman with a great family.

All from one guy who cared enough to give the kids something to do that was fun and challenging enough to get and hold their interest.

Many parents get their kids involved in one thing after another – partly to teach them different skills, partly to enable them to achieve something, and partly to keep them out of trouble.

But these are ‘minivan’ parents – families with cars, money and the time and flexibility to ferry their kids around from one activity to another.

This is not the case in inner cities. A higher percentage of parents don’t have jobs or, because they work for a relatively low wage, need two incomes to make a go of it. But, as they will tell you, they can’t afford the daycare, transportation, eating out of the house, appropriate workclothes and so on that are needed for both parents to work. In fact, those expenses can cost more than their pay. So, mom is at home. And usually without a car, without a support group that can help her, and so on.

That doesn’t leave extra money they can pump into helping their kids achieve their goals.

If you’re in that position, or know someone who is, you could make a big difference by finding people who would volunteer their services for community programs that the kids will attend. You could do a little survey of the local kids, speak to them individually, and see what they would like. Then pick the things that the majority of kids say they would like and get something going.

Community activities like this can change an entire neighborhood. If you have the opportunity to do it, you could save lives, and help many kids achieve something that they’re proud of and can carry them forward to create a good future, free of crime, guns, gangs, prison, drugs and drug rehab programs.

And the personal satisfaction for you will be out the roof.

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Can you imagine living in a State where poverty is rampant and employers can’t find enough people to hire who pass a drug test? That’s the situation in West Virginia, and this year officials plan to figure out what they can do to get these people into drug rehab and work out an overall handling to reduce the number of people who are drugged.

West Virginia is a good example of what happens on a smaller scale – in families – when drugs and alcohol enter the picture. Sometimes it’s the parents with the drug or alcohol problem, and sometimes it’s the kids. In either case, the result is the same.

How did West Virginia become, basically, an entire State with the same problems drugs create in a family. West Virginia was one of the hardest hit States when the OxyContin addiction problem surfaced in the U.S. Purdue Pharma. Purdue promoted OxyContin as less addictive than previously used painkillers like Vicodin and Percocet – and was later fined $634 million for intentionally lying to the public and doctors.

Not only were people getting addicted to the drug left, right and center, OxyContin pills were also labeled as ‘killers’ because of the rapidly escalating toll of overdose deaths connected to the drug.

People in West Virginia tended to be older and suffer from many chronic illnesses and debilitating diseases caused by years of working in the mines, so they jumped all over OxyContin.

And, now, many years later, the State is still caught up in prescription drug addiction. And many of them can’t afford to get off the drugs – since they’re almost impossible to stop taking without a drug addiction treatment program offered by professionals. There just aren’t enough of them – not good ones, anyone – offered free of charge by the State.

Back to families – this is, of course, is tearing families apart. Not only are parents, grandparents, uncles, aunts and kids suffering from addiction, the kids who want to make something of their lives are likely to move to another State to do it. They want opportunity, and there’s not much of it in West Virginia. So, they leave, and the families are left behind.

Anyone who has a family member abusing alcohol or drugs needs to get help immediately. It really will tear the family apart, and someone may even die.

We have enough to regret in our lives without also having the fact that we could have helped someone, and saved their lives, but didn’t do it. A successful drug rehab program is the answer.

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It’s the new year, and it’s time to start taking drug rehab, for yourself or someone you care about, into consideration. Do you really want to go through another year of hell living with drugs?

If you are looking at drug rehab options, there’s one specific method of so-called drug treatment that you really don’t want – and that’s methadone treatment.

Methadone treatment is used for people addicted to heroin or other opiates – like prescription painkillers.

Sometimes methadone is recommended as a ‘stop gap’ – a drug to take that will prevent withdrawal symptoms but does not get you high. You should know that people who are put on methadone for this reason almost never get into drug rehab. They are given methadone for years. Sometimes for life.

Other people, usually those who have gone back to taking drugs after drug rehab, are told that their body is no longer capable of producing the natural endorphins that make us ‘happy’, and that their only choice is to take methadone.

What has usually happened there is that the person hasn’t done a good drug addiction treatment program – and there are plenty out there that usually don’t work.

People who are on methadone, and have been on it for some time, say that the drug has no negative affect. In fact, there is plenty of evidence that it does.

A recent study in Norway, for example, found that people who are on methadone are twice as likely to have car accidents as those who are not on it. For the study, they spent two years following 2,500 people who were on methadone.

Perhaps the worst thing about methadone is that it’s almost impossible to quit. It’s harder to get off it than heroin and the prescription painkillers the person was taking before. In fact, many drug rehab centers won’t even accept someone on methadone because getting off the drug is so very difficult – even when being treated by professionals who’ve gotten hundreds of people off heroin and prescription opiates.

The real solution to opiate addiction is a good drug rehab program. One that has a very high success rate. At Drug Rehab Referral, we’ve helped thousands of people get off those drugs.

If you’re looking into drug rehab, check with us first. We can help you find the addiction treatment program that’s most likely to guarantee success. Of course, there are no real guarantees, but you might as well start off with a program that has a better chance of success than with one that has a low success rate.

The alternative is having an addict go through treatment and fail – in which case they lose their faith that they can actually get off drugs and are more likely to fall for the idea that they need to be drugged forever – on methadone.

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