People from all walks of life can very easily get sucked into a life of drug and alcohol addiction. It’s not a problem that any one group of individuals is more prone to experiencing. But, have you ever thought that your own doctor could be addicted to drugs or alcohol?

Unfortunately physicians can also fall into the grips of addiction. They not only wreck their own personal lives and those of their families, but what do you think this does to their ability to effectively treat patients? Scary thought, huh? I certainly wouldn’t want a doctor who is high on drugs managing my health, especially if I was sick with a major disease that required critical thinking. And what about surgeons who are operating on patients?

There was a recent survey done that showed some pretty alarming information, most notably, that doctors are not likely to report their colleagues if they know about or suspect drug abuse. The survey found that only one in three doctors would report the problem. The reasons being that they feared retribution by the offender or that they would be getting their colleague into trouble.

In Florida, a program has been put in place for this type of scenario to be avoided. They offer a reporting program for doctors to be able to report their colleagues or themselves, with a solution to the problem being offered, rather than revoking their license and turning them away. Doctors have the opportunity to clean up. They are required stop practicing medicine and attend a drug or alcohol rehab program, but once they’re clean, they can go back to practice.

What a concept! Why is this only available for doctors? Most of the time, you not only lose your job, but chances are, you could wind up in jail if you’re doing drugs. This gives people a great opportunity to regain their lives and live sober again. I’m in full agreement and think this is a great program. Give people a chance to make the right choice!

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A California judge is fed up with Lindsay Lohan’s inability to comply with her probation requirements. Lindsay got into trouble in 2007 for a number of offenses. She drove drunk twice, had cocaine in her system and drove recklessly.

Lindsay is no stranger at this point to the world of alcohol and drugs, or the court system. She was put on probation for a three year period and has been wearing an alcohol-monitoring ankle bracelet since May, and well before that, ordered by the court to attend alcohol treatment classes. But, she keeps pushing her luck. She’s been caught drinking with the alcohol bracelet on and she’s missed several of her treatment classes.

Well, it looks like her luck ran out. She’s been sentenced to 90 days in jail and has to go to an in-patient drug rehab program. When the judge came down with that sentence, Lindsay started to cry and plead with the court not to do that to her, but it was too little, too late. The judge basically looked at the apology as insincere and the tears as those of a crocodile.

News has also surfaced about Lindsay being prescribed a very strong painkiller called Dilaudid. This is a drug that has been compared to morphine and even heroin. She’s also prescribed Ambien (to help her sleep) and Adderall (to combat anxiety). There are too many bright, young stars being prescribed whatever drugs they want with tragic outcomes like overdose and death.

Honestly, I think the judge is doing right by Lindsay to up the ante in terms of her consequences. So far, probation and an alcohol-detecting ankle bracelet haven’t worked. And, with doctors being willing to prescribe whatever drugs she wants, coupled with the idea that she’s basically untouchable, she obviously doesn’t have a clue about responsible behavior and moral values. If she’s not willing to help herself, the law will.

Hopefully she actually dives into the drug rehab program portion of sentence and gets a clue. It would be awful if she wound up dead like so many of our favorite celebs and singers in recent years.

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This weekend, a lot of people in the US will be celebrating Independence Day (July 4th). There will picnics and barbeques and fireworks, you name it! There will also be drinking at those get-togethers, and not just for adults over the age of 21, but by minors who shouldn’t be partaking in alcoholic beverages.

There was a study done across hospital emergency rooms in the US and it showed that kids who wind up in the emergency room for underage drinking dramatically spikes during this holiday weekend. It was an 87 percent increase, to give you an idea of what I meant when I said “dramatic increase”.

In addition to kids visiting hospital ERs for alcohol, injuries, arrests and embarrassment can all be attributed to them making the choice to drink. And, to make matters worse, about 5000 people under the age of 21 die each year with alcohol related to their cause of death.

Do you know what your kids have planned for this weekend? It might not be such a bad idea to find out, or to make sure to include your children and their friends in your plans. If they’re going out with their friends, have a talk with them about the dangers of drinking alcohol. Most people chock it up to “kids being kids”, especially if they drank underage. It’s incorrect. It’s not a good example and kids should not be allowed to drink. Oh yeah, and it’s actually against the law.
Let’s vow to lower that dramatic spike in ER visits this weekend by helping our kids learn the facts and dangers about alcohol abuse. It could save their life!

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Did you know that a single alcoholic drink can triple your chances of dying in a car accident while you’re driving? A new study that was done in New Zealand has proven this startling information to be true. Most people are unaware of how little alcohol it takes to make it dangerous to get behind the wheel.

The legal Blood Alcohol Content (BAC) limit in all of the United States is .08%. Since everyone is different, reaching the legal limit will depend on the number of drinks, the amount of time in which they were consumed, your weight and your gender. And, apparently there is enough impairment after only one drink that it increases your chances of dying behind the wheel.

This information is really scary when you think of young people who are not only inexperienced drivers, but also inexperienced drinkers. They don’t know their limits when it comes to either activity. Binge drinking is very common amongst younger drinkers and they’re most likely going way beyond the legal limit.

But, you certainly don’t have to be young to make it dangerous. If one drink raises the level of danger by 30%, it’s better to play it safe and not get behind the wheel. Since you can’t plan on being in an accident, why not plan on having someone else drive who isn’t drinking? Draw straws, take turns being the designated driver or cab it for the night. It’s not safe to get behind the wheel with any amount of alcohol in your system.

Shedding new light on drinking and driving has caused other countries to look at decreasing their legal limit. I think this would be wise to do globally. Victims of drunk driving are not only the drinkers, but other people who get caught in the wrong place at the wrong time.

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In the US, alcohol abuse is one of this country’s largest problems. It often starts with school age kids. And, it has been proven that kids who start drinking alcohol in their teens are at much greater risk of having problems with alcohol abuse as they grow up.

Unfortunately, there are parents all across America who allow their kids to drink. They think it won’t hurt anything if they’re drinking at home and avoiding other drunks and risky behavior. The problem with kids being allowed to drink at home, besides the fact that’s illegal, is that brain damage can occur in a developing child after just 3 beers.

There have been studies on the effects of alcohol on the human brain, and it has been proven that after just three beers, the brain will begin to work differently. Scientists have actually put people into MRI scans while the participants drink to watch the changes to the brain as they happened.

You’ve no doubt heard the term “everything in moderation”, which can absolutely be applied to alcohol. A young person isn’t going to be permanently brain damaged if they have a drink. But, there will be negative effects if people drink over and over again, especially in higher quantities associated with binge drinking. And yes, it will be permanent and can impair critical thinking for extended periods of time.

If you’re thinking of letting your child drink, think again. Set a good example by saying no. You could save them from a life of issues with alcoholism and the possibility of brain damage and the for Drug Rehab later in their life.

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A recent article discussed the rise in the number of alcohol-related deaths in college-age kids. They increased by about 25% over a 7 year period. About 30 percent were actually in college. When we were our kids’ age, our parents didn’t have to worry so much about these things when we were going off to college. They didn’t think needing alcohol rehab would be an outcome of higher education.

Sure, they worried – about our grades, about the pressure, about how we’d do our first time away from home, and so on – but not about whether we were going to die from binge drinking, driving while drunk or being in a car with someone who was drunk, or having some other kind of accident that would never have happened had we not been drunk.

Personally, if my kid was already drinking before going to college, I’d send them to a good alcohol treatment center before college. I’d also pull them out of college temporarily to make sure they got treatment before they continued school. They’d not only be safer, they’d get a better education.

Did you know that binge drinking – which is how a lot of drinking in college is done, not in some moderate fashion, and it only consists of 4 or 5 drinks at a time – affects the brain? Numerous studies have been done.  Some show impaired memory and more than usual concentration necessary to perform simple tasks (even for people who drink like that only once a week), and some show that critical thinking is impaired for an entire month after one night of binge drinking.

Does that sound like the state they should be in to get a college education? Does that sound like an environment you want to send your kid into? I’d go out of my way to keep my kid OUT of college if those were the consequences.

Yes, most kids survive it all. But many continue on to become heavy drinkers throughout their lives. Not to mention that the vast majority of people graduating college don’t get a job doing what they studied for. Could it be they were too out of it to even know that they weren’t really interested in what they were studying?

It’s time to start taking college a little more seriously. And it’s up to the parents to make sure that’s how their kids feel about it, too. Shore them up against the college environment with alcohol and drug education, even if that means getting them through an alcohol and drug treatment program before they go, and make sure they have a real purpose for the college education they’ll be getting; that will also help keep them focused.

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Alcohol abuse is one of this country’s biggest problems. And, often, the problem starts when we’re young. In fact, those who drink while in their teens have a much greater chance of becoming alcoholics than others. Nevertheless, there are parents all over America who let their kids drink – thinking it’s harmless as long as they’re not out driving or doing something else that’s risky. But, really, you’re setting your kid up for brain damage.

A study on the effects of alcohol on the brain showed that after drinking the equivalent of just three beers, the brain starts to work differently. They put the people in this study in an MRI to scan their brain while they were drinking – and they saw it happen.

Okay – so once isn’t going to kill you. If you’re young and relatively healthy, the brain’s functioning normally again the next day. But what happens when you drink over and over again? You wind up with the “permanent brain damage that is known to occur in alcoholics.”  And that’s quote from the doctors who conducted the tests.

Just a couple more beers – i.e. five for a guy, four for a girl – actually impairs critical thinking for a month! That’s pretty serious. But we do it all the time, and let our kids do it.

Makes me wonder how much of our problems are really from brain damage.

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If you’ve ever been to a college football game, a frat party, prom party, or anything similar, you won’t notice too many beer cans or bottles around. Why? They buy it in kegs – a keg holds 15.5 gallons – the equivalent of 165 12-oz. cans of beer. And if they buy domestic beer, it will only cost them about $40, plus a not-too-expensive refundable deposit on the keg itself. Is it any wonder why we have so many young alcoholics checking into alcohol rehab and alcohol detox, so many more getting injured and ill from binge drinking, and so many car accidents and even alcohol-related deaths?

In New York, where one in three college-age kids drinks and one in 10 adults actually has an alcohol problem, they’re putting new restrictions on beer kegs to try to help the problem. A registration tag will be put on the kegs identifying the buyer and seller (and there’s a fine of $250 to $450 for damaging or removing the tag), and the deposit on kegs is being raised from $50 (that’s the NY deposit cost) to $75.

Studies have shown that raising taxes on alcohol may have acted as a mild deterrent, but in a college environment I don’t know how much it will help. With 20 people splitting the cost each person only has to come up with $7.00 and they’re going to get half of that back when they return the keg. Even 5 people would only have to come up with $28 - and there aren’t too many college kids that don’t have $28, especially when they’re going to get half of that returned.

However, many of them would probably have trouble coming up with that amount 2 or 3 times a week, though. So I guess that’s where the deterrent effect comes in.

Obviously, the best deterrent is the person not wanting to drink that much (or at all.) If that’s not the case, though, they may need alcohol rehab – which you can get through an alcohol and drug addiction treatment center. Don’t go for just a detox – that dries them out but does nothing to handle the urge to drink or the person’s ability to quit drinking.

Did you know that one night of binge drinking (that’s five drinks for a guy, four for a girl) impairs critical thinking for a month? Not only is the college kid in danger of becoming an alcoholic, he’s also pretty much wasting his education. Check out alcohol rehab.

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Last week I wrote a blog about people being unaware of why they drink – like the young man who’s only explanation was “I like a few beers when I get home from a day at work.” They know, really, that they shouldn’t drink as much as they do but they never look at why they’re drinking so much. They’ll look at that, and discover the reasons why, if they go to alcohol rehab. But it’s not likely without it.

I recently ran across a disturbing statistic about this unawareness from the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI at cspinet.org) – 48% of college drinkers report that “drinking to get drunk” is an important reason for drinking.

Tha certainly explains why you don’t get anywhere when you ask them why they don’t just have one or two drinks and leave it at that – an experience I’m sure 99% of those who have a heavy drinker in the family have had.

What purpose does getting drunk serve? It’s way beyond ’social drinking’ at that point. They want to reach oblivion – reach the point where they are semi-conscious (or unconscious.) Only then do whatever demons they’re fighting move into the shadows.

That’s why the expertise of an experienced drug counselor who can get an answer to the obvious next question – why do you want to get drunk? – is so vital. Until the drinker knows the answer to that question, he’s not going to be able to resolve the drinking problem.

And that’s why you need to address the problem in an addiction treatment center. Give us a call to find out more today.

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I hope the news articles on the recent death of 19-year-old Jason Wren, a student at the University of Kansas who died after a night of binge drinking, alerted parents to the discrepancies in the application of the law regarding students’ privacy and the practice of informing parents, or not, when students have a problem with drug or alcohol addiction or abuse.

According to Jason’s father, he knew his son had an alcohol problem before he sent him off to university and, had he known it was still a problem – he did send him to a ‘dry’ school so he did have reason to believe it would not be a problem – he would have brought him home where he could keep an eye on him.

Instead, he didn’t find out about the problems Jason was having until attending his son’s memorial service at the school, where he was allowed to see his son’s records for the first time. His son was on probation in his residence hall for alcohol violations, hadn’t shown up for the personal counseling session he was supposed to get because of it, and hadn’t done the required alcohol abuse course.

The school provost – a high ranking official, this one responsible for student success (!) - had the nerve to say that “there is no national evidence that parental notification makes a difference.”

I beieve that’s the lamest, most irresponsible, insensitive excuse I’ve ever heard. Someone’s son just died and she’s being a politician – covering her ass.

The law states that parents should be informed in an emergency. Until 2007, ‘emergency’ was defined as an ‘extreme situation’. After a student at Virginia Tech shot and killed himself and 32 others in April of that year, the definiton changed to a ’significant threat to the health or safety of the student or other individuals.’

Well – that’s obviously open to interpretation. Ask 10 people on the street what they would consider a ’significant threat to the health or safety of the student or other individuals’ and you’ll get 10 different answers. And it’s been proven that even the so-experts – psychiatrists – can’t predict whether someone’s dangerous or not. How is some administrator at a school, or a school council, going to do it?

What should you do? Jason’s father sent him to a ‘dry’ school; obviously, that wasn’t enough.

Where college-aged sons  and daughters with alcohol problems should go is to alcohol rehab. Not university. And if they’re taking drugs, do the same. Get them into an addiction treatment center - a long-term residential treatment program that will take however many months are needed to get down to the bottom of the problem so your kid CAN and WILL say no when the time comes.

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