According to a new report from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Administration (SAMSHA), the number of people going into drug rehab for prescription drug addiction has increased by 430 percent over the last ten years.

That’s pretty amazing when you think about it. Where one person out of ten may have gone into treatment for prescription drugs 10 years ago, there is now 4.3 out of ten.

And that’s only the people who go to drug rehab, not the people who are addicted to or dependent on prescription drugs but don’t get help for it.

SAMHSA says the prescription drug addiction problem is largely due to ‘pill mills.’

Pill mills are basically so-called pain management clinics that don’t do anything to address the problem; they just give out drugs. Since there are few questions asked, it becomes known that getting drugs from these doctors is a piece of cake. That attracts people who are already addicts.

However, the worst thing about pill mills is probably that they don’t offer any other solutions to the pain people are suffering. There’s no attempt to get them the treatment they need to get rid of the pain so, of course, they become addicts. There’s really no way to avoid it.

It’s hard to say how many people get addicted to prescription painkillers (OxyContin addiction, for example is really widespread) by first being given the pills by their doctor, but it’s considerable. Many of the people getting prescription drug rehab are in that situation.

That’s really criminal medicine.

What can you do? The solution is to first find a drug treatment program that will help get the person off the drugs, and then find alternative solutions to the pain. Chiropractic, acupuncture, natural medicine – they all offer possible solutions.

If these types of treatment were used, prescription drug addiction would be far less a problem.

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Have you or has someone in your family been to alcohol or drug rehab more than once? One of the major reasons for relapse is that many drug rehab programs just aren’t long enough. It’s not enough to simply get the person off drugs, or off alcohol. And that’s what short-term drug rehab programs do – that’s all they have time to do. Long-term residential drug rehab is a totally different story.

Basically, all short-term programs do is get someone through withdrawal. Going through withdrawal can be very painful or uncomfortable physically and emotionally. That’s a major reason why people don’t quit on their own – it’s hard to face that without professional help.

Once they do get through withdrawal, the addict or alcoholic thinks that was basically all they had to do. That they’ll be able to stop now. And it was a big accomplishment.

But they get back into their environment and whatever the problems were that led to them drinking or taking drugs in the first place, and they find those same problems are still there. And they’ve done nothing to resolve them.

A good, long-term drug rehab program does address and resolve those problems. It gets the person off the drugs or alcohol, just like any alcohol or drug rehab program does, but then it addresses the reasons why the person is drinking or taking drugs in the first place and helps them resolve the problems.

A recent news item by a drug rehab specialist said that when someone fails to get off drugs or alcohol permanently after their rehab program, many people consider that the problem is with the alcoholic or drug addict. That they just didn’t have the ‘character’ to stay clean.

This is not necessarily true. Getting a person off drugs or alcohol without actually addressing the reasons they take them or helping them find solutions to their problems is like giving a kid a bunch of books without ever teaching them to read and then blaming their lack of  education on their lack of  ‘character’.

Unfortunately, when someone does relapse after an alcohol or drug program, the tendency is to send them back to the same program. In other words, they do the same thing over again and expect different results. Einstein called that the definition of ‘insanity.’

Going through a program like that over and over again and going back to drinking or taking drugs also makes the person feel insane, or of bad character, or that they can’t be helped, and so on.

This makes things even worse. The person eventually gets to the point where they just don’t want to try again. They accept that it just ‘doesn’t work,’ that they just can’t do it.

What is the solution? Frankly, don’t even bother with those short-term programs unless you have absolutely no other options. Instead, get help through a long-term residential drug rehab program – give the person a fighting chance in the first place. You’re much more likely to get the results you’re looking for.

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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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According to a recent news article on a site that features airing the dirty laundry of celebrities – did the people who write that stuff grow up knowing that was their true mission in life, something that would give them a sense of purpose? –  Mackenzie Phillips is half-way through her certification program as a drug counselor. I don’t know how it will interact with an actual drug rehab program, but her counseling will apparently be turned into a TV show called No Relapse. The article called the idea of her counseling others on drugs absurd. In fact, she may be extremely successful. Here’s why.

Imagine you are a boat builder and need help figuring out a problem. Would help from an accountant, for example, who’s only boat experience has been going on a cruise really help you? Would anything they have to say be credible? Chances are high that it would be a complete waste of time.

In fact, many of the really good drug counselors have had a drug problem themselves. They understand what the addict is going through every step of the way. They know how it feels to be on drugs, they know how it feels to be addicted, they know how it feels to try and get off them.

They know about the physical pain, the emotional pain, about the experiences and feelings that lead a person to take drugs in the first place, and they know about trying to stay off them once they’re through the drug rehab program and back out in their usual environment.

Assuming that the former addict has also been trained as a counselor, there’s a good chance you won’t find anyone better to help you or someone you care about get off drugs.

Parents all over the world have tried to get their kids to stop drinking or taking drugs – as have wives with their husbands, sisters with their brothers, and vice versa in both cases, and even kids with their parents.

They are rarely successful. They usually don’t know the first thing about what the addict is going through, so their pleas, reasoning and other attempts fail.

I wish Mackenzie Phillips all the success in the world. And if you have a problem with drugs in your family, don’t be put off by the idea that a former addict may be the person able to get your family member off drugs. In fact, a former addict is usually exactly what an addict needs – which is why some of the most successful drug rehab facilities hire them.

Just as the accountant wasn’t able to advise the boat builder, airing celebrity dirty laundry for a living actually doesn’t qualify you as a drug rehab expert.

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If you know someone who is on heroin, methadone, other opiates – even prescription painkillers – you need to know this.

A recent article regarding heroin addicts in the UK says the government – i.e. the taxpayers – is spending 3.6 billion pounds (that’s nearly $6 billion dollars) to keep heroin addicts addicted to methadone. At the same time, the number of those addicts actually being referred to a drug rehab program where they can become totally free of drugs has dropped dramatically.

There is somewhere between 150,000 and 320,000 heroin/methadone/opiate addicts on the UK’s drug addiction sponsorship programs: here’s an example of what the British taxpayers are financing:

$1.2 million a year on methadone.

$2.8 billion a year on welfare payments

$1.9 billion a year on looking after the children of drug addicts

Wow.

The original intention of the methadone program – except for a very few addicts – was to use the drug to help wean them off heroin; to prevent them from having to go through the horrible withdrawal side effects that so often stops heroin addicts from kicking the habit.

Methadone is not a solution. It’s much, much more difficult to get someone off methadone than heroin. Many facilities in the U.S. won’t even accept methadone addicts in their drug rehab program. So methadone doesn’t free the person of anything – it imprisons them.

So, what about real drug rehab for these addicts? Of these 150,000 or 320,000 people (whatever the real number is) only 3,914 per year are referred for actual drug rehab. In fact, there are only 1,872 ‘affordable’ – which is being defined at about $1000 a week – beds in drug rehab facilities in the entire country.

A real lose/lose situation. Everybody loses – the addicts, the government, the families of addicts, the British taxpayer. Everyone in the country is paying to keep addicts addicted.

The very disturbing thing about this is that there is a similar trend in the U.S. Britain was one of the first countries to offer methadone as a solution. Now, decades later, it’s glaringly obvious that the great methadone experiment has failed. Let’s hope the U.S. is paying attention and learns from Britain’s mistakes.

If you know of someone who is addicted to heroin – or other opiates, which methadone is also used for – methadone is not the answer;  methadone is not drug rehab, it is continued drug addiction.

When someone you care about is addicted to heroin or other opiates, it’s tempting to do something to ‘quiet’ things down. Methadone addicts who are getting their drugs inexpensively, or, sometimes, free, often stop causing trouble. Like ‘psychiatric’ patients who are given drugs to calm them down – often to the point where they’re just sitting in a chair staring at whatever’s in front of them. Sure, with the right drug, no one causes trouble.

But is that really all you want? Wouldn’t you prefer to get them help so they can end their dependency on drugs and get back to leading a normal, productive life?

Only a good drug rehab program can do that. And by ‘good’, I don’t mean one of those 30-day things that get the person off drugs temporarily but, because they don’t thoroughly deal with why they got on drugs in the first place or how they’re going to stay off them when they get back into their regular environment, rarely gets permanent results. A good drug rehab program includes those steps. And, for the vast majority of addicts, it’s the only thing that works.

Don’t settle for less. Get your life back.

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Whitney Houston has certainly had her problems with drugs. She started her career with some incredible hits, and she was very young. Her first album was released when she was barely into her 20s. Since then, she’s won grammys, emmys – hundreds of music awards, more than any other female artist – but has had a constant battle with drugs almost since she started. Her problem? She hasn’t been choosing the right drug rehab program.

Whitney has been in drug rehab several times. Eventually, the problem got so bad her brilliant career was in the toilet. Fortunately, she’s extremely talented and was able to make a few comebacks – the latest was in 2009. But, once again, she’s in trouble – she just got out of yet another drug rehab program, a 30-day program which she says was just not enough.

She is so right. Short term drug rehab just doesn’t make it. Maybe if you have been taking drugs for a month – and aren’t totally into it, and are not in an environment or emotional condition where they will be constantly temped – 30 days might be enough. But anyone who has something serious going on needs more time.

A good drug rehab program gets the person off the drugs – which can take a while, and then gets into getting the person healthy again. Then, and without this step there’s little chance of the person staying off drugs, they get into why the person started with drugs in the first place and address that. Then, and this is the second thing that is vital for success, they look at the person’s environment, what they run into that makes them get back into drugs, and address those problems – helps them find solutions in advance.

Whitney Houston needs to really revamp her life so she understands why she is in a constant state of emotional upheaval.

A good drug rehab program will do that for her. I hope she finds it.

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If you have a son or daughter who is a musician, or aspires to be one, you might also have heard from them that drugs and alcohol get their creative juices flowing. The MusiCares MAP Fund, which has save the lives and careers of many musicians by getting them through drug rehab, dispels that idea.

Parents, family members and friends sometimes struggle for years to get the musicians in their lives into drug rehab. As long as a musician thinks their creativity depends on it, the pleas are likely to fall on deaf ears. But if they hear it from another musician – especially musicians who are undeniably successful – it might get through.

The 7th Annual MusiCares MAP Fund Benefit Concert welcomed many of those musicians, and honored Depeche Mode singer Dave Gahan. Gahan, who after years of drug abuse survived a suicide attempt and a heroin overdose, lived to pick up his career and has now been sober for years.

“To be honest,” said Gahan, “If you go down that route, drugs are going to take command over everything you’re doing anyway, and that’s been my experience anyway,” said the U.K. born vocalist. “I went through a period before I got clean where I don’t think I played a record for like two years. I just didn’t care.”

In the end, that’s what drugs can do to you. All you care about are the drugs.

Take it from the many artists who have fought their addictions and won: Steven Tyler, frontman for Aerosmith, Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards, Eric Clapton, Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page, Grace Slick – the list goes on and on.

And, you will notice, many still have illustrious careers.

But hundreds have been lost. Here’s a short list:

• Elvis Presley
• Janis Joplin
• Jimi Hendrix
• Tim Buckley
• Tim Hardin
• Alan Wilson (from Canned Heat)
• Brent Mydland and Ron McKernan (from Grateful Dead)
• Dee Dee Ramone (from The Ramones)
• Gram Parsons (from The Byrds)
• Gregory Herbert (from Blood, Sweat & Tears)
• Hillel Slovak (from Red Hot Chili Peppers)
• John Belushi (from Blues Brothers)]
• John Bonham (from Led Zeppelin)
• John Kahn (from Jerry Garcia Band)
• Jonathan Melvoin (from Smashing Pumpkins)
• Keith Moon (from The Who)
• Mike Bloomfield and Paul Butterfield (from Butterfield Blues Band)

and many, many more. If you check out the full list, just of well-known musicians, their average age when they died was 31.

Ask your musician friends if they want to risk ending their careers at the ripe old age of 31. Or would they rather still be playing to sold-out venues in their 60’s, like Steven Tyler and Eric Clapton?

Use this type of information to get your musician friends or relatives into drug or alcohol rehab. You may save their lives and careers. And, as many of the most successful musicians in the world will attest, it will also make them better musicians.

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Proposition 36, the California law that enables non-violent drug offenders to get counseling rather than go to prison, is on the rails in yet another California county, Santa Cruz. That’s about 300 people a year who, having been caught with illegal drugs in their pocket – enough for themselves only, not dealers – who will be told to get addiction help and be given a list of places that offer drug rehab, but will not be given any financial help to do that.

Sounds fair really – don’t you think? Why should we, the taxpayers, pay for that person to go to drug rehab?

Well, for one thing, it’s either rehab or prison. And rehab is a lot cheaper. The cost varies from county to county, program to program, but analysts say it roughly equates to $2.50 saved for every $1.00 paid towards rehabilitating drug offenders. That’s a lot of taxpayers dollars.

But it does kind of make you feel like you’re in between a rock and hard place, right? Especially since you really feel $1.00 coming out of your pocket every time you see the taxes taken out of your paycheck or write your annual IRS check, but you never really experience the joy of getting back $2.50. In fact, you can’t really see that $2.50 anywhere – California owes $265 billion.

Getting people off drugs so they can be productive members of the California citizenship might be a good thing – obviously the state is producing far less than it’s consuming, or someone involved in the state budget just doesn’t have a clue what to do with money.

On a more personal level, I’m sure the ‘every $1.00 spent on drug rehab saves $2.50 for taxpayers’ applies with even higher numbers in families. How much is your son or daughter being drug-free, happy, productive and out of danger worth to you? How much is it costing you to have them addicted to drugs – financially and emotionally? I would say lots more than 2.5 times the cost of drug rehab.

Ever look at it that way? If you’re tired of living with drug addiction and abuse, call Drug Rehab Referral to find help.

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Charlie Sheen, having just started his drug rehab program, gave a speech the other day about the evils of alcohol and drugs to the UCLA baseball team.  Wild Thing urged the team to stick to chocolate milk.

He was very well received, but I don’t know how much impact it’s going to have when he’s in such deep trouble himself.

On one hand, it might make more sense to get himself straightened out before he starts giving advice to others.

But, on the other hand, maybe the best poster boy for drug rehab is actually someone who’s really messed up.

Looking at the mess someone else’s life is in is a pretty effective deterrent. I recently read an article about an addict who had gone to jail 18 times for drugs. Each time he was in prison, the only thing he could think about was getting out so he could get high again.

During his last prison stint, his sister visited him and told him what was going on with his closest friends who also had problems with drug addiction – two had died, from drugs, one went to prison for life, and others also had horrible stories.

He was sober at the time, so these things meant something to him. And he decided to turn his life around.

Maybe Charlie Sheen’s story will have a similar effect. Here’s a guy who seems to have everything who can’t stop wanting to destroy himself. And there’s no doubt that the drugs and alcohol, along with his other addictions, have had a hand in that.

What do you think is the best motivation for getting off drugs?

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I’m still having trouble getting my head around how California can cut drug court/treatment programs to save money. California’s drug problems are serious enough to warrant putting more money into treatment, not less. It could actually make them money.

One study (Urban Institute and Caliber Associates) showed that, nationwide, 75% of drug court graduates have not been arrested again in the two years following graduation. Bearing in mind that most drug court rehab programs are still following up with the person at that time, you can pretty much bet that these people are not back on drugs either.

That might not sound like a big deal until you consider what usually happens for drug -related offenses: 95% return to drug abuse after release from prison, and 60 – 80% commit a new crime after release.

So, 75% doing well after two years is a significant change.

You can also see the results in other ways. New York state, for example, was able to close down four prisons because of offering drug rehab through drug courts, and has saved $250 million.

So, why is shutting down such a successful program considered a way of saving money for California?

This simply seems like bad money management to me. What is going on with California? Has it reached the stage of running so close to the wire that they actually lose money every week, despite the fact that there’s money coming in? Like a person who has a paycheck coming on Friday, but by Tuesday they’re already broke. So, they borrow $200 on Tuesday, then on Friday pay back the $200 plus $40 interest. At the end of the year have taken home about $2000 less. Never get ahead, never able to invest in what they would need to do to change their situation.

Drug abuse costs the U.S. billions of dollars every year – one way or another. If we want to have billions more to spend, we need to put more pressure on public officials to spend money on things like drug rehab that will, in the end, not only save billions, but save lives, lower the crime rate and turn current drug addicts and criminals into contributing members of society.

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