A recent increase in heroin deaths has health officials in Oregon worried. The whole country should probably be worried because Oregon is a major transshipment point for drugs in other states including, but not limited to, Montana, Minnesota, Illinois, and New York. Heroin deaths are up 32% over last year. If anyone you know is using heroin, now would be a good time to get them into a drug addiction treatment center.

The officials think this is the beginning of a trend. They’ve noticed that heroin deaths go up and down. When they see something like this, they know there’s much more of it to come.

A word of warning, don’t opt for methadone - methadone replacement therapy programs usually don’t include any of the drug addiction treatment they promise. The heroin addict winds up addicted to methadone instead, and they can stay on it for the rest of their lives. Go for a real drug addiction treatment center that helps them through withdrawal, gets them on a regimen to improve their overall health, and then gets down to the bottom of the reasons behind the person’s addiction so they don’t relapse.

There are many centers like that around, but for every one like that there are hundreds or thousands that don’t work. So, if you want to handle the situation once and for all, do it right the first time.

Officials are warning heroin addicts about these deaths in the hopes that they will test the drugs before they take them rather than shooting up a full dose right off the bat. Hey, if they can do that, maybe they can quit altogether. If you’re looking for a way to help them, call Drug Rehab Referral. Their specialists know all the facilities available and can find the right one for your situation. Whatever you do, don’t delay. Get them into a drug addiction treatment center before they become one of the increasing statistics.

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If anyone is considering going onto a methadone maintenance program as a solution to heroin addiction, you should have a look at this news article that describes one person’s experience trying to get off methadone. Getting off methadone cold turkey is anguish - I can tell you that from personal experience, I’ve gotten off both heroin and methadone. Methadone was worse. Your best bet is probably a good medical drug detox program to help through the withdrawal, and then drug rehab after that to get down to the bottom of the addiction problem and continue the rehabilitation of your body.

Sometimes getting off drugs, especially opiates, can be pretty hard on you emotionally.  Taking opiates by-passes the body’s natural endorphin production - the natural production process slows down because the drugs are supplying what’s needed.  When you stop taking the drugs, it can take a while for the body’s endorphin production to fully kick back in and get up to snuff.  As endorphins are natural mood elevators and painkillers, you can feel a little miserable for a while.

If you get into a longer-term residental drug rehab program - we’re talking about months, not weeks - and you’re getting the nutrition, exercise, and so on, that you need to get healthy, things should kick in just fine and, by the time you leave drug rehab, you’ll feel pretty good. Probably better than you have in a long time, actually.

However, some people get discouraged when things don’t change quickly enough. This is one of the reasons people think drug rehab doesn’t work. They expect things to change but don’t necessarily do all the things necessary for that change to occur, and they don’t do them long enough. So, they wind up back on the drug. Or on methadone replacement therapy.

If you or someone you care about is trying to get off opiates, bear the above in mind. Find a good long-term residential drug rehab program that understands all the elements that makes recovery possible and has them built into the program. And if you’re having a really hard time with withdrawal, consider doing a medical drug detox prior to the  drug rehab program. It doesn’t take long and you can get through withdrawal safely and with a minimum of discomfort. Then you’re properly set up to get through the longer process of full rehabilitation and recovery.

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Another methadone incident - a man charged with involuntary manslaughter after his 2-year-old son died after drinking methadone. The man left his kids alone in the bathroom with an open bottle of methadone. The story doesn’t say why the guy had the methadone, but if he was an addict - rather than someone who had methadone in the house temporarily as a pain reliever - let’s hope he now tries to get into drug rehab.

We gets lots of comments on our blogs about methadone. Many are from parents whose children died from it one way or another, and others are from former heroin addicts who have traded their addiction to heroin for an addiction to methadone. They have been told that their bodies don’t produce enough endorphins and that they therefore can’t really live any kind of normal life without opiates. That’s also the reason they’ve been told drug rehab didn’t work for them.

I’ve asked methadone users for specific information on the testing they had done to prove that their bodies were incapable of producing endorphins, but I’ve never been given any evidence that testing like that has even been done. It appears to be an assumption.

In any case, we now have another tragic incident of methadone-related death. A drug rehab program is still a safer solution.

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Here’s an unusual story about one man’s heroin addiction. He started with speed, which he quit taking because he knew it would kill him. But, after he stopped, he couldn’t sleep and had anxiety attacks. Had he gone through a good drug detox and drug rehab program at that time, that might have been the end of it. Instead, he decided to use a little heroin.

“One day I met this heroin user and asked him all about it – it was all because I wanted to sleep and I wanted relief from the anxiety attacks,” he told the Esperance Express. He got much more than he bargained for. His life became a living hell. His heroin habit eventually cost him everything he had - his habit reached $400 a day, he lost his job, his family and his friends.

He tried drug rehab several times and also got involved in a methadone program. What none of this programs did was find the deep-seated problems that drove him to drugs. When he finally found one that did that, he turned his life around.

If you know someone with a drug problem and want to help them, make sure you really check out the drug rehab programs you’re considering. Only by getting to the root of the problem can you be sure things will turn around.

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Finding a drug rehab and drug detox may be what is in store for many Oregonians. More women than men and quite a few teens are becoming addicted to prescription drugs, according to Dr. Darryl S. Inaba. Dr. Inaba thinks that a larger percentage of the population abuse prescription drugs in Oregon than anywhere else. He says that Oregon ranks number one for prescription drug abuse. The drugs most abused drugs are the usual suspects - OxyContin, Vicodon, Ritalin, Adderall and cough syrup with DXM. No surprise; they’re abused all over the country. And the number of people in drug rehab centers trying to get off them are climbing.

This ties in with another story: a sad one from Reed College near Portland where one student died and another is on medical leave from heroin overdoses. The President of Reed College, Colin Driver, says “This is not working. We have to get help.” Mr. Diver may understand the problem of not only street drugs but also prescription drugs. It doesn’t really matter whether it is prescription drug abuse or heroin addiction. Mr. Diver knows he needs help, or many of his students will end up in a drug detox and drug rehab program.

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Sam Nolan started taking drugs at the age of 13. Sam was from Hove, a city in England near Brighton in East Sussex. Her story could have played out the same way in Florida, Kentucky, or anywhere for that matter. Sam started her drug use with inhalants and marijuana. She graduated to heroin and tried to stop on several occasions. Her parents sent her to drug rehab but, although a good drug rehab program works for many people, for Sam, it was unsuccessful.

This story is sad not just because Sam died but also because her family stood by her and tried to help her. The confusion, despair and anxiety from her drug abuse is obvious in her brother, Ricky Wright’s, comment: “For me personally, I would implore anyone using heroin to see what it did to Sam.”

The problems that OxyContin, Vicodin and heroin have brought to communities may not be obvious until you have a personal tragedy like Ricky and his parents. But those problems can be seen in the newspapers and on TV everyday. Children in the U.S. are using drugs and alcohol at younger and younger ages. Kids 11 and 12 years old are taking prescription drugs to schools and sharing them with their friends. If you know someone addicted to OxyContin, Vicodon or heroin, get them into drug detox and drug rehab so their story doesn’t play out the same way as Sam’s.

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You can buy an OxyContin pill for $60 or $80 dollars or you can buy a quarter gram of heroin for $15 to take the edge off. In Utah, this is known as a splitter. Former OxyContin addicts are turning to heroin - the splitter is just the beginning - and Utah is seeing an increasing number of drug rehab and drug detox admissions for heroin addicts who used to be addicted to OxyContin..

There is currently about twice as much heroin produced in Afghanistan as is used by U.S. addicts. This trend of switching from OxyContin to heroin may mean Afghanistan’s heroin is  going to be bought after all. And it’s also causing more people to enter drug rehab for heroin addiction. One rehab in Utah is seeing 100 to 150 heroin addicts a year - up from 50 in 2000. The prescription drug addiction problem in Utah are well documented, but the heroin problem is just beginning.

When the doctor shopping ends and the Tampa, Florida-based Internet sites cease to exist - there’s currently a real crack down going on - addicts will either go on to heroin or, if they’re lucky, they’ll go to a drug detox or drug rehabs program to end their addiction. The problem of OxyContin addiction in the U.S. needs serious attention or we will have a lot more heroin addicts. If you know someone, of whatever age, who is addicted to OxyContin, convince them to go to a drug detox and a drug rehab program before they, too, start turning to heroin.

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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.

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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.

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If parents from Maine don’t get the idea about how bad the drug abuse problem really is their kids will grow up needing a drug rehab program and drug detox.

There are many examples of this in the 2007 Youth Risk Survey. Several statistics stand out: 36% of kids are binge drinking and 75% said it is easy to get alcohol. But only 2% said they bought alcohol at a store.

I wonder if parents are giving their kids alcohol or if they’re turning a blind eye when they take it.

Prescription drugs are not covered in the report but at least 20% have used prescription drugs non-medically in the past year based on other national surveys. Most of the prescription drugs used by high school students come from a medicine cabinet. Heroin, cocaine and ecstasy use are also on the rise in Maine - those you have to buy from a drug dealer.

Drug rehab and drug detox will be part of life if you live in Maine. The Northeast has a problem with heroin and prescription drugs. If you don’t what your kids going to drug rehab and drug detox, lock up your pills and your alcohol.

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