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How Pain Killers Can Lead to Addiction
How Pain Killers Can Lead to Addiction
It can often happen that one inadvertently gets hooked on pain relievers. This is a story about a young man named Brandon, who used to ride BMX bikes, both motocross and stunt riding. He eventually injured his knee and required pain medications which were prescribed for him — opiates. This led him down the road to addiction.
Fortunately for Brandon, he found a Narconon drug and alcohol rehabilitation facility, and has just completed his full recovery from prescription drug addiction. Here is his story.
After hurting his knee, doctors performed surgery to rebuild it. Then he took the opiates prescribed following the surgery, and continued to take them afterwards as he felt better than when he didn’t take them. He never realized the addictive power of these prescription pain killers.
Continuing to ride BMX bikes, he also continued to injure himself, and thus was prescribed more pain killers. Finally, he was taken off the drugs, and began to feel sick, but still didn’t realize that he was suffering from addiction withdrawal. At about the same time, his friends were abusing opiate pain pills and he started too, at parties. At age 16, he started snorting OxyContin, and each time he did so, he didn’t feel sick. In addition, he started drinking alcohol excessively.
Eventually his parents realized what was happening with Brandon and they sent him to a rehab facility for 90 days when he was 17 years old. Unfortunately, Brandon wasn’t ready to quit, and didn’t actually realize the problem with drugs that others saw in him. So, after he was released, he quickly started smoking pot and drinking, and then drifted back to the pain pills.
During his senior year of high school in Richmond, Virginia he started snorting heroin. His friends told him that shooting it was “the way to go,” so he started shooting up and that began his hard-core addiction.
He then tried some rehab programs which used Suboxone (buprenorphine) to help prevent withdrawal symptoms. However, he didn’t realize that he was still taking an opioid drug daily; he just felt better with the Suboxone and assumed that he was doing better than when on heroin.
However, he’d keep drifting back to the friends who took heroin, and he’d slip back into using it again, sometimes selling his Suboxone, or even taking it in the morning so he could go to work, and then coming home to shoot heroin too. He was lucky he didn’t end his life then in an overdose, but he was just lost at this point and didn’t consider that possibility. At this time, he worked for his father hanging drywall, his only purpose being to make enough money for another fix. Weekends were devoted to drug use and partying, and by Sunday his money was always gone.
He went to another long-term rehab about the time he was 21, where he stayed for 11 months. However, even this long interruption of his drug-taking didn’t resolve the addiction pattern. Right before he was supposed to complete the program and graduate, he and someone else from the rehab left for the evening and got drunk. He left the rehab program the next day.
Brandon’s alcohol abuse quickly advanced into more heroin use and for the next two years it continued. Sometimes he could get a prescription for Suboxone but he didn’t use it unless he couldn’t get any heroin.
He finally did come to realize that he had to overcome his addiction. He and his family found the Narconon program over the Internet. With his family’s help, he made the decision to go to Narconon, although his commitment to finding lasting sobriety there was shaky at first. He heard from other students at Narconon how much better they felt and this encouraged him to give the program a real chance.
Once that happened and he started to work sincerely on the Narconon program he felt good about himself again; the first time in many years. He said that he started having a natural happy feeling – and one he hadn’t felt in a long time.
Once Brandon started moving through the program he was able to resolve old feelings of resentment: he says he finally began to grow up while on the program. Seeing himself finish the full Narconon program, the first rehab he actually completed all the way through, was a proud moment for Brandon.
He also chose to stay at the Narconon Rehab Center to aid others to recover from drug addiction. He’ll tell other students, “Dude, if I can do it, you can do it.” He adds, “I’m glad I did this program. With my experience in rehabs, I don’t think people could find a better place to be.”
If you or someone you care about has a problem with pain killer or other drug or alcohol addiction, contact a drug rehab counselor at Narconon International. You don’t have to be trapped in the cycle of addiction. Narconon offers an effective rehab program in fifty locations all over the world.
Will Canada’s Supposed Solution to OxyContin Abuse Work with OxyNeo?
Recently a new drug gained approval of the Canadian government. It is supposed to be the answer to an epidemic of OxyContin abuse, but will this drug really be the solution it is intended to be?
OxyContin is a very strong, frequently-abused drug which acts as an opioid pain killer and is supposed to be formulated so that it is time-released. However, abusers have found ways around its time-release features to abuse the drug in several different ways. They can smoke it, crush and snort it, or dissolve it and then inject it into their veins, bypassing the time-release features so that they get a full heroin-like dose of the opioid in the body at one time. It is estimated that abuse and addiction to this drug plagues 200,000 people just in Canada.
When abusers find that they can not obtain their Oxy for some reason, many turn to heroin, which is surprisingly cheaper and more accessible than the prescription drug. Heroin is readily available from drug dealers on the street, and may be easier to find than to weave through the complex medical systems of Canada or the United States.
The government of the United States approved the Purdue Pharma drug company’s less abusable form of the drug in 2011, but it had to then meet the requirements of the Canadian authorities. This new drug, called OxyNeo was released for Canadian patients in the beginning of March, 2012. It is supposedly formulated to resist dissolving, smoking or crushing, thus circumventing the avenues abusers had used to release the full potency of the drug quickly.
According to reports, this new OxyNeo pill is supposedly too hard to crush but when it is swallowed, will still release the correct amount of medication to the body. Those who find that a whole, intact pill is excreted through their body’s waste channels are informed that they are still receiving the correct amount of medicine as is intended.
For those who would smoke the pills these new ones will not burn, at least not enough to get intoxicated from them. There is also a feature that will turn the pill into jelly when someone tries to dissolve it so it cannot be injected. These features are designed to protect those people who cannot control their extreme craving for this drug.
But, when one is addicted to opiates it is almost inconceivable to not obtain more of the drug. So, what will the users of OxyContin, when unable to obtain more of their favorite drug do to solve this dilemma? If addiction rehab is not a viable alternative, then the opiate addict will undoubtedly try to obtain his drugs from another source.
His choices would be to find other prescription opiates like hydrocodone or fentanyl or hydromorphone, and to find a doctor who would prescribe these for him. Another option would be to try to get the OxyContin from the Internet, and purchase from some other country’s suppliers, such as India or China. Unfortunately these countries may supply false products, which are not the drug at all; or some version which is contaminated with other toxins; or at best, he will get the drug but of some unknown potency. And, finally, and most likely, these users would turn to heroin. Heroin is readily available in Canada and the U.S., and its usage is already on the rise in Canada. According to the site for Canadian news, Canada.com, there have been large increases in the number of students abusing heroin, with that number doubling in just the year 2007-2008 among Toronto students. And, according to the same site, the ages of Canadian heroin addicts is falling, from about age 19 just 20 years ago to as young as 14 years of age now.
This trend does not have to continue.
There is actually hope for heroin or OxyContin and other drug abusers. The very best thing that could happen is that one would not transition off one drug to another, and another after that and so on. It would be far better to find an effective drug rehab program that really can address this issue and handle the addiction for good. There are many drug rehabs in the U.S. and Canada who claim success rates between 16 and 20 percent.
There is one that has been far more effective however and that is Narconon.
At Narconon drug and alcohol rehabilitation centers, 70% of their graduates regularly stay clean and sober for at least two years after completing the program. In Quebec, at Trois-Rivieres, there is a Narconon long-term residential rehab program for those who are ready to kick the habit for good. There is also another rehab center offering real help for addicts in Alberta, the province which in 2010 had the highest rate of opiate abuse in the country. And, in Vancouver, there is a drug education program offering Narconon’s extremely effective drug prevention curriculum so that young people never even start to go down the road to OxyContin, OxyNeo, heroin or any other drug abuse.
There is help available to those who have been abusing any drugs, marijuana, prescription drugs, or even alcohol. It is the purpose of Narconon to help addicts to find lasting sobriety and become productive, drug-free members of society. This occurs at Narconon centers all over the world on a daily basis.
Find out more details about the Narconon drug rehab program by calling one of our drug counselors.
Parents can Prevent Prescription Drug Abuse
Although many parents may not know it, they can set the example for their teenagers that will lead them to abusing or not abusing prescription drugs.
In the latest Monitoring the Future study published by the University of Michigan, some trends are noted that may have come about due to the lack of understanding young people have on what drugs can do. In this study, researchers noted that more than half of American schoolchildren have abused an illicit or prescription drug by the time they have finished high school. Additionally, sixty percent reported they had drunk alcohol and 41 percent had engaged in binge drinking (consuming five or more drinks in one sitting) just in the two weeks prior to the study.
Trends noted in this December 2011 report included the news that heroin and cocaine use are somewhat down, but marijuana use was up and exceeded cigarette smoking in teens. Prescription drug abuse is steady at a very high level.
In 2010, the number of high school seniors who were abusing prescription opioids such as hydrocodone or oxycodone was nearly twice the number that had abused those drugs in 1991, hitting more than 13%.
It is easy to see how one can become complacent about prescription drug use, and how easily that can lead one to abuse prescription drugs. In schools, too many children are given prescription drugs to help them focus, or settle down (for problems that are labeled as “attention deficit disorders” of various types); and children and teens keenly observe what their parents do. If parents take prescription medicines for anxiety, pain or trouble sleeping, it is easy to see how kids can think these drugs are harmless. Prescription drugs, however, are not harmless, but addictive, and most are extremely dangerous and easy to overdose on, particularly when mixed with alcohol or other drugs.
However, it is reassuring to know though that as parents we can have a positive effect on our children, simply by talking openly about drugs and their potentially harmful effects. Ideally, one should set an example of abstaining from drug use, as well as openly talking about issues and sharing communication honestly about how one feels about taking drugs or alcohol.
The National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Colombia University (CASA) discovered that it is important for both parents to agree on their anti-drug and anti-alcohol positions, so that they will present a consistent message when talking to their kids. In fact, CASA found that the decision a child ultimately makes on whether or not to take drugs or alcohol depends strongly on this one factor.
Lower substance abuse rates also corresponded in CASA’s research with having family dinners together five or more times weekly, with higher rates of substance abuse found in families who ate dinner together three or less times per week.
When it comes to those entering drug rehab, almost eight percent of those who enter are in the age group from 12 to 17 years old. If you added all those under 21 who are going into rehab, it amounts to about 15 percent of those two million people entering treatment, or a whopping 300,000 youth. These young people are dealing primarily with marijuana abuse, but alcohol abuse was the problem for 67,000 of them.
When prevention has not worked, and children or teens are addicted to drugs, fortunately, there is Narconon.
Narconon centers exist in fifty locations around the world and offer an effective, holistic, drugless program for rehabilitation that really works. Seven of ten Narconon graduates go on to lead drug-free and productive lives. When a person is caught in the morass of addiction, it is often too hard to pull oneself up alone.
Instead of letting your loved one struggle, call Narconon and get help. Find out how Narconon drug and alcohol rehab services can aid you and your family and work with you as parents to save your family.
Resources:
http://monitoringthefuture.org/pubs/monographs/mtf-vol1_2010.pdf
http://www.casacolumbia.org/templates/publications_reports.aspx: National Survey on American Attitudes on Substance Abuse XVI.
http://oas.samhsa.gov/NSDUH/2k9NSDUH/tabs/Sect2peTabs1to42.htm#Tab2.4B
http://monitoringthefuture.org/pubs/monographs/mtf-overview2011.pdf
Celebrities Affected by Prescription Drug Abuse
Another one of many celebrities struggling with prescription drug abuse is Matthew Perry, former star of “Friends” TV show and current star of ABC’s “Mr. Sunshine.” He has had a history of substance abuse and has gone twice to rehab for treatment of prescription pill addiction.
Celebrities aren’t the only ones fighting the battle with prescription drugs. In the state of Florida, prescription drug abuse is an epidemic. In fact pills are involved in 75% of all the drug-related deaths and on average, 11 people die daily in Florida from prescription drug overdoses.
In the United States, more people are now abusing prescription drugs than heroin, cocaine and ecstasy combined. The drug of choice for a growing number of users is oxycodone, a synthetic opioid sold under the brand name OxyContin. OxyContin is essentially synthetic heroin made in a lab by pharmaceutical companies. Oxycodone has become the most-abused prescription drug in the United States, with hydrocodone coming in second, according to the Drug Enforcement Administration’s annual count of drug seizures sent to police drug labs for analysis.
Current TV’s series Vanguard aired a disturbing documentary, The Oxycontin Express, in which South Florida was labeled “the Colombia of prescription drugs” and exposed the difficulties facing law enforcement in dealing with prescription drug abuse in what is truly a national epidemic.
Florida’s Gov. Rick Scott finally signed a bill into law in June of 2011 penalizing doctors who overprescribe painkillers, and authorizing a database that monitors prescription drugs in an attempt to control the state’s widespread “pill mills.”
How to Overcome Drug Addiction
But what if you, a loved one or a family member is faced with this highly-addictive drug problem? What would you do? How do you tell if a rehab program is effective? What will work to get one off of drugs for good? Is there a drug-free solution?
Fortunately there is help available. One can rid oneself of the addiction and live a productive, drug-free life again. Narconon is a very effective program, founded more than 45 years ago, which helps the prescription pill addict find his way back to health and sobriety. Narconon drug rehabilitation centers exist worldwide, on six continents and specialize in drug-free detoxification and treatment methods.
The Narconon program consists of two phases. In Phase one, the recovering addict will experience a physical rehabilitation. During the first part the person entering a Narconon will have one-on-one counseling and assistance and plenty of nutritional supplements to replace those destroyed during drug use. This makes for a more tolerable withdrawal. This is followed by the unique Narconon New Life Detoxification Program composed of daily exercise, time in a dry-heat sauna, and more nutritional support. Upon completion of this part of the program, many recovering addicts report fewer cravings for drugs.
However Narconon rehabilitation does not stop here, as this is just the first phase. The issues which led the person to abuse drugs have to be handled in order for him to return to a drug-free life. In Phase two, the student at Narconon studies several life skills courses helping him to rebuild his self-esteem, ability to communicate and control of self and his environment. In doing this, he handles the underlying reasons the person used drugs in the first place.
The Narconon program differs from many others in that it does not substitute one drug for another, and it offers the life skills necessary to live a drug-free life. Once a person graduates the program, there are no Narconon meetings to attend. The person is able to apply the life skills attained to live drug-free.
If you or a family member has a prescription drug abuse problem, call a Narconon rehab center for assistance.
Deaths by Prescription Drug Overdoses Triple in Last Decade
According to a 2011 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) report, the number of people dying from overdoses of powerful opioid pain relievers tripled in just the past decade.
Opioids are pain relief drugs that are chemically similar to opium.
These opioid deaths are just part of a larger epidemic of drug overdose deaths. In 2008, more than 36,000 people lost their lives from prescription drug overdoses. Close to 15,000 of these involved one of these opioid pain reliever (OPR) such as OxyContin, Vicodin, Lortab or methadone. That’s more than three times the number who died in 1999.
Every year, there are more of these drugs in distribution as doctors write more and more prescriptions for these addictive pills.
The CDC report also revealed that in 2009, 1.2 million emergency department (ED) visits were related to misuse or abuse of pharmaceuticals, compared with 1.0 million ED visits related to use of illicit drugs such as heroin and cocaine.
OPRs now account for more overdose deaths than heroin and cocaine combined. OPRs frequently are diverted for non-medical use by patients or their friends or sold on the street. According to national surveys, an estimated 4.8% of the U.S. population aged 12 or older used an OPR non-medically in 2010.
If you wonder why the cost of health insurance is skyrocketing, another study estimated that non-medical use of OPR costs insurance companies up to $72.5 billion annually in health-care costs.
Such painkillers “are meant to help people who have severe pain,” said Dr. Thomas Frieden, director of the CDC. “They are, however, highly addictive.”
Abuse figures vary greatly on a state by state basis, with the highest rate of abuse in Oklahoma and the lowest in Nebraska and Iowa. Across the country, an estimated 418,000 twelve and thirteen-year-old children abused one of the OPRs. That statistic took a ten percent jump in just one year.
Dr. Frieden said that the overdose deaths reflect the increase in the number of narcotic painkillers that are being prescribed. Every year, enough pills are prescribed to keep every American dosed up around the clock for one full month.
In order to help prevent drug abuse, Narconon takes significant measures to form community coalitions and educate other community groups on how to help get drugs out of our communities. To find out more about what Narconon is doing to effectively educate our youth, form alliances that work, and more about Narconon objectives and its effective drug prevention and rehabilitation programs, please read the following article: http://www.narconon-news.org/narconon/taking-drugs-out-of-the-communities.html.
CDC. WONDER [Database]. Atlanta, GA: US Department of Health and Human Services, CDC; 2010. Available at http://wonder.cdc.gov. Accessed September 27, 2011.
Warner M, Chen L, Makuc D. Increase in fatal poisonings involving opioid analgesics in the United States, 1999–2006. NCHS Data Brief. Hyattsville, MD: National Center for Health Statistics; 2009. Available at http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db22.htm. Accessed October 3, 2011.
Coalition Against Insurance Fraud. Prescription for peril: how insurance fraud finances theft and abuse of addictive prescription drugs. Washington, DC: Coalition Against Insurance Fraud; 2007. Available at http://www.insurancefraud.org/downloads/drugDiversion.pdf ??. Accessed September 26, 2011.
Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. Results from the 2009 National Survey on Drug Use and Health: volume 1: summary of national findings. Rockville, MD: US Department of Health and Human Services, Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, Office of Applied Studies; 2010. Available at http://oas.samhsa.gov/nsduh/2k9nsduh/2k9resultsp.pdf. Accessed October 3, 2011
Coalition Against Insurance Fraud. Prescription for peril: how insurance fraud finances theft and abuse of addictive prescription drugs. Washington, DC: Coalition Against Insurance Fraud; 2007. Available at http://www.insurancefraud.org/downloads/drugDiversion.pdf. Accessed September 26, 2011.
“Million Dollar Doctor” in Missouri Serves to Warn Public that Prescription Drug Abuse is Still Thriving
It just seems that some people don’t learn very fast. The Drug Enforcement Agency website lists seventy doctors who have gotten themselves arrested for prescription fraud, sometimes resulting in injury and even death for their patients. Newspapers across the country carry stories – Louisville, Kentucky; McLean and Manassas, Virginia; Seattle, Washington; Cleveland, Ohio; Norwalk, Connecticut; Orlando, Florida – of doctors who lose everything after they are arrested for illegally distributing prescription painkillers, sedatives, sleep aids and anti-anxiety medications. But these doctors are amateurs compared to Dr. Bruce Baker of Independence, Missouri.
Working with two accomplices, Dr. Baker distributed more than a million dollars worth of OxyContin and Oxycodone between 2006 and 2010 when he was arrested. Hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of pills were reimbursed by medical insurance and Medicare, meaning that Dr. Baker racked up insurance fraud charges as well.
One “patient” all by herself received prescriptions for nearly 2,400 pills over a three-month period.
Dr. Baker gave up the fight and pleaded guilty in February 2011.
“Without criminal doctors like Dr. Baker, the seven million people who abuse prescription drugs each year would not have such plentiful access to these drugs to abuse,” stated Bobby Wiggins, a spokesperson for Narconon. Narconon is an international non-profit organization dedicated to eliminating substance abuse and addiction through effective rehabilitation and education. “In 2007, three-quarters of a million people wound up in emergency rooms due to their prescription drug abuse, and more of these visits involved oxycodone or OxyContin more often than any other prescription drug.”
As far back as 2005, a media report showed that OxyContin was one of the drugs most often associated with fatalities, both among legitimate users and abusers.
“But putting Dr. Baker into jail does nothing for those who became addicted to these opioid painkillers,” said Wiggins. “The only thing that helps those people is getting them into a drug rehabilitation that will not give them more opioid drugs and call it treatment. This is what is happening in thousands of drug rehabs across the country. The opioid drug many addicts are getting at these rehabs is called buprenorphine. At Narconon, we help every addict recover their own self-esteem and integrity without giving them drugs of any kind. Instead of drugs, we use nutrition, a sauna detoxification program and one-on-one care. It works.” In seven out of ten cases, Narconon graduates go on to live clean and sober lives after graduation from the drug and alcohol rehabilitation program.
For more information about the Narconon drug rehab program, visit www.narconon-news.org
