Our Views

A Panama City doctor was just sentenced to 20 years in prison for “over-prescribing” methadone, oxycodone and morphine, and possibly others. In case ‘over-prescribing’ doesn’t sound like a real bad thing to you, try this: he knowingly prescribed these drugs to people who were already testing positive for cocaine and marijuana. In other words, instead of prescribing drug detox and drug rehab, as we would hope any doctor would do, he fuelled their addictions.

Two of his patients died after overdosing on drugs he had prescribed.

He didn’t defend himself, he pleaded guilty. That’s the only good news.

This doctor is 76 years old. Guess where he’s going to die? What an end to a life and career that started out helping people.

If we can really crack down on unethical doctors, get them into prison, and get patients who have been over-prescribed into drug detox and rehab, we might have a chance at winning the war on prescription drug addiction.

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Okay, so maybe I’ve led a more sheltered life than I thought. Here’s some news I never really expected – alcohol detox centers are gearing up for football season. I don’t really know why it’s a surprise. This 29-bed alcohol detox center in Madison, Wisconsin, expects a full house. And they expect the customers to start rolling in about an hour an a half before game time. The rush should start around 1:00 in the afternoon – thanks to pregame tailgate and house parties. Maybe this comes as a surprise to me because I’ve never been to a pregame tailgate or house party in my life. I’ve never been to alcohol detox either.

I wonder if the center puts up banners of their favorite teams to get into the spirit of the thing?

The story says that only about 5 percent of the customers are alcoholics. That may be, but you don’t wind up in alcohol detox for a couple of beers – you’re definitely binge drinking. Have you seen the statistics on binge drinking? Scary. It’s also been proven that binge drinkers lose mental capacity earlier in life than others, and they have trouble with memory. Not to mention the number of binge drinkers who die.

I think it might be a good idea for some of these people to get into a good alcohol detox and rehab program before next year’s season. Then maybe they’ll actually be able to get through the season without missing the games because they had to hit the detox center in the middle of the pregame tailgate party.

Popularity: 15% [?]

According to WTAP.com, the online community of West Virginia, addiction specialists in Washington county said prescription drugs are the new heroin. A crack-down on heroin several years ago apparently lowered the heroin addiction statistics, but prescription drugs replaced heroin as the drug of choice. And prescription drug addiction and abuse is now the most commonly seen drug problem in the area.

No surprise, really: painkillers are cheaper, legal and more accessible.

Hopefully, that’s not going to last very long. Since the OxyContin hearings, many news stories have focused on getting control over illegal sources for prescription drugs, and it shouldn’t take long for drug detox centers to start seeing the traffic.

The word ‘suicidal’ comes to mind when I look at how far the prescription drug addiction and abuse situation has gone in the last few years. But ‘suicide’ didn’t seem quite right. And I realized that, really, it’s murder. The work of an enemy. Who is the enemy? Well, it’s not the guy checking into drug detox, of that I’m quite certain.

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Have you heard of ‘safe-injection sites’? Some addicts who use drugs intravenously share needles or pick up used needles wherever they can find them – very dangerous as they risk contracting HIV or hepatitis C. Safe-injection sites were developed to prevent those diseases – the addict goes to the site, is given alcohol and cotton balls, rubber tubing to tie off (so they can expand the vein they’re shooting into), and a clean needle. They’re also provided with a clean area in which to do the injection, and a cubicle to rest for a minute before they leave. The system also reduces death by overdose and crime. A safe-injection site in Vancouver, Canada, is now adding a drug detox program and an aftercare area to help the local addicts get off drugs.

It is not uncommon for addicts to have moments when they decide they want to kick. But those moments are often short-lived: A few hours or a day or two later, they’ve changed their mind. The safe-injection site in Vancouver wants to be able to take advantage of those brief windows in time by getting addicts into drug detox the moment that decision is made. Even a day later may be too late.

The distressing thing about this is that they will only have 12 beds. Even more distressing is the fact that those 12 beds bring the total number of drug detox beds in Vancouver up to 53. According to the B.C. Center for Excellence in HIV/Aids, one area in the city, the Downtown Eastside, has the most visible drug problem in Canada: In the 11 year period from 1992 to 2002, there were 2000 overdose deaths in that area alone, about 30% of the addicts are HIV positive, and more than 90% have hepatitis C. And 53 beds for drug detox. Disaster.

Popularity: 3% [?]

If you’re wondering what affect the Purdue Pharma hearings are having on prescription painkillers sales, the answer, so far, seems to be ‘none’. Conflicting headlines abound - Prescription painkiller sales up, Prescription painkiller sales down. However, a few things are abundantly clear. For example, the people of Ft. Lauderdale, Florida are now among the top consumers of OxyContin. The DEA has been concerned about Florida’s rising prescription drug abuse for a while, so this doesn’t come as a surprise. Let’s hope addicted Floridians find a good Florida drug detox soon.

It doesn’t surprise me that the sales don’t appear to have been affected. Many people in severe pain are going to take OxyContin and other painkillers, regardless of the risks.

And I don’t think there are too many people thinking “what if I get addicted?”or “what if I abuse this drug?” before they take them. They’re going to think it couldn’t happen to them.

I’d like to get all the people who are addicted to OxyContin in one big room, okay, let’s make that one small state, and get a show of hands – “Everyone who thought they were going to get addicted to this drug when they first started taking it, put up your hand.”

I’d lay odds on the percentage being quite low. Wouldn’t you?

And that is exactly why prescription drug addiction is so insidious. If you take heroin, you expect it. You might even expect it with other street drugs. But when you get it from your doctor, you’re safe. Yeah, right.

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Back in the day, when I took drugs, I’d been using daily for about four years before I even met anyone addicted to heroin. I didn’t lead a sheltered life: I look everything around: marijuana, MDA, LSD, and a myriad of others. Was even shooting up meth. But there were simply not many heroin addicts around. It never occurred to me to get off drugs, and I never considered drug detox or rehab. Drugs were a way of life for me, and for just about everyone I knew. But they didn’t take heroin.

One day I walked into the house of a heroin addict who was also a dealer. She offered it to me. There was such a stigma attached to heroin – everything else was ‘recreational’, heroin was hard, heroin was for drug addicts - that even after taking everything else for four years, I hesitated. But I accepted, and began the short route to a new and different kind of hell.

Today, decades later, 124 million prescriptions are written every year for prescription painkillers that are the equivalent of heroin. Enough to get over 40 percent of the U.S. population started. And the heroin addicts that were so taboo are now taking “legal heroin” and living right next door, and two doors down, and five doors down, and across the street, and there are probably two or three in the next block – in my nice, middle-class neighborhood in a sleepy southern town. And there probably aren’t enough drug detox centers in the U.S. to help them.

How did it come to this? Some will say it’s advances in medical science but, in my opinion, greed is the culprit: A greedy industry that cares more about profits than people. An industry that is fuelling prescription drug addiction more than any pusher in the street ever did.

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You’ve probably heard of doctor shopping – going from one doctor to another looking for one who will write you a prescription for a drug you don’t have a legitimate medical reason to take, but to which you are addicted. Painkillers like OxyContin, Vicodin and Lortab are usually at the top of the list. People fake injuries or pain to justify getting the drug, and sometimes they actually injure themselves – like the man who had his wife run over his leg with the car. Shortly thereafter, his life was basically over. And it all could have been turned around with drug detox and rehab.

Where did he wind up? No house, no car, children taken away by the state, and living under a bridge waiting to die.

The drug he was taking contained hydrocordone – the ingredient in OxyContin, Vicodin, Lortab and hundreds of other drugs. They are near or at the top of the list of abused prescription drugs, and have more prescriptions written for them than any other painkiller on the market.

They are basically legal heroin. They are just as addictive, and just as hard to stop taking.
Don’t mess with them. If you need opiod painkillers, and are taking them for more than a short time, consider finding another alternative. If you’re already past that ‘short time,’ contact a drug detox program experienced with prescription drug addiction to help you get off them. Otherwise, you could be coping with something much more serous than pain in the future.

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A few years ago I tried to buy contact lenses online. I couldn’t do it without first going to an optometrist and getting a prescription. The strength I was using hadn’t changed in a decade and the worst consequence was discomfort that would make them unwearable, or not being able to see very well. So, I’d replace them. However, if I want to get a prescription drug that could turn me into a drug addict, ruin my life and that of my family, and possibly kill me or land me in drug detox and rehab, no problem.

How easy is it to get prescription drugs online? According to an article I read today, trucking companies in Appalachia had to add trucks to their routes to accommodate drug shipments from illegal online pharmacies. That’s just one small area of the U.S. Illegal online pharmacies are making doctor shopping obsolete. Just go online with your credit card, and hundreds of websites will supply you with addictive and potentially deadly prescription drugs.

Here’s how it works: The person ordering the prescription fills out an online questionnaire. The questionnaire is reviewed by a doctor who has made an agreement with the online pharmacy to do so – he needs money, maybe is in debt, maybe retired. The doctor writes the prescription. The customer pays the online pharmacy which then gets the prescription filled by a down-on-its-luck legitimate pharmacy that sends the drugs to the customer.

The doctor gets $10 - $25, the legitimate pharmacy makes money on the prescription plus a little extra, and the customer gets the drugs.

Simple, and deadly.

More than 98.5 million dosage units of hydrocodone products were illegally dispensed by online pharmacies last year, enough for a month’s supply for 410,000 people. And quite possibly enough to fill every drug detox center in the U.S. capable of handling prescription drug addiction.

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Alaska has a serious drug problem: one of the highest per capita drug abuse populations in the U.S. It’s also in the number seven spot for violent crime, much of which is largely attributed to the drug problem. Unfortunately, this week’s closure of the Salvation Army’s Clitheroe Center in Anchorage will leave thousands without access to alcohol and drug detox, and will expose Anchorage residents to even more alcoholism, drug abuse, drug addiction and crime.

The Center had problems for years: inadequate funding drove their beds from 20 to eight, and the shortage of nurses made it almost impossible to find staff – especially when the Center couldn’t afford to hire them.

The Anchorage community is worried: Without drug detox facilities, alcoholics and drug addicts will be absorbed into and supported by the community – worsening an already disastrous situation.

The Salvation Army is working with City officials to see if reopening Clitheroe is a future possibility but who knows how long that will take? Let’s hope the drug problem is somehow contained until Clitheroe or another drug detox facility can get back in operation.

Communities often resent having drug detox and rehab facilities in their immediate area – they think it creates an unsafe and unsavory environment. But a good drug detox center can turn these guys around and send them back into the community as a productive member of society. Isn’t it better than having them in the streets?

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Manatee Glens Hospital and Crisis Center, in Manatee County, Florida, just north of Sarasota on the Gulf of Mexico, is renovating three rooms to be used for alcohol or drug detox. The rooms will be able to house 300 drug or alcohol abusers per year. It appears that the primary usage will be for those who are admitted involuntarily by law enforcement officials.  However, involuntary admissions can only be held for a maximum of five days, which may not be long enough to complete a full alcohol or drug detox.

According to an article in the Bradenton Herald, law enforcement officers take 2400 people a year to prison or emergency rooms so they can basically dry out. The Manatee Glen rooms will provide an alternative lock-up, and relieve some of the stress on prisons and hospitals.

However, I would think it likely that a good number of those admitted will be back. Not only is it sometimes impossible to get through a complete alcohol or drug detox in five days, it doesn’t give any chance at all for alcohol or drug rehab. It will be more like going into the ‘drunk tank’ overnight, but coming back over and over again because the reason for the drug addiction or alcoholism is never addressed.

Florida has a significant drug problem. If you want to sort someone out, it’s best to get them into a medically supervised drug detox center that will ensure they completely detox, and will determine whether alcohol or drug rehab is also needed so the offender can stay clean and sober.

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