Our Views

Unfortunately, prescription drug addiction has become a major problem. Some drug detox and rehab centers have more people showing up at their door for help with prescription drugs than for heroin and the other illegal drugs. One of the worst prescription drugs is OxyContin: OxyContin, like heroin, is an opiate. It’s just as easy to develop an OxyContin addiction as an addiction to heroin, and it’s just as difficult to kick.

What can you expect while trying to withdraw from OxyContin? Although withdrawal is different for everyone, you can generally expect anxiety, increased respiratory rate, sweating, restlessness, anorexia and irritability as withdrawal begins. These symptoms can quickly escalate to include insomnia, nausea and vomiting, diarrhea, weakness, abdominal cramps, rapid heartbeat, abnormally high blood pressure, muscle spasms, and severe muscle and bone pain.

Does that sound like something you want to go through at home? I don’t think so.

Novus Medical Detox can help you take the first step towards ending OxyContin addiction with a safe and more comfortable medically supervised OxyContin detox. Here’s what one Novus client had to say after her OxyContin detox:

“While here I came to the realization that no one should attempt detoxification on their own. I had tried and failed to do so on my own. It was not until Novus that I finally succeeded. I never had the slightest problem here and would not recommend anyone trying to detox on their own. Novus was the best choice for my detoxification process and the staff made sure I was comfortable every step of the way.”

If you or someone you care about wants to overcome OxyContin addiction, contact Novus Medical Detox to find out how you can get through drug detox safely and with the minimum of discomfort.

Popularity: 19% [?]

Many people who started taking methadone as ‘treatment’ for heroin addiction have been on methadone for years. They came for treatment so they could end their addiction and, instead, they were given methadone – and now they’re suffering from methadone addiction. What a trade off! But, you can do something about it.

Methadone detox is now getting people the help they need. Here’s what one Novus Medical Detox Center client had to say:

“I gained 10+ pounds here. The place is very clean and nice. The rooms are comfortable. I’ve stayed all over the world and the rooms here are just as nice.

“When I came here I couldn’t imagine waking and not having my drugs. While I was here it finally opened my eyes and got me to realize that you don’t need drugs to live life and have fun.

“I feel better than I have ever felt in my life. It feels like there was a huge blinder lifted and I can see so clearly now. I just can’t believe how much this place has helped me. This place is amazing and I would recommend it to anybody that has a drug problem! I can’t wait to get my life back together. If I can get off drugs then anyone can!!”

If you or someone you care about has a problem with methadone addiction, contact Novus about doing a medical drug detox program. Once you get off methadone, you may feel better than you’ve ever felt, too.

Popularity: 33% [?]

Low self-worth is often behind alcohol and drug addiction. Even someone who appears to be doing very well in life may not feel they’re accomplishing what they should be, or may not feel they’re living up to their own or another’s expectations. Alcohol and drugs provide some temporary relief – numb you, really – and nothing does it quite like heroin. Unfortunately, heroin makes you feel even worse about yourself so, in the end, you’ve gained nothing, and lost a lot. However, heroin addiction can be overcome and when you do, you’ll also experience a renewed sense of self worth.

Heroin addiction is often accompanied by a feeling of such deep apathy that it’s unusual to see an addict get into drug detox on their own—unless they have spiraled down and decide that it is either detox or death. If you know someone taking heroin, you’re going to have to put yourself in the driver’s seat – perhaps even literally – and take them to a drug detox center where they can get help.

With that done, and if you’ve chosen a medical drug detox center that understands heroin addiction, detox and rehab and creates an individual program for every person who walks in the door, I can tell you that far more than half the battle is won. And, amazingly enough, when that detox and rehab program are over, self-esteem will have been restored and the person has their life back.

When we say that drug detox and rehab changes someone’s life, we don’t just mean it ends their heroin addiction – we mean they’re now in a position where they no longer need it and they, not the drug, control their life. A truly rehabilitated life.

Popularity: 19% [?]

I recently read an article about a drug detox and rehab center in Canada that was adding additional facilities. The thing that caught my attention in the story was that 100 percent of the people who had enrolled in their program in the last three months were addicted to or dependant on prescription drugs – largely OxyContin and other opiate painkillers. They needed OxyContin detox.

During the Purdue Pharma hearings, when Purdue was fined $634.5 million for misleading the public about the risk of OxyContin addiction and abuse, I found that enrollment into several drug detox and rehab centers for OxyContin addiction had reached about 60 percent, one of them was at 90 percent. But that was just a few drug detox centers in the states in which OxyContin was most heavily marketed.

But the drug detox center in the article I read was in Canada, nowhere near the scene of the crime.

One of two things is happening: either more people are becoming addicted, or more people are becoming aware that they have a problem and are looking for help. I would like to think it’s the latter.

In the few short years after OxyContin was released, hospital emergency rooms treated 30,000 OxyContin incidents, the death toll from OxyContin quadrupled, many people became physically dependent on the drug and others became addicted. If you or someone you care about has gotten hooked on OxyContin, find a drug detox center that can get you through an OxyContin detox fast.

Popularity: 8% [?]

I read an article earlier today about Pastor Gloria Kieler, a 65-year-old woman who has dedicated all her time and resources to helping people get off drugs. She’s been waiting for seven years for the promised government funding, and says that the money is going to a safe-injection site for heroin addicts instead of to heroin detox and other drug detox and rehab facilities that can actually end addiction.

Safe injection sites aren’t there to end heroin addiction, only a good heroin detox and rehab can do that. Gloria Kieler said it best, “”Do we keep alcoholics on booze? Smokers on tobacco? Of course not, so why do they think supplying free drugs to addicts is the answer?”

Good question, Gloria.

If you are suffering from heroin addiction or know someone who is, don’t be taken in by the idea of making it a little bit better – there’s really no such thing. You’re either addicted, or you’re not. Don’t think the problems will end with anything less than a heroin detox and drug rehab. They are the only real solutions to heroin addiction.

Popularity: 25% [?]

Heroin and other opiates killed more than double the number of people killed by guns in Massachusetts in 2005. Consequently, the state government, while acknowledging its failure to resolve the problem of heroin addiction by getting addicts into heroin detox and drug rehab, is going to distribute doses of Narcan to help addicts stay alive until they’re ‘ready for treatment.” Who says they’re not ready for treatment now?

According to a recent article, some paramedics and the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy question the idea of one addict administering treatment to another - Narcan is squirted up the nose of someone who has overdosed on opiates to reverse the effects. The person doing the squirting would be another addict.

Others feel that heroin addiction would be encouraged by making Narcan available to all.

“You give them the Narcan, where is their motivation to change? The addict is going to say, ‘I just overdosed and I got another lease on life — great,” said Michael Gimbel, a recovering heroin addict who was director of substance abuse in Maryland’s Baltimore County for 23 years. “Giving Narcan might give them that false sense that ‘I can live forever,’ which is not what we want.”

I’ve been around plenty of heroin addiction, and was an addict myself, and I don’t believe that the threat of death is the only motivation an addict has to get off drugs. Just because they don’t walk into a drug detox center on their own and ask for help doesn’t mean they don’t want it, and it doesn’t mean they’re not ready for it. Don’t be fooled by their protests. They want to end their heroin addiction, and they need your help to do so.

If someone you care about is a heroin addict and you feel they’re not ready for treatment, call an interventionist to help you out. Don’t depend on Narcan to just keep him alive until he’s ‘ready’. It may never happen in the way that you’re expecting. A good interventionist will help get him to agree to treatment, and get him into a drug detox center so he can get through heroin addiction once and for all.

Popularity: 24% [?]

According to a recent article, overdose from prescription drugs is now the leading cause of death for adults under 45 in West Virginia. In 1998, there were 21 deaths from poisonings, mostly drug overdoses, and by 2006 the number had escalated to 460. Seven of the top ten killers were prescription drugs - methadone, hydrocodone, oxycodone, morphine and fentanyl - aka Dolophine. Lortab. Vicodin. Percodan. OxyContin. MS Contin and Duragesic. OxyContin addiction is getting most of the press these days but the other drugs are just as dangerous, and they all require the same drug detox procedures to quit.

Why has the death rate increased in such alarming numbers? Partially because the number of prescriptions written for these drugs has quadrupled in West Virginia since 1998. But even ‘quadrupled’ is a long way from the difference between 21 and 460. The problem is that the many patients who start off with a prescription have trouble getting off the drugs. When they can no longer get a prescription, they hit the streets instead of going to drug detox for help. People also are introduced to the drugs by ‘friends’, find them in their parents’ or friends’ medicine cabinets, or get them in exchange for sex or other favors. The article even mentioned trading them for car payments.

Drugs beget more drugs, and deaths: Increase the number of prescriptions written by four times, and the death toll increases by 22 times.

If you or someone you know has an OxyContin addiction or a problem with any others of the drugs on that list, get into drug detox fast. Don’t become one of the statistics, and don’t risk the same happening to someone else.

Popularity: 18% [?]

I read an article today about Errol Dodson, a weightlifter and wrestler who became addicted to prescription drugs when he received a Vicodin prescription for pain. Over the next few years he developed a Lortab and OxyContin addiction, as well as Vicodin, and was paying $400 a week to buy the drugs illegally. He eventually got off the drugs with a rapid detox procedure but, unfortunately, he’s now tied to another drug, Naltrexone, and can’t even experience the natural high of exercise. Not the ideal way to handle OxyContin addiction.

Rapid detox involves putting a patient under general anesthesia for several hours while he is given other drugs – usually Naltrexone - to force withdrawal. In theory, the pain and shock of a days-long cold turkey withdrawal is still experienced by the body but is condensed into the shorter time period. In practice, and as confirmed by a National Institute on Drug Addiction study, rapid detox is not rapid or pain-free.  Most rapid detox patients take many days or even weeks to recover from the procedure which is not only dangerous but a severe shock to the body. This is especially true when the body has already gone through years of degeneration caused by OxyContin addiction. 

To make matters worse, many patients are often prescribed Naltrexone for a period of a few weeks to two years after the procedure.

Dodson tried cold turkey withdrawal prior to the rapid detox and experienced severe pain and discomfort. He said he felt like snakes were trying to crawl out of his body. So, unfortunately, he chose rapid detox and is paying the price and has exchanged one addiction for another one.

But there is a safe, relatively comfortable OxyContin detox method that avoids the severity of a cold turkey withdrawal and doesn’t require prescription drug support afterwards.  The patient is given drugs to help with the withdrawal symptoms, but the drugs are weaned during the week or so of the drug detox procedure. Novus Medical Detox offers such a drug detox program. Give them a call if you are having a problem with OxyContin addiction.

Popularity: 26% [?]

Several new sites are opening in Vermont to dispense methadone to people who are addicted to or dependent on opiate and opioid drugs such as heroin and OxyContin. The sites are called ‘medicine dispensing sites’: people who want to get off drugs come to the sites and, instead of being put through detox and rehab, they’re given a ‘medicine’ and they are just transferring from one addiction to another. In the end, they’ll need methadone detox.

Methadone addiction is possibly the most difficult drug from which to detox. Why go through that when you can just do a medical drug detox to get off the heroin or OxyContin in the first place?

If you or someone you care about wants to get off drugs, don’t just go to a methadone clinic – go to a medical drug detox center that can help you through withdrawal and then go to a drug rehab center that can help you address the issues behind your drug addiction so you can be drug free.

There is almost twice the number of deaths from methadone than from heroin every year.  If you’re on methadone now, get help with a medical methadone detox. And if you’re considering methadone treatment, think twice. Don’t just trade one addiction for another.

Popularity: 29% [?]

A recent article professes that OxyContin addiction and addiction to similar prescription painkillers and other opioid prescription painkillers has been blown out of proportion. The author voiced concern that people in chronic pain – back pain, for example – are reluctant to take painkillers for fear of developing a Vicodin, Percocet or OxyContin addiction. The author also said that only 3 – 16% of those who take painkillers for an extended period of time become addicted. What they somehow forgot to mention is that it is almost guaranteed the person will become physically dependant and, when it comes to withdrawal, the line between dependence and addiction is almost invisible.

Whether you have an OxyContin addiction or dependency, here’s what can be expected when you try to get off it: In the early stages you will probably experience anxiety, increased respiratory rate, sweating, tearing or crying, yawning, runny nose, goose bumps, restlessness, anorexia, irritability. If you don’t take more OxyContin the symptoms will probably escalate to include insomnia, nausea and vomiting, diarrhea, weakness, abdominal cramps, rapid heartbeat, abnormally high blood pressure, muscle spasms, muscle pain and bone pain

Having gone through it myself, I can tell you that there will be plenty of times you would trade how you feel during withdrawal for your original pain in a heartbeat.

OxyContin addiction and dependency has been all over the news for months – ever since Purdue Pharma pled guilty to misleading the public about the dangers of the drug and was fined $634 million. Sure people are afraid of it, and for good reason. Most of that $634 million was used to reimburse various states for the costs incurred trying to help people out of the mess they’d gotten into with the drug.

To my mind, this article smacks of the drug companies fighting back – salvaging what they can of the OxyContin empire by targeting the people least able to resist painkillers: the people who really hurt.

If you have to take OxyContin for a legitimate situation, that’s understood. But you’re right to be wary – as soon as possible get into a medically supervised OxyContin detox that can help you get off the drug safely and with a minimum of withdrawal symptoms. I just wish that I had gone to a good medical detox and spared myself the pain.

Popularity: 26% [?]