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Are you in your ‘60s or ‘70s and having a problem with prescription drug addiction or abuse? A recent pilot project conducted in Sarasota, Pinellas, Broward and Orange counties, Florida, found that 23% of the 3,497 people screened needed some form of treatment for prescription drugs. Although some of the people referred only required a little education on things like combining prescription drugs with alcohol, I’m sure some of those people actually need drug detox to get them safely off the drugs they’re taking. And they might even need drug rehab to help them overcome addiction.

According to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), about 17 percent of adults over the age of 60 (that’s about 2.5 million people) have substance abuse problems. Some have problems with alcohol, some with prescription painkillers, but since seniors often drink or take drugs alone – it’s not a social event as it is for some young people - no one even knows they have a problem. Consequently, they don’t get into drug detox or rehab so the problem can be addressed.

Fortunately, the Florida pilot project is going to be extended to 18 Florida counties overall so seniors in other parts of the state will have more help available to them. Lee County’s treatment program, for example, will receive a grant to help find seniors who are abusing alcohol or drugs and get them the help they need.

If you or someone you know needs help with alcohol or drug abuse, contact Novus Medical Detox to find out about drug detox in Florida. Although many people use drugs and alcohol to help them cope with life’s problems, they really just make the situation worse. Get help now through a medical drug detox program.

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Sometimes I wonder why people seem to take prescription drugs so lightly. Millions of people are getting prescriptions for dangerous drugs from their doctors, millions are becoming dependent or addicted, and millions more are abusing them. And even though more people are showing up in drug detox and drug rehab centers to get off them, for every person who does get treatment, there are hundreds of thousands, if not millions, who don’t.

Although the drugs themselves cause physical addiction and dependency, there’s another, underlying, reason why people continue to take them. Put simply, they make you feel better.

Years ago I had to take steroids for a while because of a severe allergic reaction. Honestly, the steroids made me feel great. It was completely clear to me why someone would want to take them.

I knew they were dangerous and knew I couldn’t stay on them for long, but I wanted to feel that way forever.

So, I spent the week I was taking them researching how they worked so I could figure out how I could feel that way without drugs. Fortunately, I had a family doctor who didn’t like to prescribe drugs and was also interested in how I could feel good without them.

Together, we discovered that I had a thyroid condition called Wilson’s Syndrome. It was dragging me down until I had absolutely no energy and was also causing both mental and emotional symptoms. My doctor put me through a program and, within less than three months, I felt better than I had in years. And I didn’t have to take any dangerous prescription drugs to do it.

The moral of the story? Find a doctor who is oriented towards ‘wellness’ rather than ‘illness’, who believes you can feel better without drugs, and enlist his help to find the physical causes of the problem you’re trying to solve. You could feel better, naturally, and avoid having to ultimately do drug detox to get off whatever drugs you’re taking. And if you’re already taking drugs that you may not need do a drug detox program to get off them, then search for a real solution to the real problem.

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Yesterday I read a blog about a new ruling from the DEA regarding prescriptions for Legal narcotics and stimulants that have a high potential for dependence and abuse – i.e. Schedule II drugs. Many groups and individuals are speaking out against this ruling and a petition to rescind it is circulating on the Internet. The ruling allows doctors to give out 90-day prescriptions rather than just 30 days. Will this ruling increase the already alarming need for drug detox and drug rehab for prescription drugs? Yes, I think so.

The list of Schedule II drugs includes many of the drugs we read horror stories about daily: methadone, morphine, OxyContin – which, along with other prescription drugs of their type cause more drug overdose deaths than cocaine and heroin combined - and Ritalin, normally prescribed for kids and identified by the DEA as one of the foremost contributing factors to later cocaine dependence and addiction.

So if a person is taking these drugs already what’s wrong with them being able to go to the pharmacy and renew their prescription a couple of times? Well, it means that no one is monitoring how they’re doing on the drug. And it means that anyone taking these drugs has an even greater chance of addiction and dependency than they had when their prescription lasted for only a month.

According to the DEA, this shouldn’t be much of a problem because doctors will only give the 90-day prescriptions to patients they know are going to need repeat prescriptions anyway.

However, judging by the number of people who’ve already died or gone into treatment at drug detox and drug rehab facilities – and the fact that many of those people start taking the drug when they were given a prescription by their doctor – I don’t see that doctors are any more able to predict prescription drug addiction, abuse or dependency than their patients.

Your safest bet, really, is to just not take these drugs at all or, if you absolutely have to, take them in the lowest dosage possible and for the shortest time possible. And get yourself into a drug detox program at the first sign of not being able to get off them.

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I read an article today about a young Russian immigrant who was introduced to heroin when she was 12. She was addicted for several years and didn’t stop using heroin until a friend overdosed and died. I guess that was the degree of impact she needed to finally decide enough is enough – obviously, what happened to her friend could just as easily have happened to her. Although the article didn’t mention whether or not she had done drug detox, it did say she had gone through rehab several times.

One of the reasons she never got through drug rehab successfully is that the people in the rehab programs she did didn’t speak her language – literally: she spoke Russian, they spoke English. The language barrier would have made it all but impossible.

Communication is a basic in drug detox and drug rehab. If you can’t talk to someone, it’s difficult for them to help you through the drug detox process and, when drug rehab starts, you can’t get down to the reasons the person is taking drugs in the first place. You also can’t give them the tools they need to handle their problems. In fact, you can’t even find out what their problems are.

The other barrier she would have experienced stems from the fact that she came from an environment, the former Soviet Union, where you just don’t say what’s on your mind – especially if you want to say something negative. It just wasn’t safe. So, even if she did speak English, the drug detox and rehab counselor would have had to have pretty sophisticated communication skills to make her feel safe enough to talk about her problems.

A successful drug treatment program is based in large part on communication. If you want to ensure you or someone you care about gets through a drug detox program and drug rehab successfully, make sure that the counselors have the communication skills necessary to get the addict to open up and to make them feel safe enough to discuss their problems.

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I ran across a website today for a lawyer who handles, among other things, criminal cases that involve drugs. On his site he talks about people who use drugs recreationally ‘suddenly’ being arrested, jailed and treated like criminals ‘solely because of their recreational drug of choice.’ The truth is: people who use illegal drugs recreationally are not only breaking the law, they are ruining their own lives and taking millions of people down with them. What they need is drug detox and drug rehab, not a lawyer to get them off.

Nevertheless, he doesn’t mention the ruined lives connected with taking drugs. Instead he does go on to say how much pain, suffering and financial hardship is caused by the fact that these recreational drug users are arrested and jailed, and that “responsible Americans” who merely use drugs are not the source of America’s drug problem.

Sounds like he’s talking about people who smoke the occasional joint, don’t you think? Not heavy users who are desperately in need of drug detox or drug rehab.

He then goes on to give some details about three of his cases – it doesn’t specifically state they were his cases but, since he’s talking about himself, I would assume that to be true.

The charges in the cases were ‘conspiracy to distribute’, ‘possession with intent to deliver’ and ‘possession with intent to distribute.’ In each case, the drug was cocaine.

The amount of the drugs the defendants were allegedly in possession of was 4 pounds, 88 pounds, and 621 pounds – approximately.

How someone who has 621 pounds of cocaine can possibly be thought of as a ‘responsible American’ who could have been arrested, jailed and treated like a criminal ‘solely because of their recreational drug of choice’ is beyond me.

In all three cases, the defendants were found not guilty. Let’s hope they at least got into drug detox.

Drugs and criminality go hand in hand. Recreational drug use can easily turn into dependency and addiction, and the need to find ways to support the habit. If you’ve got a drug problem, do something about it now. Get into a drug detox program that can help you get off drugs. Don’t wait until you need a lawyer.

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Are government efforts at curbing prescription drug addiction and abuse really pointed in the right direction? While it’s true that Cardinal Health, Purdue Pharma and a couple of other Big Pharma guys have had their wrists slapped, that’s only when they do something illegal. What about their legal activities? What about the millions who are taking prescription drugs who don’t really need them, who may wind up in drug detox and drug rehab to get off them, and who are taking them primarily because they saw them advertised and were led to believe they would be beneficial?

I just read an article about the prescription drug trafficking case against Bo Jeremy Storedahl – the case went awry when the informant, Tina Rivard, falsely claimed she bought 100 OxyContin pills from Storedahl with $4,000 given to her by the narcotics agents on the case.

God knows how many people are working on busting this little prescription drug ring while the biggest prescription drug ring in the world is sitting at their collective desk drinking Starbucks and figuring out how to get us to take more drugs. And they’re doing it with our blessing, and the blessing of our government.

War on Drugs money is primarily focused on manufacturers and suppliers, yet our number one criminals, the perps who are researching, manufacturing, advertising, marketing, distributing and selling prescription drugs continue to do business. Even when they do something illegal, the penalties don’t even put a dent in their resources.

If an avowed enemy did what Big Pharma is doing, we’d consider it an act of war. We’d be all out in our support of the victims, getting them into drug detox and rehab en masse, and we’d be using military resources to hunt down the perps. What will it take to remove the rose-colored glasses and recognize the enemy within?

Until that happens, we’re on our own. Educate yourself on the dangers of prescription drug addiction and abuse, teach your family and friends and, if you or anyone you know already has a problem, get them into a drug detox program fast.

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You may have heard Florida referred to as the prescription drug addiction and abuse capitol of the U.S., but now there are even more statistics to prove it: in the first six months of 2007, cocaine, heroin and methamphetamines killed 470 people statewide, while the five most commonly prescribed painkillers and tranquilizers killed 1,324. With that number of mortalities, you can bet there are 100s of thousands of people hooked on these drugs who need drug detox and, possibly, drug rehab.

In fact, the statistics are probably worse than they look – these only include drug use identified during autopsies. Plenty of deaths occur that are never autopsied.
 
By the way, the prescription drugs that killed those 1,324 people were methadone, 392 people; benzodiazepines (including Valium and Xanax, 353 people; oxycodone, sold as OxyContin, 323 people; hydrocodone, often prescribed as Vicodin and Lortab, 134 people; and morphine, 122 people. Probably every one of them would be alive today if they’d done a drug detox and rehab.

“We’ve become a medicated society,” said Howard Lerner, clinical director of South Miami Hospital’s substance abuse treatment program. “Ten years ago, we never saw drugs marketed on TV. Now they’re selling them like McDonald’s hamburgers. The availability is a progression of the numbers. Many more people are attracted to it.”
 
Any many more people are dying, and many more people are in need of drug detox and rehab.

Lerner hit the nail on the head with the marketing end of things – Big Pharma’s spending billions on getting us to buy these drugs. And we’re playing right into their greedy little hands. I’d starve to death before I’d eat a piece of bread from one of those hands.
If you don’t want to end up in the morgue, or be called by the police to identify the body of a friend or family member, stop taking these drugs or stop your friends and family from taking them.
 
Contact a Florida drug detox center that can get you off the drugs safely and in relative comfort, and they can help you determine whether or not you need to follow it up with drug rehab.

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It appears officials in England have finally admitted defeat when it comes to methadone treatment for heroin addiction. According to a recent news story, about 20 percent of the people who traded heroin addiction for methadone addiction - instead of going through a proper drug detox and rehab programs that will actually get them off drugs - are topping up their methadone with heroin. How are British officials addressing the problem? They’re going to give them heroin instead of methadone, and it’s free.

Having personally endured the horrors of methadone treatment, I can certainly understand why someone would feel the need to also take heroin. The effects I experienced from methadone were something anyone would want to escape.

But to put someone back on heroin because the methadone isn’t working is nothing short of crazy.

Are these really the only two options the government has to offer heroin addicts?

According to the article, the government is doing this to alleviate the crime associated with heroin addiction. What about the addicts? What about their families? What about the ruined lives? What about the vast sums of public money spent on drug treatment programs that don’t work, supporting drug addicts who can’t hold a job, arresting them and keeping them in jail? What about the lost productivity?

The methadone treatment program has been stringing people along – keeping people addicted, courting death, killing many – for decades. Is anyone concerned with that? Apparently not: They’re concerned with the fact that the guys on methadone who still use heroin are still committing criminal acts to get it.

First you treat someone with an addiction by giving them something else to get addicted to. Then, when that doesn’t work, you give them what they were addicted to in the first place. Still no drug detox, still no rehab, still no treatment.

I’m not the only one who recognizes this as insanity. There are stories about it all over the net. When will governments finally wake up - find out what kind of drug detox programs and rehab programs really work, and start funding that instead of putting public money into yet another failure?

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I read an article this morning about the Terrills, a family that lost everything to their son’s heroin addiction. It was a model family. Parents who were really involved with their kids – four boys, all of whom were promising baseball players, kids who were devoted to their parents, a new ‘dream house.’ They had it all. Then, having been introduced to OxyContin in school, one of the sons became a heroin addict. From there, everything was lost. But it could have been avoided through a good drug detox program followed by drug rehab.

The major mistake made by this family was not getting their son into drug detox and drug rehab when they first realized he had a problem. His drug use went on for years before they did something about it. In fact, they weren’t the ones to finally take action: the boy was arrested when trying to rob a convenience store.

After his arrest, he went to a 30-day drug treatment center. In my experience, a 30-day treatment program is not enough to handle heroin addiction. First they have to get through withdrawal – which, for many addicts, causes such severe symptoms they can’t stop taking the drug. Some may require a separate medical drug detox before they’re even ready for rehab. Then, in rehab, you have to address the reasons for their addiction, give them the tools to live life drug free, and build them up physically to handle the deterioration that occurs with addiction.

That can take a while. Addiction doesn’t happen overnight, neither does rehabilitation.

Don’t fool yourself into thinking that a heroin addict, or someone addicted to any opiate, will get through it on their own steam. 95% of those who try aren’t successful. Drug detox and a long-term residential drug rehab program is the only chance they have. Waiting too long has devastated many families, and lost many lives. Don’t fool yourself into thinking that you can always do something about it tomorrow.

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Families constantly struggle with alcohol or drug addiction, and it can tear them apart. But some families pull together and help each other through drug detox, drug rehab and whatever else they need to fully recover – as is the case with one recent Novus client.

“Ms. Hayes, many thanks for the wonderful treatment you and the Novus staff have provided our family over the last four months. I never thought I would have to assume the role of parent for my Mother. The difficult task was made much easier through communication from Novus counselors. When she was admitted to your facility I thought it would break my heart. The small home like setting and the energy of the young people who met us and hugged her took so much of the pain away for both of us. She has struggled with her drug problem but the turnaround your facility provided to start in the recovery direction has provided so much peace to our family. The follow up of staff calling to ask how she was doing, weeks after returning home, meant so much to her. And last but certainly not least….the timely assistance and information you provided helping her with insurance filing before and after treatment was way beyond our expectations.

”Please convey our thanks to your staff and we wish all of you a joyous holiday season and are certain the joy you have given will be returned.”

If you have a friend or family member who needs an alcohol or drug detox program, give us a call at Novus. We’ll take care of them.

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