Is substance abuse coverage as equal as required?
Insurance plans that cover substance abuse treatment must provide the same level of care and cost sharing as they do for other medical issues, but treatment centers say disagreement over what this means leaves many alcoholics and drug addicts without …
Read more on USA TODAY

The Holistic Sanctuary Stakes a Claim As the Most Successful Addiction …
There are many addiction recovery treatment centers throughout the United States, and indeed the world. The one common denominator between the vast majority of these drug treatment centers is that they rely on prescribed medications to control the …
Read more on PR Web (press release)

Women Who Sought Treatment for Drug Addiction at Caron Treatment Centers …
WERNERSVILLE, Pa., March 5, 2014 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — Heroin and prescription drug addiction are on the rise among affluent women, reveals a new survey from Caron Treatment Centers, a leader and nationally recognized non-profit provider of …
Read more on PR Newswire (press release)

Traffic Street, Shreveport

Image by So Max O
The big gold building is Jack Binion’s Horseshoe Casino (and according to the sign, Gambling Addiction Help Center?)

Officials: County addiction treatment system making strides
When people ask for help kicking an addiction to drugs or alcohol, experts say, one thing you don't want to tell them is, “Come back later.” Until recently, though, that's what some Dane County-funded drug treatment centers were doing. The results were …
Read more on Madison.com

Hastings man's experiences informs him as he helps other move from addiction …
A dozen escalating steps refer to the infamous 12 phases that lead one to recovery from addiction. A wind-swept figure on a motorcycle is riding up the path. A fire embroidered at the bottom of the staircase is representative of "the chaos before …
Read more on The Republic

State Officials Rethinking Approach To Substance Abuse Treatment
BOSTON — Leaders across the branches of state government are in broad agreement that the state needs to increase access to mental health and substance abuse treatment, with many saying there is a deficit of services and a lack of insurance coverage to …
Read more on WBUR

The Watershed Opens New Facility in Texas
The Watershed, a leading drug and alcohol treatment center, headquartered in South Florida, officially opened its doors on January 15th to a premier 28-bed facility in Clear Lake serving the Southeast Texas community. The Watershed Addiction Treatment …
Read more on PR Web (press release)

Maxim Magazine (December 2008) – Jiah Khan … “Pharmageddon”: America’s New Drug Crisis — better living through better chemistry (September 4, 2011) …

Image by marsmet552
Krantz, medical director of the Hanley Center, a drug treatment center in West Palm Beach, Fla., explained to "Early Show on Saturday Morning" co-anchor Rebecca Jarvisthat, "It definitely is a pandemic in the United States today, and we got there, essentially, in the late 1990s, there was a paradigm shift for treating chronic pain.

And at the same time there was direct consumer advertising. So, it made the perfect storm. People now were going to their physicians, and they have arthritis, the weekend warriors, the baby boomers, and they’re saying, ‘I have this pain,’ and doctors are over-prescribing.
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…….*****All images are copyrighted by their respective authors ……

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…..item 1)…. website … CBS NEWS … The Early Show …

September 4, 2010 11:01 PM

"Pharmageddon": America’s New Drug Crisis
By CBSNews

www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/09/04/earlyshow/saturday/mai...

(CBS) A new drug problem is emerging in the United States: an alarming national epidemic of pill popping and prescription drug abuse so bad it’s being called "Pharmageddon."

The latest issue of Time magazine has numbers painting a disturbing picture: Over the last two decades, deaths from accidental drug overdoses have increased five-fold. And, for the first time, unintentional overdoses have replaced car accidents as the leading cause of accidental death in 15 states and the District of Columbia.

It’s a problem Dr. Barbra Krantz describes as "the perfect storm."

Krantz, medical director of the Hanley Center, a drug treatment center in West Palm Beach, Fla., explained to "Early Show on Saturday Morning" co-anchor Rebecca Jarvisthat, "It definitely is a pandemic in the United States today, and we got there, essentially, in the late 1990s, there was a paradigm shift for treating chronic pain. And at the same time there was direct consumer advertising. So, it made the perfect storm. People now were going to their physicians, and they have arthritis, the weekend warriors, the baby boomers, and they’re saying, ‘I have this pain,’ and doctors are over-prescribing.

"The most at risk are not the street junkies, the typical stereotype that you would think of, but the people that are working, that are educated, that have had professions that are now looking for that better living through better chemistry."

Ron Dash, a former Hanley patient and a recovering prescription drug addict, told Jarvis, "For me, it started at a very young age, at the age of 10. I had some anxiety problems and I was given a prescription for Phenobarbital. I believe that set me off in the direction of not dealing with things that bothered me and going to doctors and asking for a quick fix, something to help me feel better. Over the course of my youth, growing up in the ’60s, the culture was encouraging towards social drug use. As I got into my professional career, as a professional businessman, I went to doctors and I got prescriptions for stress, and it just mushroomed and progressed from there. At the age of — my first surgery, I was given a prescription medication for pain, Vicodin. And as I grew older, I just became slowly more and more dependent on taking medications to help me cope, get up for work and get through my day."

Krantz said there are definite signs someone could be addicted to prescription drugs:

Activities abandoned or reduced: "There’s a progressive isolation that occurs in their life. Where they get to is that the drug is the only thing that’s important to them, obtaining the drug."

Dependence on the drug: "Dependence, tolerance, withdrawal is another sign," Krantz said.

Duration or amount greater than intended, intra-personal consequences — that they can’t cut down or control it. And when it becomes time-consuming: "What happens," Krantz said, "is that the person finds themselves needing to take more of the prescription drug than intended or prescribed, and then they’re taking friends, or they’re asking friends for their drugs. We saw a serious increase in the baby boomer drug addict. About 70 percent of our patients at Hanley are baby boomers. We have special program for them now."
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…..item 2)…. website … Time Magazine … Health … The New Drug Crisis: Addiction by Prescription

By Jeffrey Kluger Monday, Sept. 13, 2010

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img code photo……skull and crossbones with tons of prescription pills

img.timeinc.net/time/daily/2010/1009/wdrugs_0913.jpg

Stephen Lewis for TIME
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www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2015763,00.html

Update Appended: Sept. 17, 2010

It’s not easy to find a mother who would look back fondly on the time her son had cancer. But Penny (not her real name) does. Penny lives in Boston, and her son got sick when he was just 13. He struggled with the disease for several years — through the battery of tests and the horror of the diagnosis and, worst of all, through the pain that came from the treatment. For that last one, at least, there was help — Oxycontin, a time-released opioid that works for up to 12 hours. It did the job, and more.

The brain loves Oxycontin — the way the drug lights up the limbic system, with cascading effects through the ventral striatum, midbrain, amygdala, orbitofrontal cortex and prefrontal cortex, leaving pure pleasure in its wake. What the brain loves, it learns to crave. That’s especially so when the alternative is the cruel pain of cancer therapy. By the time Penny’s son was 17, his cancer was licked — but his taste for Oxy wasn’t. When his doctor quit prescribing him the stuff, the boy found the next best — or next available — thing: heroin. Penny soon began spending her Monday nights at meetings of the support group Learn to Cope, a Boston-based organization that counsels families of addicts, particularly those hooked on opioids or heroin.

(See the top 10 medical breakthroughs of 2009.)

"Penny told the group that she actually misses her son’s cancer," says Joanne Peterson, the founder of Learn to Cope. "When he had that, everyone was around. When he had that, he had support."

Penny and her son are not unique. Humans have never lacked for ways to get wasted. The natural world is full of intoxicating leaves and fruits and fungi, and for centuries, science has added to the pharmacopoeia. In the past two decades, that’s been especially true. As the medical community has become more attentive to acute and chronic pain, a bounty of new drugs has rolled off Big Pharma’s production line.

There was fentanyl, a synthetic opioid around since the 1960s that went into wide use as a treatment for cancer pain in the 1990s. That was followed by Oxycodone, a short-acting drug for more routine pain, and after that came Oxycontin, a 12-hour formulation of the same powerful pill. Finally came hydrocodone, sold under numerous brand names, including Vicodin. Essentially the same opioid mixed with acetaminophen, hydrocodone seemed like health food compared with its chemical cousins, and it has been regulated accordingly. The government considers hydrocodone a Schedule III drug — one with a "moderate or low" risk of dependency, as opposed to Schedule II’s, which carry a "severe" risk. Physicians must submit a written prescription for Schedule II drugs; for Schedule III’s, they just phone the pharmacy. (Schedule I substances are drugs like heroin that are never prescribed.) For patients, that wealth of choices spelled danger.

(See the most common hospital mishaps.)

"If someone is dying, addiction isn’t a problem," says Dr. Jim Rathmell, chief of the division of pain medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital. "But for prescribers, the distinction between a patient who has three or four weeks to live and one who’s 32 and has chronic back pain started to blur."

The result has hardly been a surprise. Since 1990, there has been a tenfold increase in prescriptions for opioids in the U.S., according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). In 2007, 3.7 million people filled 21 million legal prescriptions for opioid painkillers, and 5.2 million people over the age of 12 reported using prescription painkillers nonmedically in the previous month, according to a survey by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA). From 2004 to ’08, emergency-room visits for opioid misuse doubled. At the same time, the drugs have become the stuff of pop culture, gaining cachet in the process. The fictitious Dr. House and Nurse Jackie gobble them like gumdrops, as did the decidedly nonfictional Rush Limbaugh and Heath Ledger. And, like Ledger, some users don’t make it out alive.

In 1990 there were barely 6,000 deaths from accidental drug poisoning in the U.S. By 2007 that number had nearly quintupled, to 27,658. In 15 states and the District of Columbia, unintentional overdoses have, for the first time in modern memory, replaced motor-vehicle incidents as the leading cause of accidental death; and in three more states it’s close to a tie.

Watch TIME’s video "Forget to Take Your Pills? Don’t Worry, They’ll Call You."

See how to prevent illness at any age.
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Treatment Center Finder Expands Their Addiction Hotline
Treatment Center Finder is battling addiction on the front lines seven days a week. To handle this growing problem, the company's addiction hotline has expanded into 6 new states, bringing the total states covered by their services up to 12 states …
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Zona Seca Closing Drug Treatment Center in Lompoc
An alcohol- and drug-treatment and recovery program that has made its home in the city of Lompoc for more than a decade will shut its doors at the end of the week because of a loss of funding. Zona Seca, which has had a location in Santa Barbara for …
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His House/New Creation Addiction Treatment Centers Celebrates Holidays With …
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Dr. Phil Show Features Center for Discovery Adolescent Treatment Program
Center for Discovery, a leading residential treatment center for adolescents with behavioral and substance abuse issues is proud to announce its appearance on the episode of the Dr. Phil show which filmed January 15, 2014. Center for Discovery is …
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In today’s fast-changing and fast paced society, many of us pick up different types of illnesses that stem from their failure to cope with the changes around them. Unfortunately, many individuals manifest their inability to face stress as well as the pressures of everyday life by falling into the lure of addiction.

Many individuals who are suffering from addiction are the ones who experience unmanageable behavior, which can be typically attributable to depression and anxiety. Most of the time, these individuals are not aware their addiction until it has altogether consumed control of their lives.

You will discover numerous organizations offering support and the all-important attention for people who are attempting to uncover a remedy for their addiction and depression. Recovering addicts can depend on rehabilitation centers such as meth addiction Rehab Center to give them an all natural addiction recovery solution that won’t only permit them to confront their particular hurtful emotions but also help them learn the most effective ways to manage their own unfavorable thoughts and behaviors.

It is vital for addicts to understand where their damaging thoughts and harmful habits are coming from. This is where most drug treatment centers are different. Some rehabilitation facilities concentrate mainly on the individuals negative behavior and neglect to provide more attention to just what truly brings about their depression and distorted thinking.

The most effective treatment is one which allows the addicts to address their suffering and express their feelings. meth addiction Rehab Center goes a stride further by letting the addicts to direct their valid feelings toward an even more creative strategy.

By providing recovering addicts the chance to convey themselves creatively, meth addiction Rehab Center successfully leads them to the most effective road to recovery. This holistic strategy to addiction recovery shows addicts to evaluate their emotions and control their problems by getting more in touch with their own senses.

There are 7 senses that examine details in a person’s surroundings, and these send out corresponding signals to the brain. When addicts become more aware of their senses (sight, smell, touch, taste, hearing, balance, and internal sensations), they gradually recognize that they can not feel their thoughts. They understand that their depression and negative thought processes are nothing but physical sensations.

By paying close attention to what they sense from their surroundings, addicts have the ability to search for the source of their stress. They learn that every time they worry, their own thoughts send signals to their brain. It is actually not the thought that they are feeling but their bodys response to the physical sensations initiated by the thought itself.

This is how it really works. Whenever a person begins to worry, they transmits a thought of which the brain identifies as a threat. The brain then sends signs to the body to protect itself by releasing chemicals like adrenaline and cortisol. The human body responds appropriately to the alerts sent by the brain, signals which can be triggered by the feelings of a person who began worrying.

Simply by knowing this, addicts recognize the importance of paying closer awareness of what they sense from their environment. They learn to control their thoughts much better so that they can prevent the possible body reactions that can trigger their anxiety and depression. It is this type of addiction recovery approach that sets meth addiction Rehab Center apart from the rest given it is where addicts learn how to be far better linked with their own humanity.