Treatment Center Finder Expands Their Addiction Hotline
Their facilities help with all sorts of addiction including drug and alcohol rehabilitation, dual diagnosis treatment, Christian and faith-based rehab centers, gambling addiction, drug and alcohol detox, and eating disorder treatments. Recently …
Read more on Virtual-Strategy Magazine (press release)

How Medical Pot Is Helping Seniors Get Off (Prescription) Drugs
And very often, the side-effects from those medications are worse than the symptoms they're supposedly treating,” says Steve DeAngelo of the Harborside Health Center in Oakland, California. The National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) has a monopoly on …
Read more on Reason

Invisible Epidemic: Prescription Drugs Cause Most Overdoses
Meanwhile addiction to prescription drugs continues to be dangerous and sometimes deadly problem. If you or someone you know needs help, there are a number of professional treatment centers in our area that can be found online. Some have also been …
Read more on WSAV-TV

Detox center taking patients
Of the patients treated so far, more than 50 percent have been treated for alcohol and about 35 percent for prescription drugs. About 75 percent of the patients have been men. People who want help are calling for a screening over the phone. “We're …
Read more on St. Augustine Record

Detox center grand opening in St. Augustine
On Wednesday, January 22 EPIC Recovery Centerwill host a grand opening of a 16-bed facility to treat drug and alcohol dependent patients in crisis. The detox center, located on US-1 South, will operate 24/7 with 12 detoxification beds and four …
Read more on First Coast News

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.
.

…….*****All images are copyrighted by their respective authors ……

……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
.
…..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."
.
.
……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
.
…..item 2)…. website … Time Magazine … Health … The New Drug Crisis: Addiction by Prescription

By Jeffrey Kluger Monday, Sept. 13, 2010

…………………………………………..

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
…………………………………………..

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.
.
.
……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
.
.

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 …
Read more on PR Web (press release)

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 …
Read more on Noozhawk

Which Drug is Your State Most Addicted to? America's Drug Problem, Mapped
… and support for expanding access to treatment. According to the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP), prescription drug abuse is the country's "fastest-growing drug problem" and has been classified as an epidemic by the …
Read more on PolicyMic

CCA Announces 2013 Fourth Quarter Financial Results
Nonetheless, we believe that the State will continue to maintain approximately 8,900 inmates at our out-of-state facilities, while continuing to lease our California City Correctional Center in California. North Georgia. In December 2013 … In …
Read more on Wall Street Journal

Hazelden, Betty Ford Center merger approved
The merger of the Hazelden Foundation and the Betty Ford Center, two of the nation's best-known addiction treatment centers, is official after clearing its final regulatory hurdle from the state of California, the organizations announced Monday. … as …
Read more on Minneapolis Star Tribune

Elizabeth Vargas Returns to TV After Rehab: "I Am an Alcoholic"
Journalist Elizabeth Vargas at Lincoln Center on Oct. 8, 2013 in NYC Elizabeth Vargas returned to TV on Jan. 24 following her stint in rehab last fall and admitted, "I am an alcoholic." Credit: Jim Spellman/WireImage.com. Elizabeth Vargas is starting a …
Read more on Us Magazine

Elizabeth Vargas, Alcoholism, and the Dangers of “Mommy Juice”
In an interview that aired on Good Morning America last week, 20/20 anchor Elizabeth Vargas revealed that she has been battling alcoholism and that she sought treatment at a rehab center in the fall. The 51-year-old mother of two returned to her post …
Read more on Health.com

Alcohol & Drug Rehab Chicago Launches Effort to Reduce Statistics on …
Call (773) 313-3019 for a free appointment. Chicago, IL (PRWEB) February 06, 2014. A Chicago alcohol and drug rehab center is announcing that it has launched an effort toward reducing prescription drug abuse through Drug Addiction Treatment Centers.
Read more on Virtual-Strategy Magazine (press release)

Calif. Struggles to Provide Substance Abuse Treatment to Inmates
A panel of federal judges will soon issue an order outlining steps California must take to relieve prison crowding. The state has until mid-April to reduce the population by around 6,000 inmates. But Governor Jerry Brown is asking the court for more …
Read more on California Report

Nonmedical prescription drug users in private vs. public substance abuse …
Little is known regarding the demographic and behavioral characteristics of nonmedical prescription drug users (NMPDUs) entering substance abuse treatment settings, and information on the HIV-related risk profiles of NMPDUs is especially lacking.
Read more on 7thSpace Interactive (press release)