Alcohol & Drug Addiction Treatment

Commercials on TV warn parents to hide their prescription drugs, and black box warning labels attempt to expose the extreme adverse side effects and highly addictive qualities of these prescriptions, yet today the abuse of these licit drugs is becoming more common and is taking more lives each year. All these precautions to prevent prescription drug abuse from worsening.

Well it’s too late.

The American Drug Enforcement Agency recently estimated that over 7 million Americans are abusing prescription drugs. If you can believe it, this number is higher than the number of people using illegal drugs.

Illegal internet sales and crooked medical practitioners are just some of the ways these highly dangerous drugs to end up on the streets. Unfortunately, children are often misdiagnosed and given the wrong drugs, beginning a vicious cycle of addiction and withdrawal. Or the prescriptions of irresponsible parents end up in their children’s hands.

Fortunately patients are growing weary of the doctor who, after a five minute examination, is ready to prescribe something. Prescription drug addiction is now so common that even the layman understands to be cautious. What makes it even scarier is that private drug rehabs are really the only types of programs that can help.

We live in a “now” generation. If you’re depressed, cure it now. Take this pill. If you are in pain or have a headache, get rid of it now. Take this pill. You can’t sleep, so you take this pill. Now. Instead of getting to the root of the problem, we take the convenient route and put our problems in someone else’s hands. Hopefully our future generations will learn from us and find an effective drug rehab to treat prescription drug addiction.

Opiate addiction is one of the hardest addictions to overcome. Many treatment facilities find that their program does not accept people who are addicted to opiates because of the tough withdraw and medical liabilities. Especially some pharmaceutical and prescription drugs are even more dangerous than street sold opiates like heroin. Methadone is one of the hardest drugs for a person to overcome because of the extreme physical addiction that is caused. Most people who try Methadone clinics are lied to about how long they will be on Methadone only to find out years later that trying to quit their opiate addiction without Methadone would have been much easier.

Suboxone is another drug that is used to help people from opiate addiction. Though Suboxone is better than Methadone many unlucky individuals find themselves addicted to Suboxone as well. Heroin treatment centers have implemented all types of medical protocols only to find that long term drug rehab is the most effective type of treatment available for heroin addiction.

Regardless of the addiction remember there is never a quick a fix. Getting to the root problem first is vital and then teaching a person how to live life without artificial substances is the next step. Though opiate addiction can sometimes seem almost impossible to overcome, remember you can do it. The mind is a powerful tool and we can overcome any obstacle we put our mind to.

Official statements released after Heath Ledger’s death gave unequivocal confirmation that he died as the result of acute intoxication by the combined effects of oxycodone, hydrocodone, diazepam, temazepam, alprazolam and doxylamine. In layman’s terms, Heath was on too many prescription drugs all at once. Further reports indicated that medical professionals and pharmaceutical companies denounced any responsibility for Heath’s tragic and untimely death, as the combination of medications Heath was on was one that “no doctor would ever prescribe.” So let us assume then that these medications were obtained illegally and they were not prescribed. Some unscrupulous doctor sold the drugs somewhere and they ended up on the streets. The drugs were abused and resulted in the death of a loving father.

This is a nation wide problem, especially for residential drug rehabs. This does not only happen in Hollywood. This happens every day in regular American lives. In King County, Washington (Seattle), prescription opiates killed 148 people in 2006, a 572 percent increase since 1997. In Virginia, prescription narcotics took 399 lives in 2006, compared with 146 deaths from cocaine and amphetamines. In Oklahoma, of 603 drug-related deaths in 2006, more than half, 327, were attributed to hydrocodone, methadone or oxycodone. In Florida, people who died of drug overdoses in 2007 had prescription drugs in their systems more often than illicit drugs.

How many more celebrities must have their tragic story plastered across tabloid magazines? How many more parents must lose their children, and how many more children must lose their parents? Prescription drugs are highly addictive and can be deadly. Yet they are prescribed to the masses to cover up symptoms which are a direct result of nutritional deficiencies or sleep deprivation.

If pharmaceutical companies won’t take responsibility and neither will doctors, who will?

All drugs and alcohol can produce unwanted, disturbing reactions upon withdrawal or discontinuation. For some drugs that have been around for years, especially opiates like heroin, withdrawal reactions are well documented in medical journals. However, doctors are too often unfamiliar with withdrawal symptoms associated with many prescription drugs they routinely prescribe.

Stimulants like Dexedrine, Ritalin, and Adderall, which are prescribed for ADD and ADHD, have no real medical data in terms of withdrawal effects. Other prescription drugs like SSRI antidepressants, such as Prozac, Paxil, and Zoloft often cause suicidal and distressing withdrawal, yet many physicians appear to be unaware of this and continue prescribing.

Oxycontin which was produced by Perdue Pharmaceuticals came under lawsuit because they had lied about how addictive this painkiller is. Now residential drug rehabs have noticed a huge increase in enrollment because of Oxycontin. Many abusers of Oxycontin later turn to heroin because it is cheaper to purchase of the street.

I rode on a public transit bus recently, and during my 30 minute commute I was saddened to overhear the story of an addict sitting beside me. His story was like many I had heard before—an opiate user who couldn’t live without his next fix and who the state-run programs had given up on. No longer using illegal drugs, he was now addicted to the very thing his doctor gave to him to become free of his addiction.

Prescription drug abuse has caught up to us in terms of its lethality. Drug rehab facilities holding fast to the theory that addiction is an incurable disease treatable only by highly addictive prescriptions are not only masking the real problem, but they are trading one addiction for another.

This is not only the case for drug users who trade their illicit drugs for those prescribed by doctors. The average American who cannot sleep well at night or feels the ups and downs that life throws at him is prescribed Ambien or Abilify. A perfectly normal individual who has an unfortunate accident is prescribed addictive pain medications. And for many of these people, their lives are never the same.

When looking for a solution to these situations, look for a long term drug rehab that provides a drug-free treatment program that will help you to get to the root of the real situation and help an addict to live life again without the crutch of a prescription.