What Are Prescription Drugs?

Prescription Drugs – who would have known that the random pills and potions in your medicine cabinet would end up competing with marijuana for your kid’s attention and their addiction? Well it just so happens that those unassuming pills and potions once thought harmless are much more deadly than they look and they are fast becoming America’s new favorite drug of choice. It’s unfortunately true.

It’s all over the news. It’s in the papers, it’s the topic of the discussion on prime time specials and it’s all over the internet on blogs and websites. The President is talking about it. Prescription Drug abuse is the enemy.

What Are Prescription Drugs?

Prescription Drug Addiction

We all have some common knowledge of prescription medication; most of us has some old bottle of pills we never finished from a pain, ache or mental illness we may have suffered from at one time just sitting harmlessly on the shelf of our bathroom medicine cabinet. Well unfortunately these are the enemy, especially if you have teens. Although marijuana remains the all-time the number one drug of choice among teens, prescription drugs are running a very close second and if taken for granted any longer I predict it a very short time prescription drugs will surpass marijuana and become the most abused drugs in the country.

Basically prescription drugs are any “licensed medicine that is regulated by legislation to require a prescription before it can be obtained.” Not to be confused with over-the-counter drugs or OTC’s which can be obtained without a prescription (and are just as dangerous), prescription drugs are those prescribed by a doctor but can also be obtained illegally. Different jurisdictions have different definitions of what constitutes a prescription drug. The proper dispensation of prescription drugs should include a monograph (in Europe, a Patient Information Leaflet or PIL) that gives detailed information about the drug.

According to the National Drug Intelligence Center, Prescription Drugs are described as “a category of psychotherapeutics that comprises prescription-type pain relievers, tranquilizers, stimulants, and sedatives.” They are says the NDIC, “among the substances most commonly abused by young people in the United States. Prescription drugs are readily available and can be obtained quite easily by teenagers. They (Teens) just want to get high and have a good time. But little do they know these drugs used improperly are a very serious health risks.  Increasingly younger adolescents obtain prescription drugs from classmates, friends, and family members, or they steal the drugs from school medicine dispensaries and from people for whom the drug had been legitimately prescribed.

Who Can Prescribe Prescription Drugs?

Prescribing Prescription Drug

In the United States, the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act define a Prescription drug as those drugs authorized by veterinarians, dentists, optometrists, medical practitioners, and advanced practice nurses. It is generally required that Doctor (MD, DO, PA, OD, DPM, NMD, ND, DVM, DDS, or DMD), or Psychologists, a Nurse Practitioners and other APRNs write the prescription.

A basic-level registered nurse, a medical assistant, EMT, psychologists or your social workers, are not authorized to write a drug prescription ever.

Over-the-counter drugs (OTC) are drugs used to treat conditions not necessarily requiring care from a health care professional. They have been proven to meet higher safety standards for self-medication by patients. Lower strength drugs are often approved for OTC use. Higher strengths require a prescription.

Physicians can also legally prescribe drugs for uses other than those specified in the FDA approval; this is known as off-label use. Drug companies don’t often market drugs for off-label uses.

Prescription drug abusers may feel pleasure, euphoria, drowsiness, more energy, and other effects depending upon the drug. Teens can experience dangerous side effects. Prescription drugs taken as prescribed by a physician can and will successfully treat a variety of mental or physical conditions. But when abused, these prescription drugs can alter the brain’s activity and be mentally and physically addictive. (Source: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, NHSDA.)

“Most people understand that there are times when the proper medication is life saving and necessary. Some ailments such as diabetes require long-term maintenance, but not everything can be treated with pill. Let’s get wise. There is no pill to bring the dead back to life or to cure young people who have become addicted.” Mary Rieser, Narconon of Georgia.

Fighting The Fight Against Prescription Drugs

Narconon Of Georgia

Narconon of Georgia has been fighting drug addiction in Georgia for 11 years. But then the drugs were the illicit street drugs of the monsters and boogiemen. Heroin and Cocaine were the main drugs abuse by many with a few prescription pills and potion. But today these drugs have taken a back seat to what’s in the medicine cabinet says Rieser.

Talk to your kids and not at them. Don’t be to adult that you can’t get down on their level if only for a moment to get a better understanding of what the trends are. Teens today can be illusive and let’s just say sneaky, but a noisy parent is better than a parent who just does not know.

Educate yourself about the dangers of prescription and OTC drug abuse. Discuss these risks with your kids. Kids need to hear you say that getting high on legal prescription and OTC drugs is just as dangerous as getting high on street drugs.

Kids who learn about drug risks from their parents are half as likely to use drugs as kids who haven’t had that conversation with their parents.

Make sure you use drugs as the doctor intended. Stay involved with your kids. Don’t let them go through middle school and into high school without your guidance. Talk with them daily. Be honest in your conversation with them about prescription and OTC drug abuse. Know what you are talking about. Know the facts so you can clear up wrong or bad information. Peer pressure is just as deadly as the drugs when it is abused. Don’t make it all a lecture. Listen to your children. If they have questions and comments answer them truthfully. Let them know that getting high with prescription and OTC medication is not safer than getting high with illicit street drugs. In most cases it can be more dangerous.

Did you know that your child is more likely to be offered drugs by a friend than a stranger? It’s true. They can be exposed to drugs as early as age 12. Real friends don’t influence bad decisions.

There is much ado about prescription drugs. Get the facts.

Michael Bonds, Bauder College About The Author Michael Bonds is a Criminal Justice Senior at Bauder College in Atlanta Georgia. He is currently doing his externship at Narconon of Georgia He is an Activist and former Youth Counselor from Boston Massachusetts. He is the author of “Gunz, Poems & Rosez, the Experience Strength and Hope of Michael Warrior Bonds

We don’t know who busted them, but perhaps it was a smart kid who stayed home one day.  Here is the interesting story about sick people:

“It’s a beautiful spring-like day here in New York City, the kind where  you open your windows and the kids play outside. It’s also the kind of day where you might hear an ice cream truck pull up playing that distinct music and you take the kids to grab a SpongeBob icy or a Popsicle. Most people would never think that the person behind the window might be a drug dealer, but that is exactly what happened in Staten Island, New York. The Lickety Split ice cream truck was doubling as a million dollar drug business and selling Oxycodone pills for $20 a pop.

Apparently the drug addicts in the servicing neighborhoods of Pleasant Plains and Charleston knew the truck dished out drugs alongside the ice cream. Adult addicts would sit in their cars waiting for local kids to finish buying their ice cream. Once the kids left, they would line up for painkillers. The drug of choice was the generic version highly addictive Oxycontin narcotic pain reliever, Oxycodone.

According to the NY Daily News, there were several people involved in the operation:

Ringleaders Louis Scala, 29, and Joseph Zaffuto, 39, got hundreds of blank prescriptions from co-defendant Nancy Wilkins, 40, the office manager for an unsuspecting Manhattan orthopedic surgeon, officials said.

They forged them and recruited friends, relatives and neighbors to be “runners” who went to mom-and-pop pharmacies to fill the prescriptions.

They paid about $1.66 a pill, then turned them over to Scala and Zaffuto, who sold them for $20 each, prosecutors said. The runners, many of them addicts, got a few bucks or pills as payment.”

Source

While Narconon doesn’t travel around in a truck, it easily accessible.  Ice cream is best enjoyed sober.

Narconon drug rehab is the new life program and can make the simplest things a lot of fun.

Hopefully, these two books under RECOVERY ROAD and WE ALL FALL DOWN will meet this criteria.    Hopefully more interesting and helpful than the Charlie Sheen story.  Here is a review of the two books.

“We live in a society filled with temptation, where drugs and alcohol are illegal for minors but still easy to obtain. They’re so readily available, in fact, that 11 million American youths need treatment for substance abuse, according to the Partnership for a Drug-Free America. Yet few teen addicts get the help they need. And those who do are likely to relapse before they truly recover.

It’s these hard truths that are tackled in two new books for young adults, each of which handles the subject slightly differently. Blake Nelson’s “Recovery Road” is a fictional account of 16-year-old “Mad Dog Maddie,” whose rap sheet includes drinking alcohol, downing OxyContin, smoking hash, snorting coke, stealing a car, getting arrested and being thrown out of her home and sent to a halfway house.

Nic Sheff’s “We All Fall Down” is the real-life account of Sheff’s struggles to recover from addictions to increasingly hard-core substances. He started smoking pot at age 12 before the high no longer worked, and he moved on to alcohol, cocaine, methamphetamines, heroin — and rehab. Rewind, and repeat.

Both books are told from the addict’s perspective, offering up-close and personal views of their protagonists’ descents into substance abuse and the tragic effect on those who care most about them. “Recovery Road” just offers a slightly more sanitized version of the rehabilitation process — one that is likely to appeal to readers whose interest in illicit substances is purely vicarious. The follow-up to “Tweak,” Sheff’s New York Times bestseller about his meth addiction, “We All Fall Down” is a grittier, in-the-trenches retelling of his recovery that will resonate with readers who are struggling with their own addictions or those of someone they love.”

Source

If the books don’t mention rehab in the foot notes – then let us mention it here.

Drug rehabs such as Narconon can help a person rewrite their life in such a positive vein, that it can perhaps seems unbelievable.  However, it is true – any person alive can create a new life for themselves.

Here is the article:

“With prescription drug abuse on the rise in Maryland, the state legislature has proposed a solution to the growing problem.

Gov. Martin O’Malley’s administration is proposing the creation of a Prescription Drug Monitoring Program that could be used to help regulators and law enforcement personnel investigate questionable prescriptions, and help physicians and pharmacists identify people struggling with prescription drug abuse.

Maryland is one of only seven states still without a PDMP in place, according to a Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene press release.

The General Assembly approved a prescription drug monitoring program in 2006, but the measure was vetoed by then-Gov. Robert Ehrlich.

Susan Doyle, director of addiction services at Carroll County Health Department, said the program would be a very big help in Carroll County.

From 1998-2010, there has been a significant increase in the number of people admitted to treatment services who have reported that their primary substance of abuse is prescription medication, she said.

According to a chart compiled by Doyle, about eight of those people in Carroll County reported prescription drug use as their primary substance of abuse in 1998, while that number has grown to about 89 people in 2010. Those numbers include people who obtained the drug legally through a physician, as well as illegally.

About 90 percent of the prescription drug abuse in the county is opiates, which include drugs such as Codeine, Vicodin, Dilaudid, Demoral, OxyContin, Percocet, Percodan, Talwin, Propoxyphene and Ultram, she said.

“They don’t see it as a problem because their doctor prescribed it to them,” Doyle said, but abuse of the medication is very dangerous.”

Source

Narconon backs any efforts to bring awareness to the community and will provide drug awareness lectures or materials upon request.

For those who are already addicted, the comprehensive Narconon drug rehab program is the best solution.  The success rate is good – relapse rate is low.

It’s these hard truths that are tackled in two new books for young adults, each of which handles the subject slightly differently. Blake Nelson’s “Recovery Road” is a fictional account of 16-year-old “Mad Dog Maddie,” whose rap sheet includes drinking alcohol, downing OxyContin, smoking hash, snorting coke, stealing a car, getting arrested and being thrown out of her home and sent to a halfway house.

Nic Sheff’s “We All Fall Down” is the real-life account of Sheff’s struggles to recover from addictions to increasingly hard-core substances. He started smoking pot at age 12 before the high no longer worked, and he moved on to alcohol, cocaine, methamphetamines, heroin — and rehab. Rewind, and repeat. Both books are told from the addict’s perspective, offering up-close and personal views of their protagonists’ descents into substance abuse and the tragic effect on those who care most about them.

“Recovery Road” just offers a slightly more sanitized version of the rehabilitation process — one that is likely to appeal to readers whose interest in illicit substances is purely vicarious. The follow-up to “Tweak,” Sheff’s New York Times bestseller about his meth addiction, “We All Fall Down” is a grittier, in-the-trenches retelling of his recovery that will resonate with readers who are struggling with their own addictions or those of someone they love.

Right now, every state is battling the consequences of the unethical distribution of prescription drugs.   There are many battles -however, the war hasn’t even really begun.  Unless something drastic happens, in 2013 we will have the WW III of the war on drugs.   That is when the drug Oxycontin will no longer be protected by Perdue’s patent – it expires at that time.  Tons of generic brands are likely to hit the streets and unless we are prepared with tons of drug rehab and a willingness to crack down on pain clinics, the term behind the eight ball won’t even begin to describe the dilemma we will find ourselves in.  This article demonstrates what more states should be thinking of – funding for drug rehab.

“In the middle of what looks like a protracted battle against opiate addiction, treatment officials said they are encouraged by Gov. John Kasich’s vocal support and restoration of some of the budget cuts they experienced under Ted Strickland’s administration.

But some are concerned about what the final numbers will be once the budget wrangling ends and what will be available for addicts who aren’t eligible for Medicaid, the vast majority of their clientele.

The $4.6 million set aside for statewide treatment might not be enough, but it is an improvement, said Stacey Frohnapfel-Hasson, spokeswoman for the Ohio Department of Drug Addiction and Alcohol Services, which directs state and federal treatment services money to 50 local mental health and recovery boards.

“It’ll help,” she said. “We’ve been so historically underfunded.”

The Ohio Department of Job and Family Services is taking over the administration of all Medicaid for the state, which clouds the budget picture for the addiction services department.

What is written down in the governor’s proposal is $32.8 million for treatment in 2012, which represents a 22 percent increase.

That good news comes with a bit of a caveat. As part of the stimulus package, the federal government has been picking up a larger share of Medicaid reimbursements. But that expires in June.

Source

Narconon will continue to provide drug prevention and effective treatment.   However, it isn’t enough for one organization.  Anyone has ability to do something about this problem.

If someone has already become addicted to prescription drugs, Narconon drug rehab is one of the best answers around.  We are the new life treatment.

Project Prevention has decided that the correct handling for women who are addicted who might become pregant is to give them some more drug money (300 dollars) and sterilize them so they may never again have children.  The message is ” You are so broken you will never be fixed, so we are going to fix you the way we see fit.”  The money would be better spent on rehabilitation efforts.  That way we save a few lives – the life of the addict and the life of any bbabies she may bear in the future.    Messing with compromised minds and deciding what is best for them is stepping ove the line.

“A US charity is targeting female Irish drug addicts with bribes to undergo sterilisation.

The controversial charity, run by a 57-year-old grandmother, is offering €215 a year to women who agree to be sterilised.

Project Prevention Group founder Barbara Harris has been accused of “playing God” by her critics.

She has already paid more than 1,200 American female drug addicts to be sterlised and 26 British addicts to have contraceptive coils fitted.

She has now turned her attention to Ireland and says she is looking for donations to expand into this country.

Founded

“We have heard from hundreds of people in Ireland telling us how much our offer is needed there,” she said.

“We’ve heard from people complaining about how the addicts just keep having babies,” she said. “We would pay them the equivalent of $300.”

Harris explained that when a drug user has a coil fitted, the charity pays them every six months once a doctor verifies the coil is still in place.

Harris, from North Carolina, founded the charity after she adopted four out of eight children born to a crack addict mother in LA in 14 years ago.

She believes it would only take a “couple of months” to set up in Ireland with private funding.

“I am a humanitarian and I think we must stop babies being born with drug addictions”, she said. “That is why I advocate long-term contraception or full sterilisation”.”

Source

Drug rehabs like Narconon would be the preferred solution.  Who is going to be targeted next for sterilization?

Counselors at Narconon often see college binge drinking as an early issue with alcoholics.  Alcohol abuse, beginning in college, can be the start of alcoholism for many people. What begins as a seemingly social activity can spiral into an isolated pattern of drinking alone, in excess, over years and even decades.  Addicts often have to relearn how to socialize without alcohol after years of abuse.

Survey data show notable drops in student binge drinking at several colleges and universities, The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported Feb. 16. For example:

• Alcohol-related violations dropped 3.7 percent at North Dakota State University in Fargo, N.D. over two years.
• Between 2007 and 2009, “problem drinking” fell 12 percent at the University of Pittsburgh.
• The number of Purdue students who engaged in binge drinking sank from 48 percent in 2006 to 37.3 percent in 2009.
• Frostburg State University in Maryland saw binge drinking plummet 27% over the past decade.

Prevention advocates say the drop in risky drinking is no accident. Students and administrators are making concerted efforts to provide students with fun, late-night activities that are alcohol-free – and offered regularly.

What could possibly compete with a beer keg? The Wall Street Journal lists a dizzying array of activities, including alcohol-free tailgate parties, carnivals, movie showings, simulated sumo wrestling, bowling, arcade games, and contests.

http://www.jointogether.org/blog/posts/2011/activities-key-to-cutting.html

Narconon sees these significant drops in binge drinking as real progress in the effort to fight addiction.  Although these studies are fairly new, in time, other statistics will surely show increased GPAs and higher graduation rates for those schools offering more alcohol-free activities.

Narconon Drug Rehabilitation hopes to see less cases of alcoholism beginning with binge drinking as more schools adopt these practices.

Residents of treatment facilities will undoubtedly fall back into the correctional system and addiction related deaths will increase if the state reduces or eliminates residential treatment.  Although outpatient treatment helps some, many addicts require being removed from their environment and placed into a structured residential facility in order to initially get off drugs and alcohol. The state should redirect budget cuts or, at least, reduce the cuts to residential treatment. It costs taxpayers twice as much for an individual to be in the corrections system than in state funded treatment.

Even though the state of Maine has a rate of alcohol and drug addiction eight times higher than the rest of the nation, budget cuts there may soon force the closure of 10 out of 13 residential treatment centers, the Maine Public Broadcasting Network reported March 9.

Maine governor Paul Le Page is proposing to cut $5.6 million from the state’s substance abuse treatment programs. Most treatment providers say the cuts will be so deep that they will have to stop operating.

“It’s the classic pennywise-pound foolish, because we treat people at less than half the cost of the corrections community,” said Roger Prince of Serenity House, a substance abuse treatment program that is over 40 years old.

“So what do we want to do? Do we want to close this place down and send [our clients] back to jail or to the emergency room? It makes no sense to me,” he said.

According to a March 9 story in the Bangor Daily News, 40 percent of the Wellspring treatment program’s budget, or over $500,000, will vanish with the cuts. “There is no way I can make that up from other sources,” said Pat Kimball, the agency’s executive director.

http://www.jointogether.org/news/headlines/inthenews/2011/maine-eliminates-residential.html

Narconon hopes that Maine will reconsider their enormous cuts to residential treatment funding.

Narconon Drug Rehabilitation will continue to treat addicts residentially with high rates of success in Georgia, Michigan, California and Oklahoma.

It will take society as a whole because that’s how big the problem is.   Now days, almost everyone knows someone who is taking prescription drugs, even if they don’t pick up that there is an abuse problem.

This is an excellent article and well worth reading in its entirety:

“BECKLEY — Perhaps the trigger was an acrimonious divorce.

Possibly, the fuse was lit when a financial setback unleashed an avalanche of unpaid bills that made day-to-day living expenses too difficult to handle.

Maybe the proverbial straw on the camel’s back was a sudden illness that hurled the person into a deep fugue.

Whatever the underlying cause for depression, someone came along with some poor advice:

Sniff this. Swallow that. Inhale here.

What ensued was euphoria, with an unseen hook the friend never mentioned.

Once is not enough. So to maintain that good feeling, the hurting individual needs more of what took him into dreamland. Now, he’s hooked. From there, the path is treacherous, fraught with faking pain in “doctor shopping,” or buying from a back-alley supplier, and possibly ending with the slamming of a steel door.

And there’s a good reason for dependency, says Dr. Hassan Jafary, a practitioner of internal medicine at Stanaford Medical Clinic, outside Beckley.

Simply, the brain never forgets.
Jafary experimented on a reporter to illustrate. Eyes closed, the reporter opened his left hand and Jafary dropped in it an object.

“Now, as I start to count, tell me what it is,” he said.

“A dime,” the object of his experiment replied, correctly.

And that is why one shackled to drugs cannot readily overcome an addiction. The brain just won’t let go of him.

Jafary applauds West Virginia lawmakers for moving to set aside $60 million in a proposed cigarette tax increase to treat addicts.

But society as a whole needs to get involved, he says.”

http://www.register-herald.com/todaysfrontpage/x186202800/Doctor-believes-all-society-must-combat-drug-addiction

Narconon will work as long as necessary to get the word out – we are the middle of a bad situation with these drugs and unless we do something quickly, the ramifications may be severe for the world as we know it.

For those who are already addicted – Narconon drug rehab is here to help.