Drug and Alcohol Blog

Drug and alcohol addiction is a dangerous and progressive disease, but at what point in the progression is it time to get help from drug rehabilitation professionals? When someone drinks alcohol every day, but never gets drunk, or parties and does cocaine or ecstasy every weekend, but never during the week days, are they addicts in need of drug rehab? We often say that there is an addiction problem when life becomes unmanageable in various ways, however addiction is progressive. For some people nothing seems to be unmanageable until suddenly, everything is.
There is no universal scale with which to measure the extent of addiction in everyone who abuses drugs and alcohol, but addiction is a dangerous game to play and no matter what the substance, any abuse is walking a very thin line. It’s tough to figure out who has a problem and who doesn’t. It doesn’t take falling down drunk or multiple drug offenses, or stealing from loved ones to be an addict. All it takes is a dependence - just to feel normal, or to go to sleep for the night. Perhaps, instead of determining addiction as life becoming unmanageable, we should take a look at what is and is not manageable when we don’t drink or do the drugs that normally “get us through” a good night’s sleep or a night out with friends. First, can we deny ourselves that drink or drug and second, has the perceived quality of our life changed in any way without these substances? This is a question that has to be answered on a personal level and hopefully, with vigilance, it can be answered before addiction gets a solid grasp on life and begins to make things unmanageable - making the need for drug and alcohol rehabilitation imminent.

For a long time, I used to think that people don’t die from crack addiction.  I used to think that only drugs like heroin and prescription meds could kill addicts.  You don’t hear about crack overdoses like heroin, but just recently a member of our recovery community at treatment-centers.net told us that her husband, who had been a crack addict for several years had finally died from his addiction after refusing help for what turned out to be the last time.
It’s such a sad thing when any person loses a life to addiction, but I know I’m not the only one who thought that, despite it’s horrible consequences, crack did not cause fatal overdoses , or at least not as often as heroin and prescription meds do. I guess when the damage hits closer to home, any reality becomes more…real.

There have been numerous articles recently about the spread of heroin and perscription drug abuse among young people from 13-25 years of age.  These disturbing develpments have indicated that a majority of these young people are beginning with abuse of prescription pan medications stolen from parents and grandparents who are ill or recovering from surgery.  Despite the serious dangers of prescription pain medications, many people do not acknowledge these dangers because of an erroneous belief that since these pan killers are prescribed by doctors, they are not as dangerous as heroin obtained on the street.
Unfortunately, the fact of the matter is that opiates are opiates, no matter how they are administered or where they come from and the resulting addiction is indiscriminate.  For today’s young people, the abuse of prescription pan killers is graduating from pills to heroin that can be snorted very rapidly.  The nasty stigma of heroin being shot up with a needle can be circumvented and business in the suburbs is booming.  Drug dealers are finding it to be much easier to monopolize suburban communities than trying to fight for business in the inner cities as long as they have heroin in powder form that can be snorted because once again, as long as kids can circumvent the stigma of shooting heroin, it’s somehow okay.  The saddest thing is to know that the majority of these kids abusing pain pills or snorting heroin are going to hit a point where they are sick from withdrawal and all that’s available is heroin and all they can do is shoot it.  Chances are that when faced with that situation, they will do what they feel they must to escape the pains of heroin withdrawal - meanwhile creating a world of problems for themselves and their loved ones.

I have a good friend who used to be an extraordinary general manager of  top restaurant, but who now is unemployed and hiding because he was found passed out behind the bar of the restaurant he had just opened himself.
Just another example of how alcoholism ruins lives in a major way, I guess.  The saddest thing about it is of all the various kinds of addicts I have known in my life, alcoholics are the ones who are most commonly in denial - often right up until it’s too late to help.
Anyone else know someone who’s lost it all, but still doesn’t get it?  I know I’m not the only one.

Drug abuse and drug addiction have been plaguing our society for decades and the most disturbing trend was the rapid and deadly spread methamphetamine from the mid-west throughout the country. But more recently, even the heavily methamphetamine saturated states throughout the west and mid-west have been struggling with an addiction monster no one saw coming. Prescription opiate pain killers have become the most abused drugs, second only to marijuana.
According to an article I recently read, Montana is having an especially difficult time with the abuse of prescription pain killers like Vicodin, OxyContin, Fentanyl, Percocet, Methadone, Morphine, and Norco. The inundation of pain killer addiction and the crime and health problems it brings to small communities like those found in Montana has taken a toll far worse than just addiction. Emergency rooms have reported 9 nine deaths from prescription opiate overdose in the first half of 2008 as compared to 6 deaths over the 2007 year. Many addicts steal and commit prescription fraud to obtain opiates for abuse, although there is another problem aiding in the spread of prescription opiate abuse and it comes down from a higher, more inconspicuous place. According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, there were 40 million opiate prescriptions written in 1991 as compared to 180 million in 2007, which represents a 350% increase in opiate prescriptions written for a 19% increase in population. I find this to be amazingly disturbing, pointing a suspicious finger toward medical professionals who will write opiate prescriptions at the word of a patient.
Along with prescription fraud and doctors who maybe a little too “trusting” of their patients, younger addicts find their fix much closer to home in their parents’ unlocked and unmonitored medicine cabinets. This kind of addictive behavior is especially dangerous because with younger people, the only interest is getting high without any knowledge of dosing instructions or possible health risks, increasing the chances of fatal overdoses.
Unfortunately, states like Montana without a large market for drug treatment centers, addicts have an especially difficult time finding help to get sober once they have fallen victim to addiction. Geographically,  Florida and California are home to over half of the addiction treatment centers in the country leaving states like Montana with virtually no market for quality drug treatment. This leaves addicts with state and county funded treatment, which typically carries long waiting lists and substandard care that may not include medical detox and others that can barely get addicts far beyond the detox phase.  Most state funding towards addiction treatment is grossly underfunded and seriously overcrowded.  It is most unfortunate that many addicts cannot get the help they really need because of the high costs associated with private treatment centers and the long waiting lists and inferior care associated with publicly funded treatment centers.
It’s to bad that with the growing population of addicts in our society, that more funds are not dedicated to helping addicts in need of treatment. Instead of help, addicts are faced with incarceration to sweat out the horrors of detox alone and figure out how to stay sober on their own. Hopefully, this new epidemic will be enough for extra funding to help addicts get better instead of locking them up and forgetting about the opiate addiction problem gripping so much of our nation.

A recent article discussed the society of Iran and it’s addiction to opium, heroin, and other opium based drugs. Although opium is a very commonly used pain killer and is also used socially in Iran, addiction that has turned users to heroin and other opium based drugs has plagued the nation and the government has leaped into action to combat the growing addiction problem.
The government now funds 600 drug rehab centers as well as an additional 1,250 centers that give away free, clean needles and treat addicts with methadone. Aside from the addiction itself, another growing problem in Iran is the spread of HIV/AIDS. Many of the 1,250 centers funded by the government also offer help in the form of food and care for those suffering from HIV/AIDS.
Despite the preexisting presence of opium in social and medical settings in Iran, the nation has experienced a dramatic increase in opium imports ever since America has occupied Afghanistan. America has been widely blamed for overlooking the regrowth of the opium exports to the point where now, Afghanistan is the source of 93% of all illicit opium worldwide.

A recent article covered a rather disturbing story out of the middle east. The story reported that as many as 1 in 7 Iranians are addicted to opium or heroin, all coming from the poppy fields of Afghanistan. According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, 93% of the world’s illicit opium market comes from Afghanistan. This recent increase in opium addiction has set the government into action, financing hundreds of addiction treatment centers and an additional 1,250 centers that offer addicts methadone, clean needles, and help for the hungry and those suffering from HIV/AIDS.
According to Iranian officials, the goal is not to combat the addicts, but rather fight the addiction by offering help however they can. Instead of jailing addicts, Iran focuses on trying to offer rehabilitation for the drug addiction - a method that has proven very successful in drug rehabilitation efforts against a worldwide society addicted to drugs.

According to current diagnostic guides, alcohol use disorders are split into two categories: alcohol abuse and alcohol dependence, or alcoholism. But recently, an argument has been made for adding a third category classified as hazardous drinking. Hazardous drinking has been defined as drinking more than the recommended amount.
So, what is the difference between alcohol abuse and hazardous drinking and do we really need a third classification on the road to alcoholism?
Finnish studies have shown 5.8% of the population to engage in hazardous drinking. According to the study, men are defined as hazardous drinker if they consume 24 or more alcoholic drinks in a week’s time and for women, the number is 16 or more drinks in a week.  These numbers seem to be high for one person’s consumption in a week and may imply a drinking problem that needs attention, but yet they are classified as hazardous drinking numbers, not alcohol abuse numbers.
If there is a line between alcohol abuse and hazardous drinking, it seems to me that it’s mighty thin and perhaps we’re just better off calling a spade a spade. If a man is regularly drinking what averages to just over 3 alcoholic beverages every day, that’s indicative of a problem, as is a woman consuming just over 2 alcoholic beverages every day.
Micro-analyzing alcoholism is pointless when alcohol abuse, hazardous drinking, and alcohol dependence are all problems that require attention and change. The degree of intensity of attention depends on the severity of the problem, no matter what researchers want to call it or how they chose to classify it.

Everyone probably knows someone who knows someone or heard of someone who is an alcoholic and down on his or her luck, but alcoholism effects many more people that we may know. It’s not the bums on the corner and those who have literally lost everything who have problems with alcohol, but also those who drink every single day without fail, those who have racked up DUI charges, those who don’t know when to stop drinking at a sitting and end up drunk every time, and these are everyday people. We all know them. Perhaps some of us have been them. Generally, I like to classify addiction as the condition which causes life to become unmanageable, but just because someone may drink everyday does not make his or her life unmanageable, right? Surely, this person could skip a day of drinking, but could they skip an entire week of consuming alcohol? What about a month? Even if this person never gets drunk from drinking everyday, it’s still a dependency forming habit and my guess would be that after a year of drinking on a daily basis, it would be virtually impossible for an individual to stop drinking for more than a few days. Does this make him a raging alcoholic? No, this makes him a functioning alcoholic and sometimes, functioning alcoholics are more dangerous than than those who are obvious with their alcoholism. No matter how it manifests itself, alcoholism is a deadly disease and kills from the inside out causing liver failure, organ shutdown and host of other serious health issues. For subtle alcoholism, the signs are hardly noticeable, and the alcoholic seems to have everything in order at home, at work, in his or her relationships, and generally gives no signs of trouble.

There is no science as to why some people are able to remain functioning alcoholics for long periods of time and others cannot hide their alcoholism, and seem to be screaming that there is a problem from the beginning. No matter what kind of alcoholic an individual may be, alcoholism is alcoholism and it’s danger is the same from one individual to the next. Regardless of how functional an alcoholic may be, there are always signs. This is why it is so important to know the warning signs, because to someone akin to these signs, even the most functional alcoholic cannot hide his problems.

Addiction is characterized as uncontrollable compulsive behavior, often that results in life becoming unmanageable and needing change. Most commonly, drug and alcohol addictions are treated through attending a drug and alcohol rehabilitation program. Proven to be highly successful and powerful tools in the struggle to find recovery from addiction, these programs have helped countless drug and alcohol addicts throughout the years.
Along with drug and alcohol addiction, society has also felt the devastating effects of other addictions such as sexual addiction, gambling addiction, internet addiction, sexual addiction, and gaming addiction. Unfortunately, these kinds of addictions, while very real, do not receive the same amount of attention, research and treatment as do drug and alcohol addictions. far fewer addiction treatment centers address the problems associated with these kinds of addictions than drug and alcohol. Generally, people believe that sexual, gambling, gaming, and shopping addictions are not life threatening since there is no chemical substance involved. The truth is that an addiction is an addiction and it is not controllable. People affected by these more obscure addictions will resort to some of the same immoral and uncharacteristic behaviors to continue in their addiction as do those addicted to drugs and alcohol. These kinds of behaviors can prove to be very dangerous and destructive.
No matter what the addiction, individuals struggling with this dangerous, compulsive disease are at a great risk of not only losing everything they hold dear in their lives, but also their own personal health and safety. It is unfortunate that there has not been more research into gambling addiction, sexual addiction, shopping addiction, and gaming addiction, but many of the mainstream addiction treatment centers will do all they can to address these problems although their primary focus is drug and alcohol addiction.