It's been a boom decade for investors in pharmaceuticals since the marketing of antidepressants was sold to the world as a panacea for childhood "disorders." The drugging of children - from infants to teenagers - with mind-altering "psychoactive" drugs has become an epidemic in the Western world, so commonplace, in fact, that even family doctors are prescribing antidepressants for conditions as trivial as bed-wetting. If this generation of kids can survive the torrent of pharmaceuticals coming at them, millions are going to be prime candidates for drug detox.
The problem of over-medicating children exists wherever the long arm of psychiatry and pharmaceuticals can reach - which is nearly everywhere in the world. Doctors are treating so-called emotional and mental problems by handing out antidepressants as a cure-all. Those of us old enough to remember may recall family physicians who listened to and talked with patients rather than setting them up for a future that included drug detox.
In the UK a new report shows that the number of prescriptions for anti-depressants and other mind-altering drugs given to children under the age of 16 has more than quadrupled in the past decade. In New Zealand, the number of antidepressants prescribed to kids in one typical school district more than doubled between 2000 and 2005, and the story is much the same across Europe and the USA, where prescriptions, on average, have doubled or tripled. In America, antidepressants and similar drugs have been associated with the dozens of school shootings across the country, events which may have been preventable if the troubled teens had received drug detox, rehab and some decent counseling.
Long suppressed scientific evidence from clinical trials shows that children on psychoactive drugs can become aggressive, hostile, anxious and manic, and have been put at a twofold greater suicide risk than those treated with a sugar pill. For example, 16-year-old Sharise Gatchell of Sussex was prescribed an antidepressant because she was shy. She soon suffered from dramatic personality swings, becoming hostile and aggressive, and started to self-harm, all recognized SSRI side-effects. Sharon stopped the drugs, but never received drug detox. Two years later she sought a new prescription herself and, shortly thereafter, hung herself in her parent's home.
"Anti-depressants do not work in this age group," says UK child psychiatrist Dr Sammi Timimi. "There have been several double-blind placebo trials which uniformly show that sugar pills worked just as well as the SSRIs." Timimi adds that the practice has become institutionalized. "It's a triumph of marketing over science."
Parents, teachers, counselors and friends should beware of putting kids on psychoactive medications. The known side-effects and withdrawal symptoms of mood- and mind-altering drugs can be effectively reduced or eliminated through a well-designed medical drug detox program and, if necessary, drug rehab. Help get our kids off drugs today. Don't set them up for a future of dependency on dangerous drugs.
Showing posts with label drug rehab. Show all posts
Showing posts with label drug rehab. Show all posts
Demand For Detox Coming From People in All Walks of Life
Last December, in the quiet Massachusetts town of Hyannis on Cape Cod, Jordan Mendes, a 16-year-old high school sophomore, was shot, stabbed multiple times, and his corpse then dumped in a deep pit in the woods and set on fire. Charged for the murder are his 13-year-old half-brother, a 13-year-old friend, and a 20-year-old community college student.
According to Cape and Islands District Attorney Michael O'Keefe, Mendes was a "significant drug dealer" of the highly addictive opioid painkiller OxyContin, a drug that is implicated in hundreds of overdose deaths, thousands of addictions across the country, and soaring demands for OxyContin detox and rehab programs from people of all ages and walks of life.
The teenager was murdered, the D.A. said, for the $10,000 cash he had on hand that he had earned peddling drugs.
OxyContin, closely related to morphine and heroin, is normally prescribed for moderate to severe chronic pain. The drug comes in time-release tablets of varying strengths, but most addicts crush the tablets to defeat the time release mechanism, and snort or inject the drug for a quicker high.
In West Yarmouth, not far from where 16-year-old Jordan Mendes was dealing OxyContin, Benjamin Carpenter and his wife Valarie Campos were arrested for dealing OxyContin, which police allege they sold to support their own OxyContin addictions. The couple raked in more than $500,000 during 2007 and 2008 selling OxyContin, said the cops. At $6 to $20 a pill, depending on its strength, that's a lot of deadly OxyContin reaching the streets.
If you average the cost at $13 a pill, Carpenter and Campos put more than 38,460 OxyContin tablets into illegal circulation. The Drug Enforcement Administration says OxyContin is diverted by "well-organized doctor shopping rings, forged and/or altered prescriptions, and diversion from individuals' prescriptions."
We don't know where Carpenter and Campos got their illicit supplies, and the exact amount of OxyContin being diverted for illicit drug sales across America, is not public knowledge. But it must be a staggering number, when you consider that OxyContin is now commonly available from drug dealers on the streets and in the schools of almost every city and town in the country.
Perhaps Purdue Pharmaceuticals, the drug's maker, knows how much of its deadly painkiller is reaching the wrong people, but they aren't saying. Purdue, you may recall, was fined $634 million by the government last year for lying to officials about how addictive and dangerous OxyContin really is.
On the streets, heroin addicts who already have high opioid tolerances routinely take OxyContin as a temporary fix when they can't find a source for heroin. Some reportedly stay with OxyContin as a permanent drug of choice. OxyContin is essentially heroin or morphine, but because it hasn't been cut with unknown amounts of unknown substances, addicts feel safer with OxyContin -- they know how much heroin-like drug they're getting, and it's pure.
But detox centers report that OxyContin isn't just being abused by hard-core heroin addicts. The drug is affecting everyone from white-collar executives to medical professionals to veterans to college students, teenagers and even seniors and sub-teens -- they're all turning up in increasing numbers needing detox.
Quite a few people with legal prescriptions for OxyContin, who take it to manage real pain, have become physically dependent on OxyContin. The number of such people needing detox programs in the last few years has risen significantly.
But far too many people, whether using OxyContin legally or abusing it recreationally, are finding out how rapidly it can take over their lives. OxyContin abuse rapidly progresses from physical dependence to addiction, along with all the life-destroying activity that accompanies it -- alienated family and friends, lost jobs, ruined health, and too often a life of crime to support an increasingly costly habit.
As with any opioid, OxyContin use and abuse leads to higher and higher tolerance for the drug and its effects. As tolerance rises, dosages must rise too, reaching levels that would be fatal for someone being exposed to opioids the first time. Deaths from OxyContin overdose are routinely reported in the media, especially among teens and young adults who don't realize how deadly the drug can be.
For anyone who really wants to get their life back, recovery begins with withdrawal from the drug, which is safest if it is a supervised medical detox program. If the problem is a serious OxyContin addiction, a drug rehab program would be recommended after the detox.
According to Cape and Islands District Attorney Michael O'Keefe, Mendes was a "significant drug dealer" of the highly addictive opioid painkiller OxyContin, a drug that is implicated in hundreds of overdose deaths, thousands of addictions across the country, and soaring demands for OxyContin detox and rehab programs from people of all ages and walks of life.
The teenager was murdered, the D.A. said, for the $10,000 cash he had on hand that he had earned peddling drugs.
OxyContin, closely related to morphine and heroin, is normally prescribed for moderate to severe chronic pain. The drug comes in time-release tablets of varying strengths, but most addicts crush the tablets to defeat the time release mechanism, and snort or inject the drug for a quicker high.
In West Yarmouth, not far from where 16-year-old Jordan Mendes was dealing OxyContin, Benjamin Carpenter and his wife Valarie Campos were arrested for dealing OxyContin, which police allege they sold to support their own OxyContin addictions. The couple raked in more than $500,000 during 2007 and 2008 selling OxyContin, said the cops. At $6 to $20 a pill, depending on its strength, that's a lot of deadly OxyContin reaching the streets.
If you average the cost at $13 a pill, Carpenter and Campos put more than 38,460 OxyContin tablets into illegal circulation. The Drug Enforcement Administration says OxyContin is diverted by "well-organized doctor shopping rings, forged and/or altered prescriptions, and diversion from individuals' prescriptions."
We don't know where Carpenter and Campos got their illicit supplies, and the exact amount of OxyContin being diverted for illicit drug sales across America, is not public knowledge. But it must be a staggering number, when you consider that OxyContin is now commonly available from drug dealers on the streets and in the schools of almost every city and town in the country.
Perhaps Purdue Pharmaceuticals, the drug's maker, knows how much of its deadly painkiller is reaching the wrong people, but they aren't saying. Purdue, you may recall, was fined $634 million by the government last year for lying to officials about how addictive and dangerous OxyContin really is.
On the streets, heroin addicts who already have high opioid tolerances routinely take OxyContin as a temporary fix when they can't find a source for heroin. Some reportedly stay with OxyContin as a permanent drug of choice. OxyContin is essentially heroin or morphine, but because it hasn't been cut with unknown amounts of unknown substances, addicts feel safer with OxyContin -- they know how much heroin-like drug they're getting, and it's pure.
But detox centers report that OxyContin isn't just being abused by hard-core heroin addicts. The drug is affecting everyone from white-collar executives to medical professionals to veterans to college students, teenagers and even seniors and sub-teens -- they're all turning up in increasing numbers needing detox.
Quite a few people with legal prescriptions for OxyContin, who take it to manage real pain, have become physically dependent on OxyContin. The number of such people needing detox programs in the last few years has risen significantly.
But far too many people, whether using OxyContin legally or abusing it recreationally, are finding out how rapidly it can take over their lives. OxyContin abuse rapidly progresses from physical dependence to addiction, along with all the life-destroying activity that accompanies it -- alienated family and friends, lost jobs, ruined health, and too often a life of crime to support an increasingly costly habit.
As with any opioid, OxyContin use and abuse leads to higher and higher tolerance for the drug and its effects. As tolerance rises, dosages must rise too, reaching levels that would be fatal for someone being exposed to opioids the first time. Deaths from OxyContin overdose are routinely reported in the media, especially among teens and young adults who don't realize how deadly the drug can be.
For anyone who really wants to get their life back, recovery begins with withdrawal from the drug, which is safest if it is a supervised medical detox program. If the problem is a serious OxyContin addiction, a drug rehab program would be recommended after the detox.
Rod MacTaggart is a freelance writer who contributes articles on health.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)