Thursday, February 9, 2012
THOUGHT FOR THE DAY!
Never quit trying to quit! That one sticks with me, I have been a cigarette smoker for 20 years and I will never stop trying different ways of quitting this disgusting, destructive habit. I just gotta believe I can and I will one day get this monkey off my back. Drugs and alcohol were a large monkey on my back for a long time. No matter what I did that monkey held on with the grip of death. The point is it doesn't matter what your monkey represents, you can shake it off if you don't give up and keep trying. I did and so have many others. REMEMBER JESUS LOVES YOU!
Your Legal Rights To Confidential Drug Treatment
Your legal rights to treatment…you cannot be discriminated against for present or past participation in medically needed substance abuse treatment.
Too many people avoid needed intervention and treatment out of fear of repercussions. People fear that once they enroll in a drug treatment program and receive needed treatment they will be punished on the job and that they will be discriminated against in both the public and private sectors.
The reality is that people who continue to use and abuse illegal drugs have very few rights and are not protected under federal or state statutes against discrimination, but those people who have received treatment for substance abuse problems, and who have achieved abstinence, are very well protected from discriminatory practices by a number of federal and state initiatives, including The Americans with Disabilities Act, The Rehabilitation Act of 1973, The Fair Housing Act and The Workforce Investment Act.
Although the information as follows is not a complete or legal document of your rights against discrimination, you can in general assume that after achieving sobriety or after having participated in substance abuse therapies, your history of abuse can never be used against you on the job, for housing, or for access to public or private programs.
Your Rights on the Job
The vast majority of employers are compelled to offer 12 weeks of unpaid leave to any employee seeking time off for a major medically necessary period of treatment. Employers may not sanction or punish any employee who requests needed medical leave, providing they have net certain requirements for eligibility (have worked with the company for more than one year etc.).
Any medically related information that employers may have access to for insurance, Medicaid or other purposes is also completely confidential, and cannot be revealed without your consent.
Your employer must also provide reasonable allowances to you for medically necessary reasons when it would not cause undue harm to do so. For example, if you need to maintain weekly meetings with a psychologist, you have the right to alter your work schedule to allow you to fulfill a medically required treatment.
If on the job drug testing reveals the presence of a legal and prescribed substance such as methadone used therapeutically, an employer can bring no sanctions, nor reveal the presence of the therapeutic substance to anyone without your consent.
You have the right to get treatment, you cannot be punished for seeking treatment, and your employer cannot tell anyone without your consent that you have received treatment.
Additionally, when applying for a job it is illegal for a prospective employer to ask about past substance abuse or a history of treatment for substance abuse. You cannot be discriminated against when applying for a job for having sought needed medical treatment, and employers are not even allowed to ask about it by law.
You also have equal rights to access to federal and state job placement and employment training programs, regardless of any history of substance abuse or treatment.
Your Rights to Housing
You cannot be denied access to a rental or saleable property because of your past history of substance abuse.
You cannot be denied access to public housing because of a past history of substance abuse (although a criminal conviction may alter your status in this respect).
Your Right to Government Services and Programs
You cannot be discriminated against for any publicly available governmental support programs based on a past history of substance abuse. Programs may include social assistance or welfare, housing assistance, job or employment assistance or licensing programs
Your Right to Public/Private Facilities
You cannot be denied access in a discriminatory way to any private facility that provides services to the public. Examples of such facilities include schools, universities, hospitals, emergency shelters, churches, day care centers and senior centers.
You Are Only Protected Once You Have Stopped Abusing Drugs
All of the above legal protections do not apply to people currently engaged in illicit drug taking, and are only applicable to people no longer illegally using drugs of abuse. Most of the above statutes do protect people who are actively abusing alcohol, but alcohol abuse behaviors will often give organizations or employers legitimate grounds for action against the abuser.
Anyone considering treatment for a substance abuse problem should know that their right to confidential treatment is protected under law and that after achieving sobriety they cannot be sanctioned for a history of abuse or treatment, whether on the job, for housing, within governmental programs, or within private/public institutions.
Resources
If you feel that you are being discriminated against because of a past history of treatment, or want to learn more about your rights to sanction free substance abuse treatment, please visit the following governmental web sites for more information.
Read more: Your Legal Rights To Confidential Drug Treatment
How to Taper off Benzodiazepines
Thinking about trying to taper off any of the benzodiazepines and worried about the withdrawals, your anxiety and your odds of success?
Well, a poorly thought out or overly quick taper can be agonizing but it doesn’t have to go that way – a methodical and patient benzo taper makes things much more manageable.
Need some advice on how to make sure your taper goes smoothly?
Well here are 11 great tips and strategies to a successful benzodiazepine taper from Professor C Heather Ashton. Oxford educated Professor Ashton is considered a leading expert on benzodiazepine withdrawal based on her experiences running a benzo withdrawal clinic over more than a decade. She is also the author of ‘Benzodiazepines: How They Work and How to Withdraw’ which is now more famously known as The Ashton Manual.
11 Tips for a Successful Benzodiazepine Withdrawal
1. Get Confident
You can do it! Millions of people have gone before you and if they can get off so can you.
2. Don’t Believe All the Horror Stories
Just because someone else had a tough time withdrawing doesn’t mean that you will too. Every body is different every use-history is different and every tapering attempt differs as well. Many people who taper very slowly experience only minimal withdrawal symptoms so don’t worry about the worst case scenarios and all those scary stories you’ve heard. Go slow and listen to your body and it’s very unlikely that you’ll experience anything so severe.
3. Talk to Your Doctor before You Start
Talk to your doctor first to make sure it is safe and advisable for you to begin tapering down. Assuming you get the green light (and if you don’t you may wish to seek out a second opinion on that) inform your doctor of your tapering plans and your estimated schedule of reductions.
Make sure your doctor knows that you will be in control of the tapering schedule and that you do not want arbitrary deadlines or imposed pacing.
4. Get Support from Someone Who Understands What You’re Going Through
You’re likely going to need emotional and psychological support at some points of the tapering journey so make sure you’ve got someone in your corner who understands benzo withdrawal (or is willing to get informed) and who’s willing to be there for you when you need a helping hand.
This person can be a doctor or therapist, it can be a friend or a spouse or it can be a person or a group of people from a community support group. It doesn’t matter who it is, as long as they understand what you’re going through and are willing to help you out as needed.
5. Be Patient
If you’ve been using for a while, understand that it’s going to a take a long while for your brain and body to adapt to reductions in dosage. It is not uncommon for a tapering to take 6, 12 or even 18 months. This is OK.
6. Control Your Own Pace of Reductions
It’s your body so you’re the person who’s best able to judge an acceptable pace of dosage tapering. Don’t worry at the onset about mapping out a schedule of tapering all the way to the end. Make a schedule and follow it for a few weeks and then review and alter that schedule as necessary based on your progress and the way you’re handling the dosage reductions.
Resist outside attempts to push you to a tapering schedule that’s faster than you’re comfortable with.
7. Switch to Longer Acting Medications
If you take short acting medications, like Xanax, you may want to consider switching to a longer acting benzodiazepine, like diazepam.
Short acting benzodiazepines result in rising and falling quantities of the medication in the bloodstream several times over the course of a day and this can lead to feelings of withdrawal and/or cravings as you taper. Longer lasting benzodiazepines result in more stable blood concentrations.
8. The Larger Your Daily Dose the Greater Your Dose Reduction (It’s All About the %)
Don’t think dose reductions per mg, percentage dose reductions are much more manageable. For example, if you are dropping your dose by 5% a week and are starting off on 40mg a day of diazepam, then you would start off by reducing your daily dose by 2 mg (a 5% reduction). Once you are down to 5 mgs per day, for example, if you dropped that same 2 mgs you would be reducing your daily dosage by 40% - which is a very big drop!
9. Never Increase Your Dosage
There may be times of great stress when you really feel like you need to temporarily increase your dosage (a death in the family, for example). If you need to, it is fine to delay further reductions for as long as necessary, but you should never go back and increase your dosage once you have already done the hard work and once your brain has already adjusted to a lower dosage.
It can be very useful as you taper to learn alternative ways to handle stress, such as yoga, meditation, relaxation exercises or deep breathing exercises. As you learn to handle stressful situations without resorting to benzodiazepines you will gain confidence in your ability to really beat this dependence.
10. Don’t Take Other Substances Which Cause Similar Effects
It does you little good to reduce your daily benzodiazepine intake by half if you simply double your consumption of alcohol, marijuana or other sedative drugs to compensate.
11. Jump off at .5mgs of Diazepam
Once you’re down to 0.5 mgs of diazepam it’s time to make the jump off to nothing. Continuing to taper after this point serves little purpose and most people find that the worry about not taking any medication is far worse than the reality of the final jump to freedom. 1
Read more: How to Taper off Benzodiazepines – 11 Secrets to Success
White Deer Run Willamsport
The treatment program at White Deer Run of Williamsport is modeled after partial hospitalization programs for clients who do not require 24 hour care but do need more intensive treatment than is available in outpatient services.
Patients participate from 8:00am to 4:30 pm, Monday through Saturday, and 9:00am to 1:00 pm on Sunday. The program also offers a transitional living facility, which provides a structured, supervised environment for patients requiring further support.
Programs available at White Deer Run of Williamsport
- Partial Hospitalization (Adult)
- Outpatient Individual, Group and Family Therapy (Adult)
- Outpatient Individual, Group and Family Therapy (Adolescent)
- Intensive Outpatient Program (Adult)
- CD Assessment (Adult/Adolescent)
Address
901 Westminster Dr.
Williamsport, PA 17701
Williamsport, PA 17701
Hours
8:00am-4:30pm, M-Sat.
9:00am-1:00am, Sun.
9:00am-1:00am, Sun.
Read more: White Deer Run - Intensive Outpatient Addiction Treatment in Williamsport Pennsylvania For admissions information call 877-830-7020 now, toll free.
Read more: White Deer Run - Pennsylvania Addiction Treatment Centers | Private Drug & Alcohol Rehabs
Wednesday, February 8, 2012
Restraining Order Allows Two Florida CVS Pharmacies to Keep Selling Controlled Drugs
A federal judge has granted CVS a temporary restraining order, which will allow the company to continue to sell controlled prescription drugs at two pharmacies in Florida. The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) raided the pharmacies last weekend andsuspended their licenses to dispense controlled substances.
Reuters reports Judge Amy Berman Jackson, of the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., said it was likely CVS will be able to show that the DEA did not establish the “imminent danger to public health” that is needed to suspend pharmacies’ registrations.
According to a DEA statement, the two pharmacies were “filling prescriptions far in excess of the legitimate needs of its customers.” While the average pharmacy in the United States in 2011 ordered approximately 69,000 oxycodone dosage units, these two pharmacies, located about 5.5 miles apart, together ordered more than three million dosage units during the same year, according to the DEA. The agency said the pharmacies knew, or should have known, that a large number of the prescriptions for controlled substances that it filled were not issued for a legitimate medical purpose, or were issued outside the usual course of professional practice.
CVS said it would suffer irreparable harm if it were forced to stop filling prescriptions at the pharmacies. The judge noted the company has already agreed to stop selling oxycodone and other Schedule II drugs at these pharmacies while the case is under review. The DEA suspension would have prevented the pharmacies from filling prescriptions for any controlled substance, including painkillers, stimulants and tranquilizers.
A CVS spokesperson said the company had taken steps, with the DEA’s knowledge, to stop filling prescriptions from physicians thought to be prescribing controlled narcotics improperly.
Eminem Thanks His Kids for Keeping Him in Recovery
Eminem says that although he sees an addiction counselor every week, what really keeps him clean and sober is his love for his children, saying, "I love them so much and they've helped me through so many things.”
The 37 year old rapper is now 2 years in recovery from a length battle with prescription drugs. During the depths of his addiction he admits he was taking, “anything that anybody was giving to me" including the methadone pills that he admits almost killed him.
Eminem, who opens up about his battle with addiction once again on his just released album, ‘recovery’ says that he couldn’t find what he needed at a drug rehab. He explains, "I felt like Bugs Bunny in rehab. When Bugs Bunny walks into rehab, people are going to turn and look. People at rehab were stealing my hats and pens and notebooks and asking for autographs. I couldn't concentrate on my problem."
It took a near death experience in 2007 for Eminem to finally realize that he needed to make some major changes in his life. Telling his story he says, “I had overdosed in 2007, like right around Christmas in 2007... I pretty much almost died. You know, I pulled through and went home and relapsed less than a month later and I literally shot back up to the amount of pills I was taking, shot right back up to where I overdosed... Kind of I scared myself, like, Yo! I need to, I need help. Like I can't beat this on my own.”
Read more: Eminem Thanks His Kids for Keeping Him in Recovery
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