POWER IN THE PROVERB

December 11 v 2 POWER IN THE PROVERB

Pride leads to disgrace, but with humility comes wisdom.

STEP 1 :We admitted we were powerless over our dependencies

And our lives had become unmanageable.

Pride can do a lot more than bring disgrace. Pride can put you into an early grave. My pride left me homeless blaming everyone in the world for my messed up life. Step one will save your life but pride does not want that. There were so many people in my life who wanted to help me, but I knew all things so they were just trying to control me. Pride blinded me to the fact that my life was out of control. Alone and desperate is where it left me.There is a saying that is true.Pride comes before the fall. Pride can kill you or save you and in my case during the fall is where I found the Step (1) that saved me.

For more Power in the Proverb and all the latest recovery news.

VIsit :www.joseph-recoveryconnections.blogspot.com

Trapped on Suboxone

Suboxone, touted as a miracle drug to help ease addiction to heroin, does not need to become your next addiction





Out of the frying pan... Photo via


By Jennifer Matesa


12/02/13


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Addicted to Suboxone
Meet the "Robin Hood" of Suboxone
Reckitt Pulls Its Suboxone Tablets From the US Market
Video: Kristen Johnston's Gutsy Suboxone Admission
The Truth About Suboxone


You got a problem with Vikes, Oxys or heroin? Go ahead, find a doctor to script you Suboxone. Or look on Craigslist for somebody selling their surplus.


But watch out, you might never get off.


The recent New York Times investigation into the “miracle-drug” that’s “saving” addicts finally began to expose something that many of us who have taken Suboxone have known for years: its manufacturer, Reckitt Benckiser, has employed aggressive tactics to find physicians interested in making loads of cash by turning the growing pool of painkiller addicts into Suboxone Lifers. And Reckitt also tries like hell to manipulate the FDA approval process, just so they can hoard the painkiller-addict market for themselves.


Reckitt can get away with convincing doctors that addicts need to be maintained on Suboxone because—as the Times story notes—common belief holds that painkiller addicts can never be drug-free. We’re told we’ve permanently screwed up our neurology. Popular thinking goes: Once you junkies take drugs, you might as well stay on drugs for life.


Today I’d rather have a good orgasm with someone I care about than all the Oxy or Sub in my local Rite Aid.


To support this belief, Reckitt and its growing army of reps offer twisted interpretations of research studies and anecdotal evidence about addiction and Suboxone. They claim studies “prove” that replacing painkillers with buprenorphine (the opioid drug in Suboxone) helps us stay “clean.” Ditch the old drug for the new drug and we stop shooting, snorting, stealing, doctor-shopping, tricking.


Same logic pharma used in the late 1800s when heroin was promoted as a “safe” replacement for alcohol and morphine.


Don’t get me wrong: I’m not saying drugs are inherently bad, and buprenorphine has a place in the ever-expanding American drug arsenal. That place is primarily as a detox tool—the purpose for which the FDA originally approved the drug in 2002. Suboxone saved my life when I used it this way. In 2008 a family physician licensed to prescribe Suboxone managed my detox from the fentanyl I’d been given for more than three years for migraine and fibromyalgia, despite studies showing opioid painkillers aren’t the best treatment for these disorders. Given my genetic history and psychological profile—which were not documented as part of my medical history: in other words, the pain specialists didn’t screen me properly for risk of addiction—repeated exposure to these drugs flipped the addiction ON-switch. By the end I was changing dates on scripts (a felony each time) and being picked up for petty crimes like compulsive shoplifting.


After watching my 68-year-old father die of cirrhosis and cancer, my desperation to live drug-free increased even as my addiction flushed me further down the sewer. I knew that if I were going to try to detox, I’d have to hire yet another doctor; my pain specialist was awesome at getting me on drugs, but she hadn’t the first clue how to get me off.


If my “Sub doc” had believed—as so many doctors do—that somebody like me could never be drug-free, I’d without a doubt still be on drugs today. Hell, which of us inside active addiction believes we can do without drugs? I’d also be experiencing nasty side-effects for which people who read my addiction-and-recovery blog write in asking for help. Long-term Suboxone “therapy” can shut down the endocrine system and cause thyroid dysfunction, low testosterone, and premature menopause, leading to a cascade of other health problems including infertility and osteoporosis.


Oh yeah, and say sayonara to sex! I feel for the folks who tell me they can no longer get it on or get it up. I was on Suboxone for just two months and it killed off my sex-drive the way all the other opioid drugs did. And quite frankly that’s saying a lot, because I have a strong sex-drive. But in order to feel that part of my life, I have to be off drugs. Today I’d rather have a good orgasm with someone I care about than all the Oxy or Sub in my local Rite Aid. I cannot have that connection while I’m on drugs.


Read the comments section of the Times story and you’ll see people believe you can’t use Suboxone to get high. This is bullshit: you can. I have in my files emails from people who are in prison and abusing Suboxone; people who started using Suboxone while in rehab and discovered they could get sky-high; suburban American college kids who chip Suboxone because it numbs out their self-doubt; ordinary folks who have asked their doctors for help with a 50 or 60 mg Vicodin or Percocet habit and were kicked into Suboxone programs, where their little baby drug-habits and relatively unscathed nervous systems were bombed out with 16 to 24 mg of Suboxone—the equivalent, in binding power (not analgesic power), to upwards of 800 mg of morphine. These are the stories that piss me off, and they are not being represented in the press.


It’s damn hard to get off Suboxone. It dissolves in body-fat and sticks to the body’s painkiller receptors like Liquid Nails. For many people it’s hell to scrape off without professional management and a social support system. After quitting, it can take months for the drug and its metabolites to leave the body. I’ve spoken to heroin addicts who would feel better within two weeks of kicking smack who, after doing time on Suboxone, have never felt normal again. I know some doctors who, based upon vast anecdotal evidence, think this drug—an opioid partial-agonist, a substance that does not occur in nature—does special kinds of harm to the body that researchers haven’t yet discovered.


Just like doctors who can’t detox their patients off painkillers, most doctors who prescribe Suboxone don’t know how to help their patients quit. So the patients wind up asking me to be their doctor. One woman recently begged me to manage her detox in exchange for payment. I declined, but I was left shocked at the desperation of some folks out there to live a drug-free life, so much so that they will contact a total stranger and offer cash for an amateur detox. This speaks to the sorry state of treatment (not to mention the general health-care system) in this country.


These folks read my blog, they know I got off drugs including Suboxone, and they can see I’m living a productive drug-free life. I write them back, but I can’t be their doctor. The best I can do is keep writing stories like these, and letting policymakers, researchers, and practitioners know that they need to open their minds about how well most addicts can live, how much we can heal.


Jennifer Matesa is a Voice Award Fellow at the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration and is the author of the blog Guinevere Gets Sober. Her forthcoming nonfiction book about physical and spiritual fitness for living clean and sober is due out Fall 2014.

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December 10 v 24 POWER IN THE PROVERB
 

What the wicked dread will overtake them;
what the righteous desire will be granted.
STEP 2:Came to believe that God, a Power greater than ourselves,
could restore us to sanity and stability.

The Proverb makes it simple and clear !A relationship with GOD is a two way street .He wants us to change our wicked ways and in return our desire for sobriety will be granted.Start small instead of stealing to feed your addiction try earning your money.Show him your sincere in your relationship. Somewhere deep down inside of me was a tiny desire too stop living the way I was living .That tiny desire was a seed of faith we have inside all of us. I started with telling the truth The Proverb brings it home for me ,there are a lot of brothers and sisters of mine who have been consumed by the wickedness of addiction , too many. Realizing you cant do it on your own is not weakness it is STRENGTH and COURAGE . Please make it to step 2 and put an end to the wickedness. Change your behavior show GOD your willing to put and end too the wickedness and your desire for sobriety will be granted.

For more POWER IN THE PROVERB ,all the latest recovery news and other resources.
VISIT: www.joseph-recoveryconnections.blogspot.com

New Silk Road Operator: Illegal Drug Website Has Backup Locations Worldwide
 

By Join Together Staff | December 9, 2013 | Leave a comment | Filed in Drugs & Marketing And Media

The operator of the new Silk Road website, which sells illegal drugs, says he has distributed encrypted portions of the site’s source code to 500 locations in 17 countries. He claims this will allow the site to be relaunched immediately if law enforcement shuts it down again.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation shut down Silk Road in October, and arrested the operator in San Francisco on narcotics and money-laundering charges. Silk Road could only be accessed by using encryption software called Tor, which shields computers’ IP addresses, allowing people to make purchases anonymously. Silk Road facilitated more than $30 million in sales annually. It had been online since February 2011.

In November, a new online marketplace that sells illegal drugs opened. It also calls itself Silk Road. The new website looks the same as the shuttered Silk Road. It lists hundreds of ads for drugs including marijuana, cocaine and Ecstasy, and uses bitcoins, the anonymous digital currency used by the old site.

The new site says it includes measures to keep users from losing bitcoins if the site shuts down. Like the old site, the new Silk Road can only be accessed by using Tor encryption software.

Last week, the new Silk Road operator said the new backup scheme also includes distributing portions of the site’s cryptographic keys, to decrypt pieces of the site’s source code, to locations around the globe. According to Forbes, “the backup system may be a first step towards a decentralized system without a single point of failure for law enforcement to attack.”

Senators Tell FDA They Disagree with Decision to Approve Pure Hydrocodone Drug
 
By Join Together Staff | December 9, 2013 | 2 Comments | Filed in Government & Prescription Drugs

Four U.S. senators told the Commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) they disagree with the agency’s decision to approve a pure version of the painkiller hydrocodone, Newsday reports.

Senators Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, Dianne Feinstein of California, Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota and Joe Manchin of West Virginia, wrote to FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg that the decision “will only contribute to the rising toll of addiction and death” caused by the prescription drug epidemic.

In October, the FDA approved the first pure hydrocodone drug in the United States. The drug, Zohydro ER (extended release), was approved for patients with pain that requires daily, around-the-clock, long-term treatment that cannot be treated with other drugs. Drugs such as Vicodin contain a combination of hydrocodone and other painkillers such as acetaminophen.

In December, a panel of experts assembled by the FDA voted against recommending approval of Zohydro ER. The panel cited concerns over the potential for addiction. In the 11-2 vote against approval, the panel said that while the drug’s maker, Zogenix, had met narrow targets for safety and efficacy, the painkiller could be used by people addicted to other opioids, including oxycodone.

The agency will require postmarketing studies of Zohydro ER to evaluate the known serious risks of misuse, abuse, increased sensitivity to pain, addiction, overdose, and death associated with long-term use beyond 12 weeks.

Zohydro is designed to be released over time, and can be crushed and snorted by people seeking a strong, quick high. The opioid drug OxyContin has been reformulated to make it harder to crush or dissolve, but Zohydro does not include similar tamper-resistant features, the newspaper notes. The senators said it was irresponsible of the FDA to approve Zohydro without similar safeguards.

In an email to the newspaper, FDA spokesman Morgan Liscinsky said “abuse-deterrent formulations” are not available for some extended-release painkillers.

POWER IN THE PROVERB

December 9v6 POWER IN THE PROVERB
 

Leave your simple ways behind, and begin to live ; learn to use good judgment.
STEP 3 : We made a decision to turn our wills and our lives over to the care of God.
How long is gona take to realize life was not meant to be lived this way.Looking back I was a rebel without a clue wreckless and senseless.Hopefully those of you who are still struggling listen to the Proverb and take that step before its too late.There are way too many who leave this world way too soon.
For more Power in the Proverb and other great recovery resources Visit www.joseph
-recoveryconnections.blogspot.com