Frequency of Energy Drink Use Linked with Risk of Abusing Prescription Drugs
 

By Join Together Staff | April 3, 2014 | Leave a comment | Filed in Prescription Drugs & Young Adults

College students who consume energy drinks are more likely than their peers who don’t use them to abuse prescription drugs, a new study concludes. The more energy drinks a student consumes, the greater their risk.

The study included undergraduate and graduate college students, who completed a web-based survey about their pattern of energy drink and prescription stimulant use. They were asked about medications prescribed to them, as well as drugs they took without a prescription.

The more energy drinks students consumed, the likelier they were to illicitly use prescription stimulants. All students who had a valid prescription for stimulant medications said they mixed energy drinks with their stimulants. This is discouraged, because it can increase side effects, News-Medical.net reports.

The findings are published in Substance Abuse.

“This article includes a needed review of the neurological effects of energy drink ingredients. It also provides practitioners with important information about the dangerous interactions that can occur when energy drinks are mixed with prescription stimulants or other pharmaceutical drugs,” lead author Dr. Conrad Woolsey said in a news release. “Ginseng, for example, should not be mixed with anti-depressant medications or prescription stimulants because this can cause dangerously high levels of serotonin (i.e., serotonin syndrome), which is known for causing rapid irregular heartbeats and even seizures.”

Study Finds Increase in Number of Headache Patients Given Narcotics in the ER
 

By Join Together Staff | April 3, 2014 | Leave a comment | Filed in Prescription Drugs

Contrary to the advice of many medical groups, more emergency departments are giving headache patients prescriptions for powerful narcotic painkillers, according to a new study. Between 2001 and 2010, there was a 65 percent increase in emergency department use of narcotic prescriptions for headaches. Hydromorphone and oxycodone were two of the most frequently prescribed narcotics.

A number of groups, including the American College of Emergency Physicians and the American Academy of Neurology, say narcotics should not be used as a first-line treatment for headaches, HealthDay reports.

During the same period, there was no increase in ER prescriptions for non-narcotic pain relievers such as acetaminophen, nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory medications, or triptans (drugs used to treat migraines).

The study authors, who presented their findings at the American College of Medical Toxicology annual meeting, said they are concerned about the findings, in part because of the increasing rates of abuse, overdose and deaths due to narcotics.

“These findings are particularly concerning given the magnitude of increase in [narcotic painkiller] prescribing compared to the other non-addictive medications, whose use remained the same or declined,” lead investigator Dr. Maryann Mazer-Amirshahi of George Washington University said in a news release.

Co-researcher Dr. Jeanmarie Perrone of the University of Pennsylvania said several factors could be contributing to the increased narcotic prescriptions for headaches, including an increased focus on pain management, patient satisfaction, and regulatory requirements.

APRIL 3 v 34 TWELVE STEPPING WITH POWER IN THE PROVERB

The Lord mocks the mockers
but is gracious to the humble. 

( mocker ) - to attack or treat with ridicule, contempt, or derision. 2. to ridicule by mimicry of action or speech; mimic derisively. 3. to mimic, imitate, or counterfeit.



(humble ) - not proud : not thinking of yourself as better than other people. : given or said in a way that shows you do not think you are better than other people. : showing



STEP 7 - Humbly asked God to remove our shortcomings.

( shortcoming - a failure, defect, or deficiency in conduct, condition, thought, ability, etc.)



I felt it necessary to look up and share the true meanings of four particular words .Mocker ,humble shortcoming and gracious . I am discovering that when we think we know what the word means we understand the message ,what we fail to take into consideration is that most words have multiple messages in them and when a word is viewed in multiple contexts it gives multiple messages. Mocker , counterfeit that was me in active addiction trying to be someone I was never meant to be . Humble total opposite of counterfeit ! Being fake or counterfeit will keep you trapped in the make believe world in which you live . The sooner you realize that and ask God to give you humility then you will see who you truly were meant to be. Gracious means showing kindness, being compassionate, fortunate or happy . The promise in the Proverb can be yours but we gotta get real with ourselves , GOD and others .



2 Corinthians 12:20 For I am afraid that when I come I may not find you as I want you to be, and you may not find me as you want me to be. I fear that there may be quarreling, jealousy, outbursts of anger, factions, slander, gossip, arrogance and disorder.
By : Joseph Dickerson 

 From Lemons to Lemonade and Defense to Offense: An Activist’s Journey on the Road to Parity
 

By Carol McDaid | April 2, 2014 | 6 Comments | Filed in Addiction, Government, Healthcare, Legislation & Mental Health


In my recovery story, I often speak about making lemonade out of lemons. From my greatest personal struggle with addiction came my greatest professional passion and strength – being an activist, lobbyist and champion for those needing or seeking recovery from addiction and mental illness like me. My 18-year recovery journey to get parity passed and implemented is not over, but it’s important to share some lessons learned along the way.

The Early Years
In 1996, I began working on parity. Addiction was left out of the first mental health parity bill that was signed into law in 1996. From that point forward, my challenge was laid before me: get a parity bill that included addiction signed into law and implemented.

I brought lived experienced with addiction, anger, passion; Washington know-how; and staff that was consistently smarter than me to the table. I lacked a lot of technical knowledge initially, and it showed. I have learned about the clinical aspects of addiction, and later, mental illness from my clients, including addiction physicians, residential addiction treatment facilities, psychiatrists and psychiatric health systems. I learned about the very real tragedies that happen every day to families who lose loved ones, or worse, lose them behind the walls of prisons and jails through my work with Faces and Voices, the National Alliance on Mental Illness and Mental Health America. I began to carry around the picture of a 16-year-old girl who died from a heroin overdose to remind myself what I am fighting for on the days when I was discouraged and felt like parity would never pass. For good luck, I wore my lucky Irish clover necklace on the days of big votes and the day the Supreme Court upheld the Affordable Care Act (ACA).

Collaboration with Mental Health Advocates
To succeed, bridging the gaps between addiction and mental illness advocacy groups was going to be a necessity. I was an unlikely candidate as I had been a flag waving, card-carrying purist addiction advocate steeled against the discrimination I felt even among mental health advocates. To get the bill passed, former Congressman Patrick Kennedy issued an edict that I would work with another mental health advocate and establish a joint parity coalition. There were some awkward first meetings, but we made it work. Later, I had to go to a colleague who was negotiating the Senate version of parity. We compromised. The bill sponsors compromised. The bill passed, and the addiction and mental health communities have worked together on the broader health policy agenda ever since. Success has a thousand fathers and we all shared in it. We built on that shared success in the provisions we secured in the Affordable Care Act. The addiction and mental health communities had their own agendas as they should but my purist days are done. Politics is not about purity, especially when working highly stigmatized, under-funded advocacy campaigns. The goal is to find winning strategies, build coalitions and run plays that advance strategic objectives; sometimes with big sexy wins and others with baby steps that no one notices. The trick is to stay in the game, head down and work to build forward momentum.

Using “Luck” and Tragedy
Turning tragedies into lucky breaks and then forward momentum on issues is something that advocates in our field know all about. The trick is to feel and then afford the tragic situation the dignity, respect and healing time it deserves while planning strategies aimed at ensuring the tragedy never happens again. Sadly, overdose deaths and suicides are an all too familiar reality to recovery advocates. Sometimes the scale of these tragedies creates issue openings.The tragic shootings at Newtown resulted in a Presidential Executive Order that required that a final parity rule be out by the end of last year. Once that executive order was issued, it was just a matter of persistent, but polite pushing.

Other times electoral outcomes provided the luck needed to move meaningful parity bills. In 2006, when Democrats took control of the House and Senate, we had the opportunity to work on the introduction of strong parity bills that were championed by a bipartisan team of legislators, then Reps. Patrick Kennedy (D-RI) and Jim Ramstad (R-MN), former Senator Pete Domenici (R-NM) and the late Senator Kennedy (D-MA), all who had been touched personally by mental illness and/or addiction. Planning on these bills literally started the Wednesday after the elections when it was clear Democrats would control the House and the Senate. Struggling as we had to even get a hearing on parity legislation in the 1990s through early 2000s, when opportunity knocked in 2006, we opened the door and got busy. When these strategies worked and a compromise bill was reached, luck and Senate legislative acumen and tenacity were able to get our parity bill attached to the 2008 Bank Bailout Bill. Once President Bush signed the bill into law on October 3, 2008, we began planning a big celebration honoring the work of our House and Senate champions and allowing advocates, many who had worked on the law’s passage for more than a decade, to celebrate their hard-won victory.

Regulations Matter
I remember standing at the back of that party with a mental health lobbyist planning our attack on advancing the regulations to make the law mean something. That didn’t feel anti-social to me at the time – that’s just what advocates do, I told myself. We planned a lunch for the following week at a well-known DC restaurant and wrote out the regulatory strategy on scraps of paper and business cards. We were lucky enough to find committed addiction and mental health provider and consumer groups to fund the effort.

We stuck to the strategy and ran these plays for five years until we got the final rule last November. The work to implement the laws is ongoing and cannot be done just by advocates like me. Persistence in Washington is something that is not for the faint of heart. Most people can’t endure it and that keeps people like me in business. It can be frustrating, agonizingly slow and heartbreaking as lives are lost while it appears DC is doing nothing. Keeping clients to fund the advocacy work during the late 1990s to early 2000s when nothing moved was also challenging. A couple of years it was tough to distinguish whether I was a volunteer or a hired gun. I can remember going to conferences and meetings during that time and I could tell my colleagues and friends pitied me; a woman obsessed with an unwinnable cause.

Working to get regulations implemented is an “inside the Beltway” technician’s task but it is deadly important. Often well-funded opponents will rewrite a law through regulations and we worked really hard to make sure the parity law did not fall prey to that type of attack.

Burnout is a Reality
Two years into the regulatory process and 14 years in on parity, I had to face that I was burnt out, had let my health go and had neglected my marriage and my social life. It happened ever so slowly by working nights and weekends, traveling to shore up clients and pleading with the advocacy community that parity will make a difference, while fighting with payers every day and regulators about how the law is being improperly implemented. The intensely personal nature of parity to me has been my greatest strength and biggest weakness, but it remains an honor to work on something so important to me and the lives of so many. Always being on the defense, slaying dragons and fighting for the little guy is exhausting. I had to find a new positive way of looking at the pursuit of parity to allow myself to actually be balanced and well – what recovery is all about.

From Defense to Offense
I am not sure why it took me so long to realize why we should start playing offense instead of defense. It is a lot less draining and has given me a fresh perspective. Parity and the ACA have passed, the regulations are written and now we must offensively use the laws, the regulations, our grassroots and grasstops advocates to implement that which we have earned. We are not sitting at the kids table anymore begging for scraps from the adult table. We have a shiny new cost savings solution to provide public and private payers and that proves they are more efficient with us than without us.

While you can bet you will still hear me at a conference near you asking for your documentation of parity and ACA violations and why it is everyone’s job to see these laws succeed, I know now we are doing it with the wind at our back and not in our face. I take time out to enjoy some really good lemonade along the way.

Carol McDaid

Parents Influence Teens’ Drinking Decisions: Survey
 

By Join Together Staff | April 2, 2014 | Leave a comment | Filed in Alcohol, Parenting, Prevention & Youth


Parents do have an influence on teens’ decisions about drinking, according to a new survey by Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD). Teens are much less likely to drink if their parents tell them underage drinking is completely unacceptable, the survey found.

The online survey of 663 U.S. high school students found only 8 percent of teens who said their parents thought underage drinking was unacceptable were drinkers themselves, HealthDay reports. In contrast, 42 percent of teens who said their parents believed underage drinking was somewhat unacceptable, or completely acceptable, were drinkers.

Teens whose parents told them underage drinking is completely unacceptable are 80 percent less likely to drink, compared with those whose parents give their teens’ other messages about drinking, the survey found.

“Decades of research show that there is no safe way to ‘teach’ teens how to drink responsibly,” Robert Turrisi, a professor and researcher at Pennsylvania State University, said in a MADD news release. “A clear no-use message is the most effective way for parents to help keep teens safe from the many dangers associated with underage alcohol use. This issue is too important to leave to chance and hope for the best.”

In conjunction with the survey, MADD launched a new campaign that encourages parents to tell their teens not to drink if they are under 21. Not everyone agrees with MADD’s message, including John McCardell, former president of Middlebury College. In 2008, McCardell joined with more than 100 other college presidents to demand reconsideration of the national drinking age in 2008, U.S. News & World Report notes.

“Are they saying that drinking on the day one turns 21 is OK? Are they saying that they expect everyone under 21 to abstain and to wake up on their 21st birthday prepared to make responsible decisions about alcohol consumption?” McCardell said. “Do they really believe it is that simple? Many of those who turn 21 will no longer be at home or under parental influence. To whom, then, do they turn, to learn about responsible alcohol consumption?”

New Test Developed to Detect Date-Rape Drug, GHB, in Drinks
 

By Join Together Staff | April 2, 2014 | Leave a comment | Filed in Drugs & Research

Researchers in Singapore announced they have developed a new test that can detect the date-rape drug GHB in drinks, according to HealthDay.

GHB is predominantly a central nervous system depressant. It can be produced in clear liquid, white powder, tablet, and capsule forms. Because GHB is odorless and tasteless, it can be slipped into someone’s drink without detection. The drug incapacitates people who ingest it, making them vulnerable to sexual assault, the article notes.

The researchers mixed a fluorescent compound with a sample of drink containing GHB and found the mixture changed color in less than 30 seconds. They reported their findings in the journal Chemical Communications. They said the color change was seen in clear and light-colored drinks, including water and vodka. Better lighting was needed to see the change in darker drinks, such as cola and whiskey.

“We wanted to develop something that would give results within several seconds, so you can check whether it is a safe drink or whether you should stop and think again,” researcher Chang Young-Tae said in a news release. The researchers said GHB takes effect within 15 to 30 minutes, and can last for three to six hours. They are working with product designers to come up with a portable detection kit within a year.