Prescription drug overdose deaths kill 100 Americans a day in ‘man-made epidemic’

On August 5, 2012, in Prescription Drug Abuse, by Jerry Mitchell


Heath Ledger. Brittany Murphy. Anna Nicole Smith. Michael Jackson.


Garrett Reid, left, next to his father, Andy Reid.

All were celebrities, and all died ofprescription drug overdoses.

And now Garrett Reid, the son of Philadelphia Eagles football coach Andy Reid, who had been addicted to prescription drugs and was found dead Sunday, could be added to their list.

According to his probation report, he used prescription opioid painkillers, Percocet and OxyContin, before graduating to cocaine and heroin. By age 20, he was in rehab.

“For every Heath Ledger that dies, there are many more that never make the headlines,” said Marshall Fisher, executive director of the Mississippi Bureau of Narcotics. “Almost everybody knows somebody who has been touched by this.”

Each day a 100 Americans die of a drug overdose — most of them from prescription painkillers. In Florida alone, six people die a day from these overdoses.

“If six dolphins washed up in a single day on the Florida coast, it would make national headlines,” Fisher said. “What about for people?”

Read The Clarion-Ledger‘s stories on the problems of prescription drug abuse in both Mississippi and the U.S.

Andy Reid statement implies son's death linked to drugs

Andy Reid statement implies son's death linked to drugs

By Les Bowen
Daily News Staff Writer




BETHLEHEM – Andy Reid and his family tacitly confirmed the worst in a statement released Monday evening: Garrett Reid "lost the battle that has been ongoing for the last eight years" – his battle with drugs, which led to Garrett's incarceration several times from 2007 to 2009.

An Eagles spokesman said the family was aware of the inference that would be made from its characterization of the death of the eldest son, who passed away in a Lehigh dorm room Sunday morning


Monday morning, Eagles tackle Todd Herremans said he would be surprised if it turned out Garrett Reid's previous problems factored into his death. Herremans said there was no sign of that sort of situation, as Garrett Reid, 29, worked with the Eagles' strength and conditioning staff.

"It just seemed like everything was going the right way. That would be surprising," Herremans said.

Lehigh police chief Edward Shoop released a statement Monday saying there would be no statements until an investigation is complete. No official determination has been made.

But the Reid family statement thanked the Eagles family for its support, then continued into this: "We loved Garrett so much. He was a wonderful son and brother. He made us laugh, he was a pleasure to be around, he always had a smile on his face, and we will miss him dearly. We will never forget him, and we will remember him with love.

“Garrett's road through life was not always an easy one. He faced tremendous personal challenges with bravery and spirit. As a family, we stood by him and were inspired as he worked to overcome those challenges. Even though he lost the battle that has been ongoing for the last eight years, we will always remember him as a fighter who had a huge, loving heart."

Tuesday morning, the Eagles were to bus down from Lehigh to the Church of Jesus Christ ofLatter Day Saints in Broomall for Garrett Reid's funeral.

"I don't want to get into his past," center Jason Kelce said, when asked about people assuming drugs played a role in Garrett's death. Kelce and other players all spoke before the family statement was released. Later, Kelce declined further comment. "I think that's been gone into enough. All I can speak on is Garrett as an individual and a person I knew. There wasn't a single guy who was a better person, day in and day out toward everybody on the team, wanted to see everybody succeed, genuinely wanted to see the team win. He was awesome, every single day for us."

Second-year linebacker Casey Matthews said he didn't even know Garrett was Andy's son when they first met, in the weight room.

"It wasn't ‘til later you realized who he was and that he had a past," Matthews said. "The way I knew him, it was hard to see that he'd had a past."

Matthews said Garrett Reid would sometimes refer to having been imprisoned. "We would never bring it up. He would," Matthews said. "It definitely seemed like he was past all that. The way he carried himself, it seemed like he was."

Kelce talked about how hard this must be for the Reid family. He said Tammy Reid, Garrett's mother and Andy's wife, was on the West Coast – the Reids have a home in Dana Point, Calif. – and had to fly across the country after hearing the news.

Kelce told of a brief interaction with Andy Reid on Sunday: "He just told me to keep this thing rolling, keep everybody on track. We can't use this as a setback right now."

Reid addressed the team as a whole around noon Sunday, players said.

"He was just saying you don't know what God's plan is, and this is a time when we have to lean on each other," Herremans said. "We let him know he can lean on us and we'll be here for him, to do whatever he needs us to."

Players said they knew something was wrong early Sunday, when emergency vehicles huddled around the C Building at the Sayre Park dorm complex, where the team stays at Lehigh. Kelce said that since the coaches stay in that building, he thought perhaps something had happened to one of them. Word soon filtered out that the situation had to do with Garrett Reid, though many players didn't know Reid was dead until they gathered on the field Sunday, about an hour after the 7:20 a.m. 911 call to Lehigh police.

Wideout Jason Avant confirmed what had happened and led an onfield prayer.

Said safety Kurt Coleman: "It was just a prayer to just kind of help us, because everything was new to us, we had just heard about it – for God to watch over [Andy Reid] at this difficult time, and to give us strength to push on."

Avant said reaction to the tragedy taught him something about how his coach is viewed.

"You can tell how great a man is when the cafeteria workers are asking about him, when the security staff up here at Lehigh are going out of their way to sign cards and different things like that," Avant said. "For him not to be out here [Sunday] was definitely hard, but once we got out to do football, it kind of loosened up the whole day a little bit, because we know that's what he wanted."

Avant called Garrett Reid "a very, very good person … [who] helped me as a player."

"He was always in the weight room with us, always on the field with us. He was just a happy-go-lucky guy," left guard Evan Mathis said. "Always a joy to be around. Always telling jokes, having fun. Really just brightened your day when you were around him."

Defensive tackle Cullen Jenkins said one of Garrett Reid's duties was curfew bed checks.

"[Sunday] night, you're like, ‘Wow, he won't be coming through to check us in anymore,' " Jenkins said. "Everything you do, you do it heavy-hearted."

Herremans said he'd known Garrett well since Herremans arrived as a fourth-round draft pick in 2005.

"We talked about [Garrett's drug troubles] on a personal level, just man-to-man about what he'd been through … he'd been through a lot," Herremans said. "Health became a huge part of his life. He had everything going in the right direction. He'd found something he was passionate about, strength training."

Eagles chairman Jeffrey Lurie said on Sunday that he thought Andy Reid would be back coaching by the end of the week, though nothing has been announced. The Eagles open their preseason Thursday, at home against the Steelers.

Read more:http://www.philly.com/philly/sports/20120807_Andy_Reid_statement_implies_son_s_death_linked_to_drugs.html?cmpid=137039688#ixzz22qjkL2lt

Is Scientology's Narconon Killing Patients?

With seven deaths since 2005, Scientology's Narconon flagship may finally face criminal charges. The bigger scandal is that faith-based addiction programs are embraced as primary treatment. Where does that leave AA?


By Maia Szalavitz  The fix

Narconon, the Scientology-affiliated rehab is under investigation by the state of Oklahoma, following three patient deaths within the last nine months. Last Wednesday, the inquiry into the July 19 death of 20-year-old Stacy Murphy was expanded to include the April death of 21-year-old Hillary Holten and the October death of 32-year-old Gabriel Graves. The state district attorney has asked the sheriff’s department to deepen its investigation.

The involvement of law-enforcement agencies—not simply regulatory authorities—suggests the possibility of criminal charges against those involved with the deaths. The facility, Narconon Arrowhead, is located near Canadian, Oklahoma. It is not only licensed by the state and listed on the federal addiction program locator, but also accredited by CARF, an organization that claims on its website to “focus on quality, results” in certifying treatment programs.

The 2009 death of 28-year-old Kaysie Dianne Wernick, who was transferred from Narconon Arrowhead to a nearby hospital while suffering a respiratory infection, resulted in an out-of-court settlement of a civil negligence lawsuit, the terms of which have not been disclosed. There have been three other deaths at that Narconon facility alone since 2005. Over the years, as The Fix has reported, numerous deaths and many lawsuits have been linked to the international Narconon program.


There have been seven deaths of patients at Narconon Arrowhead since 2005.

Oklahoma assistant district attorney Richard Hull told the Tulsa Worldthat, “After looking at the [earlier] report and additional witness statements, the District Attorney’s Office has requested the Sheriff’s Office to further investigate,” and that full autopsy and toxicology reports have not yet been received. A spokesperson for Narconon Arrowhead told Alcoholism and Drug Abuse Weekly that program staff found the deaths “deeply saddening” and their loss “has taken an extreme emotional toll on us as well.” Narconon representatives have also told the media that they are cooperating fully with the investigation.

As The Fix reported earlier, the Narconon program is based on Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard’s “Purification Rundown,” which was originally devised as part of the process required for conversion into Scientology. It involves taking high doses of vitamins and spending four to five hours a day in 150-degree saunas. This is believed to “detoxify” the body and remove drug “residue” that Hubbard claimed was responsible for craving.

There is no scientific evidence, however, that drug “residue” causes craving or that mega-doses of vitamins and marathon super-hot saunas are effective elements in addiction treatment. Indeed, for people who are medically fragile or who have recently taken certain classes of drugs including alcohol, amphetamines and cocaine, intense heat without breaks for relief could potentially lead to hyperthermia, which can be deadly. One study found that 25% of deaths in saunas were associated with alcohol or stimulant use.

Narconon also shares Scientology’s fierce opposition to psychiatry and the use of psychiatric medications, meaning that even if the rest of its methods were evidence-based, it would not be able to effectively treat half of all people with addictions who suffer from co-existing conditions like depression, nor would it utilize the state-of-the-art treatments that include medication. The belief that all psychiatric conditions can be treated via Hubbard’s techniques would not seem to support effective screening and referral for care for these disorders.

In fact, when Narconon was originally fishing for official and popular support to build Narconon Arrowhead rehab in the late 1980s, the Oklahoma State Board of Mental Health flatly denied approval, pointing out that there was no credible evidence that the program (which also included indoctrination in the teachings of Hubbard) was effective for chemical dependency and that evidence-based effective addiction treatment suggests that, on the contrary, Narconon is very unlikely to work. Nonetheless, Narconon purchased tribal land, without disclosing its ties to Scientology (its typical MO), and got the rehab up and running. Eventually, despite a flurry of negative publicity, it was able to win state-board approval.


Narconon’s viability as a rehab comes down to the ongoing belief that faith-based addiction treatment is legitimate.

Although each Narconon is, at least on paper, independently owned and operated, the Church of Scientology holds the license. Many, if not most, of the staff at the several dozen Narconon rehabs worldwide are Scientologists, and according to many former patients, the implicit goal of the Narconon treatment program is to turn addicts, who may pay tens of thousands of dollars for their rehab stay, into Scientology converts.

All of which raises the question: how on earth has such a program managed to be licensed in numerous states, listed on federal registries of addiction treatment and even accredited by organizations that are supposed to ensure quality and high standards of care?

Narconon is, to some extent, a special case in the rehab industry. As a de-facto extension of Scientology, it can deploy all of that organization’s infamously sophisticated strategies against opponents, including extreme litigiousness and PR and, reportedly, even threats of violence against whistleblowers.

Yet in a larger sense, Narconon’s decades-long viability as a legitimate rehab comes down to the ongoing belief that faith-based treatments, while not permitted as primary care in the rest of the medical system, are acceptable for addictions. There is no other disease or disorder for which a Scientology-based treatment that has been thoroughly discredited by science could win such acceptance. There is no other medical condition for which faith-based programs from multiple religions that also “pray away the gay” are considered part of mainstream care. There is no other medical condition, in fact, for which prayer and meeting are seen as a main element of recovery.

Alaskan Family Services

About
MissionServices for Families
Company OverviewAlaska Family Services was established in 1979 to respond to the needs of women and children in the Mat-Su Borough. What began as a small core of basic services has grown into a broad network of programs designed to strengthen and support individuals and families.
DescriptionAFS is home to nearly two dozen critical social service programs, including the only nationally certified domestic violence and sexual assault shelter in Alaska.
General InformationAt Alaska Family Services you can access services such as substance abuse counseling, behavioral health treatment, Alcohol Safety Action Program (ASAP), Child Care Assistance Program, Domestic Violence/Sexual Assault Programs, Dorothy Saxton Youth Shelter, Family Support and Preservation, Family Violence Intervention, ROSA House, Tobacco Prevention and Control, and Women, Infants, and Children (WIC).



Location 1825 S Chugach Street, Palmer, Alaska 99645


Contact Info
Phone (907)746-4080 or 1-866-746-4080
Website http://www.akafs.org

Residential Rehab Only Helpful in the Short Term for Meth Users, Study Finds

By Join Together Staff | August 2, 2012 | 2 Comments | Filed in Drugs,Research & Treatment


Community-based residential rehabilitation programs are only helpful in the short term for methamphetamine users, a new study suggests. Shorter detoxification programs are even less successful, Reutersreports.

While about half of the study participants were able to stop using meth after they joined a residential rehabilitation program, most had gone back to using the drug after three years, the study found.

Few addiction treatment programs are designed specifically for methamphetamine users, according to lead researcher Rebecca McKetin of the Australian National University. Instead, people often go through programs meant for people using heroin or alcohol.

She compared long-term methamphetamine use in 248 people in a rehab program, and 112 in a detox program, with 101 meth users who were not in treatment. People in residential rehab generally live for several months at a treatment center that offers counseling, as well as social and recreational activities. People enrolled in a detox program usually spend a few days at a hospital or other medical facility.

After three months, 48 percent of those who went through rehab remained abstinent, compared with 15 percent of those who went through detox or who did not receive any treatment.

At one year, 20 percent of meth users who went through rehab were still not using the drug, compared with 7 percent of people in the other two groups. By three years, only 12 percent of those who went through rehab still were not using meth, compared with 5 percent of the others.

The study is published in the journal Addiction.

HEROES IN RECOVERY

About
Challenging the stigma associated with the word addiction - because every person who takes a step towards change is a hero.
Description
Foundations Recovery Network (FRN) has ignited a grassroots movement called “Heroes in Recovery” to celebrate the heroic efforts of individuals, families, healthcare professionals and institutions in fostering a society where people can seek the help they need without feeling ashamed or isolated. It intends to remove the social stigma associated with people who are “in recovery,” to recognize the
heroic effort it takes to overcome the obstacles in seeking help, and to celebrate the act of preventing the past from kidnapping the future. While the movement initially focuses on persons recovering from addictive behavior, it is meant also to recognize heroes recovering from many other types of disorders and trauma that can feed or manifest from an addiction.

According to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), 20 million people needed substance abuse treatment last year and did not receive it. 10 million Americans did not receive needed mental health care. The stigma associated with substance abuse and mental health disorders creates a significant barrier to individuals and families seeking help.

It’s important for the public to understand, embrace, and encourage people who are finding a way to thrive within their own circumstances and live the lives that they desire and deserve.



Contact Info
Email heroesinrecovery@gmail.com
Website http://www.heroesinrecovery.com


History by Year
2011
Heroes in Recovery Inaugural 6K Run/Walk

Cumberland Heights TN

About
Cumberland Heights is a nationally recognized alcohol and drug treatment center located west of Nashville on the Cumberland River, offering in-patient and out-patient services for individuals as well as programs for family members.



8283 River Road Pike
Nashville, Tennessee 37209
Always open

Phone 1 (800) 646-9998
Website http://www.cumberlandheights.org

Austin Recovery Addiction Rehab

About
Austin Recovery Addiction Rehab provides effective, affordable & compassionate residential treatment. Our programs include Short-term & Extended treatment & Family House in addition to Detox, Outpatient, Aftercare and Alumni.
Description
Since 1967, Austin Recovery has provided effective, compassionate, and affordable drug and alcohol treatment for individuals, families and communities. Our transformational treatment model incorporates a broad range of techniques including individual and small group counseling with licensed clinicians, experiential therapies, 12 step work, and a comprehensive evidence-based curriculum.

Our trea...See More
General Information
Full Medical Detox
Adult Men's and Women's 30- and 90-day Residential Programs
Family House Program (Women with Children)
Intensive and Supportive Outpatient
Aftercare

Alumni
Co-occuring Disorders
Nicotine Replacement Therapy
Self-pay, Insurance, and Public-funding Options



8402 Cross Park Drive
Austin, Texas 78754


Phone 1 (512) 697-8600
Website http://www.AustinRecovery.org

Mixing Energy Drinks With Alcohol Can Lead to Risky Sex for College Students

By Join Together Staff | August 3, 2012 | Leave a comment | Filed in Alcohol,Research, Young Adults & Youth

Combining caffeinated energy drinks with alcohol can lead to risky sex for college students, new research suggests.

The study of 648 students, published in the Journal of Caffeine Research, found 29 percent of sexually active participants said they had alcohol mixed with energy drinks in the past month. During their most recent sexual encounter, about 45 percent had a casual partner, 44 percent said they did not use a condom, and 25 said they were drunk, according to HealthDay.

Those who said they drank alcohol mixed with energy drinks were more likely to have casual sex and/or to be intoxicated during their most recent sexual encounter, the study found. Consuming alcohol and energy drinks did not affect the rate at which students used a condom during their most recent sexual encounter.

Lead researcher Kathleen E. Miller of the University of Buffalo said the findings suggest alcohol and energy drink mixes may play a role in the “hook-up culture” on many campuses.

“Mixing energy drinks with alcohol can lead to unintentional overdrinking, because the caffeine makes it harder to assess your own level of intoxication,” Miller said in a university news release. She added that energy drinks mixed with alcohol “have stronger priming effects than alcohol alone. In other words, they increase the craving for another drink, so that you end up drinking more overall.”

Lessons From Maine’s Fight Against Limits on Addiction Treatment

By Celia Vimont | August 3, 2012 | 4 Comments | Filed in Addiction,Government, Insurance, Prescription Drugs & Treatment


Maine’s decision to retroactively limit Medicaid payments for buprenorphine to treat opiate addiction is likely to have disastrous consequences, warns the President of the Northern New England Society of Addiction Medicine.

As state budgets continue to tighten, more states are likely to take Maine’s lead, says Mark Publicker, MD. In some states, buprenorphine (Suboxone) and other opiate agonists may not be covered for addiction treatment, while other states are imposing prescribing and refill limits, says Publicker, who is also Medical Director of Mercy Recovery Center in Portland. He is calling on addiction treatment professionals to lead the battle to maintain the availability of medical treatment for addiction.

At the recent American Society of Addiction Medicine (ASAM) annual meeting, Dr. Publicker spoke about the new Medicaid limits on buprenorphine in Maine. He noted patients face a cutoff in medication after a maximum of two years of treatment. The limitations are retroactive, meaning patients on long-term therapy will be hit first and hardest, he said.

“The intent of the new limitations is to save money, but legislators had no concern about the fiscal consequences of such a move, such as increases in crime rates, illnesses, child neglect and an increased number of premature births, which are all anticipated to be far more costly than medications,” he says.

Targeting addiction treatment for budget cuts is an easy move for legislators, he adds. “Addiction is a highly stigmatized condition, and there is no grassroots organization that will rise up to oppose treatment limitations. There is a fundamental misunderstanding about addiction as a chronic disease, and the role of medication in maintenance management.”

Dr. Publicker and colleagues, with the help of ASAM and a number of other medical groups, lobbied against the limits in Maine, but were only able to get a one-year delay in the implementation of the retroactive limit.

“The impact will be disastrous,” he states. “Many of my patients have been on buprenorphine for more than two years, and are leading successful, healthy lives. Many, if not most, of my patients who have achieved sobriety on buprenorphine will go into withdrawal, and the relapse rate will be extremely high. My patients’ lives are at stake.”

In Maine, which is largely rural and poor, opiate addiction is endemic, according to Dr. Publicker. “In many areas, there are no alternatives to medication-assisted treatment. This is a treatment that primary care providers can offer in their offices.”

ASAM is developing a state-by-state survey about the status of buprenorphine limitations, Dr. Publicker notes. At the annual meeting, he urged his colleagues around the country to take action against legislative attempts to cut funding for medication-assisted treatment for addiction.

“The fight against limitations requires coalitions,” he says. “It requires a comprehensive approach involving organizational support and cooperation, effective lobbying, developing personal relationships with legislators and the executive branch, and public information involving the media. It is important to make the clinical case and the economic case against limitations. It is just as important to take this issue to the public, to enlist patients, patients’ families, and other advocacy organizations to join in the fight.”

The Truth About the Kennedy Curse

With Mary Kennedy's suicide in May followed by Kerry Kennedy's car crash this month, talk turned again to the eerie hex cast on this golden American dynasty. Could the mystery be hiding in plain sight?


By Susan Cheever
08/01/12
When Kerry Kennedy got into a potentially fatal accident with a tractor-trailer after nodding off at the wheel at around eight in the morning on the way to her gym two weeks ago, she became part of a long tradition of accidents has haunted one of America’s political dynasties for three generations: the crashes of four planes and at least six cars, a fatal ski accident and a lethal drug overdose, not to mention the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963 and of Robert F. during his own presidential campaign in 1968.

Kerry, 52, the daughter of Robert and Ethel Kennedy and the former wife of New York governor Andrew Cuomo, was charged with misdemeanor “driving with ability impaired” by drugs; she pleaded not guilty. Kennedy’s first public response was that she may have nodded off because she took an Ambien sleeping pill instead of her thyroid medication that morning. Then she released a statement saying that the accident may have been caused by a partial seizure or some related neurological event.

Final toxicology reports released July 25 showed that she was apparently right the first time—she had a generic version of the top-selling prescription sleep agent in her system when police found her dazed and disoriented behind the wheel of her damaged 2008 Lexus after she drove away from the scene. In fact, Ambien, a quick-acting, supposedly non-addictive anti-insomnia agent, has long been suspected of causing a wide range of unwanted “sleep” behaviors, from walking to eating to driving. The drug is on the top-10 list of drugs found in impaired drivers in many states. These so-called Ambien driverstend to display a type of road recklessness more bizarre than most DUIs, such as driving in the wrong direction or slamming into stationary objects like parked cars and light poles. Kennedy was reportedly driving erratically before colliding with the tractor-trailer and then continued driving up the road until pulling off at the first exit.


Being accident-prone is a well-documented symptom of addiction, even if the accident is as small as reaching for the wrong pill.

Yet toxicology reports aside, this latest scandal inevitably reinforces the suspicion that the Kennedy clan is, at the very least, conspicuously accident-prone. Kennedy watchers refer to this seeming propensity for accidents as the “Kennedy Curse”—a frequent trope in media coverage. But given that Kerry Kennedy’s close friend Mary Kennedy, the estranged wife of Kerry’s brother Robert, committed suicide in May, this most recent trouble seems like something more than generic bad luck. Still, like the husband of Diane Schuler who went the wrong way on the Taconic Parkway in Westchester causing multiple deaths, many people would rather believe that an enraged cosmic deity like H.P Lovecraft’s Cthulu has cursed this family than admit a much simpler diagnosis. Perhaps the Kennedy Curse is nothing more mysterious than garden-variety alcoholism and drug abuse.

Kerry Kennedy appears not to have been drunk that morning—no alcohol was reported to have been found in her blood—and the causes of the Kennedy accidents may ultimately be impossible to know. Still, having accidents is a well-documented symptom of alcoholism and drug abuse, even if the accident is as small as reaching for the wrong pill. The way the disease of addiction has emerged in the Kennedy family, skipping some generations and shapeshifting others, is an almost textbook profile of how the disease works.

Some members of the family, including Kerry’s brother Robert, have come to terms with their addictions and found help in recovery. Chris Kennedy Lawford, whose mother, Patricia, was one of nine children of Joseph P. Kennedy Sr. and his wife, Rose, has written brilliantly about recovery in and out of Alcoholics Anonymous. Lawford’s Aunt Joan took him to his first AA meeting, and when he knew that he had to finally stop using, he called his cousin Bobby. “I called the one guy on the planet I didn’t want to bow to, my cousin Bobby, and asked him to tell me what to do,” he writes in Symptoms of Withdrawal.

Lawford’s memoir is a heart-rending portrait of what it was like to be a golden boy in a beloved and legendary family undermined by addiction. Of his cousin Michael’s death in a 1996 skiing accident on Aspen Mountain—he was playing football—following a scandal over his inappropriate relations with an underage baby-sitter, Lawford writes, “To many it didn’t make sense—he was way too good at both sports to die like this—but to me it made perfect sense. If I hadn’t had drugs to alleviate my internal angst, the emotional pain would have sent me looking for a hot babysitter to fuck or a giant tree I could slam into going 70 miles an hour on skis."

The litany of Kennedy traumas and troubles is painful to contemplate, but to mistake their appalling series of human accidents and errors for Greek tragedy is to avoid the distinctly unromantic reality of addiction. Only the plane crashes are, as reported, free of the suspicion that alcohol or drugs may have played a role. Joseph P. Kennedy Jr.’s plane crashed over England during World War II in 1944; four years later, his sister Kathleen died when her plane went down over France. The most heart-breaking plane crash was probably the loss of John F. Kennedy Jr.’s Piper Saratoga off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard in 1999, in which he, his wife and her sister were killed.


To mistake their appalling series of human accidents and errors for Greek tragedy is to avoid the distinctly unromantic reality of addiction.

Edward Kennedy, the late Massachusetts "lion of the Senate" and a longtime alcoholic, was severely injured in a crash in 1964; the pilot and one of his aides were killed. Five years later came the most infamous Kennedy automobile accident, in which the senator drove his car off a bridge in Chappaquiddick on Martha’s Vineyard, trapping Mary Jo Kopechne inside where she drowned. Later, Kennedy himself, who had been drinking at a party before the accident, wondered if “some awful curse” hung over the family.

Many third-generation Kennedys came of age in the '70s and early '80s, when recreational drug use among teens was rampant. The Kennedy kids did not come through unscathed. Hardest hit was David Kennedy, a son of Robert and Ethel who died of an overdose of cocaine and the opioid analgesic Demerol at age 28 in 1984. In 1973, David and his then girlfriend had been riding in a Jeep driven by his older brother Joseph when it overturned, paralyzing the girlfriend and seriously injuring David, who reportedly became addicted to painkillers and was in and out of rehabs for IV drug use over the next decade. But reports of hard partying by many of David's brothers, sisters and cousins surfaced over the years.

To be a Kennedy means to live in the glare of the public spotlight. American’s fascination with the family and its dozens of cousins has hardly abated since the legendary days of the Camelot White House. The Kennedys are unusually good-looking, glamorous and wealthy with a deep and noble commitment to public service. The activism that many of them embrace—from progressive politics to environmentalism and AIDS—are worthy causes. America is a country in need, now more than ever, of intelligent, altruistic politicians. Still, to have many members of a family that is so widely revered consistently try to downplay their own struggles with addiction when so many families nationwide are mystified and destroyed by it, seems less like a public service than a damn shame.

Susan Cheever, a regular columnist for The Fix, is the author of many books, including the memoirs Home Before Dark and Note Found in a Bottle, and the biography My Name Is Bill: Bill Wilson—His Life and the Creation of Alcoholics Anonymous.

Drug Screening Now Required for People Seeking Welfare Benefits in Utah

By Join Together Staff | August 1, 2012 | Leave a comment | Filed inCommunity Related, Drugs, Legislation & Prevention

People seeking welfare benefits in Utah must now take an online drug-screening survey, which is designed to determine if they are likely to have a substance use disorder, according to The Salt Lake Tribune.

Those who receive a high score will be required to take a drug test. A person with a positive drug test will have to enroll in a drugtreatment program and stay off drugs, or else their benefits will be cut off, the article notes.

The company that makes the drug screening survey, the SASSI Institute, has one version for adults and another for teenagers. It says its surveys are 94 percent accurate.

According to Utah State Representative Brad Wilson, who sponsored the bill, an estimated 5 to 10 percent of welfare recipients are drug-dependent. He said most welfare recipients qualify for Medicaid, which will help cover treatment costs.

The newspaper notes Michigan and Florida faced legal challenges when they mandated drug testing for welfare recipients. In both cases those laws were struck down as unconstitutional, according to the article.

Many states have been considering measures that would require welfare recipients to undergo drug testing.

Party Buses Draw Criticism for Turning Blind Eye to Teen Drinking

By Join Together Staff | July 31, 2012 | 1 Comment | Filed in Alcohol,Community Related, Prevention, Young Adults & Youth

Party buses, promoted as a safe way to transport teens and adults to nightclubs and other hot spots, turn a blind eye to teen drinking, according to critics. The vehicles also dump hard-drinking partygoers in neighborhoods that don’t want them, the San Jose Mercury Newsreports.

In one recent incident near Santa Cruz, California, a fight broke out on a party bus between two young adults, who fell out of the moving bus. One died. Everyone onboard, except the driver, was drunk.

California Assemblyman Jerry Hill is sponsoring a bill that would make party bus companies responsible for their passengers, including minors who drink onboard. According to a news release issued by Hill’s office, party buses have become an increasingly popular place for minors to drink. “Due to the lack of penalties and enforcement, minors often drink onboard resulting in tragedies covered in the news in recent years,” the release states.

California tightened rules on “prom limousines” that became popular in the 1980s, where teens drank in the back seat, behind tinted windows. Party buses are not regulated in the same way. Under Hill’s bill, party bus companies and their drivers would have to ensure that minors do not drink onboard, or board the bus drunk. If minors are onboard, a chaperone 25 or older would have to accompany them, to ensure they don’t drink.

Some Trucking Companies Use Hair Tests to Detect Drugs in Drivers

By Join Together Staff | July 30, 2012 | Leave a comment | Filed in Drugs,Government & Prevention

Some trucking companies are using hair tests to test drivers for drug use, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

At Schneider National Inc., 38,000 applicants have undergone hair drug testing over the past four years, the newspaper notes. Of those, 1,411 failed the test, for drugs including cocaine and marijuana. More than 90 percent of those applicants passed a urine test for the same drugs. Urine testing is the government-mandated industry standard, according to the article.

While molecules of some drugs, such as methamphetamine, remain in the urine for only a few days, they can stay in the hair for months. Because applicants know in advance they will be tested, they can abstain from drug use for a few days to obtain a clean urine sample. A 2007 investigation by the Government Accountability Office found it is easy to cheat on urine tests, either by sending in someone else to take the test, by adding drug-masking agents purchased online, or by diluting the sample with water.

“The urine-based drug test is simply not catching chronic drug users,” Don Osterberg, Senior Vice President of Safety and Security for Schneider, told the newspaper. He says the government allows hair testing, but it is not officially recognized.

Schneider wants the U.S. Department of Transportation to make hair testing official, and allow test results to be shared with other trucking companies.

“It’s a deterrent,” said John Spiros, Vice President of Safety and Claims Management at Roehl Transport, which began testing hair last year. “When people know that you’re doing hair-follicle testing, a lot of them won’t even apply.”

Hair testing has drawbacks. It does not detect recent drug use, and may show positive results for smoked drugs in someone who has been in the same room but did not smoke drugs themselves

Relative of addicts 'planning on going to their funerals'

By SAMANTHA ALLEN

sallen@fosters.com

DOVER — A local woman told Foster's many of her relatives who abuse prescription drugs have recently turned to "bath salts," a legal stimulant soon-to-be outlawed this year, because it's cheaper and readily available in stores.

She said the effects of the "legal high" have ruined the lives of her family and she is terrified for the future.

"I'm just planning on going to their funerals," she said. "Drugs have literally ripped apart my entire family."

One relative of hers, a Farmington resident, has nearly overdosed or committed suicide several times this year while on bath salts.

"It's killed one of my relatives and it's about to take another if he doesn't get help," she said.

Different forms of bath salts — the street name for a legal substance falsely-advertised as bath beads, plant food and incense — contains methylenedioxypyrovalerone (MDPV) and mephedrone, stimulants which doctors say act like Ecstasy when taken.

Users consume the manufactured drugs by smoking, injecting or ingesting them and experience effects similar to those of cocaine, LSD, MDMA and methamphetamine, according to the Drug Enforcement Administration.

A ban on bath salts and other "synthetic marijuana" compounds is set to go into effect Oct. 1 of this year, with President Barack Obama signing new legislation earlier this month. This past week, more than 90 individuals were arrested and more than 19 million packets of "designer" synthetic drugs were seized in the first-ever nationwide law enforcement action, called Operation Log Jam, by the DEA.

But local agencies say they are still grappling with the phenomena of this drug, which is recently available on shelves at local gas stations and convenience stores.

Frisbie Memorial Hospital Memorial Hospital's Assistant Director of Emergency Medical Services Gary Brock said his team has dealt with calls from bath salts users since last year, and the episodes are typically very violent. He said at the peak of incoming calls, Frisbie Memorial Hospital EMS received about a dozen reports every week, primarily out of the Rochester area, though their coverage extends to other Tri-City communities and beyond.

"The majority of calls we get are for individuals who are out of control," he said. "They're either out of control hallucinating or they're violent."

The unidentified woman said her addict relative has on many occasions called her house, claiming cracks in the walls are video cameras looking in on him, and his home is surrounded by police looking to arrest him. She said when her family drives to Farmington to help, he is often extremely agitated and fights against those wanting to help him.

Brock said this type of paranoia is a common occurrence in the calls he has responded to.

"Many of the signs and symptoms are very rapid heart rate, high blood pressure, chest pain — but very, very often, we encounter them hallucinating, acting paranoid and delusional," he said. "We haven't had any serious injuries (to EMS responders), but they certainly present a physical risk to both police and EMS as these patients ultimately have to be restrained while dealing with their medical issues."

With more than 30 years in emergency response, and 14 years at Frisbie Memorial Hospital, Brock said he can only hope the bath salts phenomena does not reach the level of the methamphetamine "epidemic" witnessed across the country. He said locally, bath salt users have already tied up hospital resources and emergency room staff for hours at a time.

"Bath salts do not clear their body for hours and hours and hours," he explained. "A patient can be in crisis for a very long time. It creates a log jam in the hospitals. A bath salt abuser who's in crisis can take up to half of the emergency room staff to initially try to deal with the crisis, and those are staff members that are being pulled away from other folks."

In 2010, 57 poison centers reported receiving 303 calls concerning bath salts use. In 2011, from January to August, that number rose 4,720. At the national level, the DEA reported the number of calls multiplied nearly four times, with 3,200 calls in 2010 to 13,000 in 2011. 60 percent of the cases reportedly involved patients 25 and younger.

Recently however, Brock said he has seen a drop-off in the calls and, while he can't point to anything specifically, he said it may have to do with the ban slated for this fall. Also, effective Jan. 1, 2013, New Hampshire's "driving while intoxicated" (DWI) charge will include language to outlaw all chemical substances which are considered to impair a driver, including bath salts, prescription drugs and over-the-counter medications such as Benadryl.

"We've certainly been seeing the decline in the bath salts issues and we'll welcome that relief," he added.

For the local woman concerned for her relative, she said she is appalled by the social systems in place that encourage her family members to keep using. She said her Farmington relative has a network of friends who trade narcotic prescriptions or buy pills at $1 per milligram, and when they can't get a hold of those substances, they fall back on bath salts to get them through the lull.

As she learns local stores are pulling their supply in advance of the upcoming ban, she said her relatives will even turn to alcohol. She wishes more rehabilitative services were available, noting her homeless relative, who lives hopping from couch to couch, can't afford health insurance.

"He stays in. He doesn't go out," she said. "It's a beautiful summer and he's pale, pale, pale. He's a vampire. They (his friends) all are. They stay up all night doing Suboxone and Oxys and Percocets, Vicodin, and then bath salts when they can't get those. That's why bath salts isn't an exclusive story."

Brock said his department is aware of the prescription drug users turning to bath salts to aid their addiction, but he said a patient's reaction to bath salts is unlike any other he has observed.

"One of the problems with it is their chemical makeups are very similar to amphetamines. Use creates a high in the addiction centers of the brain that would cause an individual to want to seek that high again," he said. "(But) the methamphetamine abusers we see tend to not have these violent and paranoid behaviors with every instance of use, whereas anecdotally, our experience has been that we see a great deal more violence and hallucinations with use of the bath salts. It may be the combination of all the unknown (manufactured) chemicals with this that's causing this very dangerous behavior."

Lawmakers continue to warn manufacturers of these drugs, said to be based internationally, find new ways to tweak their chemical compounds so they can stay ahead of the law and design new drugs that have yet to be banned in forthcoming years.

Time will tell how manufacturers respond to the new laws in place while the community hopes these bans have some effect on halting drug use at the local level.

The Rebel Doctor

Meet Gabor Maté, a doctor who works with North America’s only supervised injection site and believes that addicts are some of the happiest people he knows.


The Good Doctor Photo via


By Kristen McGuiness  The FiX

07/11/12
In the field of addiction, Hungarian-born Gabor Maté is known for his controversial and revolutionary theories on the sources of addiction and how addicts should be treated. And he knows of what he speaks: in the early 2000s, Maté joined the Portland Hotel Society (PHS), a clinic for Vancouver’s homeless and drug addicted, and he followed that by working withInsite—the only supervised injection site in North America. In his so-called spare time, the Canadian doctor has written best-selling books on parenting, stress, and ADD. 2011 saw the release of In The Realm of Hungry Ghosts, his much-acclaimed treatise on the way addiction begins in childhood.

Dr. Maté spoke with The Fix about his views on how addiction arises and the best ways to treat it.

How did you get into addiction therapy?

I worked in family practice for over 20 years and in palliative care for seven, which is when I became interested in childhood mental health issues and finally I went into addiction work. It’s impossible to be in family practice and not run across some addiction. Early on in my career I had worked in downtown Vancouver [notorious for its drug use and homelessness] and I knew I would go back. 

What was your role at the Portland Hotel Society?

I was on the on-staff physician there for 12 years—the first full-time physician they had ever had. It is a highly concentrated area of drug use and some of our clients were highly addicted. These are people who are at the extreme end of the addictive spectrum: they are dependent on meth, cocaine, heroin, cigarettes and alcohol and as a result, they suffer from many physical problems: HIV, Hepatitis C, joint infections, and abscesses. And of course they have mental health issues as well. 


At the very heart of addiction is the deep absence of self-esteem, which is caused by stress to the traumatized child. 

What was your experience at Insite?

People are allowed to bring their illicit drugs and, under supervised conditions, are given clean water and clean needles to use to inject. Nurses are on site to help so people will be resuscitated should they overdose. The immediate purpose of Insite is to eliminate the disease transmission from one addict to the next and to reduce the rate of infection. When you think about it, it’s straightforward. It’s better for people to inject with clean water rather than dirty water from a back alley. But beyond that, our intention is to treat people like human beings and, for many, this is a new experience.

What have you learned about addiction from those experiences?

First of all, I’ve come to learn that nature has very little to do with addiction. There are certain genes that may predispose to certain addictions but if the person is treated well, those genes have no impact on their behavior. Addiction runs in families because the same conditions are recreated from one generation to the next. So you need to look at people’s lives, not their hereditary. If you look at why addicts are soothing themselves through chemicals, you have to look at why they have discomfort and you will see that they have all experienced childhood adversity—the pain and distress that they needed to escape. 

And from that end, what do you see as the role of stress and trauma in addiction?

Once you’re traumatized as a child, you will continue to be traumatized as an adult [until you get help] because you will not have the emotional balance necessary to heal the trauma. Women who were abused as children will seek out abusive partners. And society plays its part in that, too. Even though we live in a highly addicted society, it is only the substance addicts that are criminalized and ostracized. People who are addicted to, say, cigarettes—or even power—are considered okay. But if someone is addicted to heroin, that person will be further stressed by the criminal system and the medical system, neither of which have much understanding or compassion for addiction. 

Why is the War on Drugs a failure and how can we really solve the drug epidemic?

The War on Drugs is an utter failure only if we accept that its fundamental intention is the elimination of addiction and of drug trafficking. But from another perspective, it may not be a failure at all. Is the war in Iraq a failure? Not for the companies that make billions of dollars of profit on it, not for the military who make billions of dollars, or the contractors or politicians. The War on Drugs has been a failure from the position of its stated aims. But is it a failure? Not from the point of view of the police apparatus, not from the perspective of the big drug dealers who are in cahoots with government agencies around the world, nor from those who profit from the increasingly privatized jail system, nor those who supply jails, and so on.

You seem to have a very humanistic view on addiction. Why do you think that is?

First you have to understand that the source of addiction is in the human himself. Then you think: how do you help someone who is pain? First by acknowledging their suffering and validating their attempt to escape from their pain, then by helping them not suffer so that they don’t have to rely on the drugs. It takes a whole different perspective. Resources that are used to incarcerate people would have to be used to help people to rewire their brains in healthy ways—through access to food, safe housing, good counseling, and employment skills: those things addicts that don’t have and have no way of getting under the current system. At the very heart of addiction is the deep absence of self-esteem, which is caused by stress to the traumatized child. Addicts believe that if all these negative things happen to them, there must be something wrong with them. When they are punished and attacked and criticized further, it hardens that deep sense of self-loathing.

How, then, do addicts get themselves out of that cycle? Is there room for free will in recovery from addiction?

Is there free will? When you think about it, there is no absolute free will because let’s say that you and Donald Trump both have the freedom to fly a private jet. You have the freedom but he has the ability. The same thing is true psychologically. Donald Trump might be free to have a spiritually validated life but he might not be able. He needs the accouterments, and riches and power, and that has to do with psychic factors that he has no control of. Free will implies consciousness. For addicts, their behaviors are very unconscious. The safer people feel and the more accepted they feel, the more they feel connected to others. The more defensive they are, the more reactive they are. You can give them the conditions where they can develop free will. Very few people have absolute free will because very few people have absolute consciousness—the addicts least of all, and that includes the power addict.

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Portugal Decriminalized All Drugs Eleven Years Ago And The Results Are Staggering

Samuel Blackstone | Jul. 17, 2012, 9:37 AM

AP Photo/ Paulo DuarteOn July 1st, 2001, Portugal decriminalized every imaginable drug, from marijuana, to cocaine, to heroin. Some thought Lisbon would become a drug tourist haven, others predicted usage rates among youths to surge.



Eleven years later, it turns out they were both wrong.

Over a decade has passed since Portugal changed its philosophy from labeling drug users as criminals to labeling them as people affected by a disease. This time lapse has allowed statistics to develop and in time, has made Portugal an example to follow.

First, some clarification.

Portugal's move to decriminalize does not mean people can carry around, use, and sell drugs free from police interference. That would be legalization. Rather, all drugs are "decriminalized," meaning drug possession, distribution, and use is still illegal. While distribution and trafficking is still a criminal offense, possession and use is moved out of criminal courts and into a special court where each offender's unique situation is judged by legal experts, psychologists, and social workers. Treatment and further action is decided in these courts, where addicts and drug use is treated as a public health service rather than referring it to the justice system (like the U.S.), reports Fox News.

The resulting effect: a drastic reduction in addicts, with Portuguese officials and reports highlighting that this number, at 100,000 before the new policy was enacted, has been halved in the following ten years. Portugal's drug usage rates are now among the lowest of EU member states, according to the same report.

One more outcome: a lot less sick people. Drug related diseases including STDs and overdoses have been reduced even more than usage rates, which experts believe is the result of the government offering treatment with no threat of legal ramifications to addicts.

While this policy is by no means news, the statistics and figures, which take years to develop and subsequently depict the effects of the change, seem to be worth noting. In a country like America, which may take the philosophy of criminalization a bit far (more than half of America's federal inmates are in prison on drug convictions), other alternatives must, and to a small degree, are being discussed.

For policymakers or people simply interested in this topic, cases like Portugal are a great place to start.
See also: Here's How America's Love Of Methamphetamine Helped Create The Hellish Mexican Drug War >

Researcher Developing Vaccine to Treat Heroin Addiction and Protect Against HIV

By Join Together Staff | July 26, 2012 | 1 Comment | Filed in Drugs, Funding,Prevention, Research & Treatment

A researcher at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research has been awarded a grant from the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) to develop a vaccine that would treat heroin addiction and protect against HIV.

Dr. Gary R. Matyas has been selected as the 2012 recipient of the NIDA Avant-Garde Award for Medications Development, Phys.Orgreports. He will receive $1,000,000 per year for five years to support his research.

“This highly innovative dual-vaccine model would simultaneously address the intertwined epidemics of heroin abuse and HIV,” said NIDA Director Dr. Nora D. Volkow. “The implications for public health are enormous.”

“Heroin use is strongly associated with a high risk of HIV infection and represents an increasingly important worldwide health problem,” Dr. Matyas said. “The possibility of creating a combination heroin-HIV vaccine provides an important opportunity to address both a unique treatment for heroin abuse as well as continuing the quest to develop an effective preventive HIV vaccine.”

Businesses in Nearly 100 Cities Raided in Nationwide Synthetic Drug Takedown

By Join Together Staff | July 26, 2012 | 2 Comments | Filed in Community Related, Drugs, Government & Legal


Local and federal law enforcement officials raided businesses in almost 100 cities on Wednesday, in the first nationwide crackdown on synthetic drugs, USA Today reports.

Operation Log Jam targeted businesses selling drugs such as “Spice,” “K2” and “bath salts.” The drugs are widely available in convenience stores, despite a law signed by President Obama earlier this month that bans synthetic drugs.

Raids took place in cities including Columbus, Ohio; Duluth, Minnesota; Tampa and Pittsburgh. Authorities also conducted raids in upstate New York and the Rio Grande Valley in Texas.

Many states had banned synthetic drugs before the federal law was signed, the article notes. The National Association of Convenience Stores says it advised its more than 148,000 member stores to remove the drugs from their shelves once the ban took effect.