Opiate drug addiction can cause depression and many patients are prescribed antidepressants by psychiatrists. A blind study in 1998, whose findings were reinforced by landmark research in The Journal of the American Medical Association last month, concludes that antidepressant drugs thought to help with depression are not as effective as once thought. More studies being conducted suggest that benefits are often not much more effective than placebos.

Patients on a placebo improved about 75 percent as much as those on drugs. Yoga, relaxation imaging, meditation, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and other forms of therapy can help combat this debilitating illness.

Most common side effects of antidepressant therapy include sexual problems, drowsiness, sleep difficulties, anxiety, nervousness and nausea. While some side effects may go away after the first few weeks of drug treatment, others can persist and progressively get worse.

In adults over the age of 65, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors pose an additional concern. Studies show that SSRI medications may increase the risk for falls, fractures, and bone loss in older adults. The SSRIs can also cause serious withdrawal symptoms if you stop taking them abruptly. Once you’ve started taking antidepressants, stopping can be difficult; many people have withdrawal symptoms that make it difficult to get off of the medication and may require opiate detox.

If you decide to stop taking antidepressants, it’s essential to taper off slowly. If you stop abruptly, you may experience a number of unpleasant withdrawal symptoms such as crying spells, extreme restlessness, depression, anxiety, dizziness, fatigue, and aches and pains. These withdrawal symptoms are known as antidepressant discontinuation syndrome. Antidepressant discontinuation syndrome is especially common with Paxil or Zoloft. However, all medications for depression can cause withdrawal symptoms.

In general medicine, the standard for informed consent includes communicating the nature of the diagnoses, the purpose of a proposed treatment or procedure, the risks and benefits of the proposed treatment, and informing the patient of alternative treatments so he or she can make an informed, educated choice.

Psychiatrists often do not offer patients non-drug treatments, nor do they conduct thorough medical examinations to ensure that a person’s problem does not stem from an untreated medical condition. At times, they might fail to inform patients of the nature of the diagnoses, which would require informing the patient that psychiatric diagnoses based on behaviors with little scientific or medical validity (no X-rays, brain scans, chemical imbalance tests to prove anyone has a mental disorder).

All patients should have what is called a “differential diagnosis.” The doctor obtains a thorough history and conducts a complete physical exam, rules out all possible problems that might cause a set of symptoms, and explains any possible side effects of the recommended treatments.

There are numerous alternatives to psychiatric diagnoses and treatment, including standard medical care that does not require a psychiatric label or drug. Governments should endorse and fund non-drug treatments as alternatives to potentially ineffective and dangerous drugs. Limiting drug treatment can lead to the reduction of drug addiction.

Skeptics claim the numbers reveal a system of scientific fraud. “This rapid increase in diagnosis of bipolar disorder can only be explained by either a runaway epidemic infection or a medical fraud that seeks to label people as ‘diseased’ in order to sell them more drugs,” said consumer health advocate Mike Adams.

According the new study, nine of 10 individuals diagnosed as bipolar are treated with at least one medication, and two-thirds of them are treated with two or more drugs. These drugs create profitable, reliable revenue streams for drug companies.

The data for the study were taken from annual government surveys of doctors.

The skyrocketing rate of psychiatric diagnosis’ has many people arguing over whether a mental disorder was previously under diagnosed, or whether psychiatrists are now over diagnosing it.

“There’s no question that there is misdiagnosis going on,” said Gary Sachs, director of the bipolar and mood disorders program at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. “You can dispute whether it’s under- or over-diagnosis.”

Misdiagnosis, in turn, may lead to inappropriate use of drugs. These patients often become addicted to the unnecessary medication, needing to seek out addiction treatment. People need to lead healthier life styles, stop opiate and illicit drug use, seek exercise and practice good nutrition.

Chronic use of opiates has long been associated with multiple side effects, many of which are due to lower levels of androgens in this patient population.

Previous studies have shown that long-term opiate use may lead to opiate induced hypogonadism, resulting in significantly decreased testosterone levels in men. One area of chronic opiate use that needs to be looked at extensively is the correlation between opiate-induced hypogonadism and associated side effects such as osteoporosis and sexual dysfunction in male patients taking opiates. Marked testosterone deficiency is a well-established risk factor for both osteoporosis and altered sexual function, and recent information demonstrated that altered estrogen levels may play a role in these side effects as well.

Drug Detox and Long Term Therapy Would Offer Better Outcome For Long Term Sobriety

Success rates for drug rehabilitation are hard to obtain.

Did Lindsay Lohan attend private therapy sessions, etc. in a high-class rehab in Malibu after an accident with her Mercedes on Sunset Boulevard?

Was she given special treatment? Is the outcome and claims made by the rehab centers falsely optimistic. Lohan, in her early 20’s has gone through another treatment in rehab.

Promises of wonderful gourmet meals, group and private therapy, massage, swimming, jaunts on the beach, sound very promising but come with a hefty price tag. The luxurious retreats for patients like Lohan, are in the hundreds if not thousands, all boasting about their amenities, and success rates.

Hard to come by is evidence that these programs work. The unspoken truth in the rehabilitation industry is that lots of money can buy views of the ocean, massage therapy and gourmet chefs. But whether it buys sobriety is very uncertain.

Reliable and honest statistics of success of drug rehabilitation programs are impossible to determine. No rehab or detox center in the world has done in-depth controlled studies. This would include bringing patients back to the treatment location every 3 months for 1-2 years for hair analysis to see if a person was telling the truth and collecting the information into a very expensive and controlled study. This has NEVER been done at any drug rehab center in the world.  Yet you can call any number of them and they will tout a figure that sounds promising and hopeful, but is it honest? Government studies suggest that drug treatment does reduce drug abuse by 40 percent to 60 percent, but for how long? Are these figures influenced by use of replacement opiates, Suboxone and Methadone. Shouldn’t this “drug treatment therapy” be when a person is opiate free, be on-going (maybe a year or 2 or longer) and be convenient, near a person’s home to easily continue attending the sessions?

Government studies also suggest that 80 percent of addicts will relapse after rehab center treatment and some of the failure will be attributed to the use of Suboxone, (Buprenorhine). How can a program keep a person clean when now they are now addicted to Suboxone? Patients are discharged from the program after 2-4 weeks and then have to suffer with Suboxone withdrawal. Experts agree that the success rate for rehab center programs are possibly 20 percent at best, and below 10 percent at worst. There are even some statistics that say the success rates are only 1-3%. Without controlled studies, these figures mean nothing. Yet our politicians are lobbied to continue pushing these programs as the recommended treatment and to keep the insurance companies paying for them. Enormous profit is being made and the rehab centers would like to make sure it continues.

Promises owner, Richard Rogg, said: “There’s no way to effectively measure success rates. Any program bragging of a success rate is not telling the truth.”

Wonderland Rehab Center, which charges approximately $40,000 for a 30-day stay, agrees that statistics are not encouraging. He says that any treatment center that gives you high success rates is, I believe very arrogant. At Passages, Chris Prentiss, who founded the center with his son claims an 84.4 percent success rate since opening his doors in 2001, and charges around $67,550 per month,

Samuels, a clinical psychologist, said that “If you spend your whole time at a treatment center, when you leave you’re not prepared for the stresses and anxieties on the outside.”

Timothy P. Condon, the deputy director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, a part of the National Institutes of Health says “Setting up a program, making it luxurious, using things that are not rigorously tested, I don’t know the benefit of that. If I was going to spend a lot of money, I’d want to see outcomes.” Truthful outcomes are hard to come by.

JS Online: Survey shows rise in baby boomers’ illicit drug use

From the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel comes an article about the rise in drug use among baby boomers. Drug use among baby boomers rose 4.1% in 2007, states the article.

Other interesting facts from the article include:

• “Among boomers aged 50 to 54, illicit drug use increased from 3.4% in 2002 to 5.7% in 2007”
• Boomers aged 55 to 59 showed a significant increase in illicit drug use over a five-year period

Interestingly, while illicit drug use in baby boomers increased, drug use among those aged 12 to 17 actually decreased during the 5 years the study was done.

To read more about this survey, please visit the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

Prescription opioids in home put children at risk – Yahoo! News

Keeping up with the theme of children and teens being overexposed to prescription drugs in the home, an article from Yahoo! News surfaces that touches upon research that shows that opioids in the home are putting children at a greater risk than previously thought. Don’t let your child become the next opiate detox patient .

Some facts from the article:

• The number of deaths due to poisonings with [prescription medications] nearly doubled between 1999 and 2002
• Among the 9,179 children for whom opioid exposures had been reported to RADARS (Researched Abuse, Diversion and Addiction-Related Surveillance), 8 died, while 43 suffered serious effects. The children ranged in age from newborn to 5.5 years old, while most were 2 years old. Ninety-nine percent of the children ingested the drug; 92 percent of cases occurred in the child’s home; and 6 percent took place in another person’s home, suggesting that opioids were discovered during toddlers’ exploration of their environment

To read more about the Opioid findings, read Yahoo! News.

A new trend is emerging that is leaving drug addicts that set out seeking treatment in worse conditions then they were before they started treatment: doctors prescribing opiates as a solution for drug addiction treatment.

What is Buprenorphine Treatment

Methadone and OxyContin have been trendy methods of Drug Addiction Treatment for the past few years. These “treatment” methods call for heroin addicts to be placed on a prescription drug of Methadone or OxyContin in order to lessen withdrawal and craving effects associated with abruptly stopping drug usage. What happens, however, is that dosages of Methadone need to be steadily increased in order to get the full effect of the drug, ultimately reaching the point where drug addicts become addicted to the treatment drug. The addiction to the treatment opiates then leads to illegal means of acquiring those prescription drugs.

Buprenorphine Treatment is a similar “treatment method” to Methadone and OxyContin. With Buprenorphine, drug addicts are prescribed orange pills which dissolve under the tongue in order to relieve addicts’ cravings for narcotics. The thing to remember, though, is that Buprenorphine is an opiate.

Buprenorphine Treatment Abuse

In recent months, Burprenorphine has become one of the most popular and requested street drugs, mostly by drug addicts who were prescribed the opiate as a treatment option and now need a higher dosage than their doctor will prescribe.

Health officials have seen patients crushing and injecting Buprenorphine pills, eventually leading to overdose and relapse situations. A recent report by The Sun investigated abuse of the drug, which included illegal street sales.

Explore Your Treatment Options

If you or someone you care about has made the decision to seek drug addiction treatment, please research all of your options before deciding on which treatment is best for you. Realizing that your body can easily become addicted to drugs – even opiate drugs that are being prescribed by doctors – early in the research process will help ensure a successful treatment journey. Don’t trade one bad habit for another!

For the first time in 5 years, Denise is free, sober, clean, clear, and happy. After struggling with an opiate addiction she tried to get clean using subutex and soboxone, only to become addicted to them as well. After treatment, now Denise says, “I feel as though I have finally been released from my personal prison of using.”

Read More About Denise’s Story and Experience…

According to a National Survey (2006), almost half of the American public knows a friend or family member with a pain killer addiction. Furthermore, the majority of them are not aware that what they are really addicted to is an opiate. This makes pain killer abuse equal to that of a heroin addiction.

Heroin is a semi-synthetic opioid created from morphine, a derivative of the opium poppy. This opioid compound acts the same way as endorphins by creating a feeling of happiness, well-being, and euphoria. The similarity of heroin addiction to pain killer addiction lies here, in the opiates contained in these substances. Because opiates are addictive substances, the misuse and abuse of pain killers very often leads to a serious addiction.

Although many take opiate based drugs as pain killers, the start of an opiate addiction may be psychological. Individuals may think that by taking their pain killers they can have a better day or become less stressed. Such careless use of these drugs comes with a high price, both substances, will lead you to dependence, tolerance and withdrawal stages. More often than not, a pain killer addiction leads into the use of heroin.

Withdrawal symptoms for these addictions may appear at different time intervals, but the results are the same. They both include vomiting, shaking, stomach pain, depression, suicidal thoughts, horrible cramps, aching bones, restlessness, insomnia lasting days to weeks, runny nose, loss of appetite and sweating.

The recreational use and abuse of pain killers is not to be taken lightly. The dangers of an opiate class drug are very apparent and proven. It is important that you are educated on the dependency of opiates should a doctor prescribe them, use as directed and with caution. Seek the advice of a professional if you start to experience withdrawal symptoms or suspect an abuse problem.

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