Roxie Riggs is a Caucasian female some sixty-five years of age who came in today with narcotic addiction for evaluation for medical treatment for this problem. The patient is presently receiving treatment with buprenorphine; however, her practitioner moved away. Ms. Riggs was placed on methadone in 2001 (age 51), and was taken off it in 2005 (age 55). She has never been treated with naltrexone. Ms. Riggs first started taking buprenorphine on January 1, 1994, and is presently using the drug. Her unfortunate initial contact with opiates was in 1961 when she was 11 years old, persuaded by her close friend and a stranger. Three years later, when she was 14 years old, the patient begin regular use of opiates. Within that same year she realized
Question 1: a) Donna Gamble is an Aboriginal woman who lives in her hometown of Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. She is a former ward of the state and has spent a significant part of her youth inside juvenile correction centres. At a young age she started using drugs and alcohol as a form of escape and resorted to prostitution as a means of sustaining her habits. Donna has six children, all with the exception of the youngest two who were placed in the custody of child services. Donna has quit working as a prostitute and is currently on the road to recovery from years of addiction and abuse.
Gabor Mate 's essay “Embraced by the Needle” addresses important issues on the negative effects that childhood experiences have on the development of addictions, and the long term effects that drugs play throughout an addict 's life. The author states that addictions originate from unhappiness and pain that is often inflicted upon addicts at early age such as infancy. In Mate essay, he uses many patients past childhood experiences to help create a picture of the trauma that an addict faced as child and the link it plays with who they are today. Mate builds an impressive argument based on the way he organizes his ideas on what addiction is, and how it corresponds to a person 's childhood experience. The author does this effectively
The methadone program at Rosthern Hospital is a very active and intense program. Boast over 20 patients that are regular methadone users, the involvement of the physicians, pharmacists, nurses, and addiction counselors are key (Melle, 2016). Dr. Melle is the coordinator of the methadone program at Rosthern Hospital. His roles include, patient recruitment, patient care management, follow up care, and most importantly prescription and dosage of the methadone (Melle, 2016). Pharmacist’s role in methadone treatment is providing the methadone to the hospital, as well as in Warman pharmacy they monitor and dispense some methadone to some of the patients in the methadone program. Addiction counselors are an outside resource that the staff at Rosthern hospital can utilize. There are not social workers or counselors at Rosthern, but Dr. Melle and the nurses prefer if their patients are regularly seeing an addiction counselor while in the methadone program. Finally, the nurses role in the methadone program is early treatment and monitoring of patients during detox, the continued monitoring or patients when methadone doses change, dispensing methadone and monitoring our patients in the recovery program, and observation of patient’s success during the program. Together the interprofessional team has successfully treated dozens of patients, and the methadone program address the needs of both the patients and the addiction issues that are plaguing the surrounding communities (Melle,
The documentary states that over 27,000 deaths a year are due to overdose from heroin and other opioids. According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention in 2015 prescription pain relievers account for 20,101 overdose deaths, and 12,990 overdose deaths are related to heroin (Rudd et al., 2010-2015). The documentary’s investigation gives the history of how the heroin epidemic started, with a great focus on the hospice movement. We are presented with the idea that once someone is addicted to painkillers, the difficulty in obtaining the drug over a long period of time becomes too expensive and too difficult. This often leads people to use heroin. This idea is true as a 2014 survey found that 94% of respondents who were being treated for opioid addiction said they chose to use heroin because prescription opioids were “more expensive and harder to obtain (Cicero et al., 2014).” Four in five heroin users actually started out using prescription painkillers (Johns, 2013). This correlation between heroin and prescription painkiller use supports the idea presented in the documentary that “prescription opiates are heroin prep school.”
Satel tells us, “While theoretically anyone can become an addict, it is more likely the fate of some” (1). Amongst those in that category are women who were
Almost one hundred years ago, prescription drugs like morphine were available at almost any general store. Women carried bottles of very addictive potent opiate based pain killers in their purse. Many individuals like Edgar Allen Poe died from such addictions. Since that time through various federal, state and local laws, drugs like morphine are now prescription drugs; however, this has not stopped the addiction to opiate based pain killers. Today’s society combats an ever increasing number of very deadly addictive drugs from designer drugs to narcotics to the less potent but equally destructive alcohol and marijuana. With all of these new and old drugs going in and out of vogue with addicts, it appears that the increase of misuse and abuse is founded greater in the prescription opiate based painkillers.
... age could cause adolescents to seek to an alternative way to get opioids from the black market. Doctors will try to lower the rates of opioid dependents by prescribing an alternative medications. With many opioid-dependent patients becoming addictive to opioids it causes huge effects on the human body. With having opioid exposure at such a young age increase the possibility of becoming opioid-dependent patients. “About three quarters of all adolescents receiving treatment for opioid use disorders reported first used before the age of 25” (Pugatch, Marianne, et al 435). Also adolescents visit the emergency department involving “opioid pain relievers and benzodiazepines” (Jones, Christopher M, Leonard J Paulozzi, and Karin A Mack 881). There are many ways to make sure that adolescents will become educated about opioid addiction, for example treatment facilities.
This leads to the second school of thought on medically assisted treatment. There has been a great deal of debate about the medication used to treat Opiate addiction, methadone. Many feel that the drug methadone is simply trading one drug in for another, as the addiction to methadone is quick and almost more powerful than an opiate addiction (Nelson, 1994). The withdrawals effects are far more intense with methadone and for this reason it is a lifetime maintenance medication. Some suggest that more rehabilitative programs are needed that would address the social problems the users have to help them recover, instead of the methadone program that is viewed...
Almost everybody on Long Island, and probably all around the world, has been prescribed a drug by a doctor before— whether it was to knock out a nasty virus, or relieve pain post injury or surgery. However, what many people don’t realize is that these drugs can have highly addictive qualities, and more and more people are becoming hooked, specifically teenagers. But when does harmlessly taking a prescription drug to alleviate pain take the turn into the downward spiral of abuse? The answer to that question would be when the user begins taking the drug for the “high” or good feelings brought along with it—certainly not what it was prescribed for (1). The amount of teens that abuse prescription medications has been rapidly increasing in recent
Drug use and abuse is as old as mankind itself. Human beings have always had a desire to eat or drink substances that make them feel relaxed, stimulated, or euphoric. Wine was used at least from the time of the early Egyptians; narcotics from 4000 B.C.; and medicinal use of marijuana has been dated to 2737 B.C. in China. But it was not until the nineteenth century that the active substances in drugs were extracted. There was a time in history when some of these newly discovered substances, such as morphine, laudanum, cocaine, were completely unregulated and prescribed freely by physicians for a wide variety of ailments.
Heroin was originally synthesized in 1874 by a man named C.R Alder Wright. Created as a solution to opium, a drug that had plagued many American households. It was originally produced for medical purposes evidently becoming highly addictive. Heroin “... was originally marketed as a non-addictive substance” (“History of Addiction”) which inevitably increased its popularity. It became especially popular in places of poverty. Heroin became a solution to struggle. So common it was almost as if heroin was a prescribed medicine for hardship. Known as “[a] treatment of many illnesses and pain” (“A brief history of addiction”) but later revealed that it caused more harm than good. Being so easily accessible it became immensely common among musicians.
Addiction is a disease that affects by ten percent of Americans but countless others, including family and friends, are devastated by it. Addiction is not a choice that a person can make; rather the disease takes away people’s ability to make conscious choice. Science has advanced to show exactly how drugs affect the brain chemically, proving that it is a disease and not a moral failing. Addiction is a disease and should be treated through rehabilitation and community based support groups such as Narcotics Anonymous (NA) and Alcoholics Anonymous (AA), not imprisonment, and the state and federal governments should increase funding and programs for prevention and treatment.
Opioid dependent individuals who are in inpatient treatment have a 60% chance of relapsing; another estimate suggests that less than 25% of addicts will remain abstinent post methadone maintenance therapy (Veilleux et al., 2010). Opioid addiction is not just harmful for the individual, but also causes a large financial burden on the nation. In 1996, the United States dispersed roughly $21.9 billion dollars across the nation due to heroin addiction expenditures (Mark et al., 2001). Treatments which are able to address comorbid issues that affect retention rate, longer-abstinence post-treatment completion, and decreased economic impact would be very beneficial on a national and global
Substance addiction is becoming an epidemic. While some people can quit using a substance without any help, most people need help to their recovery. Narcotics anonymous is an important support group for our society. There are many different narcotic anonymous programs to join that have meetings throughout the week. The members of the support group all share one thing in common, they suffer from different types of chemical dependency. Members help each other because they have the same problems and worries that everyone in the room has. Though they may be struggling with different stages in their life, for the most part, they all relate to what each is going through. Just as AA, NA focuses on the 12-step program. The members of
It has been discovered that most people who struggle with drug addiction began experimenting with drugs in their teens. Teenage drug abuse is one of the largest problems in society today and the problem grows and larger every year. Drugs are a pervasive force in our culture today. To expect kids not to be influenced by the culture of their time is as unrealistic as believing in the tooth fairy (Bauman 140). Teens may feel pressured by their friends to try drugs, they may have easy access to drugs, they may use drugs to rebel against their family or society, or they may take an illegal drug because they are curious about it or the pleasure that it gives them.