In June of this past year I lost my brother, Jimmy, to an overdose on heroin. He struggled with addiction for the eight years prior to loosing his life. Jimmy’s senior year of high school marked his initiation into using drugs. While attempting to perfect the ski trick that had occupied all of his time that winter, he overshot his landing and broke his pelvic and sacrum. To ease the undeniable pain, his orthopedic surgeon prescribed him a high dose of Oxytocin. Jimmy was no match against the addictive nature of opiates and by the time his prescription expired, getting his next fix was all that occupied his time. It wasn’t long before my parents picked up on his dependency and sought out help. The next seven years Jimmy was in and out of treatment facilities more times than I care to count—always returning home sober and hopeful for his future. The circumstances resulting in his relapses were diverse, but could be summed up to him simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time with access to his crutch. Finding him proper help came with a high cost: Detox Facilities, Rehabilitation, and Halfway Homes cost equal to most college tuitions today. In my parents mind, there was no alternative. Every choice was the difference between the life or death of their child. They sought out the best treatment in the country and were very involved in his recovery process. I went to several family weekends at the treatment centers where I met his counselors and became pretty familiar on the subject of dependency and it’s brutal disease. He attempted all of the medication-assisted treatments, eventually opting out because “he didn’t feel like himself”. I wish I could slap him now for giving up so easy. I’m left with only questions of “What if?”...
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...drawal syndrome that indicates the subject’s state of dependence). (Maremmani, p. 6) The addictions effect on the body is quickly established. Adapting to the presence of the drug, the body will begin to exhibit withdrawal symptoms once the opiates effects diminish. Symptoms of withdrawal include restlessness, muscle and bone pain, insomnia, diarrhea, vomiting, cold flashes with goose bumps, and leg movements (Volkow, p. 2). Although the demand for heroin remains significantly lower than for other drugs such as cocaine, methamphetamine, and marijuana, the consequences of heroin abuse are such that it poses a significant drug threat (Gruber, p. 157). Although a variety of effective treatments are available for heroin addiction, methadone maintenance (MM) remains the most common and current treatment of choice for opiate addiction in the United States (Gruber, p. 157)
The book I chose to read for this assignment is called “Stay Close: A Mother’s Story of Her Son’s Addiction”. The target audience can be parents, adolescents, recovering addicts, college students and mental health professionals.
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.”
“The number of people receiving methadone maintenance treatment in Ontario has increased sharply in recent years, from 6,000 in 2000 to 38,000 in 2012” (CAMH). Though this number seems threatening, it is a sign that Canada’s effective methadone treatments are reaching more people. Methadone is a synthetic opioid; it has a different chemical structure but similar effects on the body to other opiates such as morphine, heroin, codeine and OxyContin (Harvard Health Publications). Methadone is not used to cure, but rather treat addictions that individuals have to more dangerous opioids. Critics of the maintenance treatment say these rising numbers is proof of addicts getting high with Canadian’s tax money. A more accurate statement would be that
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...
Ice, crank, meth, crystal, tweak, go fast otherwise known as Crystal Methamphetamine, in the United States is at epidemic levels. 1
Some people argue that the drug users aren’t the heroin victims. One writer notes, 'The parents of the user who steals from them, abuses them, physically, emotionally and mentally, the siblings who suffer the loss of care and love but who also get abused and used by the user, the kids of the user who learn that the parent's desire for smack is greater than the desire to be a parent,' are the real heroin victims (Fitzgerald, 2000). This problem therefore effects not only the user but the society living around them as well.
George F. Koob defines addiction as a compulsion to take a drug without control over the intake and a chronic relapse disorder (1). The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders of the American Psychiatric Association defined "substance dependence" as a syndrome basically equivalent to addiction, and the diagnostic criteria used to describe the symptoms of substance dependence to a large extent define compulsion and loss of control of drug intake (1). Considering drug addiction as a disorder implies that there are some biological factors as well as social factors.
Young adults with opioid addictions worry what their friends, family and even doctors will think of them and hesitate to seek professional help. The result is that teen addiction often remains unaddressed, and it inevitably worsens without treatment. As a society, there is a lack of education about addiction as a disease, so most people simply don’t know how recovery works. Recovery from addiction is long and painful, and the stigma around addiction only prevents people from getting the help they need, making it crucial for society to look past the stigma that people in recovery are always on the brink of relapse, a false perception that affects self-esteem and relationships.
...ss the body. This brief but intense rush is then followed by a deep, drowsy state of relaxation and contentment that is marked by a clouding of consciousness and by poor concentration and attention. This state lasts two to four hours and then gradually wears off. Some individuals do react negatively to heroin, experiencing only anxiety, nausea, and depression. Additionally some addicts may experience the burning out or detrition of muscles from injection sites intramuscularly (mainlining).
To begin with, in order for a facility to be successful in treating people with addictions whether it be alcohol, or drugs the facility must have a treatment plan to use and guide both counselors and the client alike to be successful in the program.
Every single person in an addict’s immediate family is affected in some way by the individual’s substance abuse. In recent years, our society has moved further away from the traditional nuclear family. There are single-parent homes and blended family homes. Each of these family structures and more will affect the addict’s overall impact on the family. If young children are a part of the family, their
Ryan is the presented client in this case at twenty-five years old. He identifies himself as a heroin addict and first started using substances at the age of twelve years old. This was around the time that Ryan reports his parents got divorced. His substance use first began with occasional alcohol and marijuana use that became daily use by the age of fifteen. Ryan shares that he then began to experiment with a variety of drugs including opiates which became his drug of choice. His use of opiates escalated from pills to intravenous heroin use that he was supporting through dealing, stealing, and pawning. The client has made attempts at sobriety previously including detox, inpatient, intensive outpatient treatment, and one-on-one therapy. His girlfriend recently entered treatment for her heroin use and Ryan is able to report numerous consequences of his drug use over the past several years including pending legal issues that have driven him to
The Journal of Neuroscience Dobler-Mikola, A. Gschwed, P. Gutzwiller, F. Steffen, T. Rehm, J. Uch engagen, A. Feasibility, Safety, and Efficacy of Injectable Heroin Prescription for Refractory Opioid Addicts: a follow-up study. The Lancet, volume 358, pg. 1417-1420. Everitt, B. Robbins, T. (1999) Drug addiction: bad habits add up. Macmillian Magazines, volume 389, pg.
My first memories of my father were what I now know as active addiction, I would watch the chaos in my house, the abuse, both mental and physical and at the time I didn’t understand but as time went on it was apparent, at the age of 11, my father hung himself, although he did not die he cut off oxygen to his brain long enough to render him blind and incompetent to care for himself and he was place in a nursing home where he would reside for the next 25 years of my life. I swore I would never do drugs because I saw firsthand the destruction, but my family addiction did not stop there. My aunt was a daily drinker, my uncle was addicted to heroin, another aunt addicted to crack