OxyContin addiction « Medical Detox Programs in a stress-free environment

June 10, 2009

Movement To Ban OxyContin Gathering Momentum

Filed under: Big Pharma, FDA, OxyContin addiction, heroin addiction, prescription drug abuse, prescription drug addiction — Rod Malcolm @ 2:19 pm

Massachusetts State Senator Steven Tolman calls the OxyContin / heroin problem in his state a deadly epidemic.

In an op-ed piece in the Boston Globe recently, Steven A. Tolman, Democratic senator from Brighton, Mass., called the OxyContin and heroin addiction problem in his state “the deadly epidemic no one’s addressing”.

Sen. Tolman describes the widespread horror caused by OxyContin and heroin — essentially interchangeable drugs — and how the lack of available treatment is causing devastation.

“Recently, the OxyContin and Heroin Commission, established during the 2007-2008 legislative session, held the second in a series of public hearings throughout the state,” Tolman writes. “The commission’s purpose is to investigate the levels of addiction to OxyContin and heroin, study the laws regarding treatment, gauge the epidemic’s cost on state services, and offer solutions.

“We’ve heard from parents who have emptied bank accounts or remortgaged homes paying for private treatment because insurance won’t cover long-term care. Families have described reviving their dying children with Narcan [ed.: a brand of naloxone, a drug used to counter the effects of opioid overdose] or having them arrested for felony drug charges to get them off the streets. Otherwise good people appear in our courtrooms, end up in jail or the ER, or spend a lifetime on harm-reduction medication because there is no clear path to recovery,” he added.

Tolman’s experience in Massachusetts is mirrored in almost every state in the Union. The facts are, of course, that OxyContin is molecularly almost identical to illegal heroin, is just as addictive as heroin, is metabolized in the body into morphine (another illegal drug), and has become in many parts of the country the main gateway drug to heroin, and even preferred by long-time heroin addicts to heroin itself.

Back in February, at a public meeting called by the FDA’s Opioid Risk Evaluation Mitigation Strategy (REMS), Novus Detox’s medical director Steve Hayes asked the panel the same question he had been asked by a Novus patient coming off OxyContin:

“If heroin is illegal, why is OxyContin legal?”

No one on the FDA panel had an answer.

If you don’t have an answer either, you should take yourself right now to Ban OxyContin and sign the petition. More than 2,600 others have already done so.

And if you’re in doubt about signing the petition, read through some of the hundreds of comments left by petitioners telling stories of devastation and death at the hands of OxyContin.

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June 1, 2009

OxyContin And Big Pharma’s Prescription Drug Bonanza

Filed under: Big Pharma, FDA, OxyContin addiction, pharmaceutical giants, pharmaceutical sales, pharmaceuticals, prescription drug addiction — Rod Malcolm @ 11:37 am

Between 1980 and 2003, Americans doubled their spending on new autos, tripled what they paid for clothing, but increased their spending on prescription drugs nearly 17-fold, thanks to the $billions Big Pharma spends on marketing. And with drugs like OxyContin in the mix, the entire world has fallen victim to the greatest epidemic in history.

There is a grass-roots movement afoot to restrict the use of the narcotic painkiller OxyContin to, at most, end-stage cancer patients and similar cases — or to ban it outright.

An online-petition to ban OxyContin is gathering thousands of signatures, and will be presented to the FDA and other relevant government agencies soon. We encourage all readers to hasten over and sign the petition now.

So why ban a painkiller that purportedly helps people get along?

It’s no longer a secret that prescription drugs can harm you. In the relentless search for the next billion-dollar blockbuster, Big Pharma’s aggressive marketing of unsafe drugs has become a painful thorn in the side for thousands of Americans.

Thousands of innocent people have been killed or maimed by drugs like OxyContin — drugs which were not just unsafe, but were heavily marketed by drug-makers who knew about its dangers and lied about it.

Big Pharma’s unethical, greed-driven marketing practices are creating an enormous backlash, a subculture of anti-pharma activists who have lost loved ones to the deadly side-effects of prescription drugs, or who have been injured themselves. We’re not talking about prescription drugs illicitly obtained and consumed recreationally — the majority of victims received legal prescriptions from family doctors.

One of the most publicized drugs in this category, OxyContin from drug-maker Purdue Pharma, ranks among the highest on prescription drug activists’ outrage list. Essentially legal heroin, OxyContin has caused or been involved in the deaths of thousands, and the devastation of addiction and ruined lives for many tens of thousands more.

It’s old news that Purdue was fined $600 million a couple of years ago for its lies about the dangers of OxyContin. And senior executives pleaded guilty to criminal charges, were personally fined more than $34 million, and were assigned to hundreds of hours of community service in drug rehab centers. Numerous other drug companies have also been charged with misleading the medical profession, regulators and the public about the dangers of their drugs. Lawsuits number in the many thousands.

As the horrific catalog of Big Pharma’s marketing lies and unethical excesses continues to be revealed in courtrooms across the land, citizens are calling for an end to the practice of promoting and distributing unproven, unsafe drugs — essentially turning the public into experimental guinea pigs.

And they want more punitive results from the legal system, which has thus far treated pharmaceutical companies and their complicit executives to slaps on the wrist, rather than the jail terms normally accorded drug dealers and admitted felons.

A heartless street dealer may be complicit in the harm of a few, but Big Pharma’s list of victims is in the hundreds of thousands. In any other situation, such statistics are considered genocide. In this light, corporate drug dealers deserve far more severe punishment than street dealers.

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February 12, 2009

FDA’s Planned Narcotic Regulations Should Include Broader Education

Filed under: Big Pharma, FDA, OxyContin addiction, drug addiction, pharmaceutical giants, pharmaceuticals — Rod Malcolm @ 12:31 pm

Soaring death and injury rates from dangerous opioid painkillers are being caused by physicians’ inappropriate over-prescribing, along with Big Pharma’s aggressive, illegal marketing. What’s needed is more education, and alternate forms of therapy.

A New York Times article reports that new rulings expected from the FDA will limit or remove many physicians’ rights to prescribe several of the most addictive and dangerous narcotic painkillers.

But is this really the only solution to a dreadful situation?

Reiterating that situation, The Times states that “hundreds of patients die and thousands are injured every year in the United States because they were inappropriately prescribed drugs like OxyContin or Duragesic [a brand of fentanyl] or they took the medicines when they should not have or in ways that made the drugs dangerous. The agency has issued increasingly urgent warnings about the risks, but the toll has only worsened in recent years.”

FDA Black Box warnings and Public Health Advisories in recent years have accomplished little, since the numbers of narcotic painkiller prescriptions continue to soar, and addictions, injuries and deaths are growing apace. The 24 versions of narcotics on the FDA’s list were prescribed 21 million times in 2007, for nearly 4 million patients.

The drugs being considered for restricted uses are listed on the FDA web site, and include various brand and generic versions of fentanyl, methadone, morphine, oxycodone, hydromorphone and oxymorphone. The products listed are made by 15 different drug companies. The FDA is calling for meetings with manufacturers, patients’ groups, consumer health activists and the public beginning in early March, seeking ideas about how to implement the new regulations.

But it’s a complicated situation, because many physicians and patient advocate groups continue to complain that chronic, serious pain is under-treated in America. Simply cutting the availability of the drugs isn’t a solution, they say, since it does less than nothing for those whose lives are ruined by genuine chronic pain, and could increase their numbers.

It seems to me that what’s needed is more, and better, education about pain, narcotics, and pain relief in general. And not just for doctors, but also for patients.

Physicians need more and better education on the realities of opioid use and abuse, including the scientific fact that, in the long run, many opioids actually cause more pain than they relieve. And doctors should also have their closed minds opened to every alternate form of pain therapy that has ever shown any efficacy or promise.

Patients need to be better informed too — and much more closely followed — when they’re prescribed opioids. And they should also be offered alternative forms of pain therapy whenever possible — anything is better than a narcotic if it will do the same job.

Continuing Medical Education (CME) on opioids should be mandated right away — it’s been talked about for years, and is long overdue. Meanwhile, medical schools need to expand education in narcotics, and they should add classes on the many alternate approaches to pain relief that exist, and are in common use all over the world.

In other words, dangerous pharmaceuticals are not the only answer to a lot of the pain out there. Medicine has got to unbend and really start caring for patients.

And speaking of Big Pharma, it should be kept several arm-lengths away from all education on the subject. We know where Big Pharma is coming from — it’s mostly about marketing, with little left over for patient safety, and zero for alternative therapies.

Doctors, who are supposed to be dedicated to patient health and the old “do no harm” dictum, are too quick, even fatally so, to prescribe narcotics, ignoring potentially helpful therapies — some that have demonstrated efficacy for thousands of years — that don’t carry risks of addiction, injury and death.

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February 11, 2009

Judge Upholds Decision Barring Purdue Execs From Federal Health Care

Filed under: Big Pharma, FDA, OxyContin addiction, pharmaceutical giants, pharmaceuticals, prescription drug addiction — Rod Malcolm @ 8:53 am

An administrative law judge has upheld a decision barring three former executives of Purdue Frederick, an affiliate of Stamford-based Purdue Pharma LP that makes OxyContin, from federal health programs for 15 years.

Comparing the three chief executives of a pharmaceutical company to the Third Reich’s Adolph Hitler, Hermann Goering and Heinrich Himmler may seem a stretch to some people, but to those harmed by a prescription drug, and to the loved ones of those killed by that drug because the drug’s hazards were criminally misrepresented, the comparison isn’t that far off.

In 2007, Purdue Pharma and Michael Friedman, its then-chief executive officer, Dr. Paul Goldenheim, then-chief scientific officer, and Howard Udell, then-general counsel, pleaded guilty to misleading doctors and patients from 1996 to 2001 as to OxyContin’s addictiveness by promoting it as a low-risk painkiller.

As is now well known, the three executives were charged with one count of misdemeanor misbranding of OxyContin, served no prison time, and paid a total fine of $34.5 million. Purdue Pharma pleaded guilty to felony misbranding of OxyContin and was ordered to pay $600 million in criminal and civil penalties and forfeitures, including $100.6 million to the U.S. government and $59.3 million to repay state health programs and Medicaid.

Last week, reports the Stamford Advocate, Judge Carolyn Cozad Hughes found that Friedman, Goldenheim and Udell had the responsibility and authority to “prevent or correct” Purdue Pharma’s misbranding but “failed to do so,” according to the Office of the Inspector General. The judge then upheld an earlier court decision barring the three executives from participating in federal health programs for 15 years, following an action brought by the Office of the Inspector General for the Department of Health and Human Services.

Now the top three execs are barred for 15 years from Medicare, Medicaid and other federal health programs. Purdue Pharma says it will appeal the decision. But we’d bet that the three multimillionaires are comfortably wrapped in sumptuous private health care plans, and that Medicare and Medicaid are the last things they personally need. In fact, we’ve wondered how everyone involved escaped jail time.

A missing figure in the case might have included a marketing executive or two, or whoever it was that personally, hands-on, directed the felonious “promoting” of OxyContin. This would have let us add Paul Josef Goebells, the Third Reich’s Minister of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda, to our imagined list of OxyContin mass murderers.

Nazi war criminals were responsible for the deaths of tens of millions and the misery of hundreds of millions. With OxyContin, it’s simply a matter of scale. When it comes to a death in the family, the scale is “one”. Marianne Skokel, of Baltimore, lost her 29-year-old daughter, Jill, in 2002 to an OxyContin overdose. She tells The Advocate that she doubts the Office of the Inspector General’s actions will change the former executives or the company.

“I don’t think they know how to conduct business honestly,” she said. “They’re felons.”

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January 12, 2008

More Drug Detox Is Needed as More Prescription Drugs Are Found To Cause Suicidal Thoughts

Filed under: OxyContin addiction, drug detox, prescription drug abuse, prescription drug addiction — Rod Malcolm @ 8:40 pm

Drugs Kill. You’ve probably seen that on bumper stickers and T-shirts. And you’ve probably thought the same thing many other people think about guns – guns don’t kill people, people kill people. While it’s true that we have the option to take drugs or not – especially when we’re talking about street drugs – just as we have the option to pick up a gun, or not, the fact is that people prescribed drugs by their doctor are sometimes completely unaware that those drugs can kill them – or, more and more, that the drugs might motivate them to kill themselves. Which is just one more reason why you need to get people into drug detox so they can stop taking drugs that are unnecessary.

The latest drug to cause suicidal thoughts and tendencies is Zyprexa. Although it is supposed to be used to help those with the alleged mental conditions known as bipolar disorder and schizophrenia, off-label prescriptions are not unusual. In fact, 15,000 elderly people in nursing homes die every year from Zyprexa and similar antipsychotic drugs. And they’re usually only being given the drug to calm them down so the nursing staff doesn’t have to bother with them.

But those deaths are in addition to those who commit suicide.

Increased risk of suicide has long been acknowledged as a side effect of SSRI antidepressants – Lexapro, Zoloft, Prozac and Paxil, for example – in people aged 18 – 24. But there seems to be no age limit on Xyprexa. And the lawsuits are starting to pile up.

One of these days, I hope we will have a sane, non-drug-dependent society. But, for now, help yourself and those you care about – get them into a medical drug detox program to get them off prescription drugs. Including Zyprexa.

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January 11, 2008

Drug Detox Q &A: Is There Anything Drug Companies Say That I Can Believe?

Filed under: OxyContin addiction, Oxycontin detox, drug addiction, drug addiction help, drug detox, prescription drug abuse, prescription drug addiction — Rod Malcolm @ 10:58 pm

Are you confused about prescription drugs? If so, it’s not surprising. The word is getting out that they are dangerous. There’s even a commercial on television about it – a man sitting on a bench says that he doesn’t like living in pain, but he’s afraid he’ll get addicted to painkillers. A kindly man then replies that the drug he’s pushing isn’t addictive, so it’s not a problem. How can you tell if a drug is dangerous or not? How can you tell if you’re likely to need drug detox or rehab to get off them? One thing for sure, you can’t listen to the drug companies.

Actually, that’s not entirely fair, you can listen to some of what the drug companies tell you – there is some truth in their information about side effects.

However, until recently, even the side effects were downplayed: Drug companies used to choose which clinical trials they would disclose to the public, and even to the FDA when they requested approval. Obviously, they chose trials that presented the drug in the most favorable light. Fortunately, a new law now requires the side effects be disclosed. And those side effects should be enough to make deciding whether or not to take the drug a no-brainer.

The list of OxyContin side effects, for example, is very long – there’s at least 80 of them – and they cover such diverse reactions as anorexia, nervousness, abnormal dreams, thought abnormalities chest pain, amnesia, depression, migraines, . anaphylactic or anaphylactoid reactions – which basically amount to, among other things, a sudden drop in blood pressure accompanied by difficulty breathing and, if not treated, death – and withdrawal symptoms ‘with or without seizures’. That’s where the medical drug detox comes in.

If the side effects are that bad even after the drug company has done everything possible to make the drug look good, you can imagine how bad it really is.

The long and short of it – don’t take prescription drugs unless you have a life-threatening situation. And if you’re already taking them, get into a medical drug detox program that will help you get off the drugs before the drugs themselves threaten your life.

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January 2, 2008

Will More Drug Detox Be Needed With Patients Getting 90-Day Prescriptions for Dangerous Drugs?

Filed under: OxyContin addiction, Oxycontin detox, drug addiction, drug addiction help, drug addiction treatment, drug detox, drug detox program, drug rehab, prescription drug abuse, prescription drug addiction — Rod Malcolm @ 6:17 pm

Yesterday I read a blog about a new ruling from the DEA regarding prescriptions for Legal narcotics and stimulants that have a high potential for dependence and abuse – i.e. Schedule II drugs. Many groups and individuals are speaking out against this ruling and a petition to rescind it is circulating on the Internet. The ruling allows doctors to give out 90-day prescriptions rather than just 30 days. Will this ruling increase the already alarming need for drug detox and drug rehab for prescription drugs? Yes, I think so.

The list of Schedule II drugs includes many of the drugs we read horror stories about daily: methadone, morphine, OxyContin – which, along with other prescription drugs of their type cause more drug overdose deaths than cocaine and heroin combined – and Ritalin, normally prescribed for kids and identified by the DEA as one of the foremost contributing factors to later cocaine dependence and addiction.

So if a person is taking these drugs already what’s wrong with them being able to go to the pharmacy and renew their prescription a couple of times? Well, it means that no one is monitoring how they’re doing on the drug. And it means that anyone taking these drugs has an even greater chance of addiction and dependency than they had when their prescription lasted for only a month.

According to the DEA, this shouldn’t be much of a problem because doctors will only give the 90-day prescriptions to patients they know are going to need repeat prescriptions anyway.

However, judging by the number of people who’ve already died or gone into treatment at drug detox and drug rehab facilities – and the fact that many of those people start taking the drug when they were given a prescription by their doctor – I don’t see that doctors are any more able to predict prescription drug addiction, abuse or dependency than their patients.

Your safest bet, really, is to just not take these drugs at all or, if you absolutely have to, take them in the lowest dosage possible and for the shortest time possible. And get yourself into a drug detox program at the first sign of not being able to get off them.

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December 27, 2007

Florida Drug Detox and Rehab Centers See Rise in Prescription Drug Addiction

Filed under: OxyContin addiction, drug detox, drug detox program, prescription drug abuse, prescription drug addiction — Rod Malcolm @ 2:18 am

Cocaine and crack dealers in Florida have added something new to their menu: prescription painkillers. What brought about this turn of events? As with any market – dealers are responding to demand. But what created the demand? For many people with a prescription drug problem, it started when they received a painkiller from their doctor. And although more of them are getting help in drug detox and rehab, many more are still risking their lives.

Bradley Johnson is one of the many casualties. Bradley started taking OxyContin when he received a prescription from a doctor. In fact, that doctor, a podiatrist in Broward County, refilled the prescription for about a year.

All Bradley had to do was say his foot hurt, said his mother, Susan. He told her it was easy.

It didn’t stop at OxyContin addiction for Bradley. When he died – he fell asleep at a friend’s house and never woke up – it was from a combination of oxycodone and Xanax, an equally dangerous anti-anxiety medication.

I’m sure a number of things contributed to Bradley’s condition but the most obvious, and the most criminal, is the doctor who refilled OxyContin prescriptions for a year. Unbelievable. I’m surprised that Bradley’s mother is not suing the doctor.

The proposed Florida bill that will give doctors access to the prescription drug database will help some doctors – but it’s not going to do anything for a doctor who refills OxyContin for a year.

The patient’s records are right there – surely the doctor was aware of the fact that the kid had a drug problem. There’s no way someone could take OxyContin for a year and not be at least physically dependent, and the chances of him not being an addict by that point are also pretty slim.

Bradley’s mother is now out there campaigning, educating others on the dangers of prescription drugs. But it’s too late to save her son. Don’t wait until it’s too late to save yours, or yourself. Contact a Florida drug detox program, find out if you’re in trouble, and do something about it.

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December 25, 2007

Drug Detox and Rehab Efforts Thwarted by Big Pharma

Filed under: OxyContin addiction, drug addiction, drug detox, drug detox program, drug rehab, prescription drug addiction — Rod Malcolm @ 2:13 am

Are government efforts at curbing prescription drug addiction and abuse really pointed in the right direction? While it’s true that Cardinal Health, Purdue Pharma and a couple of other Big Pharma guys have had their wrists slapped, that’s only when they do something illegal. What about their legal activities? What about the millions who are taking prescription drugs who don’t really need them, who may wind up in drug detox and drug rehab to get off them, and who are taking them primarily because they saw them advertised and were led to believe they would be beneficial?

I just read an article about the prescription drug trafficking case against Bo Jeremy Storedahl – the case went awry when the informant, Tina Rivard, falsely claimed she bought 100 OxyContin pills from Storedahl with $4,000 given to her by the narcotics agents on the case.

God knows how many people are working on busting this little prescription drug ring while the biggest prescription drug ring in the world is sitting at their collective desk drinking Starbucks and figuring out how to get us to take more drugs. And they’re doing it with our blessing, and the blessing of our government.

War on Drugs money is primarily focused on manufacturers and suppliers, yet our number one criminals, the perps who are researching, manufacturing, advertising, marketing, distributing and selling prescription drugs continue to do business. Even when they do something illegal, the penalties don’t even put a dent in their resources.

If an avowed enemy did what Big Pharma is doing, we’d consider it an act of war. We’d be all out in our support of the victims, getting them into drug detox and rehab en masse, and we’d be using military resources to hunt down the perps. What will it take to remove the rose-colored glasses and recognize the enemy within?

Until that happens, we’re on our own. Educate yourself on the dangers of prescription drug addiction and abuse, teach your family and friends and, if you or anyone you know already has a problem, get them into a drug detox program fast.

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December 22, 2007

Prescription Drug Detox Centers in Florida Have Their Work Cut Out for Them

Filed under: OxyContin addiction, drug detox, drug rehab, methadone addiction, prescription drug abuse, prescription drug addiction — Rod Malcolm @ 5:52 pm

You may have heard Florida referred to as the prescription drug addiction and abuse capitol of the U.S., but now there are even more statistics to prove it: in the first six months of 2007, cocaine, heroin and methamphetamines killed 470 people statewide, while the five most commonly prescribed painkillers and tranquilizers killed 1,324. With that number of mortalities, you can bet there are 100s of thousands of people hooked on these drugs who need drug detox and, possibly, drug rehab.

In fact, the statistics are probably worse than they look – these only include drug use identified during autopsies. Plenty of deaths occur that are never autopsied.

By the way, the prescription drugs that killed those 1,324 people were methadone, 392 people; benzodiazepines (including Valium and Xanax, 353 people; oxycodone, sold as OxyContin, 323 people; hydrocodone, often prescribed as Vicodin and Lortab, 134 people; and morphine, 122 people. Probably every one of them would be alive today if they’d done a drug detox and rehab.

“We’ve become a medicated society,” said Howard Lerner, clinical director of South Miami Hospital’s substance abuse treatment program. “Ten years ago, we never saw drugs marketed on TV. Now they’re selling them like McDonald’s hamburgers. The availability is a progression of the numbers. Many more people are attracted to it.”

Any many more people are dying, and many more people are in need of drug detox and rehab.

Lerner hit the nail on the head with the marketing end of things – Big Pharma’s spending billions on getting us to buy these drugs. And we’re playing right into their greedy little hands. I’d starve to death before I’d eat a piece of bread from one of those hands.
If you don’t want to end up in the morgue, or be called by the police to identify the body of a friend or family member, stop taking these drugs or stop your friends and family from taking them.

Contact a Florida drug detox center that can get you off the drugs safely and in relative comfort, and they can help you determine whether or not you need to follow it up with drug rehab.

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