Actor Heath Ledger’s highly publicized recent death is focusing more attention on the skyrocketing overdose fatalities in the US propelled mainly by prescription drugs. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), prescription drugs have overtaken cocaine and heroin combined as the leading cause of lethal overdoses. And treatment specialists across the country are seeing a huge increase in people with prescription drug problems of all kinds turning up at drug detox programs for help.Although overdose deaths have been increasing since the early 1990s, recent prescription drug death statistics have risen so dramatically they have created the first increase in 25 years in the nation’s death rate from injuries of all kinds, the CDC said in a December study. Prescription drug abuse and overdose statistics are borne out in the changing demographic of people arriving at drug detox programs everywhere. A glance at news summaries from across the US shows an alarming rise in prescription drug dependencies requiring medical drug detox among ordinary professional working people – far more than heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine and other traditional street drugs.”Unintentional poisoning deaths – 95 percent of which involve drug overdoses – increased from 12,186 in 1999 to 20,950 in 2004,” said CDC injury prevention expert Dr. Len Paulozzi. “During that time prescription drugs overtook cocaine and heroin combined as the leading cause of lethal overdoses.”The majority of overdose deaths are linked to opioid painkillers such as OxyContin and methadone, says the CDC. But drug poisoning deaths involving other psychotherapeutic drugs, including tranquilizers and antidepressants, rose a whopping 84 percent from 1999 to 2004. And a growing percentage of accidental deaths involve dangerous combinations of prescription drugs, such as antidepressants and benzodiazepines with opiates. Whether prescription drugs are obtained legally or illegally, the sheer numbers and variety of them, their myriad side effects, and complex sets of withdrawal symptoms – especially when taken in random combinations – have driven drug detox specialists to develop better methods to help victims come off the drugs without serious incident.”Depending on an individual’s DNA and metabolism, drug combinations can create further problems and cause the person to experience one or more of the more damaging side effects of the drugs,” said Steve Hayes, Director of Novus Medical Detox Center in Pasco County, Florida. “Combinations can unexpectedly compromise someone’s central nervous system and rapidly lead to collapse, coma and even death. Drug detox that takes into account each individual’s metabolism has become the safest way out for the many thousands of people who become dependent on prescriptions drugs.”John Walters, director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, who unveiled a massive new advertising campaign addressing prescription drug abuse by teenagers, said that because prescription drugs aren’t a street drug, people think they don’t have the same risk. The ad campaign, scheduled to begin during the Super Bowl, will speak to parents as well as kids about the dangers of prescription drugs.Novus’ director Hayes concurs that prescription drugs are treated too lightly compared to traditional street drugs. “Many prescription drugs can quickly create dependencies that are difficult or impossible to deal with on one’s own,” he said, “and that would be even more true for inexperienced young people. Medically supervised drug detox is essential to avoid serious complications.”Prescription drug problems span all sectors of society and most victims arriving for drug detox for prescription drugs are middle class, law-abiding people. “Most people coming to Novus for medical detox look just like your accountant or your lawyer, your doctor or even your mother, brother or father,” Hayes said. “They dress well and are well groomed. They have responsible, well-paying jobs and they love and support their families. These people have no idea how to buy illegal street drugs or where to find them.”From all the research, press reports and statistics, it’s clear that the majority of people with prescription drug problems seeking drug detox are ordinary Americans accidentally caught in the web of dependence. The death of superb actor Heath Ledger, found dead on the floor surrounded by prescription drug containers, is a tragic example of what can happen when drug detox is avoided or ignored when it’s needed most – to get the person off the drugs before tragedy strikes.The real risks of prescription drugs and their prevalence in our homes suggests we should encourage everyone we know, friends or family, to pay closer attention to the effects their prescriptions are having on them, ensure they don’t take odd combinations, and seek immediate advice from a medical drug detox program specialist at the first sign of trouble.
Posts Tagged ‘Death’
Medical Drug Detox Might Have Saved Heath Ledger From Fatal Overdose
December 3rd, 2011The Ideal Scene For a State Department of Mental Health
July 13th, 2011An Ideal Scene expresses the way an area ought to be. In other words, if you had your “druthers” (“I’d rather…”) what would things look like and how would they operate in the best of all possible worlds? We can state unequivocally that the scene in most state mental health departments and facilities is abominable. If they were really doing their jobs right, their patients would be recovering and being sent, sane, back into society as productive individuals. It doesn’t take much research to find out that isn’t the case, just Google “psychiatric abuse.”
In Missouri, for example, the annual budget for the state department of mental health is well over $1 billion. It has been generally increasing for the last thirty-seven years while state psychiatric facilities continue to abuse their patients. In fact, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch exposed the outrageous level of abuse in Missouri psychiatric facilities in a series of articles called “Broken Promises, Broken Lives” published June 11-14, 2006. They said, “Mentally retarded and mentally ill people in Missouri have been sexually assaulted, beaten, injured and left to die by abusive and neglectful caregivers in a system that for years has failed at every level to safeguard them.”
[See the resource for a graph of the Missouri Department of Mental Health annual budgets.]
Similar situations can be found in other states. For example, on December 30, 2007 the Atlanta Journal-Constitution published “A Hidden Shame: Danger And Death In Georgia’s Mental Hospitals” saying that “despite intense scrutiny, conditions are still substandard for many patients in seven state facilities.”
The following would be necessary characteristics of an ideal state mental health department. If your state’s department of mental health doesn’t fit these criteria, where are your letters to your own state representatives and senators telling them to get busy and fix it? It’s all laid out for you here, now go write those letters.
No person should ever be forced to undergo electric shock treatment, psychosurgery, coercive psychiatric treatment, or the enforced administration of mind-altering drugs. Governments should outlaw such abuses. Prosecute as a criminal offense any and all cases of physical damage caused through psychiatry’s use of electroshock, brain surgery or abusive drug “treatment.”
People in desperate circumstances must be provided proper and effective medical care. Medical, not psychiatric, attention, good nutrition, a healthy, safe environment and activity that promotes confidence will do far more than the brutality of psychiatry’s drug treatments. Housing and work will do more for the homeless than the life-debilitating effects of psychiatric drugs and other psychiatric treatments that destroy responsibility.
The use of physical and mechanical restraints should be outlawed. Until this occurs, any psychiatric staff member-and the psychiatrist who authorized the procedure-should be criminally culpable should the restraint result in physical damage or death.
Insist the community treatment laws that rely upon mandatory and thereby coercive measures be abolished, and dismantle or prevent “mental health courts” which are another conduit for drugging our communities.
Humane mental health hospitals and homes must be established to replace coercive psychiatric institutions. These must have a full complement of competent physical (non-psychiatric) doctors and medical diagnostic equipment, which non-psychiatric medical doctors can use to thoroughly examine and test for all underlying physical problems that may be manifesting as disturbed behavior. Government and private funds should be channeled into this rather than abusive psychiatric institutions and programs that have proven not to work.
Legal protections should be put in place to ensure that psychiatrists and psychologists are prohibited from violating the right of every person to exercise all civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights as recognized in the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and in other relevant instruments.
Appropriate state regulatory agencies should investigate every complaint of psychiatric assault, fraud or illicit drug selling. Such agencies should revoke or suspend a psychiatrist’s or psychologist’s license for such criminal practices. All patient complaints of sexual abuse should be referred to the police, attorney general or prosecutor who must be obligated to investigate and prosecute.
The responsible officials of regulatory agencies or their advisors must be held accountable and criminally charged for harm caused by psychiatric drugs and other psychiatric “treatment” if it is established that they knew, or should have known, of such harm either through clinical trial results, adverse reaction reports or broadly available public information.
Establish rights for patients and their insurance companies to receive refunds for mental health treatment which did not achieve the promised result or improvement, or which resulted in proven harm to the individual, thereby ensuring that responsibility lies with the individual practitioner and psychiatric facility rather than the government or its agencies.
Clinical and financial audits must be done of all government-run and private psychiatric facilities that receive government subsidies or insurance payments to ensure accountability, and the compilation of statistics on admissions, treatment and deaths, without breaching patient confidentiality.
Establish or increase the number of psychiatric fraud investigation units to recover funds that are embezzled in the mental health system.
Taxpayers’ money must not be used to fund psychiatry’s unworkable methods and “treatment” for “diseases” that cannot be scientifically verified.
It must be recognized that every person is responsible for his or her own actions and must be held accountable for their actions. State legislators should repeal any laws permitting the insanity defense and diminished capacity pleas.
Remove psychiatrists and psychologists as advisors or as counselors from courts, police forces, prisons, criminal rehabilitation and parole services, and educational institutions. Because psychiatrists have no scientific foundation for their claims, do not permit them to render opinions about or to treat drug addiction, criminal behavior and delinquency, or to probe for alleged dangerous behavior.
None of the 374 mental disorders in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) (or those in the International Classifications of Diseases mental disorders section) should be eligible for insurance coverage because they have no scientific, physical validation.
Defense Against Methamphetamine Drug Crimes
July 9th, 2011Methamphetamine drugs can permanently damage an individual’s physical and mental health. An overdose of methamphetamine drugs has a high chance of ending in tragic death. Being convicted of possession, distribution, or production of methamphetamine thus comes with extremely high punishments.
Some individuals charged with this crime have been falsely or unlawfully accused. These cases may be hard to prove as the courts are trying to set examples for other methamphetamine users around the country. The best way for an innocent individual to attempt to defend themselves includes hiring a criminal defense attorney. Even if an individual is guilty of some charges, there are many ways to create holes in the prosecution’s case, or at the very least reduce a sentence.
If an individual is arrested while the officers are breaking the law, evidence collected agains them may not be admissible in court. Warrants must be in order and rights must be read. Legally obtained evidence is the only thing that will help prove a case in court.
Methamphetamine drugs are highly addictive substances that are being controlled in our society at three levels. The first is that they are making the production of the drug more difficult. Depending on the state, ephedrine or pseudo-ephedrine will often times not be sold without writing down a driver’s license number, or in large amounts. The next two levels, distribution and possession of the drug, will include harsh punishments to deter possible users.