Opiate addiction – or dependence upon drugs like heroin and prescription painkillers oxycodone and hydrocodone – has been a growing problem in Russia for years. Despite the government’s interest in correcting the problem and providing prevention and treatment to those who need it, they are adamantly against the use of evidence-based treatment protocols like methadone maintenance and Suboxone treatment.

Substitution Therapy Ban

In the United States, the effectiveness of methadone and Suboxone is well established through multiple studies and thousands of success cases. In Russia, however, that’s not the case. According to the Toronto Media News Co-op Russian experts say that: “The effective way to solve the problem of drug addiction treatment is an intensive search for and introduction of new methods and means that focus on complete cessation of drugs use by patients with addiction, their socialization into a new life style free from drugs, but not on exchanging from one drug to another.”

Naysayers believe that “substitution therapy” is nothing more than trading the object of addiction. They believe that addicts will continue to be addicts after treatment and that nothing substantive about their life and habits will change as a result. The evidence says, however, that those who use a controlled substance under the care of medical professionals have a lesser chance of overdose and can slowly lower their dose over time until they are completely drug-free, allowing them the opportunity to immediately begin to live a functional life that is not controlled by drug dependence.

Krocodile Abuse

The problem with avoiding well-known, positive treatments for opiate addiction in Russia is that addicts are left to fend for themselves, often overdosing, contracting HIV and other transmissible diseases by sharing needles, and creating new drugs that have effects similar to heroin but are less expensive – drugs like Krocodile. When heroin gets too pricey for addicts – most of whom live in poverty – they instead turn to homemade drugs like Krocodile. Similar to morphine, Krocodile, or desomorphine, it is made from codeine, which does not require a prescription in Russia, and actually turns the skin of the user scaly and green like a crocodile, an effect caused by gangrene and phlebitis. Krocodile users are expected to live only two to three years.

Fighting Addiction

In some ways, Krocodile is a substitution for heroin, but one that is devastating to addicts. In the same way, in the United States, those who can’t afford prescription painkillers often turn to heroin, which is far less expensive. If opiate addiction is an issue for you, rather than opt for a more dangerous substitute, consider choosing a positive substitution therapy at a medical rehabilitation center. Call us now to find out more about how we can help.

The pending closure of important Georgia drug treatment programs aimed at helping women break free from drug addiction has a number of people worried. Because the need for addiction treatment has not lessened, many are concerned about the impact to the community when help is no longer available – as well as the impact to the women themselves and the wellbeing of their families.

The good news is that private rehabilitation is available and can provide an even more comprehensive level of care and treatment for women who are ready to stop drinking and abusing drugs.

Federal Funding Cuts

Federal funding provides the backbone of support to a number of treatment facilities in Georgia and with the revocation of those funds, many will be unable to keep their doors open. The ones that advocate for female addicts and their children are in the spotlight right now because their far-reaching programs extend beyond the addict herself to the family she supports. Such programs offer long lasting results and could potentially save the state – and the country – hundreds of thousands of dollars in the future when mother and children get the help they need early on.

In total, about 14 outpatient programs and 80 openings in residential treatment programs may be cut from Georgia rehabilitation centers.

Neil Kaltenecker is the executive director of the Georgia Council on Substance Abuse. Kaltenecker says: “Nationally, we know that about 13 percent of all state costs are because of addiction, whether that’s crime, whether that’s emergency room visits, healthcare, kids in foster care, unemployment, homelessness, all of those sort of social costs. That safety net just [will not be] there for these folks.

“We know that addiction is a family illness, it affects the families. So what we do in these programs is have therapeutic childcare where you’re teaching kids [and] kind of shoring up their strengths so they don’t have to go down the same road [of addiction].”

The Private Drug Rehab Option

Many who qualify for treatment at facilities that rely heavily upon federal funding may not think that they would be able to afford care at a private drug rehab. The fact is, scholarship programs are available as is sliding scale treatment for those with middle to low incomes. There are also financing options for those who can afford some now but prefer to make payments on treatment later.

If you are interested in traveling to The Orchid and experiencing our drug rehabilitation programs for women here in Florida, contact us today for information about how you can get started on the enrollment process.

It’s not an uncommon scenario: a woman addicted to heroin realizes that she is pregnant. Unable to stop abusing heroin on her own and in fear for her baby’s life, mother seeks help from doctors. Because of the great deal of knowledge we now have about the nature of opiate addiction and its effects on the baby, doctors can easily help addicted mothers-to-be to switch from heroin addiction to methadone maintenance during their pregnancy and avoid the risk of overdose as well as limit the risk of miscarriage.

The problems start when baby is born addicted to methadone. This is a known factor when the mother is addicted to heroin or methadone throughout pregnancy and its one that is planned for. Babies generally stay in the hospital to make sure that they detox correctly and safe under the care of medical professionals.

In one case, however, the addicted newborn was released with her mother and this proved problematic. The mother was given methadone both for herself and for the baby and told to slowly wean the child off the drug over three months’ time. Unfortunately, mother didn’t follow doctor’s orders. She continued to give her baby the methadone – not maliciously, but because she wanted to ease her baby’s withdrawal symptoms – using portions of her own doses and keeping the child on the drug for 14 months total.

Despite her intent, it was still a dangerous thing to do. The mother has been diagnosed with bipolar disorder and other mental health issues in addition to her long-time battle with heroin addiction, and that is being taken into consideration. She won’t go immediately to jail for her actions but because she admitted to a felony charge of reckless endangerment, she will spend five years on probation and will end up in prison if she doesn’t make better choices in the future – i.e., avoid heroin and other drugs of addiction, care well for her baby, and avoid engaging in any other criminal acts.

The mother also had her baby removed from her by social services. However, because she was so cooperative with her caseworkers and did everything asked of her including completing parenting classes, she now has supervised contact with her child and is moving closer to being able to regain custody.

If you are pregnant and heroin addiction is an issue for you, seek help immediately. Getting the drug treatment you need – including methadone maintenance – can save you and your child. Ready for serious heroin rehab? Contact us at The Orchid today to find out how we can help.

Hospice is intended to be the final phase of healthcare as someone’s life is drawing to close. The work of hospice is generally regarded as more of a mission than a job and its central goal is to keep patients and their families as comfortable as possible as they move through the end-of-life process. The use of prescription painkillers is almost always vital to hospice achieving its goal. Since hospices only accepts patients that doctors believe will pass within the next 180 days, the concept of addiction to the medications prescribed is the least of anyone’s worries as a patient’s comfort becomes paramount.

Nevertheless, medicine is by no means an exact science and predicting when someone will die is not a guarantee, but an educated guess. Currently, 200,000 patients a year survive hospice and are discharged back to live life. After surviving deadly ailments, many of these individuals are left to fight once again for their lives due to an addiction to painkillers.

It is a rare hospice patient that does not receive opioid painkillers-these prescriptions include the likes of morphine and oxycodone. Often patients are receiving much higher doses of these prescriptions than is normal. Dr. Jane Orient, a professor at the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine, says she had to remove her father from a hospice who insisted on giving him morphine he did not need.

Hospice Survivors Often Find Themselves In Drug Rehabilitation

This tendency to overmedicate leaves the nearly quarter of a million people a year who survive hospice in grave danger of a prescription drug addiction. Dr. Walter Ling, director of the substance abuse program at UCLA states, “Everybody who works in the drug rehabilitation field finds these hospice cases.”

For-Profit Hospices Possibly Making Money Off Addiction and Illness

Although in general most hospice care follows its guiding principles to the letter and provides a valuable and necessary service for both patients and families, a Harvard Medical School study published in The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) sheds some light on why we are starting to see hospice survivors turning up in drug rehabs. For-profit hospices have quadrupled Medicare hospice spending in the last ten years while not-for-profit have stayed steady. Twenty percent of for-profit hospice patients survive as compared to twelve percent of not-for-profit hospice patients with an average stay of 30 days longer. Nancy Kane, a professor of health policy at Harvard believes from her analysis of the information that “The long lengths of stay and high rates of live discharges suggest some hospices are signing up people who don’t belong in hospice.”

In other words, for-profit hospice may be manipulating medical uncertainties, such as when someone will die, for profit and possibly creating prescription painkiller addicts in the process. What do you think can be done to help curb painkiller addiction for hospice survivors? Do hospices have a responsibility to survivors who develop a dependence? Your opinions are welcome below.

The stereotypical drug addict portrayed on TV and in the minds of most Americans is usually a white or black male under the age of 25, homeless, dangerous, and clearly identified as an addict by his criminal behavior or psychotic demeanor. Crystal meth addicts – many don’t even have a picture of what that looks like, but assumes that he or she would be much like the original stereotype. The average American wouldn’t assume that a crystal meth addict would be in their mid-50s, happily married for decades, and financially stable with no criminal record at all.

Perhaps that’s why the case of Charles and Deborah Harley are so important to talk about. This middle aged couple appeared to the casual observer to be well-adjusted and “normal.” No one would have even considered them as possible candidates for the development of crystal meth addiction. Aged 55 and 54, respectively, the two have been married for a long time, neither has a criminal record of any kind, both have high school educations and good reputations in the community. So how did it happen?

According to the couple, both of them have been hiding issues with illicit substances for decades. Though a full blown addiction never developed in their 20s and 30s, they both knew that they had an issue with drugs. For Deborah, it was amphetamines, a substance she says she experimented with since the early ‘80s. For Charles, his primary issues were with both marijuana and cocaine, a problem he’s had since his 20s.

If the problem had been hidden for so long, what brought it to light now? Apparently, it was a new regulation put in place at local businesses that monitored the purchase of products containing ephedrine and pseudoephedrine, one of the primary ingredients in crystal meth. The couple had made regular purchases of the drug that put them on the radar of local authorities. A search warrant was granted based on these purchases and executed by the local drug enforcement team.

Though the Harleys initially said that they purchased the drugs to treat their allergies, they were sentenced to two years on probation for possession of methamphetamine and maintenance of a drug house. The couple were both remorseful and embarrassed to find themselves in court for drug charges.

Said Charles Harley: “You’re never too old to be foolish. I apologize to the court and my family.”