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.

During active drug and alcohol addiction, the focus is on the addict. The risks, the health problems, the violent outbursts, the need to remain high or drunk, the constant search for more money to buy more drugs and alcohol, the mood swings – it’s all about the addict. Few think about those who live with and love the addicted person. Children, spouses, extended family, and siblings are all deeply wounded by the untreated drug dependence of the person they love – emotionally and often physically as well – and while the focus is on getting the addict the help they need to recover, few consider the needs of the family in terms of helping them recover from the experience as well.

How Families are Hurt by Addiction

Addiction is not just the problem of the person physically and psychologically dependent upon an illicit substance. Families, too, are victims of the disorder, for a number of reasons. Many end up experiencing:

• Domestic violence. In domestic violence cases, more than half of all those reported involve drug and alcohol abuse. How many go unreported?
• Emotional abuse. Emotional abuse is even more common as family members are forced to deal with the mood swings of their addicted loved one and rarely given the room to have their own emotional issues related to this and other problems.
• Financial problems. Addiction is expensive, and the damage and problems caused by that addiction can be expensive, too. Few addicts can maintain a job and contribute to the family finances; rather, the addicted family member usually costs the family more money than all other members combined, which puts undue financial pressure and stress on everyone else.
• Social isolation. Embarrassment caused by the addicted family members’ erratic behavior and the need to “cover up” those problems often means that the family is isolated from others – which often serves to increase their sense of dysfunctional addiction as normal and decrease their chances of healing.
• Health problems. Family members of addicts often forego their own mental and physical healthcare in service of dealing with their loved one’s addiction. As a result, many suffer from untreated mental health disorders like depression and chronic ailments that go undiagnosed.

What Families Need to Heal

Family therapy is one of the best ways to address the issues related to an addiction in the family. If the addicted family member refuses to attend or is at an inpatient treatment center, family members can find healing and support through 12-step meetings, personal therapy, and other group therapy options. Learning how to prioritize one’s own health is essential to make sure that, in the event of the relapse of the addicted family member, others in the family remain protected.

Contact us at The Orchid today to learn more about our woman-centered drug rehab program and how we emphasize family healing.

Multiple drug charges can add up to exponential amounts of trouble, and even in districts where there are drug courts to help offenders with an obvious drug and alcohol addiction problem, getting in trouble with the law on several occasions can make it harder to get a sentence that is more treatment than punishment.

One man in Auburn lost out on a plea deal for drug dealing because it came to light that he had been charged with possessing heroin just two weeks prior to his arrest for the current charges. When he was offered the four-year prison time over a longer sentence, the judge told him to stay out of trouble – but the offenders issues with addiction made it impossible for him to follow those directions without treatment and he was inevitably caught. His ultimate sentence? Seven years in prison.

Getting Drug Addiction Help While Incarceration

The hope is that those who are living with a drug and alcohol addiction problem and arrested for their crimes will get drug addiction treatment assistance through the prison system. Unfortunately, there’s not a lot of money in the state budget for comprehensive care and many who are incarcerated fall through the cracks. Though they can often stay clean and sober due to a lack of drugs and alcohol, most will relapse almost immediately after leaving prison.

Getting Help for Drug Addiction Before You End up in Court

The problem with drug addiction is that it causes patients to do desperate things, including criminal acts, in an effort to maintain their addiction. This can mean stealing to pay for drugs or committing fraud by getting duplicate prescriptions. It can also mean a lack of control that leads to domestic violence or assault, hurting someone while driving under the influence, and other charges that can mean incarceration rather than treatment even if drug court is an option – drug court is only for nonviolent offenders. Violent offenders receive incarceration rather than treatment even if their actions were instigated or fueled by addiction problems.

The best way to avoid the problem of fighting with the courts to get the help that you need for addiction is to enroll in rehab before you end up in front of judge for any reason. Women who choose a woman-only drug rehab can increase their chances of success in treatment when they actively engage in therapy and other treatment options. Contact us at The Orchid to learn more about the options available to you in drug addiction treatment.

Until recently, it was commonly believed that addiction was an issue of willpower: those who were morally strong could stop drinking and abusing drugs and those who weren’t were shunned. Over the years, however, more and more research has demonstrated the changes that occur in the brain and how addiction has the characteristics of a chronic disorder rather than a moral failing. Very few – especially those in the medical and psychotherapeutic fields – view addiction as anything other than a physical health issue with psychological components.

The Argument Against Addiction as a Disease

There is, however, an ongoing argument against drug addiction as a disease. Many refuse to believe the scientific evidence that more is at work than an inability to control oneself. They point out that:

• Drug addiction is not contagious. You don’t “catch it” accidentally.

• There’s no known way to develop drug addiction or alcoholism other than to drink or abuse drugs, which is clearly a choice, at least initially.

• Once it’s clear that drug and alcohol abuse has negative consequences, the patient still continues to drink and abuse drugs.

Most argue that those diagnosed with other diseases would stop the causative behavior if that were the way to treat the issue. Why can’t those addicted to drugs and alcohol do the same?

The Argument for Addiction as a Disease

Yes, it’s true that you can stand next to an addict or alcohol and not “catch” the disease. The same is true for the ability to “catch” HIV or cancer, and those are definitely both diseases, too. And yes, it is a choice to initially pick up a beer or smoke a joint or try any drug and that this action can ultimately lead to an addiction. But so too can it be said that skin cancer starts with choosing to be out in the sun without sunscreen – but few would say that those who are living with skin cancer have a moral issue or a problem with will power.

Additionally, there are a number of studies that track the marked changes in brain chemicals and structure that occur when drugs are abused for a long period of time. Clearly, a patient undergoes physical and psychological changes as a result of drug abuse and addiction. These changes make it even more difficult to control the impulses related to the problem.

What Do You Think?

Is drug and alcohol addiction a disease or a choice? Leave us a comment and let us know!

It’s becoming more and more common in the UK and in some parts of the United States: where drug courts provide drug addiction treatment for those who committed nonviolent crimes while under the influence of drugs or in pursuit of money to buy more drugs, many who stand before a judge as a result are actually requesting to be remanded to treatment. In fact, some “criminals” are asking for drug treatment, saying that they hoped to be arrested for their crimes so that they could get the help that they couldn’t get for themselves out on the street.

One car thief, Stewart Reith, recently stood before a judge in the UK and asked to be locked up so that he could get drug rehabilitation help. The judge said ‘yes.’

Everything about Reith’s crime was very highly visible. He went to a car dealership and posed as a staff member, walking the floor with a clipboard and wearing the company jacket. The cameras on site captured him getting into the Vauxhall Corsa VRM and driving away; the car was found a few days later without its tires.

Even with the camera footage of Reith doing the crime, there was no forensic evidence to help investigators track him down from the abandoned vehicle. The homeless Reith ultimately turned himself in and gave law enforcement all the details they needed, saying he had stolen the car with the hope of selling it to fund his habit but couldn’t find any buyers.

Finding Drug Rehab the Right Way

Reith’s story sheds light on the sheer desperation that many living with addiction feel when it comes to conquering their drug abuse issues. It’s not an easy thing to accomplish even with all the right resources – those who are alone and without support have almost no chance. Not everyone is lucky enough to have family who will help them get the help they need to heal or friends who will persevere and help them to enroll in treatment.

If someone you care about is living with a drug or alcohol addiction, don’t wait to confront the issue. They may not be immediately ready to enter drug rehab, but if they have the determination to get clean, you can help them find a drug rehab that can help.

The Orchid offers a comprehensive drug and alcohol addiction treatment program that treats women who are living with a drug dependence. Call now to find out how you can help a woman you care about get the help she needs to start a new life without addiction.