Drug and Alcohol Rehab Blog

The New Face of Addiction Recovery

The 12-step program has been the oldest and most prevalent group in the country for many decades when it comes to treating drug and alcohol addiction.  The original purpose was for people to recover - not to stay “in recovery”. 

Throughout the years the ideas about drug rehabilitation and addiction recovery have been changed and warped into being life-long treatments of mental disorders with many newer made-up diseases piled on top of it and all of the new prescription drugs to treat these symptoms.  What has happened with all of these new treatments is that the problem of addiction and helping someone to completely recover has become more compound and in most cases worse, not better. 

Unfortunately millions of families over the years have been on the receiving end of this deceptive pit of hoplessness that has been perpetuated by the idea that addiction is an incurable brain disease and that people have to fight it and treat it for the rest of their lives.  However, after several failed treatment attempts (and many substitute drugs being erroneously prescribed) people are waking up and realizing that there are some simple truths to helping someone permanently recovery.

One of these truths is that addiction is not an incurable brain disease - there has never been a single study ever in history to prove that it is, yet the concept is continually forced upon even those of us who have successfully beaten addiction and are cured.  People are ultimately responsible for their own condition, but may need help regaining control.  Addiction isn’t a pre-determined or hopeless fate.

Another is that giving more drugs to addicts on any long-term basis will not help them become drug-free.  The simple concept is that someone still taking drugs is not free from them.  This includes the myriad of prescriptions for “dual diagnosis” and drug replacement therapy for opiate addicts as well as others.

The third is that very few people ever get permanently better in 28 or 30 days.  In most cases, it takes time to undo what has taken some years to create.  People aren’t magically better in a month.  This was an arbitrary timeline set up by insurance companies unwilling to pay for much more.

What we continue to see each and every week is that when addicts and their family members begin start to see these truths then they have hope.  They see that a drug and alcohol rehab that approaches addiction treatment with these fundamentals has a much higher success rate for permanent rehabilitation.  These basics are creating the new face of addiction recovery - those who have permanently recovered and move on with a happy, productive and drug-free life.

For more information or to get help for a loved one in need, contact us today by calling 1-877-421-9659 or visit www.drug-addiction-rehab.net. 

The False Hope of Antidepressants

Most of the calls that we get from family members of addicted people tell us that their loved one was put on an antidepressant at some point to try and treat the symptoms of their addiction.  Time and again we try and help educate people on the truth about these drugs and how the only way to truly become drug free is to go through a drug-free program in the end.

More and more information continues to surface about the dangerous long-term effects of antidepressants and related psychiatric drugs.  Below is a bit of recent information that was also made known through one of the most respected medical journals in the world. 

Dr. Erick Turner was a former paid speaker by the pharmaceutical industry who developed a conscience and turned on his pharmaceutical masters. He spoke out against the products he’d been promoting. In the January 2008 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, he published an article telling the truth about one class of drugs, SSRI antidepressants, such as Prozac and Paxil. In interviews, he has spoken even more broadly, stating that the lack of efficacy of SSRIs is the “dirty little secret” of the psychiatric world.

The hidden studies that he was able to uncover consisted of 74 clinical trials, with 51% showing results that were better than placebo and 49% with negative or mixed results. In other words, about half the trials, though they’d been produced for drug corporations and most likely were attempting to produce the desired results of showing benefits, did nothing of the sort.

Armed with the smoking gun proof of negative trials being hidden, Turner produced a paper, “Selective Publication of Antidepressant Trials and Its Influence on Apparent Efficacy” for the New England Journal of Medicine. This time, he wasn’t ignored.

Daniel Carlat, assistant professor of psychiatry at Tufts University School of Medicine, himself once on the dole with Wyeth Pharmaceuticals, argues, “The fact that the negative trials can just be hidden away means that practicing doctors can get a very false notion of efficacy data for a drug. That’s the real crisis here.”

According to Mike Adams of Natural News, “The cat is now out of the bag regarding SSRIs. If they work, it’s only rarely. The known risks are extensive and appalling. Most, if not all, school shootings involved the use of SSRIs, or their next-generation offshoot, SNRIs. Suicide rates increase after starting them. Weight gain is often a problem, indicating a potential link to diabetes. Sleep disturbances and sexual dysfunction are fairly common. Many people have a great deal of difficulty withdrawing from these drugs. None of these problems were revealed during pre-approval clinical tests, but the fact that they’re common begs the question. How many trials showing these dangers were suppressed?”

If you or your loved one is trying to overcome and addiction and have been prescribed one of these drugs as a false hope of recovery, contact us to find safe ways of detoxing off these medications and getting into effective long-term drug and alcohol rehab programs.

Visit www.drug-addiction-rehab.net or call us at 1-877-421-9659.

Performance-Based Contracting for Drug Rehabs

Finally somebody in a government position is starting to go down the right road regarding drug rehabs and their outcomes.  A press release issued by the Treatment Research Institute in Pennsylvania posted on JoinTogether discussed the issue of performance-based contracts for drug and alcohol rehab programs.

It read: “Paying substance abuse treatment providers for results, not services, may lead to improved quality of care, according to the first published study of a novel performance-based contracting system implemented by the State of Delaware in 2002.”

The study found that this type of system greatly improved retention rate in outpatient programs, which is to be congratulated.  A new contract was also recently put in place for detoxification centers to ensure clients get signed up for some type of continuing treatment instead of stopping after detox.

These are all fantastic ideas and initial outcomes, but one of the most important outcomes still isn’t being measured - whether or not the clients remain clean and sober.  This is a step in the right direction for sure, but performance-based contracts should include whether or not the programs work, by setting standard follow-up and outcomes measuring procedures as well as benchmarks in quality of life improvement to see how effective a drug and alcohol rehab program can be.  This would be the surest way to increase the maximum return on tax dollars spent, as well as to reduce relapses and give much more hope to families sending loved ones to treatment.

Today there are some private non-profit facilities who do have their own outcomes measurement systems in place to monitor effectiveness.  These facilities pride themselves on their dedication to keeping people off of drugs, and not just seeing how long they can keep them in treatment.

You can find out more about performance-based drug and alcohol rehabs by calling us today at 1-877-421-9659 or visiting www.drug-addiction-rehab.net.

UN Official Slams Celebrity Rehab Glamorization

Celebrity drug use and subsequent addiction treatment center visits have become so popularized that people have decided to cash in on it with shows such as “Celebrity Rehab” with Dr. Drew.  The problem is that the publicised failures of most traditional forms of treatment, along with the glamorization of drug use by some celebrities and the media has become somewhat of a joke instead of the serious situation that it actually is. 

Finally someone else is stepping up to denounce the behavior.

“Coke-snorting fashionistas are not only damaging their noses and brains — they are contributing to state failure on the other side of the world,” wrote Antonio Maria Costa, the executive director of the UN’s Office on Drugs and Crime. The comments, published in an opinion piece in the British newspaper The Observer, was the second time in two weeks that the United Nations has criticized celebrity drug use.

Cashing in on the misfortunes of others, or making dangerous drug use seem trivial, only popularizes it even more in the eyes of impressionable young people all over the world.  The message they receive from these irresponsible celebrities and media outlets is that it’s entertainment while the life-threatening consequences get pushed pack into the shadows instead of being brought into the forefront.  Frankly, it’s pretty disgusting.

Most people can’t afford $100,000 + exotic rehab centers that are more like spa retreats, which is good because they rarely work and have no identifiable success rates to speak of.  On the contrary, we are committed to helping people find effective drug rehab programs at longer-term rehabilitation centers across the country at the least cost possible.

For more information, check us out at www.drug-addiction-rehab.net or call us at 1-877-421-9659.

Is Buprenorphine Becoming “Methadone Light”?

It seems that yet again billions of dollars have been wasted on drug replacement therapy as a viable solution for drug addiction.  Even worse is that it is yours and my tax dollars (that could otherwise actually help someone).

What I’m talking about is buprenorphine, which is sold by the names of Suboxone and Subutex.  With a joint venture between the National Institute of Drug Abuse (NIDA) and Reckitt and Benckiser Pharmaceuticals this drug has been heavily touted as the greatest thing to treat opiate addicts.  But then again, so was methadone at one point in time, and by now most of us are aware at how damaging, addictive and deadly methadone really is.

The kicker is that even as these co-consipirators pushed to make the drug more readily available, evidence of abuse of buprenorphine was kept hidden from the public at large, according to a recent series of articles by the Baltimore Sun.

The article claims that there are approximately 170,000 people in the Unites States on buprenorphine.  All of whom were probably told the drug is the best thing for their condition.  Now, we’re not debating the effectiveness of the drug to ease withdrawal symptoms on a short-term basis like a few days, but opiate addicts are being put on this drug now as a form of longer-term opioid maintenance. 

Due to the fact that we get calls from people every week trying to get off of buprenorphine as well as methadone and they were told it was a workable treatment, we’ve now dubbed Suboxone and and Subutex as “methadone light.”

So what about people out there who aren’t on opiates?  How does this story relate to them? 

Well, the point is that as long as someone is taking one drug to treat an addiction to another, you’re never going to solve the problem completely.  Whether it is atypical antipsychotics for methamphetamine users, antidepressants for alcoholics, anti-anxiety drugs for marijuana users, some new pill for cocaine addicts, etc., it is always only going to temporarily relieve the symptoms, at best.

We would like to extend to you an invitation to find a drug-free solution to addiction recovery that can end the struggle for good.  Addiction can be overcome and is not a brain disease.  Find out more by visiting www.drug-addiction-rehab.net or call 1-877-421-9659 to speak with a counselor.

Ledger’s Tragedy from Prescriptions

The tragic news of Heath Ledger’s death has really grabbed a lot of attention, but the focus and blame hasn’t been correctly pointed yet.  It appears that Ledger is the latest sorrowed tale in prescription drug overdose deaths, celebrity or otherwise.  The antidepressants and sleeping pills seem to be the culprit, in which case the responsibility lies in the hands of the doctor who prescribed both of these toxic substances as well as the drug companies who promote the drugs as being safe and effective.

When celebrity drug rehab tabloid gossip mainstays such as Lohan, Spears and Winehouse begins to rule airwaves, its easy to assume that a drug-related death is due to illegal substances, but that doesn’t seem to be the case with Ledger.  Police reports show no foul play, evidence of suicide attempt, or other substances from the toxicology report.

Mike Adams from NewsTarget.com shows that “FDA-approved pharmaceuticals kill twice as many Americans each year as the entire Vietnam War”.

This disturbing fact that’s routinely swept under the carpet by mainstream media and government officials is echoed by the number of calls we get on a weekly basis of otherwise well-meaning people who are now full-blown addicts because of prescription drugs that were recommended to them by their doctors and the ensuing havoc created by them.

Remember, the drugs ruining our society aren’t just the ones on the street.  Just turn on the television to see pharmaceutical ads or drive down the road where you see brand new pharmacies popping up in every suburban development.  When damaging antidepressants are just as common in homes as Flinstones vitamins, there is a major problem that isn’t being looked at enough.

If you or someone you know has a drug or alcohol problem, or would like to know about resources to help them get off prescription drugs, call us today at 1-877-421-9659 or visit www.drug-alcohol-rehabs.org.