A recent Houston Chronicle story focused on the increase in abuse of the prescription pain killer hydrocodone -- commonly sold as Vicodin and Lortab -- throughout central and southern Appalachia (West Virginia, Tennessee, Kentucky and Alabama) where it is causing a huge rise in the number of hydrocodone-addicted people requiring detox and drug rehab.
I was particularly struck by a statement about the unholy power that drug addiction can wield over such a strong instinct as parental love - “If you're faced with this choice – pills or your kids – you think you'd make the right choice. But the drugs are more powerful."
Bob Noone, a child welfare attorney in Logan County, WV, in the heart of Appalachia, told a reporter that he “missed the old abuse and neglect cases where people just had incredibly dirty homes." Now, the attorney said, 80 percent of his cases involve parental abuse and neglect stemming from drug abuse. Families are being torn apart in the mostly rural Appalachian communities where drug and crime problems rival those usually seen only in big cities.
Hydrocodone has become the most-abused prescription drug in the Appalachia region, more than the better known, more powerful OxyContin which just a few years ago was nick-named “hillbilly heroin." During the OxyContin scare, between 2001 and 2003, at least 13 doctors in the region were convicted of supplying medication to drug addicts. Since then, most doctors have become more cautious about prescribing OxyContin. Prescriptions for hydrocodone have risen by an average of 65 percent nationally (124 million prescriptions in 2005 and more by now), by 105 percent in West Virginia, and have nearly doubled in Tennessee.
Unfortunately, hydrocodone has proved to be not only easy to get, but also highly addictive. Even users of street drugs are switching to it. But most hydrocodone addiction problems begin innocently with prescriptions for legitimate pain. If someone you know is using hydrocodone, OxyContin or another opioid pain killer for legitimate reasons or for non-legitimate reasons, help avoid a family breakup or a ruined life. If you suspect an addiction, get them into a successful drug rehab program.
Well, here we are in 2008, and it’s time to reflect on the year gone by. What’s the first thing we recall from 2007? The war in Iraq? The mid-west floods? The California wild-fires? Al Gore’s global-warming peace prize? For many Americans what pops into mind first and foremost are the strangely-fascinating excesses of the year’s celebrity bad girls and their insatiable appetites for alcohol, illicit drugs, arrests and DUIs, jail time and trips to drug rehab.
2007 was definitely the year that the girls gone wild made drug rehab a household word. Not that they all wound up in rehab: Of the Hollywood girls gone wild - Lindsay Lohan, Paris Hilton, Nicole Richie and Britney Spears - Paris and Nicole managed to avoid it. They only had to go to jail. The UK’s drug-soaked wild-child, blues singer Amy Winehouse, who had a major hit about refusing to go to rehab, nevertheless spent a month in drug rehab last summer. But according to friends and family she’s going to go back into treatment sometime soon and, judging from media reports, it can’t be soon enough.
It’s a wonder some of these ladies managed to survive at all, never mind save what’s left of their careers. Endlessly partying like sailors on shore leave and logging arrests for DUI and possession of marijuana and/or cocaine, they were either in or out of rehab or jail so many times it set our heads spinning.
Thanks to relentless paparazzi, we had plenty of creepily entertaining shots of drugged, drunken, bleary-eyed, carousing, panty-less, filthy rich young women hell-bent on self-destruction. But while we’re watching this destruction on TV and reading about it in magazines and tabloids, we might want to keep something else in mind: One in five Americans has, is, or soon will be in trouble with alcohol or some type of drug. As there are no paparazzi recording it for the media, we tend to miss it. And these millions of addicted Americans don’t have personal managers or studio moguls to back them up, millions of fans offering unqualified support, or mega-bucks to cover months of drug rehab in some sexy Malibu drug rehab center.
Fortunately, while alcohol and drug addiction and personal self-destruction are happening all around us, so is rehab. There is an alcohol or drug rehab program in almost every town and city in America. And every day, addicted people beat their addictions and get their lives back.
This year, let’s put our attention on what’s happening at home and in our own neighborhoods. If it’s not you or your wife, husband or kid, there will be someone next door or at work who needs help with alcohol or drug addiction or abuse. In 2008, do what you can to help them find the drug rehab program they need to recover their life.
Rod Mactaggart has sinced written about articles on various topics from Addictions, Alcohol Treatment and Keyboard Synthesizer. Rod is a freelance writer who contributes articles on health.Contact: . Rod Mactaggart's top article generates over 135000 views. to your Favourites.