It’s not the first time that a lab or research facility has set out in search of a vaccine that can cure or prevent drug addiction. The latest approach is a little bit different than past attempts, however – rather than a prevention or even a cure, this vaccine would block the addictive substances from reaching and therefore affecting the brain. A patient who has been vaccinated as a part of their drug addiction treatment would experience no high or effect if they were to relapse and take their drug of choice – if it works like it’s supposed to.

So far, the drugs that have been effectively blocked by the vaccine have been nicotine and cocaine.

Do Drug Addiction Vaccines Work?

Does it really work? The jury is still out and long-term studies are ongoing, but so far, the results coming in are positive.

Some patients report that just knowing that they have taken the vaccine has helped them to avoid relapse. Knowing that the vaccine should stop them from getting high if they smoke a cigarette or do a line keeps them from wasting their time and trying.

One patient says: “You still have to mentally say to yourself, ‘I’m not going to do this,’ but it’s so much easier to say it when you know if you light a cigarette, you’re not going to get any pleasure out of it.”

How do Drug Addiction Vaccines Work?

Vaccines don’t work in the brain like other drugs that stop the effect of addictive substances at certain doses (e.g., methadone or Chantix). Instead, vaccines stop illicit drugs while they’re still in the bloodstream, and neither substance should ever reach the brain. The vaccines don’t bind to receptors in the brain or try to change perception in any way; rather, they work by making the body reject the illicit substance before it has a chance to take effect.

This is an important distinction because some of the drugs that provide similar blocking effects against addictive substances are often eschewed because of their side effects. As yet, no significant side effects have been identified among patients using the latest vaccine for drug addiction treatment.

Would You Try a Drug Addiction Vaccine?

If you had access to a drug addiction vaccine, would you take it? Do you need further research studies to prove its efficacy one way or the other? What do you think?

Sex, drugs, and rock and roll: the saying is that they go together. Unfortunately, both sex and drugs have taken down some of the biggest bands in rock and roll history. Here we take a look at some of the bands that have lost their front men to drug addiction – and continued to rock.

Iron Maiden Lost Paul Di’Anno to Bad Behavior Under the Influence

British heavy metal band Iron Maiden let go of Paul Di’Anno, their first singer, when his wild behavior under the influence of drugs became too much for his band mates to handle. That’s saying a lot – Di’Anno’s band mates were hardly clean and sober and they were an up and coming heavy metal band, not a religious choir. The fact that he got kicked out says quite a lot about the rate of his drug abuse and the depth of his addiction. But Iron Maiden went on to hire Bruce Dickinson and made one of the best known metal albums around: The Number of the Beast.

Pink Floyd Booted Syd Barrett for Psychedelic Addiction

To be more specific, Pink Floyd let Barrett go when his abuse of psychedelic drugs affected his mind so deeply that the band couldn’t take it anymore. Given the tone and theme of Pink Floyd’s music in their two bestselling later albums, Dark Side of the Moon and The Wall, Barrett must have been pretty far gone to be shunned by these guys.

In the hole left by Barrett, Pink Floyd put no one. Instead bassist Roger Waters and guitarist David Gilmour split the duties of lead singer and became one of the most successful and unique rock bands in the world.

The Temptations Fired David Ruffin Due to Cocaine Addiction

A classic, early rock band, The Temptations, lost their lead singer, David Ruffin, when Ruffin’s cocaine addiction got too out of control for the band to handle. Already topping the charts with hits like “Ain’t Too Proud to Beg” and “My Girl,” the band risked plummeting into obscurity by getting rid of their popular front man. They took the chance. Replacing Ruffin with Dennis Edwards turned out to be a smart move, though, and the band went on to even more success with hits like “Just My Imagination (Running Away With Me)” and “I Can’t Get Next to You.”

What happened to Ruffin? He went on to a sporadic, yet occasionally successful solo career, but ultimately died of an overdose in 1991.

Dennis Quaid, 57, has been hitting the media stage recently, reminiscing about the past and discussing serious issues like his previous cocaine addiction.

According to some reports, Quaid even says that cocaine was such a large part of Hollywood life during the 1970s that its costs were often included in movie budgets. In other situations, producers would make sure that there was a supply of the drug available to actors in their movies and then write off the cost as a petty cash expense.

For Quaid, the issue of cocaine addiction was a serious one. He says that he couldn’t start his day without the drug: “I’d wake up, snort a line and swear that I wasn’t going to do it again that day. But then 4 o’clock rolled around, and I’d be right back down the same road like a little squirrel on one of those treadmills. Meanwhile, my life was falling apart.”

Quaid’s ongoing addiction hurt his career and his health – the actor was sure that he would be dead in five years if he continued without treatment.

How did it start? Casually, says Quaid. It was always available at Hollywood parties and Quaid began using it whenever it was around. Quaid wrote in Newsweek that, “That’s what people were doing… Instead of having a cocktail, you’d have a line.”

The pressure of stardom kept his cocaine addiction going, according to Quaid. He wrote in Newsweek that: “Coming from where I came from – lower-middle-class life, from Houston into Hollywood – and all of a sudden this success starts happening to you, I just didn’t know how to handle that. Doing blow just contributed to me not being able to handle the fame, which, at the time, I guess I felt I didn’t deserve.”

By the 1980s, it became clear that he wouldn’t be able to hold things together for much longer without serious cocaine addiction help. His band, the Eclectics, broke up and his acting started to falter as a result of getting a single hour of sleep most nights. Says Quaid: “I had one of those white-light experiences that night where I kind of realized I was going to be dead in five years if I didn’t change my ways. The next day I was in rehab.”

Quaid spent two years breaking free from cocaine addiction and starting a new life in sobriety. He says the experience “gave me the resolve and resilience to persevere in life. If I hadn’t gone through that period, I don’t know if I’d still be acting. In the end, it taught me humility. I really learned to appreciate what I have in this life.”

Charles “Tyke” Peacock was expected to bring home the gold medal in 1984. What he did instead was fake an injury so that he could avoid the Olympic trials and keep his drug addiction under wraps. Now it’s 27 years later and the cat is most definitely out of the bag. Peacock has been arrested for burglary. Will he get six years in prison for his crime or will he get 12 months in a drug rehabilitation facility?  It’s up the judge.

Says Peacock: “I need rehabilitation, not incarceration.”

Early Athletic Achievement and Early Drug Abuse

It was in high school that Peacock first began to impress people with his athletic ability, but it’s also where he began to abuse drugs and alcohol. Peacock says, “I used recreational drugs in high school, you know, pot smoking, a few beers, never knowing where that was going to lead me.”

It’s a huge warning for teens and parents who believe that casual or occasional drug and alcohol abuse during the teen years is nothing to worry about.

Peacock managed to hold it together well enough to remain functional athletically through his early 20s. He graduated from high school and went to Modesto Junior College in California where he was on the track team from 1980 to 1981. He took a full-ride basketball scholarship at the University of Kansas for the 1982-83 season, but transferred the following season to Fresno State University in California. It was in Kansas that Peacock said his occasional drug and alcohol abuse developed into an addiction that he couldn’t control.

Athletic Prowess Overshadowed by Drug Addiction

He had a reputation as one of the best high jumpers in the world. He won the high jump in 1981 at the World Cup in Rome and a silver medal in the event at the 1983 World Championships in Helsinki, Finland. Then it was time to try out for the 1984 Olympics.

Says Peacock: “I was blessed with this just my drive to win, so to speak, was really off the charts. The talent itself was really a blessing. It was a God-given talent. Leading up to the Olympic year (1984), I was ranked the No. 1 high jumper in the world. But no one knew that I was using drugs, I mean, no one outside my little circle of friends.”

It wasn’t just his Olympic dreams that were dashed as a result of his drug addiction – Peacock had a shot at the NBA as well. In 1983, he met the coach of the Houston Rockets and was promised a tryout in 1984. Peacock says: “My addiction had took off. It was full blown by then. Needless to say, I never made it back that year to try out with the team.”

A History of Crime to Support Drug Addiction

When Peacock was making more and more money due to his athletic success, it only fueled his drug addiction. When that income went away, Peacock had to get the money for drugs somewhere; he turned to crime. Over the years, he’s had a long list of arrests and spent time in prison twice.

He says: “Any time I’ve ever been in trouble, it was for taking something that didn’t belong to me to support my drug habit. I stole things to support my habit.”

Get Help for Drug Addiction

Before you end up in front of a judge for crimes done for no other reason than the support of drug addiction,  get the help you need to recover. Contact us at The Canyon today for more information about our program. We can help.

It’s a pretty common story: every couple of weeks of so, the Coast Guard makes the news with another drug bust, pulling over a ship or a barge on its way to the United States that has thousands of pounds of cocaine or heroin on board. It happens so frequently, in fact, that it’s only makes the news on slow news days. The most interesting part of this story to the rest of the world is not necessarily the 95 bricks of cocaine that were intercepted – though that’s important, too – but the brand new boat they’re using to nab drug traffickers.

The Boat that Caught the Drug Dealers

The new Coast Guard boat is a 45-foot Response Boat-Medium (RB-M). It’s quick, it’s well-equipped and it’s proven itself to be a valuable asset in a number of different types of missions. Better than the larger ships, the new Coast Guard vessel has an easier time intercepting those suspicious, go-fast boats that are common in drug operations.

Pulling 95 Bricks of Cocaine Off the Market – A Positive Rush

Finally, cocaine provides a rush of a non-deadly kind. A US Customs and Border Protection Caribbean Air and Marine Branch aircraft on surveillance saw a little 18-foot yola headed for Puerto Rico with no navigation lighting, they called the Coast Guard. In response, the USCG sent out a  45-foot RB-M from Station San Juan and the Coast Guard Cutter Matinicus.

When the crew of the 18-foot yola saw the men and women in blue coming, they began throwing things overboard. The RB-M crew boarded the boat and stabilized it to keep it from sinking, then recovered as much cargo as they could from the water. A field test sample revealed that the suitcases that were tossed into the water were full of cocaine.  Over the next 24 hours, the Coast Guard worked with the Caribbean Corridor Strike Force and transferred the drugs to Immigration and Customs Enforcement Homeland Security Investigations agents for a more thorough investigation.

Senior Chief Petty Officer Robert Pump is the Station San Juan officer-in-charge. He says: “The 45-foot RB-M has continued to exceed all of our expectations. This interdiction is one more example of the amount of utility that was designed into this boat. The designers and builders should be proud that their efforts have resulted in an outstanding multi-mission platform that will capably safeguard our maritime domain.”

Fighting Cocaine Addiction on our Shores

While it’s a great help to Americans struggling with cocaine addiction that there is a little less product on the streets to promote relapse, serious day-to-day treatment and addiction counseling is necessary to truly fight relapse on a personal level. Contact us today if you would like to learn more about our cocaine rehab program here at the Canyon.

Is someone you love abusing cocaine regularly? Are you searching for information that will help you not only understand the nature of the disease and what to look for but how to help your loved one get the cocaine addiction treatment they need to kick the habit forever? Below you will find the definitions to a number of terms that will assist you as you research cocaine addiction and cocaine rehab options for your friend or family member. Bookmark the page and come back to as often as necessary.

• Cocaine Binge – Binge use of cocaine or any drug may not happen every day or even every week, but a person who binges on cocaine will use large amounts of the drug in a period of days. The risk of overdose is large among those with binge cocaine habits because their body can’t handle the overload of the drug. Usually followed by a ‘crash.’
• Cocaine Crash – After using cocaine for days on end, the user eventually runs out of their supply and can’t get more and the period that follows is called a ‘crash.’ During a cocaine crash, the user may be irritated, depressed, tired yet unable to sleep and suffer from sinus problems and headaches.
• Cocaine – The drug you hate is the psychoactive component of the coca plant, a white powder that can be snorted, freebased or injected.
• Crack – An inexpensive form of cocaine that combines cocaine, baking soda and hydrochloride salt into a rock form that can be smoked.
• Freebase – This is one of the terms used to describe the process of removing the hydrochloride from cocaine hydrochloride. The base form of the drug created through this process is smoked.
• Dual Diagnosis Treatment – For those who are living with cocaine addiction in addition to other psychological and behavioral disorders like ADHD, schizophrenia, and bipolar disorder, Dual Diagnosis treatment provides help for both issues at the same time.
• Outpatient Cocaine Addiction Treatment – Outpatient programs are slightly less expensive than residential programs and allow addicts to continue to go to work or attend school if missing those things for a more intensive treatment is an issue.
• Inpatient Cocaine Rehab – Residential or inpatient treatment services provide a complete detox and addiction treatment program. Each one is different, but most incorporate 12-step meetings and personal therapy sessions with medical treatment and an array of other alternative treatment options.
• Holistic Cocaine Rehab – Holistic cocaine rehab programs may be inpatient or outpatient and may or may not provide 12-step meetings, but incorporate acupuncture, meditation, yoga, equine assisted therapy,  art therapy and other therapeutic options with the Cognitive Behavioral Therapy found in one-on-one session.
• Cocaine Detox – Those who experience extreme physical withdrawal symptoms when they attempt to stop using cocaine will need to ensure that their treatment program includes medical services and detox that will provide directed care to this issue.

If you would like to learn more about cocaine rehab or how you can help your loved one to heal from cocaine addiction, contact us today.

No doubt about it: cocaine addiction does quite a number on romantic relationships when you’re actively using, even if your partner is actively using as well. Fighting is extremely common and the things you said and did under the influence will still loom large in your partner’s mind after you return home from cocaine rehab.

Dealing with past mistakes is the beginning of mending your broken relationship. When you follow up with giving your partner the emotional space to do whatever it is they have to do, you have a shot of creating a new relationship for yourselves. However, it’s important to know when you’ve done all you can do and it’s time to let go. Finding support after cocaine rehab can help you gain the objectivity you need to stay focused on your recovery while you mend your romantic relationship.

Dealing with Past Mistakes in Your Relationship After Cocaine Rehab

Your partner is going to be happy when you come home after cocaine rehab, but after an amazingly short amount of time, he or she will likely start bringing up the past. It may be done in a passive aggressive way, in a controlling way, in an angry way – however your partner expresses irritation. But it will come up, and when it does, you need to tackle it head on. Ask your partner to tell you exactly what he or she is feeling. Let them vent about the things you did that hurt them and what they’re scared of happening now. Then apologize. Give them an actionable plan that you intend to follow to make it up to them and ensure that those things don’t happen again. If you can’t come up with one on the spot, ask them what you can do to make it better. Mending your relationship starts with making amends, and you may have to work your way out of the dog house.

Allowing Your Partner the Room to Feel/ Change/ and Leave After Cocaine Rehab

Even when you make amends and make changes, your partner may have some residual feelings about the past or about the possibility of you returning to active cocaine addiction. There’s nothing you can do about this and the worst thing you can do is to try to change their mind or convince them that they need to forgive you. If they’re going to do it, they’ll do it in their own time and no amount of pressure on your part is going to change that. If they need to leave for awhile, let them go. If they need to be angry, let them be mad. Either their feelings will change or they won’t. There’s nothing you can do but focus on your recovery.

Knowing When to Let Go of Your Romantic Relationship After Cocaine Rehab

Sometimes it’s clear that the past just won’t be forgotten or that remaining in an old relationship is a trigger to get high or drink. When this happens, it’s time to let go. Walking away can be difficult, but when it’s a choice between a happy, positive life and a life that is fraught with anger and fighting, you need to put your recovery first and choose positivity.