Florida’s days of easy access to prescription painkillers may soon be over as officials make it harder to score pills in the Sunshine State.

It’s a dubious distinction, but Florida has earned its reputation as the so-called “Oxy Express,” with thousands flocking to the state’s more than 1,000 pain clinics to obtain prescription drugs – often illegally or under questionable circumstances. Those who doubt the severity of the problem need to know only one statistic: 89 percent of all the oxycodone sold in the US in 2010 was bought through Florida doctors.

The days of the Florida pill mills may soon be coming to an end, though. Officials are using tougher laws to disrupt the pipeline that moves the drugs north. In the past year, more than 400 clinics were either shut down or closed their doors. And it doesn’t stop there. Prosecutors have indicted dozens of pill mill operators, and nearly 80 doctors have seen their licenses suspended for prescribing mass quantities of pills without clear medical need.

New laws are also cutting off distribution. As of July, Florida doctors are barred, with a few exceptions, from dispensing narcotics and addictive medicines in their offices or clinics. The changes have had an immediate effect, with doctors’ purchases of oxycodone falling by 97 percent in the first half of 2011.

Law enforcement agencies know they can’t just focus on doctors, though. Pharmacies play a key role, too. The number of applications to open new pharmacies in Florida has nearly doubled in the past two years, accounting for up half of all the requests in the entire country, according to the latest Drug Enforcement Administration figures.

One way to tell the new measures are working is to look at what’s happening on the streets. The price of scoring illegal oxycodone on the streets nearly doubled from 2010 to 2011, jumping to $8 to $15 per pill. In turn, that price hike is resulting in more individuals seeking treatment for prescription painkiller abuse once they find they can no longer afford their addiction.

Prescription Drug Addiction Help at The Canyon

If you or someone you love needs help with prescription drug addiction, call The Canyon at the toll-free number on our homepage. Someone is there to take your call 24 hours a day and answer any questions you have about treatment, financing or insurance.

What’s behind the limited supply of drugs to help stem attention deficit hyperactivity disorder? Is there a connection to the rise in abuse of ADHD meds?

Those who regularly take prescription medication to treat their attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) are finding a shortage of the drugs at their local pharmacy. The problem is so bad that the FDA is receiving hundreds of complaints daily from patients unable to get their prescriptions filled.

What’s behind the shortage? It turns out it is the result of a troubled partnership between drug manufacturers and the Drug Enforcement Administration. Manufacturers want to maximize profits while the FDA wants to minimize abuse of the increasingly popular drugs, often misused by college students looking for a quick, cheap way to stay awake.

Curbing abuse is a noble cause, but kids who rely on drugs like Adderall and Ritalin are caught in the middle. The American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry has told its membership of more than 8,000 doctors that the shortage seems to be “widespread across a number of states” and called the lack of meds “devastating” for children.

Placing blame is tricky. The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) is the agency responsible for setting manufacturing quotas aimed at controlling supplies and preventing abuse. The FDA blames the shortages on overly strict quotas set by the DEA. The DEA, in turn, questions whether the shortages are real or manufactured, suggesting manufacturers are simply choosing to make more of the expensive pills than the generics, creating supply and demand imbalances.

That means fewer generics are being produced, so those who can’t afford the pricier name-brand drugs are forced to go without. Another issue is that ADHD drugs aren’t always interchangeable. Individuals can react differently to similar but not identical meds, meaning they don’t just need any ADHD drug to be available, but the generic or brand that has been proven to work for them.

Another contributing factor is surely the fact that ADHD drugs are being prescribed in record numbers. Doctors wrote 51.5 million prescriptions for ADHD drugs in 2010, with a total sales value of $7.42 billion — an increase of 83 percent from the $4.05 billion sold in 2006, according to IMS Health, a drug information company. Along with this rise in legitimate use, abuse of ADHD drugs rises as well.

Prescription Drug Abuse Help at The Canyon

If you or someone you love needs help with a prescription drug addiction, call The Canyon at the toll-free number on our homepage. Someone is there to take your call 24 hours a day and answer any questions you have about drug treatment, financing or insurance.

Prescription meds are killing three times more people as Rx abuse of drugs like OxyContin and Vicodin continue to skyrocket in the US. What’s behind the surge?

Prescription drug abuse remains rampant in the US, with pill mills and unethical doctors making it easy for addicts to get a quick – and legal – fix, as long as they have the cash. One of the tragic results of this rampant abuse of legal drugs is that overdose deaths from powerful painkillers have more than tripled in the past decade.

Prescription painkillers like OxyContin, Vicodin and methadone contributed to nearly 15,000 deaths in 2008. That’s more than three times the 4,000 deaths in 1999. Those troubling stats come from a new government report released by the CDC that illustrates the danger in big, clear numbers.

And the problem isn’t likely to go away anytime soon.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, nearly five percent of Americans ages 12 and older say they’ve abused prescription painkillers. The study also
Shows that fatal overdoses were more likely in men and middle-aged adults.

Prescription Drug Rehab

If you or someone you love is in need of prescription drug rehab, call The Canyon at our toll-free number. Someone is there to take your call 24 hours a day and answer any questions you have about treatment, financing or insurance.

Is the anti-anxiety drug a quick fix or a drain on resources? Some doctors are stopping prescriptions altogether to wean patients off the popular medication.

In recent years, doctors have seen a steady stream of patients seeking Xanax, an anti-anxiety drug prized for its swift calming effect. The clamor for the drug, and concern over the striking number of overdoses involving Xanax and the growing problem of prescription addiction, are leading some doctors to take the unusual step of limiting or stopping Xanax prescriptions altogether.

The drug, and its generic version, alprazolam, has steadily risen in popularity. While it has helped in some cases when used as prescribed, the widespread use of Xanax has also led to widespread prescription abuse for more than a decade. Those concerned about prescription addiction have focused largely on narcotic painkiller addiction, but benzodiazepines, the class of sedatives that includes Xanax, are also widely misused or abused, often with very negative consequences.

Alprazolam was the eighth most prescribed drug in the nation last year, according to SDI, a data firm that tracks drug sales. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention last year reported an 89 percent increase in emergency room nationwide related to nonmedical benzodiazepine use between 2004 and 2008.

In hopes of helping to limit the damage, some state- and federally-funded healthcare providers are cutting off prescriptions for controlled substances. Not everyone is on board, though. Other doctors say that refusing to prescribe certain drugs under any circumstance is overly rigid, noting that Xanax helps many people who use it responsibly.

Xanax Rehab

If you or someone you love is in need of Xanax rehab, call The Canyon at our toll-free number. Someone is there to take your call 24 hours a day and answer any questions you have about treatment, financing or insurance.

Prescription painkiller abuse is giving birth to a new type of addicted baby. Unlike crack, the drugs their moms take are legal, but the dangers are just as deadly.

In recent years, it seems the reports of “crack babies,” infants of addicted moms who are born sharing their parent’s physical craving for drugs, have diminished. But now a new type of addicted baby is on this rise, sharing many traits (and all the dangers) of their earlier counterparts.

A new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention claims that prescription drug overdose deaths in Florida are up a staggering 265 percent since 2003. It’s statistics like this that have led the White House Office on Drug Control Policy to declare prescription drug abuse the nation’s fastest-growing drug problem.

Prescription Drug Addicted Babies

But as with other substance abuse, the problem doesn’t just affect the addicted person. According to state health records, 635 Florida babies were born addicted to prescription drugs in the first half of 2010 alone. South Florida doctors and intensive care nurses report a dramatic uptick in babies born hooked on pills that their mothers abused while pregnant, CNN.com reports.

It’s just another version of the crack baby epidemic, and it has healthcare professionals and law enforcement very concerned. Babies born to moms who abused prescription painkillers during their pregnancy go through withdrawal symptoms that any adult going addicted to prescription meds would face. The problems can range from cramps, sweating and rapid breathing to seizures.

Treatment facilities across the country, The Canyon included, have seen a dramatic increase is the need for prescription drug rehab programs as the number of users (and abusers) continues to rise. Unfortunately for these affected babies, moms-to-be or new moms hooked on prescription drugs are usually reluctant to seek help because they’re afraid they’ll lose custody of their newborns. As a result, the babies don’t get the care they desperately need. For women who try to kick their habit during pregnancy, there are other risks. They can’t safely just stop using. They need to be weaned off slowly, under medical supervision, or the baby will go into withdrawal in the womb.

Prescription Drug Rehab

If you or someone you love is in need of prescription drug rehab, call The Canyon at our toll-free number. Someone is there to take your call 24 hours a day and answer any questions you have about treatment, financing or insurance.

Antonio Banderas, actor and husband of actress Melanie Griffith, recently reported to the UK tabloids that his wife was making great strides in her fight against prescription drug addiction.

Says Banderas: “We had problems and she had problems which she had to put together. She did and she’s working again, and I am so happy.

“She was addicted to pills – that was her problem, but she totally recovered in the last three years and has been totally sober and great. We had to deal with that – professionally. I am telling you now about our personal life, but professionally that is why she just disappeared. Because in Hollywood that is anathema.”

Recognizing Prescription Drug Addiction

It’s not always easy to see when prescription drug use turns into an addiction that requires medical attention. Because most prescription drug addictions start with a legitimate prescription and many painkillers and other addictive medications have significant side effects, it’s often hard to tell what is “normal” and what isn’t. In general, here are a few tips that can help you identify prescription drug addiction in yourself or someone else:

• Continuing prescriptions when they are no longer necessary. Too often, those with a short-term pain issue (after surgery or an accident) are given a month’s worth of a painkiller prescription when they only need 10-days’ worth. If you continue to take the medication when your body no longer needs to fight pain, addiction can develop.
• Taking more than prescribed. If you feel that your pain is not assuaged by your prescribed dose, contact your doctor before making any changes on your own to the timing or amount of your dose.
• Drinking while on prescription medication. A synergy happens when you combine alcohol and prescription painkillers or sedatives. This means that together the two substances are exponentially more potent than the sum of the effects taken separately. If you are regularly abusing alcohol or taking other drugs in addition to your prescription, addiction may be an issue.

Fight Prescription Drug Addiction

If you believe that prescription drug addiction is a problem for you and you don’t feel that you can simply step down your prescription over time with any success, prescription drug rehab is the next best move. Contact us at The Canyon today and learn more about your options in prescription drug addiction treatment and how we can help you fight the disease.

Women who are addicted to prescription medications take their addiction to a whole new level of harm when they become pregnant during their addiction. According to nurses, the babies who were addicted to drugs were generally born addicted to crack, heroin, or crystal meth due to their mothers’ untreated addiction during prenatal development. Nurses report now that more than half of the babies they treat for addiction are suffering from prescription drug addiction, addicted to everything from methadone to OxyContin to Percocet and Vicodin.

White House Drug Czar Gil Kerlikowske recently toured a pediatric care unit facility in order to get a firsthand look at the effects of a mother’s prescription drug addiction on the babies born addicted.

Said Kerlikowske: “The most important part, I think, is the education and the awareness. Young people don’t perceive prescription drugs as dangerous. People don’t remember or think about what is in their medicine cabinets.”

One of the problems is that many mothers who become pregnant while living with an active addiction aren’t expecting to get pregnant and therefore are not prepared. Once they are pregnant, attempting to undergo an abrupt prescription drug detox will mostly likely mean a miscarriage, and many don’t want to take that risk, preferring to wait until their baby is born to begin the process of detox.

Another problem is that many doctors don’t necessarily recognize the signs of prescription drug addiction among the mothers they treat. Women who are physically dependent upon a prescription painkiller or an anti-anxiety medication may not realize that their dependence will hurt their child – and they may not report their use of the drug to their OB out of fear that the doctor will make them stop taking the drug.

Treatment of babies born addicted to prescription drugs becomes the priority in the face of unexpected pregnancies and the increasing rate of prescription drug addiction among the population. Even if the mother cannot or will not decrease her dose during the pregnancy, it’s important to report the drug usage as early as possible so that the baby can be monitored throughout the pregnancy and preparations can be made in advance for the baby’s care after birth. Every baby will react differently depending upon the dosage of the mother’s addiction and other factors, but it’s important to plan for the worst case scenario – in some cases, newborns will spend the first couple months of their lives in the NICU as they heal.

If you are struggling with prescription drug addiction,  contact us today at The Canyon. We can help you make the changes necessary to live a healthy life.