America’s drug problem doesn’t just center around illegal substances anymore. A growing new breed of addicts is turning to the medicine cabinet to get high.

For years, we talked about drug abuse dangers and warned kids about scary dealers or peer pressure from friends to try illegal substances. Musicians and others seemed to glorify drug use, and parents worked hard to keep their progeny away from “bad influences.”

Ironically, while we were trying so hard to fight against the abuse of illegal substances like heroin, meth or cocaine, a new threat began to gain popularity at an alarming rate. Healthcentral.com reports that recent studies show prescription drugs are now the second most commonly abused type of drug in the United States. The overprescribing of narcotic painkillers, sedatives and stimulants is partly to blame for this epidemic, along with the rise of Internet pharmacies, making it easy to score meds anonymously without being under the watchful eye of your local doctor.

So how can you tell when prescription drug use has crossed the line from “use” to “abuse”?

When you find you need to take more of a medication to achieve the same level of sleep, pain relief or alertness, you have developed what experts call a “tolerance” to that drug. Tolerance is a sign that your body is becoming physically dependent on the medication. This is not the same as being addicted to a prescription drug, but it can be a warning sign that you are taking too much.

It’s a short trip from tolerance to physical dependence. Once your body becomes physically dependent on a medication, you will experience withdrawal symptoms, making it very difficult or uncomfortable to stop taking the drug. The side effects of withdrawal can be so strong – ranging from insomnia, nausea and anxiety to depression, sweating and shaking — that many individuals are unable to stop taking a drug without medical supervision.

Remember, these powerful medications are prescribed to help individuals reclaim their lives and health, not to create new medical issues. If you begin planning activities around the times you take your medications or miss important events because of your prescription drug use, it’s a clear warning sign that the original purpose for taking the medicine is being overshadowed. Taking more than is prescribed is another classic sign that you’re losing control.

As the prescription addiction continues to grow, you find that instead of feeling better on the medication, you’re feeling worse, possibly experiencing mood swings, relationship problems, blackouts or even paranoia. Despite these negative consequences, you keep using. You may also get desperate enough to start asking for prescription meds from friends and relatives, falsifying prescriptions or even stealing to pay for meds. If you recognize these behaviors in yourself or a loved one, there’s no shame in reaching out for help.

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.

A new rash of hospitalizations has another state on the alert for this trendy but dangerous drug.

What’s a concerned parent to do? It’s so hard to keep up with all the new drugs that arrive on the scene everyday. Now a type of fake pot that has cropped up here in the US is raising new health concerns after at least three users were hospitalized for kidney failure, according to Wyoming state authorities.

Authorities are viewing the use of this drug, which goes by names like “Spice” or “K2,” as potentially life-threatening. This substance, also called herbal incense, is marketed primarily to young people and is popular for the high it creates, which is similar to that produced by marijuana. The drug is smoked in a joint-like cigarette.

The recent incident in central Wyoming that landed three patients in the hospital after smoking something called “Blueberry Spice” drew the attention of State health authorities, but it’s just the latest in a long line of issues that have been seen across the country.

While there have been no deaths reported, officials are still very concerned. The use of this synthetic or “fake” pot has been on the rise for several years now. The compound, known as JWH-018, was created in the lab of John Huffman, a professor of organic chemistry at Clemson University, who was researching how marijuana-like compounds act on brain receptors.

According to the Drug Enforcement Agency, which banned JWH-018 and four other synthetic cannabinoids in 2011, calls to poison control centers rose from just over 100 in 2009 to more than 2,700 nationwide in the space of a year.

At the same time, retailers plead ignorance by marketing it as incense and insisting it’s not for human consumption. Despite this, it’s assumed that most smoke shop owners know how their customers are planning to use it.

Drug Addiction Help at The Canyon

If you or someone you love is battling 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.

A new study shows adopted children are twice as likely to abuse drugs if their biological parents did, suggesting a clear link to genetics.

It’s an age-old debate: Nature or nurture? Do we develop certain positive traits or bad habits as a result of who we are genetically, how we’re raised or other outside influences?

A new study shows that adopted children are twice as likely to abuse drugs if their biological parents did, suggesting a clear link to genetics playing a role in the development of substance abuse problems. Of course, substance abuse in the adoptive family is also a risk factor, according to the study, which looked at more than 18,000 adopted children in Sweden.

These results seem to suggest that environment AND biological family history can both play a role in a child’s potential for future drug use. Rather than worry adoptive parents, the experts insist these findings should be reassuring, showing the importance of a positive environment.

“For someone at low genetic risk, being in a bad environment conveys only a modestly increased risk of drug abuse,” says lead study author Dr. Kenneth S. Kendler, professor of psychiatry and human genetics at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond. “But if you are at high genetic risk, this can put your risk for drug abuse much higher.”

The study was published in the Archives of General Psychiatry and showed that 4.5 percent of adopted individuals had drug abuse problems as identified by Swedish medical, legal and pharmacy records, versus 2.9 percent of people in the general population.

Whether your children are adopted or biological, there are precautions that can be taken to help deter drug use. First off, simply pay attention. Spend time with your child, monitor his or her behavior and be aware of changes. This is going to help the child feel secure and loved, placing him or her at less risk for developing a substance abuse problem.

Addiction Help at The Canyon

If you or someone you love is battling drug or alcohol 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.

The micro-blogging site bans content that promotes or encourages self-harm.

The information superhighway is full of plenty of bad along with the good. For every healthy piece of information, there seems to be a negative counterpart. Helpful info on the principles of gravity for your child’s science project resides right there along with child porn. Explicit pro-anorexia sites (complete with tutorials and tips) exist beside healthy vegan recipe sites.

Policing the entire World Wide Web has proven too big of a task to-date, but some are taking a harder look at what goes on in their own virtual backyard. The micro-blogging site Tumblr, for instance, recently announced it is taking steps to clean house by officially prohibiting blogs “that actively promote self-harm.”

While they insist via the official Tumblr staff blog that the company is “deeply committed to supporting and defending [its] users’ freedom of speech,” specific types of content—including spam, identity theft and pro-eating disorders posts—”aren’t welcome on Tumblr.”

For those who are afraid the company will take a Big Brother approach, cracking down on jokes or simple offhanded remarks, Tumblr is making a distinction between a post that actively promotes or glorifies self-harm vs. a post where you joke that you need to starve yourself after Thanksgiving or that you wanted to kill yourself after a humiliating date. Those comments are fine, Tumblr says, but recommending techniques for self-starvation or self-mutilation is not.

Tumblr goes on to explain, “Don’t post content that actively promotes or glorifies self-injury or self-harm. This includes content that urges or encourages readers to cut or mutilate themselves; embrace anorexia, bulimia or other eating disorders; or commit suicide rather than, e.g., seek counseling or treatment for depression or other disorders. Online dialogue about these acts and conditions is incredibly important; this prohibition is intended to reach only those blogs that cross the line into active promotion or glorification.”

The new policy goes into effect March 2012 and will include a grace period as users adjust to the new rules. Tumblr will also begin showing “public service announcements” whenever a user searches for keywords frequently associated with blogs that promote self-harm.

Co-Occurring Disorders Help at The Canyon

If you or someone you love needs help with substance abuse and a process addiction such as an eating disorder or self-harm, 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 co-occurring disorders treatment, financing or insurance.

Dogged pursuit of that ultimate high score could just be deadly.

It sounds like a crazy movie plot or an urban legend pre-teen boys share to scare their friends, but it really IS possible to die from too much video gaming. And it’s not just a fluke either. It turns out that it’s beginning to be a disturbingly common phenomenon.

The most recent incident was when a young man in Asia died of what medical experts attributed to “prolonged gaming.”Chen Rong-yu, 23, checked in at a cafe in Taiwan one evening to play “League of Legends.” A waitress recalls noticing the young man at noon the following day talking on his phone, but then he was found sitting in his chair rigidly, with his arms outstretched. The death and resulting corpse went completely unnoticed by 30 or so other customers for up to nine hours. Medical experts surmise Chen died from cardiac arrest brought on by blood clots, something surprisingly common among obsessive gamers.

Other gamers who have met a similar fate died of exhaustion or lack of movement during extended play sessions. It sounds like some sci-fi nightmare, but medical experts say that the lack of circulation can literally cause the blood in the human body to congeal, and any sudden movement will bring about a heart attack.

This latest tragic story is a reminder that addiction comes in many forms. Gambling, sex, gaming and shopping are all prime examples of process addictions, and they can be just as dangerous as substance abuse.

Addiction Help at The Canyon

If you or someone you love needs treatment for substance abuse and a process 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 co-occurring disorders treatment, financing or insurance.

New research shows marijuana smoke doesn’t hold the same dangers as tobacco smoke, but pot proponents shouldn’t start celebrating just yet.

A new study shows that marijuana smoke does not damage lungs in the same way tobacco smoke does, a fact that “legalize marijuana” groups will likely see as a victory, but that doesn’t mean the drug isn’t dangerous.

While marijuana contains many of the same chemicals as tobacco smoke, researchers at UC San Francisco found that smoking marijuana on an occasional basis does not appear to significantly damage the lungs. The study, reported by the Los Angeles Times and published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, looked at 5,115 men and women in four US cities regarding their current and lifetime exposure to tobacco smoke and marijuana smoke and their lung function.

The study showed that lung function declined with increased exposure to tobacco smoke, but the same pattern was not seen with marijuana smoke. There was no evidence of lung function damage with smoking one joint a day for seven years, however, after 10 years, there was some decline in lung function as measured by the speed at which a person can blow out air.

There is a growing interest in understanding the pros and cons of marijuana use as pot usage rates rise and many states consider legalization. The study doesn’t show the effects of chronic marijuana use, and addiction experts continue to express concern over the role pot use may play in a variety of types of substance abuse.

The National Institute on Drug Abuse maintains marijuana is dangerous on many other levels, including impairing driving and interfering with learning and brain development when used by adolescents.

Addiction Help at The Canyon

If you or someone you love needs help with an addiction to marijuana or other drugs, 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.

You don’t have to be involved with the drug trade to get swept up in their illegal activities, as one Mexico native learned the hard way.

Mexico’s drug war has taken over the lives of ordinary people in that country, making many fearful even to go to restaurants or other public places where kidnappings could happen. And you don’t even need to be involved in the drug trade to suffer consequences.

CNN recently told the story of one Mexico native who lived through a drug-related nightmare – and all he was doing was minding his own business and trying to better himself. Juan Andres, as CNN agreed to call him, traveled daily from his home in Ciudad Juarez to the University of Texas at El Paso. It was a quick three-and-a-half-mile commute that earned him a special pass to go quickly through customs. There were some hoops to jump through initially, but once Andres proved he wasn’t high-risk, he earned the coveted SENTRI pass. The special status was a time-saver for the married father of two, but it also made him a target to drug traffickers.

The morning of November 16, 2010, was a typical commute for Andres, who drove his 2007 Ford Focus to the Stanton Street Bridge border crossing as he’d done every day for years. And then it happened. US Border Patrol agents singled him out for a random search and discovered two black duffel bags filled with marijuana in the trunk of his car.

“It was like suddenly being in a nightmare,” Andres told CNN. “I [asked] God, ‘Why did you allow something like this to happen?’”

He told the agents he had no idea how the drugs got there, but because there was no evidence that his trunk had been tampered with, he was arrested and detained. Andres was charged with drug possession with the intent to distribute and spent six months in various US jails awaiting trial. He refused to accept a plea deal because he knew he was innocent.

On May 10, 2011, Andres was found guilty of possession and intent to distribute marijuana. He faced up to three years in prison. If Andres had already had a criminal record, he could’ve been sentenced to up to 20 years in prison.

So how did this happen?

Drug cartels are always looking for new ways to get product into the US, and they concocted a plan to take advantage of the SENTRI pass system and law-abiding citizens like Andres.

Fortunately, US law enforcement noticed a pattern in several drug smuggling cases and the case was dismissed against Andres just three days after he was sentenced. The federal investigation that followed proved that Andres was one of at least five so-called “blind mules” used by cartels to traffic drugs. Others included a fourth-grade teacher and a sports medicine doctor.

Despite being a free man with a cleared name, Andres is still haunted by his experience and the six months he spent behind bars, falsely accused.

Drug Addiction Help at The Canyon

If you or someone you love needs help with 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.