In the United Kingdom, approximately 1.5 million people are addicted to benzodiazepines, a group of sedatives often prescribed for anxiety. Many of these addicts are elderly people who were prescribed the drugs decades ago and may still suffer debilitating side effects such as paranoia, lethargy, fatigue, dizziness, and memory loss. Jo Waters of the Daily Mail UK writes that many people don’t realize the drugs are the problem.
While cases of performance-enhancing substance abuse by professional athletes are not unfamiliar to national headlines, what may go unnoticed is the flip-side to the story: drug dependency among pain-stricken athletes. Participating in the most grueling and physically demanding contact sport, American football players are expected to endure pain and continue playing. To maintain performance, players are often advised to take pain medications to numb injury, and inevitably ignore early indications of serious complications.
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It was established in 2008 that in the past year, approximately 282,000 people above the age of 12 were dependent on or abused heroin. Additionally, 1,716,000 people over the age of 12 were dependent on or abused pain relievers.
This week, Minnesota launched a state database that tracks uses of Vicodin, OxyContin, and other narcotic painkillers with abuse potential. Beginning Monday, pharmacies were required to report data on addictive drugs to the Minnesota Prescription Monitoring Program. By late March, doctors, dentists and pharmacists will be able to tap into the system to identify patients who get too many habit-forming medicines.
A new study shows that one in five Wisconsin teenagers have abused prescription pain killers. This is the first time the Department of Public Instruction (DPI) has asked about teenage prescription drug abuse in its annual Youth Risk Behavior Survey.
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Steven Tyler, lead singer of the band Aerosmith, has entered a treatment center for pain management and an addiction to prescription painkillers resulting from 10 years of performance injuries, according to People magazine.
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How long has it been since you’ve done a complete inventory of all the prescription medications and over-the-counter drugs you have in your home? Do you even know what you have? Some of those old containers of pills, solutions, drops and creams may be long past their expiration date. Chances are, however, you’ve got bigger problems lurking in your medicine cabinet. Without knowing it, you may be endangering yourself or others in your family. It’s time to be smart about prescription addiction. In this case, what you don’t know may very well kill you.
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Opioids and the long-acting oxycodone appears to be a popular choice in Ontario, Canada. According to a new study in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal) and a release in Science Daily, deaths from opioids in Ontario have doubled since 1991 and the addition of oxycodone has resulted in a five-fold increase in oxycodone-related deaths.
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Janet Jackson told ABC’s Robin Roberts in an exclusive interview that her family was not naive about Michael Jackson’s drug problem, saying that she reached out to her brother throughout the years, but was unsuccessful.
A psychiatrist who treated Anna Nicole Smith for drug dependency during her pregnancy said she tried to set up a program to wean her off prescription painkillers but found the celebrity model uncooperative and hostile during her stay in the hospital.