Prescription Drug Addiction: The Hidden Epidemic

Are you suffering with an addiction to prescription drugs? Or, are you suffering because you have a loved one who is addicted? If so, author Rod Colvin understands your anguish. His brother, Randy, died as a result of his years of addiction to prescription drugs. Once recovered from the loss, Colvin was determined to help others who are still suffering. He wrote Prescription Drug Addiction—The Hidden Epidemic.

The Book Answers These Questions:
• How does addiction “rewire” the brain?
• What happens if the drugs are stopped abruptly?

• What are the symptoms of addiction?

• Who’s at risk for addiction?

• When does proper medical use become addiction?

• How do most people become addicted?

• What are the symptoms of withdrawal?

• What is the difference between addiction and physical dependence?

• What are the top 20 most-abused prescription drugs?

• What is the proper use of benzodiazepines (xanax, valium, klonopin, ativan)?

How Can You Leave Prescription Drugs Behind?
Read stories of recovery from eleven individuals, including a homemaker, an attorney, a physician, a business woman, and a salesman.
· Learn how they become addicted.
· Find out how they made it into recovery.
· What were the turning points in their lives that made them seek recovery?
· What is their advice to others who are struggling?

Treatment for Addiction—What’s Involved?

· What are the treatment options?
· What is a medical detox?
· What is in-patient treatment?
· What is out-patient treatment?
· What is a partial-day treatment plan?
· What is rapid detox for opiate addiction?
· Does insurance pay for treatment?
· What is relapse prevention education?

How Can Family Members Ease Their Pain?
Addiction affects everyone in the family. No one escapes the pain and the chaos.
· What can family members do to help the addict and themselves?
· What does it mean to enable an addict?
· Find out if you’re enabling the addict.
· What are the levels of enabling?
· What is a family intervention?
· How can you set up an intervention to get your loved one into treatment?
· Understand that addiction is a progressive disease.

Advice from Addiction Medicine Specialists
Read the advice of addiction medicine specialists. Their topics:
· Addiction is an illness.
· How to build on hope.
· Be cautious with benzodiazepines.
· Stages of chemical dependency.
· Addiction to pills means greater denial.
· Addicts are not having fun.
· Warning signs of addiction.
· How to avoid isolating, a trigger for relapse.

A Helpful Guide for Overcoming Prescription Drug Addiction

The first comprehensive guide to overcoming addictions by using natural remedies that rebuild health for both body and mind from the inside out.

• Covers a full range of natural remedies, including herbs, homeopathy, aromatherapy, flower essence remedies, color therapy, acupressure, and more.

• Addresses many different substances, such as caffeine and chocolate, and discusses how the body deals with withdrawal, detoxification, and repatterning.

• The natural remedies included in this book can be used in conjunction with conventional therapies.

• By well-known author Brigitte Mars, who has 30 years of experience with natural therapies and is the formulator for UniTea Herbs.

Addiction is one of the most serious health issues facing our twenty-first century culture. Modern lifestyles encourage us to consume excessive amounts of caffeine and sugar and to unwind from our stressful lives with tobacco or alcohol. Left untreated, some addictions can cause metabolic damage, leading to heart disease, high blood pressure, and immune disorders--as well as causing nutritional deficiencies, fatigue, and depression.

Addiction-Free--Naturally offers gentle but effective ways to ease cravings and nourish the body, as well as information on cleansing the body of accumulated toxins and using natural remedies for stress relief. The remedies can be used in conjunction with conventional therapies, such as psychotherapy or Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. The author also offers advice on designing a personal program to break addiction and finding a health care professional or program to offer expert guidance as you walk the road to recovery.

Straight facts and medical information concerning legal, painkilling prescription drugs.......2005-07-06

All too often, patients place far too much trust in their overworked doctors, psychiatrists, and therapists; take tranquilizers, benzodiazepines, and other mind-altering substances for temporary emotional problems; and ultimately find themselves trapped in a cycle of habit and despair. To make matters worse, many doctors then diagnose their newly addicted patients with clinical psychiatric ailments and minimize or neglect the source of the trouble--the drugs themselves. And, since the 1950s, this problem has disproportionately plagued women, stereotypically regarded as prone to "hysteria" by their male doctors.

Joan Gadsby's book is both a memoir and a book of advocacy. On the latter score, it is a triumph: Gadsby has gathered a mountain of evidence regarding the careless dispensation of drugs, the shady marketing practices of pharmaceutical companies, the undeniable seriousness of the symptoms caused by prolonged use, and the dangers that confront patients who try to discontinue their prescriptions. In the past few years, Gadsby's goal--to publicize the dangers of these drugs--has been made much easier by an avalanche of media attention, but her book is still valuable as a one-stop resource for the layperson looking for information on the topic.

As autobiography, however, the book stumbles. There's no arguing with Gadsby's courage or with the misfortune she has endured, and her accounts of drug withdrawal and subsequent legal battles are riveting. Her writing is technically precise, but she's no memoirist. Far too often, her recollections read like excerpts from a resume: "I was responsible for managing multi-million dollar budgets and leases, and recommended, directed, and coordinated major capital repair and upgrading projects for many Crown-owned properties." "She later moved to the operational side of WCB as director of client services and was responsible for ten area offices throughout British Columbia, traveling extensively." And there's a certain cringe factor when one reads the treacly Rod McKuen-influenced poetry that adorned her refrigerator in times of need--and which she reprints in whole, with lines like "When tomorrow comes, this day will be gone forever" and "Love yourself first and most." (A few people in situations similar to Gadsby's might find such inspirational material worthwhile, but bad poetry is bad poetry, and there's little benefit for the rest of us.)

Fortunately, though, Gadsby sticks mostly to her main themes, and presents a compelling and irrefutable case for the dire situation created by these prescription drugs. Hers is a voice of sanity that should--and must--be heard in order to thwart this legally perpetuated epidemic.

A must read for anyone dealing with or know someone that is dealing with an addiction .......2007-07-11