Drugs | Substance Abuse and Addiction

Rapid Detox

Rapid Detox is a new method of detoxification that speeds up detox by speeding up withdrawal symptoms from a drug so withdrawal that may have taken weeks will now take only hours. In case you are wondering, the patient is sedated through all of this so feels nothing.

The beginning of any recovery program for addiction is detox. Simply stated, the addictive drug is no longer ingested causing withdrawal symptoms as the body adjusts to being without the addictive substance. Living through detox can be rather painful and uncomfortable.

Drug addiction has always been viewed as a psychological problem and treated as such but the rapid detox approach deals with addiction somewhat differently.

Addiction is viewed as a physical problem; a chemical imbalance in the bain brought about by the addictive drug so addiction is treated as a medical problem. Rapid detox is performed in a hospital – an ICU or Intensive Care Unit no less.

First the patient is admitted to the hospital at least 24 hours prior to the procedure and a detox ‘plan’ is developed from careful monitoring of the patient. Next the actual detox procedure is performed with the injection of drugs designed to speed up withdrawal while the patient is sedated.

Last, the patient is monitored for another 24 hours in the ICU for any changes in vital signs.

This form of treatment, known as the Waismann Method, performs a very dangerous procedure within a hospital in case emergency medical care is needed.

The one drawback is the fact that medical insurance will not cover these costs. In spite of this the long term recovery rate of patients who had undergone this treatment is cited at 75%.

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Detox without Drugs

There is a growing trend among drug treatment centers to provide initial detoxification without the use of drugs to minimize cravings.

This ‘cold turkey’ approach combined with sauna baths to release toxins from fatty tissues and life skills therapy is proving to be very promising.

The rate of recovery for this new method of detox is cited at a whopping 70% permanent sobriety. Mostly this treatment has been used with heroin/opiate users but is gaining popularity as a form of treatment for all types of substance abuse.

I’m sure we will here of this approach in the future.

Making Meth

This post is concerned with making meth; particularly with what it is made from. My hope is that maybe someone will read this and decide not to try meth for that first time.

Methamphetamine can be made out of chemicals found in hardware and convenience stores and can take about three hours. The byproducts of manufacture are toxic and smelly – smelling somewhat like a gas leak.

Some think making a batch and selling it is an easy way to getting rich but it really is not. You stand a good chance of killing yourself or at least poisoning yourself if you do not end up in prison.

And if you are thinking of trying out crystal meth…keep in mind that some moron cooked up this batch in a dirty kitchen with no idea of quality control. You just may kill yourself.

So what is in meth? That is actually not an easy thing to list; there seem to be several completely different ways to make it. The recipe I found came from an Internet search and takes about 3 hours to make.

It uses dilute hydrochloric acid that is found in brick and driveway cleaner, lye, starting fluid spray for your car and many nasal inhalers. These ingredients are boiled, kneeded and evaporated in a specific way to make meth crystals.

Not something I want to run out and smoke…

More Drunk Driving

Yes, more drunk driving stories. I find it interesting how public attitudes towards drinking and driving are slowly changing.

It seems that an Oregon man left work and started drinking beers in his car from a cooler as he was driving home. On the way home he managed to get very drunk and slammed into a stopped or slow moving car on the side of the road.

He killed all 4 people in that car but, he himself, was seemingly unharmed. The police came and found the man had 4 prior convictions for driving under the influence of an intoxicant.

After being brought to the hospital the man refused a blood test to determine his blood alcohol count but submitted to one 3 hours later. The test registered a blood alcohol level of 3 times the legal limit of .08.

He later pleaded guilty to 4 counts of first degree manslaughter and was sentenced to 43 years in prison.

So do not drink and drive…..

Drunk Driving Error

A ‘drunk driver error’ resulted in the arrest of a Van Buren County, Michigan man.

It seems that the drunk driver was heading home around 2 am and started to get sick. So he quickly pulls into the nearest parking lot but misses and ends up on the lawn where he got sick and passed out.

The parking lot and lawn he ended up on contained the local State Police barracks…

They merely walked outside, woke him up and arrested him. His blood alcohol count was twice the legal limit.

Toxic Meth Labs

I love to search Google News for drug abuse information and today I searched on ‘Meth Labs’. I was amazed to find 1600 entries in google for the past few days alone…

Anyway, meth labs are extremely dangerous to run; explosive, a lot of toxic chemicals and chemical byproducts and can be contained in something as small as a suitcase. Did I mention they were illegal?

Most meth labs are found because of their peculiar smell so labs are usually located in remote areas although they have been found in apartments, houses and even hotel rooms – anywhere there is a way to heat a pot.

The latest means of production is a meth lab in a moving vehicle using the ‘one pot’ process or ’shake and bake’. The ingredients are mixed in a 2 liter soda bottle using lithium as a heat source – lithium heats up when in contact with water.

This method of production only makes small amounts of meth but has the advantage of diffusing the smell easily and making cleanup easy; by merely dumping the used soda bottle and toxic chemicals out the car window. And…a moving lab is harder for the police to raid.

But rapidly expanding gases produced when lithium and water mix may turn the soda bottle into a bomb if it is not ‘burped’.

Wastewater Drug Detection

Wastewater Drug Detection is a new method of tracking drug use across the nation. I’m surprised no one thought of this sooner…

Wastewater from toilets sinks, showers and tubs can be analyzed for trace amounts of cocaine, methamphetamine, Ecstasy and other drugs to give an indication of drug use in the community which created the wastewater. Patterns of drug use can be identified and analyzed. Tests can also detect caffeine, vitamins, antidepressants and just about any substance you could imagine.

In a sample test several communities in Oregon had their wastewater tested and trace levels of cocaine and meth could be detected and mapped by community by the day. As expected higher drug levels were found in urban areas than in rural areas which could be because of the greater population concentration. Cocaine tests from wastewater across several communities also indicated that cocaine use could be at a higher rate than previously thought.

Tests such as this implemented on a nationwide level show a lot of promise.

Legal Marijuana?

Legal marijuana may be a fact in California soon. A San Francisco assemblyman has proposed a radical idea…legalize and tax marijuana. Even though this has been talked over for decades the terrible financial state of California may actually make this come true.

Legalizing and taxing marijuana could bring in roughly $1.4 billion providing a needed ’shot-in-the-arm’ for California’s economy. Proponents of this also talk of other benefits such as a reduced prison population, a reduction in revenue for organized crime and even increased sales of late-night snack foods.

Many people feel that legalization of marijuana will happen eventually anyway so why not do it now and reap the monetary benefits at a needed time? Alcohol and nicotine kill millions each year and they are legal, while marijuana is not near as dangerous but it is still illegal.

Opponents feel that making money ‘on the backs of drug addicts’ is immoral and unethical, to say the least. They believe that legalization will make California the leader in drug use.

My opinion? Legalize it, control it, tax it.

Drugs and Child Abuse

When you think about it, common sense will tell you that drugs and child abuse go hand and hand. But one must be very careful making these assumptions because what seems ‘obvious’ may not necessarily be true.

For instance, most heroin users drank milk when they were little so does milk cause heroin abuse? I’m sure there is someone somewhere who thinks so.

This may have been a poor example but the point is that even though 2 events may be related or correlated it does not mean that one event causes the other event. Each event may be completely separate from the other.

This is why controlled studies are performed; studies that eliminate all outside variables and whose results are run through statistical tests to gain a ’significance level’ giving the results of the study a probability level of being correct. But I digress…

Coming back to the point, does the taking of certain drugs cause child abuse or are they both caused by some common factor? Studies have been conducted to determine this but they were generally run poorly so results are questionable.

Those studies seemed to suggest that babies born to mothers who were abusing opiates or amphetamines were 13 times more likely to experience some kind of physical, emotional or sexual abuse than babies born to non-drug abusing mothers.

Almost half of all babies born to drug abusing mothers experienced some form of abuse as opposed to 6% to non-abusing mothers.

Curiously, babies born to methadone abusing mothers had a significantly lower incidence of abuse and the last part of the study showed that a significant number of drug abusing mothers with abused children stopped abusing their children once they entered a drug recovery program.

Interesting things to think about…

14 Year Old Drug Dealer

In Idaho drug abuse with prescription drugs is a very serious problem. Emergency room visits due to overdose are becoming commonplace as more and more teens participate in pharm parties.

So how do they get these drugs? Their parent’s medicine cabinet is one way and buying them from other children is another way. In fact the distribution and selling of so-called legal drugs is becoming a big business in the grammar schools and high schools.

The sad part is that the law stipulates that if you are caught selling drugs on or even near school property and are 14 years old or older you are charged as an adult with the delivery of a controlled substance on school property.

Many children who bring in 4 or 5 pills from mom’s medicine cabinet to sell for a quick 20 bucks are caught and immediately labeled as drug dealers. Lives are ruined and at such a young age.

Parents need to be educated on what is going on in schools and should not willingly supply their children with any prescription drug to take to school for whatever reason.

Substance Abuse and Addiction

Blog Posts

Rapid Detox

Detox without Drugs

Making Meth

More Drunk Driving

Drunk Driving Error

Toxic Meth Labs

Wastewater Drug Detection

Legal Marijuana?

Drugs and Child Abuse

14 Year Old Drug Dealer

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