Abuse Of Prescription Drugs A Problem Among Teens

The statistics on these drugs are hard to "swallow". One in five teens has abused prescription drugs.

The Denver metro area is slightly above the national average in such abuse, according to the Denver Human Services Office of Drug Strategy.

CBS4's Rick Sallinger reports the problem has become so common it's taken on a name in slang, "pharming" as in pharmaceuticals.

It's in music, like "The Vicodin Song" on YouTube by Terra Naomi, and it's in the schools.

CBS4 asked one student what drugs he has seen around his Denver high school.

"Albuterol, vicodin, valium, codeine, other sorts of pharmaceutical drugs," he replied.

Though he says he doesn't use them he and other kids rattle off the names like a veteran pharmacist.

"Things like allergy medicines, Allegra, things like that being sold, such things like Oxycontin."

That pain killer is one several students ingested at Castle View High School in Douglas County. And a few weeks later at a nearby middle school, different drugs were found on the students.

It's a world Alexis Mueller knew too well.

"Instead of taking them as a pill we would crush them up and snort them and then it gives you more high of a rush," she said.

Before being caught by her parents, Mueller used pain killers Oxycodone, Vicodin and Adderall (which is for attention deficit disorder).

"Where are kids getting these prescription drugs?" CBS 4 asked Mueller.

"They are getting them either from their parents or their friends who have parents who have them," she answered.

Public service messages warn it's like having a drug dealer in the house.

"When you talk to your kids about drugs start with the ones in your medicine cabinet," one TV announcement reads.

But that's not the only place these drugs can be found.

The Internet is loaded with sites offering these drugs for sale. No prescription? No problem.

Under the supervision of CBS4 Medical Editor, Dr. Dave Hnida, we found it disturbingly easy to order addictive drugs like Vicodin.

And you don't know what is really in the pills.

Dr. Brian Hemstreet is an associate professor with the University of Colorado at Denver School of Pharmacy.

"While it's technically illegal to obtain prescription drugs from other countries it is very very difficult to track and police that sort of activity," he said.

He adds, there is a misconception among teens that pharmaceutical drugs are safer than street drugs.

"Did you see any kids get sick?" CBS4 asked teen Alexis Mueller.

"Oh yeah there would be nights at parties where a big thing is mixing all kinds of drugs people would be in the bathroom vomiting I mean people passed out," she said.

These drugs are supposed to be prescribed to make people feel better. It doesn't work out that way - that I can guarantee.

Later - Monty

The mucho sexy Audi R8

WOW! I was just driving down the street and one of these flew by me 30 mph faster then I was going and I was needless to say, very jealous.

I mean look at this thing... It amazing.

If anybody out there has a lot of money and wants to donate one to my charity... :) I will take it and use it well, I promise.

The base price of this monster is 110,000.00

Not to bad eh?

Anyhoo, I saw it and had to blog it as its such a sick car.

What do you guys like out there? i mean for its price range I think that its a pretty damn hot car, especially considering that there are not a lot of them around so anywhere you go people will strain there necks when you drive by.

Later - Monty

Black Gold, and why I am broke!

Well well, well.... What do we have here??? Sky high F*&^ing gas prices, that is what we have here!!!

As you know I have been publishing a lot of things on the drugging of our society and this is great and I get good results from this, but you know I was just at the gas station and it was $3.53!!! That is crazy is it not?!

I unfortunately do not have people with a good enough sense of humour to to carry out anything like what is in the picture but I knew that there would be people on the Internet that did!


Below is a chart that I found interesting, I don't think that I even need to explain it - Just look at it and let me know what you think.























Well????

I had a good friend of mine come back from the war recently and he was in the army and lived in Los Angeles. He told me that he learned something very important in the war - and I am not kidding when I say this - He stated the one thing that he learned was that the money in this world was in OIL!

He then proceeded to move to Texas and work for the oil companies - Now I am not saying that we should all up and leave our jobs and head for oil country, as i think that would be stupid and irresponsible as I am not for the monopoly of oil etc, I think that its not okay. I am just saying that when he was overseas he learned something and that something was that our intentions overseas were far from what was stated by media and government, and that we were there vor the vested interest of OIL.

Now aside from this - one thing that I wanted to bring up was CANADA! Did you know that they have the 2nd largest amount of oil outside Saudi Arabia?! I bet you did not. Here is an excerpt out of something that i just read that I thought was interesting.

"The U.S. government said Thursday Canada holds the world's second-largest oil reserves, taking into account Alberta oil sands previously considered too expensive to develop.

The Energy Information Administration, the statistical wing of the U.S. Department of Energy, has included recent private sector estimates that an additional 175 billion barrels of oil could be recovered from resources known to exist in Western Canada since the 19th Century.

At a briefing on this year's EIA International Energy Outlook, EIA Administrator Guy Caruso cited a December report in the Oil and Gas Journal that raised Canada's proven oil reserves to 180 billion bbls from 4.9 billion bbls, thanks to inclusion of the oil sands - also known as tar sands - now considered recoverable with existing technology and market conditions.

The latest estimates put Canada ahead of war-torn Iraq, which the EIA estimates holds 112.5 billion bbls and is constrained from raising production for entirely different reasons. The U.S. agency estimates Saudi Arabia's recoverable oil reserves at 264 billion bbls."

I thought that this was fascinating as it means that we have the oil right there!!! Now we would obviously have to develop the equipment and facilities to get the oil out of the ground in Canada but that's why we have to start that NOW! This is not a new "discovery" I read about this in National geographic years ago!

Well, what do you think of all this? let me know - I'm anxious to hear.

Later - Monty

Recent travels...

Hey guys,

I know that I have not been with you recently. I will be doing a better blog tomorrow but I thought that I should let you know that recently I went to Chicago and then to Omaha Nebraska and then came and I did this all in one day! It was great and I had a lot of fun, I was working yes but still it was great.

I want to go to Chicago as this is what it looked like.









I mean is that not beautiful!!??

Next I went to Omaha and this was desolate... here is a photo for you...










So there you go...

Tomorrow i will do one on the pope mobile... So stay tuned.

Later - Monty

Drug fact - News Flash!

Hello there!

I just read this when going through my daily barrage of horrific news about the drugging of our children and adults in America - You ready for it....

"There are more than enough antipsychotic and antidepressant medications prescribed each year to hand a Xanax, Prozac or Ritalin to every man, woman and child in America."

HELLO!!! Think about that for a second.... Thought about it? That is a whole lot of drugs... That means that there are 303,830,148 drugs floating around being consumed by people as that is how large the United States is at the time of this writing, so when you might say to yourself that "not that many people take prescription drugs" or "America is not over drugged" just look at the facts...

I read this in an article from Joseph R. Mawhinney, who is the president of the California Psychiatric Association.

Well, what do you think of this....?

Later - Monty

U.S. Senator Rips Psychiatrist Funded by Antipsychotic Maker

Hello!

This is an excerpt from a Senators speech that aired on C-Span on 4/2/08 and I found this to be very interesting...

A University of Cincinnati psychiatrist who was the lead author of a 2002 study that concluded kids did well on AstraZeneca’s antipsychotic Seroquel has received hundreds of thousands of dollars from the company since then, according to Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa).

Grassley (pictured) raised the issue in a floor statement last week in support of a bill he’s co-sponsoring that would require drug and device makers with annual revenues of more than $100 million to disclose to the federal government on a quarterly basis anything of value given to physicians, such as payments, gifts, or travel expenses.

“Today, I am going to report on the actions of one physician to explain how industry payments to medical experts can affect medical practice,” Grassley said by way of introducing his remarks. Grassley then reviewed the funding for Melissa DelBello, who had reported to the University of Cincinnati that she had received $100,000 from AstraZeneca in 2003, the year after the study’s publication in the Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry. She reported another $80,000 in 2004. The payments covered lectures, consulting fees, service on advisory boards and reimbursements for travel-related costs, Grassley said.

DelBello, who also has received NIH grants, also reported $100,000 in outside income between 2005 and 2007. But when Grassley asked AstraZeneca directly, the total value of its payments to DelBello during those three years came to $238,000.

“The fact that a physician can promote a drug to other doctors and receive NIH funding, while hiding a very clear conflict of interest, is disturbing,” Grassley concluded.

Well - What do you think... Click here to watch the full video on this

Later - Monty

Comments anyone...?

Hello y'all!

I just wanted to say that I have added the comments option to my blog now... SO - you can now say what you want to what I say and we can debate or agree or whatever you want...

I think that this is great as it will make it so that all you hundreds of faithful readers will be able to speak your mind...

So start commenting and let me be the guy that regrets it as there are so many posts that I get fired for just going through all the comments each day...

Thanks my people.

Later - Monty

Anti-psychotics may speed Alzheimer’s...

Anti-psychotic drugs frequently used in nursing homes to treat aggression in Alzheimer’s patients don’t provide any benefit and seem to lead to a marked decline in verbal ability, a report says.

The study, published in the April issue of the journal Public Library of Science Medicine, adds to a long line of evidence suggesting such drugs aren’t safe in elderly patients and don’t work very well when used off-label.

The Food and Drug Administration warned doctors in 2005 that some anti-psychotic drugs could increase the risk of death when given to older patients in nursing homes.

Yet the drugs are widely prescribed. An estimated 30% to 60% of nursing home patients in the USA are given the drugs, and many of the patients have Alzheimer’s, a progressive brain disease that sometimes leads to aggressive behavior, says Ralph Nixon, a spokesman for the Alzheimer’s Association.

Doctors often prescribe these drugs because they act as sedatives for difficult patients, says researcher Robin Jacoby, a geriatric psychiatrist at the University of Oxford in England.

Often an underlying medical problem, such as an untreated urinary tract infection, causes an Alzheimer’s patient to behave aggressively, Jacoby says.

But overburdened doctors will prescribe a drug rather than take the time to figure out what’s causing the patient’s distress, he says. “These patients are drugged up to the eyeballs,” Jacoby says.

Jacoby and his colleagues studied 165 people with severe Alzheimer’s living in nursing homes in four cities in Great Britain, where the drugs also are heavily used. The patients had been taking an anti-psychotic drug such as thioridazine, chlorpromazine, haloperidol, trifluoperazin or risperidone for at least three months. The researchers took half the patients off the medication and gave them placebo pills. The other half kept taking the medication.

After six months, the researchers found that patients who kept taking the anti-psychotic drugs showed a significant deterioration in their ability to speak fluently. Alzheimer’s ultimately destroys the brain’s language centers, but the study suggests the drugs might speed up that process and leave patients increasingly isolated, Nixon says.

The FDA approved the anti-psychotic drugs for the treatment of schizophrenia, not Alzheimer’s, says P. Murali Doraiswamy, chief of biological psychiatry at Duke University Medical Center.

But doctors can and do prescribe FDA-approved drugs off-label for other conditions.

The medications do help certain people. If there’s no other way to stop an Alzheimer’s patient from acting out a dangerous delusion, then a prescription for an anti-psychotic can be a blessing, Doraiswamy says.

“But a lot of doctors don’t realize how powerful these drugs are,” Doraiswamy says. “They should be used only as a last resort.”

What is addiction?

PHYSICAL DEPENDENCE

Physical dependence occurs when the body is physiologically changed by the drug and a person experiences withdrawal symptoms when the drug is not taken or the dosage is dramatically reduced.

If you are a long-time coffee drinker or consumer of sodas which have caffeine and suddenly stop drinking coffee or the sodas, you will almost certainly have become physically dependent on the caffeine and experience withdrawal symptoms. The caffeine withdrawal symptoms can include headaches, insomnia, nervousness and erratic behavior, and having a difficult time “getting awake” in the morning.

All of us know that taking sleeping pills for too long can make us physically dependent on them to go to sleep. If the sleeping pills are not taken, insomnia can result. Others have found that taking laxatives for too long has resulted in a physical dependence on them and experience withdrawal symptoms when they stop taking them—constipation and often headaches.

ADDICTION

A person who is physically dependent on a drug is not necessarily addicted.

Addiction is the continued use of a drug because of the way that one feels after taking the drug—often described as a type of euphoria feeling or a “mellow” feeling or sometimes, in the case of many drugs, to not feel a certain way.

The more one is addicted, the more one’s use of the drug becomes compulsive despite negative consequences which can be severe. Addicted people will often lie, doctor shop, sell and buy drugs on the street, deny drug use if asked and, in short, do things that they would never do otherwise.

If the addicted person stops or reduces their use of a drug, in almost every case the addicted person will experience withdrawal symptoms associated with the drug.

TOLERANCE

Tolerance to a drug generally means that it takes a larger amount of the drug/alcohol to obtain the same feeling/effect that was created by the drug/alcohol when first taken.

Tolerance is dependent largely on a person’s DNA but manifests itself in three main ways. One is that our body adjusts to the addition of the drug/alcohol and actually turns off some of the receptors that were being activated or affected.

Another way that the body can adjust to drugs/alcohol is by the receptor becoming less sensitive and requiring more of the drug/alcohol to produce the same effect on the receptor. (This effect is similar to the doorbell that must be pushed harder and harder to get it to ring.)

A third way is for the body to reduce the natural production of the substance that the drug/alcohol is replacing or enhancing. This means that it takes more of the chemical to produce the same effect.

It can take the body anywhere from minutes to weeks to re-adjust back to normal once use of the drug/alcohol ceases. It is during this re-adjustment period that most people feel the worst withdrawal symptoms when they stop taking drugs or drinking alcohol.

-

So - After reading all of this and now that I have said what it is... If you are addicted or know someone that is then they should come to the facility that i work at and its called Novus
and we WILL get you or the person that you know off drugs.
Anyhoo - I just thought that people should know about addiction as it is very important to know in this day and age.

Later - Monty

Elephant Self Portrait!!!

Elephant Paints Self-Portrait

This is AMAZING... In the next few minutes you will see a elephant in a village in Thailand that paints a PICTURE!!! You can actually go there and watch them paint and then purchase the pictures... This is awesome...

I did a little investigation as last time I checked animals don't just grasp a pen and paper and start drawing but the process that they teach these animals is very loving and they are very nice to them as well... As a matter of fact for all you "GO GREEN" nuts out there (I sorta am one too) the paper that the animals draw on is actually recycled dung. That's about as green as it gets.

Anyways - I had to put this up as I was fascinated by it.

Later - Monty