Vol. 87 April, 2010- Replacing Water with H2O: Medication versus Abused Drugs?
Article Written by Donna N.
I recently was made aware of a woman who needed to stop abusing drugs and went to her doctor, who prescribed a “medication” to help her accomplish this. In the process of her accomplishment which was the stopping of abusing drugs, she got addicted to the medication which was prescribed for her to do this.
Why is it whenever we have a symptom or a health problem, and we go to a doctor, the first line of defense is a prescription for some sort of pill, even if it is not needed.
A person goes to a doctor with a cold, clearly caused by a virus and the doctor gives an antibiotic. Even though the antibiotic will have zero effect on the virus, through the placebo effect the patient feels better. One can look at this as the patient, unknowingly to himself, has convinced his unconscious mind that now he has a prescription to feel better and will, and more importantly does.
A person wants to stop taking heroin, and they are given methadone. Methadone is a narcotic pain reliever that is similar to morphine without the high euphoric effects that addicts crave when addicted. It is a synthetic opiate, which means it is synthesized in the lab. It has the same side effects as opiates, causes dependency and has been known to be even harder to stop than heroin or other pain-killers such as percocet or oxycontin.
The medication that the woman took to stop abusing drugs is called Suboxone. According to SMSHA (Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration) there were over 2 million suboxone prescriptions issued to 300,000 patients in the year 2007 alone.
Suboxone causes just as many undesirable side effects if not more, and some report it is even harder if not impossible to withdraw from this drug, as this woman found out.
It is an extract of opium and can produce the same euphoric high as an opiate however it produces a lesser degree of sedation and respiratory depression than the opiod drugs and can cause no significant impairment of cognitive or motor skills. Isn’t it good to know you can get high and still function whilst on this drug?
Despite controls that are in place to make Suboxone “diversion-proof” there have been reports of Suboxone diversion throughout the United States, especially in the Northeast according to The National Drug Intelligence Center report which is titled “Intelligence Bulletin:
Buprenorphine:Potential for Abuse dated September, 2004.
In Vermont a pharmacist reports that Suboxone is being diverted and sold for $25 per 8 milligram tablet. Abusers are reported to be grinding the tablets and snorting them, and in Maine the report is Suboxone tablets are going for $50 a tablet , according to the same National Drug Intelligence Study.
I really believe that it is because the pharmaceutical companies are making huge profits that the government backs the decision to market these drugs.
Remember when you called your bookie to bet your numbers for the week,and that was and is illegal. Why is it that the government runs the same operation and calls it the lottery, making itself huge profits, and now it is legal.
I believe it is the same way with the drug medication market. As long as someone profits, they will keep producing ever more of these drugs to take the place of the illegal drugs. And that is really all they are doing. Substituting one illegal drug for a legal drug.
In Brookhaven Lab a neuroscientist by the name of Panayotis Thanos found that D-cycloserine other wise known as Seromycin found that mice treated with this antibiotic were less likely to stay in an environment where they had come to expect a dose of cocaine when compared to mice who received a placebo. Seromycin is an antibiotic used to treat TB.
Drug resistant TB killed 150,000 in 2008 according to the World Health Organization(WHO), and Seromycin is the second line drug in treatment of TB. Other experimental uses for this drug are for anxiety, OCD, and use in behavior therapy according to Science, 7/22/2008
Do we really want to be using a drug, that was developed and is the second line drug of choice in treating TB, for treating drug addiction, when again, all you are really doing is substituting one drug for another?. Eventually, just like most antibiotics over prescribed, they become ineffective towards the initial problem.
Drug addiction is a problem that goes beyond the physical abuse of these mind altering drugs. We need to find the reason behind why one wants to alter their mind in the first place. To get to the root of the problem as I have said in previous newsletters. This requires work and delving into ones own mind and emotions to figure out what it is that drives them to want to be comatose through life. It requires being honest with oneself and it requires a lot of work on oneself. Unfortunately most people, especially addicts want the quick fix. We want instant gratification, hence the evolution of the drive through pharmacy, coffee shops, fast food places, even dry cleaners. Life itself is becoming a “drive through and a drop off”, people just don’t take the time to do much of anything anymore unless they can do it quickly. The quicker and the faster you can achieve the result, the better.
So if a drug company can produce a drug to help you stop abusing another drug we go for it, because it doesn’t involve our time. It isn’t anymore work for us. However we are really fooling ourselves if we think as addicts we are clean, or we have solved our problem. And I feel this applies to 12 step meetings as well, for although we may not be using drugs it is true that-for the most part we have not gotten to the root of the problem and done the work on ourselves to not ever want to abuse drugs or seek that escape of our minds and emotions again. If we had, we would not have the need to attend these 12 step meetings to ensure our success of NOT abusing drugs.
I find it hard to understand why we are willing to take a drug disguised a “medication” to stop using another drug. Is it because we trust our healthcare provider and know no other alternative?
There are 24 drugs currently in the development for the treatment of alcoholism alone according to data from Thomson Pharma, a ThomsonReuters company which monitors the drug industry. Let us be clear that the reason why there are so many drugs in development is because there is a huge money making potential.
Alcohol and drug abuse addicts see no other alternative. Their minds are so messed up from all the drug abuse that it seems logical to them to take one drug to stop another drug.I also think that addicts are many times so desperate that they see no other alternative.
Just like psychotherapy for most people, is a revolving door that leads to nowhere, substituting one drug for another drug, in the disguise of medication is not only like the fox dressing up as “Granny” for Little Red Riding Hood, it is just as dangerous because these substitute drugs can kill just as easy as the illegal drugs, only you are making some one rich legally instead of illegally, which I you at least you are helping the economy, however at your own health expense.
Through hypnosis one can not only stop the abusing of drugs, but get to the root of why one is abusing drugs and loose the desire completely. Substitute drugs currently can not do that. You may lose the desire to stop Drug A, however you are now dependent on Drug B, so what have you accomplished? And with 26 letters in the alphabet, you may not have enough time to figure it out before the illegal drugs kill you or the legal drug’s side effects kill you. And all because you wanted the easier and quicker way out.
The irony of it all this is, the easier quicker way out, and this applies
to me as well, was and is hypnosis.
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About Donna
Donna M. Novi's passion for the Life Sciences began at the age of 16 when she became fascinated with Biology and Chemistry. So much so that her teachers allowed her to teach basic genetics to lower class men. After landing a Quality Control position with New England Nuclear, she completed her Associates degree from Middlesex Community College. After which she became the first person in the company to be promoted to Chemist prior to receiving her Bachelors of Chemistry from Almeda University. As of 2012 and 38 years following a Life Sciences career, Donna has worked with everything from Multi-step synthesis of steroids to Bio-safety level 2 work with inactivated HIV virus. Currently, she is employed by PerkinElmer in the processing of radioactive nuclides directly from a live reactor for use in Cancer treatment and research.
Bringing her considerable professional experience to bear, she is a very active contributor to Dawning Visions Hypnosis, Inc. as she believes that many more people should be able to benefit from this method of treatment.