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Heroin and Fentanyl Fight, Ongoing in DuPage County

June 16, 2016 By James Faulkner Leave a Comment

Heroin and Fentanyl are currently one of the main causes of death in DuPage County.

DuPage County has seen 73 deaths caused by Heroin and Fentanyl since the start of 2015. The number of people saved is 128.

STATES CHRONICLE – A recent study has recently revealed that doctors over-prescribe opioid-based painkillers, which in turn have a high chance of triggering an addiction. People addicted to painkillers also have an increased risk of becoming addicted to other drugs such as heroin.

DuPage County now reports a concerning sudden rise in drug-related deaths. The cause of these deaths are Heroin and Fentanyl, a notoriously powerful painkiller.

In 2015, DuPage County has recorded 43 deaths in which various mixes of heroin and fentanyl were involved.

In 2016 so far, twelve people have died from taking a similar combination.

Fentanyl, alone, has been the cause of death for eight people in 2015. In the first five months of 2016, DuPage County has recorded ten fentanyl-related deaths.

The potent painkiller is currently consumed by many as a recreational drug, which has a high risk of accidental overdose.

Heroin is known to be four or five times stronger than morphine. Medical fentanyl is considered to be 100 times more potent than morphine. Any mixing of the two substances leads to an incredibly high chance of overdose.

While those numbers alone can be considered cause for more than enough concern, DuPage County police officers have confiscated imported or “homebrew” versions of the drug. These versions of fentanyl, medical officials state, are five to ten time stronger than medical fentanyl.

Additionally, the illegally imported or homebrew drug is disguised to look like other market drugs, such as OxyContin or Xanax. Several people who overdosed did so not knowing what drugs they were actually taking.

The most effective means of attempting to prevent an in-progress Heroin and Fentanyl overdose-induced death is with the help of Narcan. Narcan is a drug specially designed to reverse an opiate-based overdose.

Last year, DuPage County police officers received specialized training in applying the medication. With the help of the Narcan drug, officers have managed to save 62 people who had overdosed on Heroin and Fentanyl in 2015. In just the first five months of 2016, the number of individuals saved from overdosing was 64.

DuPage County has already initiated several comprehensive education programs in high schools and middle schools. The programs have been designed to enforce opioid prevention.

The County’s health department has also strengthened its efforts to connect Heroin and Fentanyl addicts to health organizations and support groups that can help them get proper treatment and avoid further addiction.

Image Courtesy of Pixabay.

Filed Under: Health Tagged With: addiction, DuPage, DuPage County, fentanyl, heroin, Narcon, opiate, opioid, overdose, painkiller, police

Opioids and Painkillers Have a 40 Percent Addiction Rate

June 14, 2016 By Georgia Dawson Leave a Comment

Opioids lined up on a table.

Abusing prescription painkillers could lead to severe addiction to substances such as heroin.

STATES CHRONICLE – A research study performed in the United States in 2015 in regards to usage and storage of painkillers has revealed that all is not right in the world of medical opioids.

According to the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, prescription opioids-induced deaths have tripled between 1999 and 2014. The primary cause for this exponential increase is suspected to be the overprescribing of painkillers.

Opioids are often prescribed to patients when they are discharged from hospitals. Painkillers are a constant risk of addiction. A majority of heroin users have started out as opioid addicts.

A study in regards to personal opioid use, painkiller storage habits, and the sharing of medication was performed in 2015. The study surveyed 1,055 consenting adults who had received prescriptions for OxyContin or Vicodin in the previous year.

Even though an average time of six months had passed since their initial painkiller prescription, approximately 47 percent were still taking medical opioid at the time of the survey.

Nearly 60 percent of the surveyed subjects stated that they expected to have excess or leftover medication. In order to avoid the risk of addiction, excess opioids should be discarded. A minimal percentage of individuals actually did this.

Researchers established that close to 30 percent of survey subjects were given instructions on how to store and discard their medication from their doctors. 45 percent of the surveyed were made aware of such instructions from drug packaging or pharmacists.

Less than 10 percent of patients stored their prescription opioids in a securely locked location, during and after usage. Approximately 20 percent of patients said they kept their medicine in a “latched” location.

8 percent of study subjects shared their prescription painkillers with friends who were in need, 14 percent shared with relatives.

A staggering 45 percent gave their excess or leftover prescription opioids to people who they knew of having issues with managing pain, instead of discarding them.

A similar but different study which gathered data from 600,000 Medicare recipients revealed that close to 15 percent of all hospital patients are given an opioid prescription at discharge. Out of these 90,000 patients, close to 43 percent were using painkillers three months after their discharge.

The results of the study reveal that there is a clear issue in overprescribing pharmaceutical opioids but that also health care professionals must also make greater efforts in promoting the usage, storage, and disposal of painkillers.

Image Courtesy of Wikipedia.

Filed Under: Health Tagged With: addiction, Drugs, heroin, opioids, Oxy, OxyContin, painkillers, prescribed, prescription, study, Vicodin

Video Game Overuse May Be an Addiction: Experts

March 3, 2014 By James Faulkner Leave a Comment

Millions of U.S. children and adults obsessed with video games may suffer from a real addiction, according to a proposal up for debate by top U.S. doctors.

Dr. Martin Wasserman, executive director of MedChi, the Maryland State Medical Society, helped spearhead the new proposal, which has resulted in a 10-page report submitted to the AMA by the group’s Council on Science and Public Health.

“The concern came up because one of our psychiatrists here in Maryland was seeing older people who were losing their social contacts,” specifically because of their overuse of video games, Wasserman said. “It was ruining their family life. So, it was not unlike gambling addictions or alcohol, where it was having a profound impact on the lives of individuals.”

According to the AMA report, one soon-to-be-released British study polled 7,000 “gamers” and found that 12 percent of them met World Health Organization criteria for addictive behaviors.

Scene from Call of Duty

Scene from Call of Duty

Statistics released in 2005 by the Entertainment Software Association (ESA), an industry group, estimated that 70 percent to 90 percent of American children play video games. The typical gamer is a 30-year-old male who spends about seven or eight hours a week gaming.

The ESA survey also found that video game overuse was most prevalent among the approximately 9 percent of video game users who play against others online in Internet-based “massive multiplayer online role playing games.”

The new AMA report defines “heavy game use” as two or more hours a day, but Wasserman, a pediatrician, said addictions are best defined by their impact on an individual’s life and psyche.

“Basically, you’re using a disproportionate amount of time on the video game, and it’s what you are thinking about even when you’re not on the video game,” he said. “And even though it’s having negative consequences for you in school or your family situation, or it’s taking a disproportionate amount of your money, you still continue to do it. You spend less time with your friends or in other social things.”

One theory why certain individuals spend so much time on online games is that they prefer the experience to real-world interaction. According to the report’s authors, the “current theory is that these individuals achieve more control of their social relationships and more success in social relationships in the virtual reality realm than in real relationships.”

But that sense of control may come at a price, Wasserman said, especially for children and adults obsessed with games loaded with violent imagery.

“The violent aspects of this, in particular, have got to be a threat to the normal growth and development that we’d like to see in young people,” he said. “People have observed more aggressive behaviors [linked to gaming], and if you do subjective testing, there are studies which have shown aggressive behaviors in young people and less supportive behaviors.”

Lebron James on NBA 2K14

Lebron James on NBA 2K14

Wasserman wonders, as well, about the sedentary aspects of hours of video game use. “I can’t tell you if this is associated with our current epidemic of child obesity,” he said, “but too much time in front of a video tube — and much of that time spent watching violent interactions — can’t be good for our kids.”

That’s a sentiment shared by a majority of the American public, according to a survey of more than 1,000 parents of children aged 2 to 17 that was released Tuesday by the nonprofit Kaiser Family Foundation. According to the Associated Press, two-thirds of parents responding to the survey said they were “very concerned” about the amount of sex and violence their children are exposed to in various media.

But the AMA report remains merely a starting point for discussion among doctors gathering in Chicago. It is far from certain that the physicians’ group will, in fact, move to label excessive gaming an addiction.

The report’s authors are urging that the AMA pressure the American Psychiatric Association (APA) to include “Internet/video game addiction” in the next edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the standard diagnostic text used by psychiatrists worldwide.

But Dr. James Scully, medical director at the APA, said any decision on the matter is a long way off.

Right now, “we don’t agree or disagree” with the idea, he said. “As a diagnostic issue, it is going to be several years before we make a determination of that. It’s clearly something that we want to consider.”

Popular video game World of Warcraft

Popular video game World of Warcraft

In the meantime, he said, it’s up to parents to limit their child’s exposure to video games, especially the more violent ones. Both the AMA and the APA support current recommendations from the American Academy of Pediatrics that limit children’s exposure to all “screen time” — TV, computers and video games — to a total of two hours a day.

Wasserman believes this simple rule can minimize media’s potentially harmful effects. Media, in itself, isn’t always bad, he said, but “everything needs to be done in moderation.”

“That’s what we taught our kids — if they didn’t do it in moderation in our home, we moderated it for them,” he said. “It didn’t hurt them.”

More information

There’s tips on healthy video game use for kids at the Nemours Foundation.

Filed Under: Lifestyle, Technology Tagged With: addiction, American Medical Association, Video games

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